I still am struggling to find articles that actually delve into the technical details of how they’re blocking and if it’s any more complicated than a DNS-level block or if they’re also demanding to block that IP range or what. I want to know who the third parties are and what kind of services they’re offering that allow it to be routed around. Damn not being able to speak Portuguese, that’s on me.

It’s called Hitman.

There’s also a series of science-based, 100% hitman simulator video games of the same name.

How easy or hard is it to hire a Hitman?

That’s the man right there, Officer.

A roundhouse kick to the neck!

So much yes on the typing, The number of young people who don’t even own a laptop and do all homework/correspondence on their phone is too damn high. (Which coincidentally, is tied to how they don’t understand file systems/path)

That’s not to shun the use of phones or that form factor, and maybe this is just the old fogey in me, but phone interfaces are so limited and you have to jump through so many hoops to do what amount to keyboard shortcuts on a PC. (Yes I know some young people can be quite quick and accurate with them… thus old fogey)

It’s rather more about how long it ends up taking them because they’re shunning a device that is aimed at streamlining such processes, instead of a device that is aimed at being a phone, with a computer slapped on for funsies.

Literally half this stuff were first-year college courses for me, even though I was already familiar with a bunch.

I agree it needs to be pared down a bit, but I also agree with OP that actually a lot of this should probably be being taught at the high school (or german equivalent) level. I think we do a disservice to students by not having some of this available to children in lower grade levels.

hand out USB drives/cheap SSDs

learning some “real” programming

1. Handing out drives has to go hand-in-hand with education about how “you shouldn’t just plug in any drive that someone hands you or you find on the street.” That’s basic security consciousness at this point. You might point them towards the Open Source schematics for this USB Firewall: https://globotron.nz/products/usg-v1-0-hardware-usb-firewall

2. Don’t start with “real” programming. Start with scripting. A place where you can get the feel of the ideas of programming while starting somewhere more basic. Linux scripting and Powershell scripting are both good places to start. You still get programming fundamentals (what is a loop, what’s an if-else statement, etc) without jumping into confusing versioning or where to get updates (should I let Windows update Python, or do I want to update it with pip? You have to choose one or things get fucky with them overwriting each other).

3. When I mean more basic I mean literally things like SYNTAX and PATH are way more important for students to be understanding before they start programming. Syntax and path (relative and absolute), in my opinion, are easier to learn when you’re learning them on the OS you’re using. That means “real programming” is obfuscating things like syntax and path, and students need to understand these core concepts before they move on to "real programming.* EDIT: Like seriously, students need to understand what the fuck a delimiter is and why it is!

How terrible to biased in favor of *checks notes… the frail, the sick, the old, and those in need.

Doctors with Borders Made for Them.

Every answer so far is wrong.

I wouldn’t say wrong so much as leaving out the detail that LLMs aren’t evil and that open source LLMs are really what the world should be aiming for, if anything. Like any tool, it can be used as a weapon and for ill-purposes. I can use a hammer to build a house as much as I can use it to cave in someone’s skull.

But even in the open source world, LLMs have not lead to a massive increase of new tools, or a massive increase of finding bugs, or a massive increase in open source productivity… all things LLMs promise, but have yet to deliver on in the open source world. Which, based on how much energy they use, we ought to be asking if that’s actually truly beneficial to be burning so much energy for something which has, as of yet, to prove itself as actually bringing the promised increased open source productivity.

Someone’s been watching way too many movies and isn’t familiar yet with how mind bogglingly stupid “AI” actually is.

JARVIS can think on its own, it doesn’t need to be told to do anything. LLMs cannot think on their own, they have no intention, they can only respond to input. They cannot create “thoughts” on their own without being prompted by a human.

The reason they spout so much BS is because they don’t even really think. They cannot tell the difference between truth and fiction and will be just as happily confident in the truth of their statements whether they are being truthful or lying because they don’t know the fucking difference.

We’re fucking worlds away from a JARVIS, man.

Like half the stuff they claim AI does, like those “AI stores” Amazon had, where you just picked up stuff and walked out with it and the “AI would intelligently figure out what you bought and apply it to your account.” That AI was actually a bunch of low paid people in third world countries documenting videos. It was never fucking AI to begin with because nothing we have even comes close to that fucking capability without human intervention.

Lula doesn’t seem quite as straightforwardly pro-Russia as Bolsanaro was, but its very clear their economic association with Russia makes them unable to truly be neutral arbiters of the situation, no matter how much Lula wants to present Brazil as attempting to be neutral.

route everything through a VPN

I can see it now:

“SOS I need help, I’m stuck in an underwater cave just outside Tulum, Mexico and I’m running out of air!”

“Finding your geolocation, we have determined your cave is in New Zealand. Dispatching rescue team to the Mines of Moria.”

EDIT: Don’t ask me how someone got satellite phone signal in an underwater cave lol.

Does the satellite stuff work in the UK and could it be bad for privacy?

