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insertwackynamehere

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  1. At least with GDPR, it’s definitely related to being able to delete social media accounts and other mundane things of that nature, in addition to abuse. The limitations are if some obligation exists to hold onto specific data (banking stuff for example with its own regulations) and there are exceptions. But what GDPR and similar legislation are pushing for is literally the right to have all personal data deleted upon request for any reason, assuming no business need exists. Enforcement is still a big question mark outside of the major players in tech who cooperate and offer data deletion portals because they are easy to sue and can see the future coming down the line. And I don’t know how it applies to pseudonyms, but I doubt it’s favorable if anything can be linked back to a real person as they have a very stringent idea of user identifying information. Similar legislation exists in California now so big tech is really on the hook. I don’t want this to sound like I’m whining about Doomworld not supporting this because a legitimate complaint about all of it is how technically burdensome it is for smaller players. But I do know that this is not just about extreme situations like abuse; it is about the right to have your personal data removed at any time for any reason (with a handful of legitimate exceptions). https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rights-citizens/my-rights/can-i-ask-company-delete-my-personal-data_en#:~:text=Yes%2C you can ask for,be deleted at any time. also of course ianal…I’m now curious about this in general and found this: https://law.stackexchange.com/a/32370 it seems pseudoanonymizing a user fulfills the deletion obligation perhaps? And if everyone is a pseudonym already than I guess it comes down to if that pseudonym is recognizable as a person for some out of band reason
  2. I used to think things needed to be permanent and dutifully archived but I actually now think the ability to nuke one’s personal footprint on the web is a growing privacy rights concern. I think whether or not someone feels OCD about a thread with half the comments missing is less important than the right to be forgotten. I’m in US where I don’t believe has any legal footing yet, but my understanding is that it does in the EU. I think that with the pushes to reign in overreaching technology and emphasize privacy, it’s going to get to the point where it’s a legal requirement everywhere. I know that in practice you can’t unring a bell, but also you kind of can when you are a nobody who wants to make it extremely hard to dig up stupid posts online from high school. What’s interesting is that old school web forum goers tend to be very vocal about privacy (and encryption and other technology-as-rights causes) while criticizing mainstream social media for privacy reasons. But this facet of privacy seems to be completely backwards compared to mainstream social media.
  3. insertwackynamehere

    Is Project Brutality hated in Doomworld ?

    I’ve said this before in one of the many various similar threads, but I like Brutal Doom and think a lot of the criticism (at least 10 years ago) felt kind of salty with post facto “logical” reasoning applied. Specifically, I will call out a couple of themes in this thread: Claim 1) Brutal Doom appeals to modern gamers who like CoD, Fortnight, etc. Claim 2) Brutal Doom makes the game easier by not being such a tightly controlled and choreographed fight loop (“sandboxy”). I grew up as a kid in the 90s playing Doom (among other video games) with my friends. When I fire up Doom now, I feel nostalgia and I enjoy playing it without mods, but it definitely shows it’s age. Playing Doom as a kid the 90s was not a dour experience. Brutal Doom, in many ways, captures the hard-to-qualify subjective experience of what playing Doom felt like at the time. I think people who are younger playing Doom long after it’s heyday may mistake artifacts of its age for design choices. When you played back in the day, at least as a kid and not a professional, it was thrilling. It wasn’t a choreographed experienced of perfectionism and min-maxing. After decades of popularity, of course people have it down to a science exactly how much ammo per enemy, how to confront each horde, etc. That is a side effect of the decades of experience and research of players as well as the limitations of the time period when it came to game complexity. I think a lot of people here are sticklers for playing Doom like a solved game. This overlaps with the slaughter map arguments. I personally play more because there is a consistent aesthetic I enjoy from the engine and its descendants, and the general gameplay style. I am not a very good player or “gamer” in general, but even so I still sometimes resent knowing matter-of-factly exactly how many times I need to shoot an enemy, because I think games stop being fun the less you have to left to discover and the more it’s about perfecting skill within a known rule set. I think a game is mostly tapped out for me when it’s all about known rules and “getting good”. Brutal Doom making the game more sandboxy helps because it does remove the min-max component which some people like me actually hate, and it also gives the same “vibe” as playing Doom in the 90s. I think younger people don’t realize blowing up nukage barrels felt like Brutal Doom to some 8 year old 25 years ago. You would explore levels that were more interesting than anyone had seen and explore game mechanics that were surprising and exciting, until they all became fully documented and over the decades, mapped around with 0 tolerances.
  4. insertwackynamehere

