horangi

I think its mostly a fait accompli now though. Not sure if you are from the US or not, but drivers licenses/IDs need to be 'RealID' compliant by next year which allows for facial biometric identification. In time it wont really matter if you have been staying off the grid, your face will be your ID (as mine apparently is now using Global Entry and by giving up my rights to privacy from the government by being a Fed). You don't really even need to link up a birth certificate or social security number, etc with it, if you've gotten on the wrong side of the law, there's nothing preventing the state from prosecuting John/Jane Doe with facial ID # xyz. Add to the fact that virtually everyone already keeps a personal tracking device on them nearly all the time (no insidious tracker chips needed) and I'd guess the age of anonymity is at an end. Given the way we've seen the youngest generation act towards social media, my guess is that in a hundred years, no one will blink an eye about it.

We have a similar policy re: telling the truth with our child, and agree that creating a total taboo can lead to pretty bad consequences when they do head off for college/turn 21 due to lack of self control. I'd have no problem with ours having a glass of wine if we were in a country with a lower drinking age etc. That said, 14 seems a tad young in my book, if for nothing else due to developmental concerns. My bigger concern wouldn't be for my kid, but anytime someone else's kid is involved, it can get legally harrowing if anything goes wrong or their parents get involved/school finds out.

Isn't the correct response: 'no, but I will happily call child protective services if I receive that text.' ?

Thanks for sharing, quite an interesting read especially considering it was published in 1984. "We are all supposed to keep tranquil and allow it to go on, even though, because of the data revolution, it becomes every day less possible to fool any of the people any of the time. If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out for will come - you heard it here first - when the curves of research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics all converge." Man I wish the first sentence was true- not sure they anticipated that too much data would lead to the truth being more easily obscured. We seem to be on track with AI and molecular biology, but those robotists are really letting us down. (Just wrapping up Excession by Banks, so this whole thread was serendipitous for me)

Indeed spot on, always a bit of a roulette with each bite.

After a pretty hectic day, no energy to prep dinner, and really poor options for take out food at the grocery, I relented to my kid and picked up a hot pocket for them and a microwave burrito for myself. (To their joy since we virtually never eat that kinda processed stuff). Now I haven't had a microwave burrito since college and hot pockets since before that, but I'll be damned if they haven't shrunk by 50% and are virtually all bread. It used to be the issue was that they were so overstuffed you'd have to avoid burning yourself with the molten hot cheese fillings, now it may as well been a 5 day old croissant stuffed with a couple chunks of pepperoni and a pinch of cheese.

I'm not sure how the facial scanning at the airport is going to impact much there. If you are flagged, its not going to matter if they scan your face or not. Now perhaps the concern is more with the facial recognition everywhere else where one might be considering nefarious viva la resistance activities. I will say coming back through immigration the last couple trips has been a breeze- we didn't even need our passports, just look at the camera, it gives you a green check, then walk past the CPB person who says welcome back XYZ.

Right and I believe in the Netflix version the ETO refer to the Centauran system in passing. When I was reading the book with some friends, we debated which system it was and had bypassed Alpha Centauri because it doesn't seem to have the orbital mechanics necessary for the plot. A and B are gravitationally bound spinning around a central point and proxima is the equivalent of a very very far off satellite of that combined system. Proxima is known to have stable planets and there's nothing to indicate the tidal forces needed to have planets swapping stellar bodies (A and B are ~35 AU apart). To be fair, the book was published before much of this was worked out, and even so, its an acceptable creative license for the plot.

Socks are about the only clothing item I am really particular about. For years my partner has been trying to ween me off of Smartwool socks (due to the price) for some 'equivalent' and its just never the same.

Noting Wert's last comment on Fallout and leaping back a couple pages into the 'Best RPG of All Time' debate, I think that its best to bound it a little by release date ranges or sub-categories that aren't predominantly linked to technological development. There seems to be a tendency to artificially give a handicap to older, ground-breaking games when, as I see it, things like graphics, sound, UI, QoL improvements should be just as important in determining 'the best of genre' lists. As a result, its not just recency bias that would lend a skew towards more 'recent' games, but the onward march of progress in gaming technology which objectively improves in fits and starts with time. Is Fallout: NV better than Fallout 4? Debatable since the advances in graphics/UI/combat mechanics may be able to compete against the differences in quality of the setting and writing. But is anyone going to say Fallout 1 is better than Fallout 4 if both were released today? You can argue Civ V is better than Civ VI due to preferences in mechanics, but Civ VI is objectively better than Civ 1. Diablo I vs IV. Warcraft I vs Startcraft II. etc. Basically, outside of a narrow category like 'retro style metroidvania' etc. or for the most die hard grognards, there shouldn't be many candidates for 'best of category' older than say 15-20 years (with those older ones being like Morrowind maintaining momentum due to their ability to be modded into more modern games). BG3 is a candidate for best of CRPG today, but I doubt that will be the case in 20 years, whereas, by then, Planescape: Torment will be a museum relic, played only by post-docs trying to understand 1980's American culture, (if we aren't there already). Or in other words, I know naught which will be the best RPG tomorrow, but the all time best RPG will be Fallout: Live Edition. ETA: After all I just said, I just built a new computer after my daughter spilled a cup of water and ended her desktop, thus 'forcing' me to giver her my previous one and suffering through having the latest tech. Going from a RTX 2060 and equivalently specced computer to a 4070 Super-based computer has, to me, been the smallest jump in appreciable gaming quality since I've been building computers (generally about once every 4-5 years). Cyberpunk looks a little better, I guess, but not really anything that has blown me away like going from Quake to Unreal in 97/98 with a dedicated gfx card. Some of the 'best of' games of the last decade may be able to hold off competition longer I would think in terms of graphics.

I'll add also to fionwe's comments that the expansion of the universe itself diminishes the ability for light and thus anything to move between points and bit by bit eliminates the ability for communication between them. With sophisticated technologies we might be able to move close to light speed, but the universe is foiling our plots by constantly expanding. The reason other galaxies aren't on the menu for our future near-light speed vessels isn't because of current distance, but because those other galaxies are moving away at nearly the same speed. Our current galaxy is probably the only petri dish we have to play in and as noted above, its as equally large as it is old.

Straying a bit from the primary thread topic, but I visited a temple in Taiwan that had the aforementioned shrines but also one to Jesus... and Pikachu. I get the impression Buddhism basically accepts whatever it takes to get you in touch with the divine (peacefully) is all good.

I'm getting it as well. Just so long as it doesn't start asking me to pick out crosswalks and fire hydrants I am OK. Because I am most definitely not a human according to that test.

Yeah that's definitely not a hate-bandwagon I'm keen to join. Fair points from you and Deadlines about the psychology of the situation, with Oppenheimer being a decent real-world comparison. It was more of a direction thing where it seemed her character was flip-flopping between episodes 5-7. I also responded to the beauty objection with similar disdain.

Wrapped up the 1st season. Overall good, I thought the pacing of episodes 6-8 (particularly 6) was a bit odd but I didn't expect them to get that far into the plot in Season 1. Season 2 will need to buff up the sfx budget for sure.