I’m not sure if it works in the UK, (see below) but it’s really only meant for emergencies. Like if you’re lost in the wilderness with no cell phone signal and you’ve broken your leg. It really can only be activated when you dial 911 and don’t have signal, so I don’t expect that that’s something you’d want a lot of privacy for if you wanted you be, you know, rescued and alive. I think I’d be willing to sacrifice info like my name, location, and the nature of my emergency to stay alive but that’s just me. 😆

• This feature is currently available in the US only (except Hawaii and Alaska).

To contact emergency services when you don’t have a network coverage on your Pixel phone:

1. Dial 911 immediately.

• If you don’t have a mobile or Wi-Fi network, you’ll find an option to use Satellite SOS in the dialer.

2. Tap Satellite SOS android satellite and then Use Satellite SOS and then Start.
3. To describe your emergency, fill out the emergency questionnaire.
4. To share your emergency with your emergency contacts, answer the on-screen questions.

• To notify your emergency contacts, tap Notify.
• If you don’t want your emergency contacts to receive your location and emergency information, tap Don’t notify.

5. To connect to the satellite, follow the on-screen prompts to correctly position your phone.

• Connection and response times vary based on location, site conditions, and other factors.

6. Once you’re connected, the emergency service provider should reply via text within a few minutes.

• To receive replies, stay outside with a clear view of the sky.
• When you would like to end the satellite text conversation, press the End button and follow the prompts.

Anyway I doubt it would be sending data to satellites without you knowing simply because that’s costly and you have to align your phone properly to get signal for it to begin with.

I understand I didn’t make it clear in this comment and I apologize for that, elsewhere in the thread I made clear that I don’t want games like WoW/Diablo/Borderlands/Balatro to get banned, but I do think it’s important to recognize how their systems work and can impact people with addiction/gambling issues. I think we haven’t ever actually had a conversation about that aspect of these games, and I think it may be an important one to have, even if it only deeply affects a small sliver of society. Out of 9 billion people, a sliver is still often millions.

Also, and I do apologize, (especially if it was just a typo) but it is actually “wide berth” not “wide birth.” Otherwise, I agree with your point. However, I really did have friends who struggled with WoW in functionally the same way I have had other friends struggle with drugs and alcohol. They were in the minority, but they existed. I think it’s important to find ways to help those people deal with those issues without impacting the large number of people whom it does not. As I said elsewhere, I personally don’t have good ideas how to achieve that, I just know the conversation should happen. I would hope more clever and thoughtful people than I could have good ideas.

Ah yes, the ESRB, the group built to avoid actual regulation.

I mean, I get it, to an extent, the MPAA was and is absolute dogshit and filled with weird right-wing Christians who don’t like things that show women’s sexual pleasure and a lot of other weird censorial decisions.

Like how Hillary Clinton wanted to ban GTA because of the Hot Coffee mod, when the actual “Hot Coffee” minigame wasn’t available in an easily accessible way.

So, to that extent, I can understand why they built that system to avoid idiot fucking puritans taking over the ratings sytem, but I generally agree, it’s become more of a taboo thing just like the “PARENTAL WARNING EXPLICIT LYRICS” just made people want that version more. (That really worked out, huh, Tipper Gore?)

Without actual enforcement, it becomes something cool for kids to get.

I’m not the one who made the original post so I’m not asking for a solution for this.

I’m pointing out how hard it is to lay down a line in the sand and say “this one is bad and this one is good” because sadly, but very arguably, the core game mechanics are addictive themselves.

I remember the couple in China South Korea whose baby died because they were playing too much WoW.

It’s been 20 years I got the country wrong: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2005/06/547/

Some people just cannot control themselves when it comes to a skinner box.

I don’t know what the solution is because I’d rather not see Diablo/WoW/Borderlands/Balatro get banned.

I just think it is important to discuss the reality of their skinner box operational procedures.

…and because literally every mechanic in the game is random. The whole game is a skinner box. I say this as a fan of Balatro.

To quote myself from elsewhere in the thread: The blinds are random, the jokers are random, the store is random, the planets are random, the tarot cards are random, it’s all random.

That’s literally what gives Balatro an addictively replayable quality.

True, and I say this as a fan of Balatro…

…but the core of Balatro is literally in its random presentation. The blinds are random, the jokers are random, the store is random, the planets are random, the tarot cards are random, it’s all random. World of Warcraft didn’t need you to pay money to get epic loot either, but I still had friends ruin their lives over chasing epic loot in WoW. I haven’t had any friends ruin their lives over Balatro yet, but I also don’t think it’s impossible for that to happen. Obviously Balatro isn’t “gambling” in the sense of taking a risk with actual real money, but otherwise it still fits the definition of a skinner box.

Because at their core, when a massive amount of the gameplay revolves around random chance, it’s very easy to get addicted to it.

Tracy, California.

All I know about it is when my friends car broke down there for two days. Sounded awful.

So yeah, a terrible place for a road trip destination.

Similarly, I’d also say Monroe, Louisiana. To quote an old B-movie from the 50’s “There’s nothing off of I-20!”

There’s no unfortunately named landmarks, just unfortunate people in unfortunate towns.