    Never Forget

    The toxic kindness brigade here always finds a way to be unkind about certain things To clarify, if you are in every thread discussing microaggressions and how people online are horrible chuds but then come here to be edgy and not realize you are the chud, you are who I’m talking about
  5. I believe these are referred to as "charter schools" in US. I grew up in a large US city and I remember they were controversial. I'm now in NYC and they are still controversial it seems. I don't have kids myself so I haven't really paid much attention closely, but I do follow the US urban public school debates to some degree, having been a product of one. I believe besides the idea of charter schools being controversial at least back to the 90s (my frame of reference as a kid at the time), you have people like Betsy DeVos intertwined with them. She is a Trump-adjacent politician who married into Amway wealth (Amway is a successful multi-level marketing scheme company). Make of that as you will lol. On the other end of the spectrum, I know Bill Gates was recently pushing for something in New York during the pandemic relating to schools which sounded "charter-ish" when I read it, but searching later I'm not sure it's exactly the same thing. But still, it would be "billionaires inserting their foundations into the public education sector" which I guess could be purely benevolent but always sounds suspicious (quick source: https://www.edweek.org/education/new-york-state-teams-with-gates-foundation-to-reimagine-education-amid-pandemic/2020/05). Also just so people understand the charter school idea, it shouldn't cost the public anything more than they already pay in taxes. My understanding is that it is a privatization of public education such that everyone receives vouchers to use on a private charter school of their choosing, rather than get assigned to a state-run school district public school. So in theory, it isn't supposed to be cutting poor people out of public education, it's instead supposed to remove public schools from the purview of the state while still being tax-payer funded and free to attend. That's my simple understanding at least. Of course, the controversies surrounding them challenge these claims, and other things, at every level. I never attended one and I actually don't know if I even know anyone who did personally. I, however, attended a "good" elementary school (as in, a public school in a city where some districts are good and some districts are bad) and then a magnet middle and high school (magnet schools are a type of public school with limited acceptance rates of students across the entire city based on academic or other specialty merit). As you might imagine, both of these sorts of public school realities are also controversial (meritocracy being challenged as an unfair concept, and school systems with "good" and "bad" schools as being inherently broken). None of that is directly tied to charter schools, but its more an important side note to understand the state of affairs leading to these arguments. Rich people in USA go to private school or live in a rich suburb where the public schools are subsidized by the wealth of the community via taxes and are generally "good" schools. In cities, the socioeconomic divides and educational divides are much more stark and you end up with various escape hatches being created to save some kids from their situation who show early-on promise. What has to be understood also is that "good" and "bad" schools are not snobby descriptors but just the reality that some schools are filled with violence and misery and others are a safe place for people who could not exist or learn surrounded by violence. And of course, these become self-fulfilling prophecies which snowball each school's reputation. One is a holding pen, the other an actual school. I think the people selling charter schools are trying to argue the state has failed and want to create a new type of school where you have to actually care about being there or else you're kicked out. Kicked out to where, I'm not sure. At least that is my understanding in NYC. EDIT: Actually after reading more, there is a distinction between vouchers and charter schools although they are intertwined topics. Vouchers let you attend any private school in theory. Charter schools are still tax-payer funded but operate outside the bounds of the education system. So a lot of this post is conflating the two, but they tend to be discussed in the same breath as they are both seen as a threat to a public school system operating under one bureaucratic management chain.
  6. There are a lot of comments here which I think are interesting. I just want to say one thing which I think is very important for clarifying the current state of affairs. Right now this is a credible legal issue. High ranking officials are coming out to a congress who is taking things seriously and an inspector general who is taking things seriously based both on testimony that is public and evidence that is not public. What this means is this is right now, as far as the public is concerned, a legal issue unfolding. This is intriguing in its own right, and has potential for further implications, but right now it is all lawyers, legality and law. At the most mundane, as I said in my OP, there is apparently enough evidence that some agencies are acting in a rogue manner avoiding congressional oversight and private contractors might be siphoning off funds. These are serious allegations that are being treated as credible, regardless of the UAP stuff which seems both incidental to the accusations at hand but of course extremely intriguing because of course the subject matter is interesting. This is separate from the scientific/empiric/rational/skeptic view about things. Without evidence in the hands of the public, this whole thing is non-falsifiable and cannot be a scientific discussion just yet. I completely agree with that. We cannot empirically discuss aliens based on "what ifs". The goal of all of this is to get to the bottom of a series of alleged massive coverups that might be as mundane as run-of-the-mill military industrial complex fraud and rogue agencies treating congress and the president like temporary workers who don't deserve to have oversight. It may be as exciting as parts of government or private aerospace being forced to disclose some degree of knowledge of something out of this world. The legal aspects must be delved into, congress is doing that right now, whatever they have seen that we haven't has seemingly affected them in such a way that they are pushing forward based on what they see as some level of credibility to certain claims being made, and if they are allowed to do their job, then hopefully the public will end up better informed and the actual science, if any, can commence. This of course does not mean the public has to accept extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence as that is a scientific burden that must be met, not a legal one. The intriguing thing here is we are only 1 degree of "what ifs" away from UFO stuff being real. It is still a "what if" but it has never been treated this way before. I think the "what ifs" can be an interesting discussion because we are not scientists discussing papers but forum-goers having an armchair off-topic discussion about current events. But I completely agree that absolutely nothing is proven by any of this in a scientific sense, as far as any of us know. That's why I think out-of-hand skepticism is a bit annoying about this topic. There is a very objective truth right now that Congress for whatever reason suddenly really cares about this. That's still in the legal realm, but you can't really be a skeptic about the fact it is being discussed, investigated and legislated on as we speak. At some point, doing so makes you become a conspiracy theorist (e.g. they are discussing it to distract people from more pressing issues, its all part of some plan, etc). That's no longer rational skepticism, that's looking at what is objectively happening and coming up with a series of hypothetical machinations to explain it beyond "congress people have seen things the public haven't and now think this is a legitimate priority".
  7. I'll just get straight to the topic, the last few years there have been more and more disclosures about "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena" or "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" (formerly referred to as UFOs but I guess rebranded due to the euphemism treadmill and the negative associations with the term UFO). These disclosures have been usually military pilots or aviators and no one ever officially claims anything more than the matter of fact "these are things trustworthy people have seen that we so far cannot explain or identify". Recently, a former intelligence official David Grusch came out as a whistleblower. He just spoke to a US House of Representatives bipartisan subcommittee about what he believes is criminal fraud from private corporations who get government contracts as well as large scale coverups regarding "non-human intelligence" and various craft and even "non-human biologics". You can watch the entire hearing on YouTube from AP News' livestream of the proceedings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpzJnrwob1A Meanwhile, the Democrats have been introducing legislation in the Senate to force disclosure of UAPs and basically give congress a lot more oversight over what is going on: https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/schumer-rounds-introduce-new-legislation-to-declassify-government-records-related-to-unidentified-anomalous-phenomena-and-ufos_modeled-after-jfk-assassination-records-collection-act--as-an-amendment-to-ndaa This legislation (the 2024 NDAA) just passed today: Spoiler is a boring legal stuff edit clarifying the NDAA being passed in the Senate with the UAP provisions. I just wanted to get some better sources than a Tweet. I understand there is a lot of skepticism about this kind of stuff, but right now we have a bipartisan push to get to the bottom of claims being made by various whistleblowers who seem to be considered credible in the eyes of Congress. There is under-oath testimony, an attempt to get Grusch into a "SCIF" which is apparently a secure room where he legally able to talk to Representatives about the disclosures he cannot make on live TV in a public hearing (names, places, etc) and an overall "this is serious" vibe. Some of his claims are "mundane" accusations of criminality on the part of defense contractors and various agencies so from that perspective some people may just be processing this as a typical whistleblower proceeding. Anyway, this is definitely a far cry from someone rambling on AM radio. There will be skepticism since Grusch is going by the book and therefore the bombshells that go beyond claims of proof and into actual proof, if any, will be dropped in the lap of congress people who can then figure out how to proceed, versus a Snowden-like illegal public disclosure (I am not anti-Snowden but it is clear Grusch is trying to take the "correct" route here). And this is not just like Marjorie Taylor Greene types pushing this, there are people like AOC (who interviewed Grusch in my link above, with the composure of someone taking his claims seriously) and Chuck Schumer (recently pushing for the UAP language throughout this years defense act). Anyway, the whole thing just feels very surreal to me because people who are presumably more informed on this kind of thing are actually taking this seriously. So while it's too early to claim anything one way or the other, I don't think this can be dismissed out of hand based on the skepticism bar of UFO-talk being the purview of mescaline-brained hippies who spent too much time in a Nevada desert. Also to make this slightly about Doom, I always wondered what "Phobos Anomaly" and "Deimos Anomaly" meant when I was a kid. The dictionary definition didn't help me. It was only later on I realized the "anomaly" was a pre-existing portal on each moon linked to one another that the military basically cordoned off and reverse-engineered. At least thats what I think, I can't quite remember classic Doom lore exactly. It's interesting that UAP is also a reference to anomaly (except when it means aerial, I've seen both definitions used). And also UAP/UAC. Idk just some silly closing thoughts.
  8. insertwackynamehere

    apple vision pro

    At $3500, Apple knows what market they are targeting. They are targeting the market of people who can spend $3500 today without blinking to play with Apple's first generation VR device. Getting hung up on the price is useless; either you can afford it or you can't. It's understandable if you can't because its an absurd amount of money for most people to drop on something which will likely just be viewed as a prototype in the long run. All that is separate from whether or not AR/VR has some large role in the future of computing and/or whether or not Apple will successfully be a part of that future. I'm not sure myself about the answer to either of those questions, but a lot of threads about new technology, especially new Apple technology, read like threads from 2001 dismissing the iPod. I've noticed in my decades reading online content that many of the enthusiasts deepest into the world of technology and computing seem to often have the most inflexible outlooks on the future. Betting against the internet's initial opinions on something new seems to often pay off, in a contrarian way.
  9. insertwackynamehere

    Imgur is about to purge unregistered image uploads

    I'm going to take the contrarian viewpoint that this is a good thing. Purges of personal content are good for the social eco-system. Relying on third-party image hosting in this day and age as your source of truth or even for web-serving purposes is just silly. You can easily host and serve images in the modern world for minimal cost on your personal websites, even with full CDN capabilities. This isn't the 90s or 00s. And to back up things using a 3rd party service*? Why? Backing up content in a way that you actually still own it has never been easier. Uploading to some lossy image host is just silly unless your goal was to share anonymously. *This I realize was phrased badly. Third party back up services are fine. What I meant was third party image hosting services who's main goal is to drive engagement, not third party dedicated back up services who's main goal is to the serve the customer paying for backups.
  10. insertwackynamehere

    Do you guys even lift?

    I finally got back into lifting after the pandemic last October and I'm getting bigger than I've ever been. Just half a pound shy of 190 at 5'10.5" (179cm). Over a decade ago when I first started lifting I was maybe 130-135lbs and viewed myself as a "hardgainer" or "ectomorph" (both over-simplifications but useful for context). I would always hit walls where I felt like I couldn't bulk more with the tradeoff being I also had trouble getting fat, but as I went through my early 30s during the pandemic just sitting around and leading an unhealthy sedentary lifestyle of eating, drinking and waiting, I finally experienced putting on visible fat. I ended up with like a 35" waist which is at the border of unhealthy for my height, but with no signs of stopping. As disappointing as the slowing metabolism is in some ways, it seems to also have allowed me to break through my 165lb mid-20s "wall" as long as I try and focus this growth on muscle-building. Waist has shrunk (currently 33" in the morning during this bulk, but a minicut in January brought it down to close to 30" at 172lbs) and weight has increased so everything moving in the correct direction. Starting to feel tired from the intensity of the gym sessions so my plan is to call it end of April, or when I see 190lbs on the scale if sooner (which is likely). Going to then spend May-August just doing pump and maintain work while casually eating at maintenance and basically give myself a planned break. I know in the past I wouldn't plan breaks and then I just stop. This time I want to get in front of that and give myself a break by making the gym fun and easy-going for a bit so I keep going consistently without stress and then see in the fall if I want to go for another bulk or what.
  11. insertwackynamehere

    some changes that i want to see in doomworld

    So many people being against post and account deletion is surprising. It seems like its in the spirit of "the right to be forgotten" which is maybe a bit unwieldy to execute on in practice (you can't unring a bell, so to speak) but still a good sibling to the right to privacy. It sounds like according to Mordeth, Doomworld already offers a solution via admins (as opposed to a self-service solution) so this isn't meant to call out Doomworld itself, just that the thread is surprisingly opposed to what is generally hailed as a positive, progressive concept adjacent to privacy rights, and is also becoming somewhat of a global legal issue ever since GDPR and similar legislation in US states such as California.
  12. Just say "sorry I'm not very good at video games :( " You can't successfully berate someone who is humble and not defensive. You can try but it backfires lol
  13. insertwackynamehere

    So what exactly made the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie bad?

    lol this inspired me
  14. insertwackynamehere

    So what exactly made the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie bad?

    I liked it as a kid. I don't know if other people didn't like it as kids, but I have a hard time taking adults complaining about kids movies seriously so if it's just an early iteration of grownups incessantly complaining about children's media, then I think it speaks for itself
  15. insertwackynamehere

    what’s everybody’s opinions on olive garden?

    The Olive Garden in Times Square is sort of a meme in NYC because its seen as the epitome of tourism, but I also kind of feel sympathetic to visiting families who just want to go to a place they recognize that isn't going to be weird about kids and which doesn't exist solely for Michelin stars, clout, and see-and-be-seen types. So I think it serves a purpose. It feels like sometimes the restaurant/hospitality industry has become too split between suburban basic and cosmopolitan exclusive (hard door, snobby pretentiousness, ultimately just Vegas/Salt Bae garbage that is Olive Garden for the elite).
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