He has cheaper ones too, so check around the shop and find one that fits your requirements.

Nor should it be. The standard for copyright violation is pretty high, things don’t have to just look similar, they need to actually match, so there’s no copyright over the idea of cute, Japanese-themed monsters, especially with other Japanese-themed monster games/shows like Digimon. Even if they matched the art style, you can’t copyright art style, you can only copyright the art itself.

The original part is the specific formulation. Pretty much all games are mashups of other games anyway. Palworld found a formula among popular games that really struck a chord with people, and they executed on it pretty well.

And yeah, I’ve seen extensive portions of Palworld since my SO is really into it. My SO doesn’t care much at all about Pokemon, Breath of the Wild, or Fortnite, though they really like Palworld. That alone is a pretty good argument for Palworld being distinct.

Nintendo is mad that Palworld did a great job with some of their ideas, and I think they want a piece of the action. I don’t think they’re concerned that anyone would mistake Palworld for any of their IPs, they just want some cash. I’m interested to know which patents they claim Palworld violated, because it’s honestly really rare in video games for patents to actually be enforceable because there’s so much prior art and a lot of variations in how mechanics can be used.

Exactly. ISPs want to do as little work as possible and collect as much as possible. If they have to monitor for torrents, track which customers they’ve warned, etc, that’s extra cost that, ultimately, could take away paying customers. So there are no benefits for them unless the piracy is causing problems for other users (i.e. could result in more customers cancelling service).

Probably a delicious baked potato dish. Not sure whether cheesy potatoes really care if you’re guilty of piracy, they just want to be eaten.

Exactly. Hydrofoils have a bunch of downsides (more expensive to buy and maintain, don’t work in shallow water, don’t work with big waves, etc), so it’s not like the average boat owner can simply switch to a hydrofoil boat. It’s a cool solution if it works in your particular area, but they’re not a drop-in replacement.

Yeah, I’ve been moving away gradually. I have a few subs on Odysee, one on Rumble, and I’ve signed up for Nebula which handles a few more. If I had to, I could drop YT and get enough content from those other sources.

Or just… block ads.

Cool, put some actual rules in place. I recommend a law that states that customers own their data and it cannot be stored or transferred without an explicit agreement to do so. And no, burying something dozens of pages deep into a TOS doesn’t count. And companies should have a very clear custodial obligation to safeguard any data they store, similar to how banks have guarantees against fraud.

Exactly. If a company wants to sell my data, they should have to make an explicit agreement with me to do that. If law enforcement wants data from my phone company, they should either produce a warrant or get my permission to release it. And so on.

If a company holds my data, they should be legally accountable for safeguarding it, and liable if it gets in the hands of someone I don’t have an agreement with. Banks do that with my money, I don’t see why social media companies should have any less expectation here.

And no, burying some form of consent in a TOS isn’t sufficient, it needs to be explicit and there needs to be a reasonable expectation that the customer understands the terms.

Hard disagree. I really enjoy a lot of Nintendo’s games, and will be buying Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom right around release. Some favorites:

• Smash Brothers
• Mario Kart
• Zelda - didn’t like BotW and didn’t get TotK, but I loved the Switch ports of Skyward Sword and Link’s Awakening
• Kirby
• Mario Party
• Super Mario 3D World
• Xenoblade Chronicles

My kids like Pokemon and my SO like Ring Fit, but I think that series is pretty boring. And here are some I haven’t played, but probably will:

• Astral Chain
• Switch Sports
• Luigi’s Mansion
• Paper Mario
• Metroid
• Pikmin

That said, I very much don’t like Nintendo as a company, especially its opposition to emulation. But I do like their first party titles, and they’re very polished at launch, unlike many other big studios.

What’s weird about it? AFAICT, Palworld doesn’t violate Nintendo copyright in any meaningful sense, though it might violate Nintendo’s patent claims.

That said, this lawsuit seems really late, and I wonder if that’ll factor into the decision at all (i.e. if it was close, the judge/jury might take the lack of action by Nintendo as evidence of them just looking for money).

Right, and if it’s not profitable, it should be scrapped, but if it pays for itself, I see no harm in keeping it.

Out of curiosity, which AI tools specifically do you use and do you pay for them?

Just whatever is free, so no, I don’t pay for them for two reasons:

• my boss doesn’t allow AI to have access to our codebase
• I honestly don’t find enough value to actually pay

So I’ll just find something with a free tier or trial and generate a little bit of code or something. Or I’ll use the AI feature in a search engine to help me get search terms for relevant documentation (i.e. list libraries that do X), and then I’ll actually read the documentation. I have coworkers who use it for personal projects (not sure what they use), and that’s also part of what I’ve listed above (i.e. the generating documentation part).

But I very rarely use AI, because I very rarely start projects from scratch. 99% of my work is updates to existing projects, so it’s really not that useful.

Exactly.

People like easy solutions to complex problems. If you don’t see the problems, it’s easy to assume they don’t exist, but what actually happens is that by banning things, you just push them underground, where they fester. Alcohol prohibition created the mafia, which caused so many more problems than alcohol ever did, and it’s still around today. Banning drugs seems to have created, or at least strengthened, the drug cartels. I wouldn’t be surprised if strict controls around CSAM actually ends up harming more kids as people who would be casual observers end up getting caught up in the worst of it and end up actually harming children. I’m not saying CSAM should be legal or anything like that, I’m just saying the strict censorship of anything close to it is more likely to push someone who is casually interested to go and find it. The more strictly something is controlled, the more valuable it is for the person who controls it.

In other words, it’s the Streisand Effect, but for crime.

No, what we need is better education and better (not more) policing.

I completely agree. I’m reading a book related to 1984, and all of the thought crime and whatnot it talks about is scarily on-point when it comes to social media censorship. For example, “sex crime” is strictly controlled, and in the same chapter that someone gets taken away for getting pregnant, the MC talks about sexual relationships she has and plans to have. Nobody can talk about love or relationships, yet everyone seems to engage in them, or at least one-night stands. In fact, the word used for “abortion” in that book is “unbirth,” which is right there with the term “unalived.”

Blocking out a huge part of human culture doesn’t help anyone, and it doesn’t actually work, because people will find a way. What can work is giving users the tools to hide stuff they don’t want to see.

National security interests are the interests of the people though.

In a broad sense, sure, but “national security interests” are a huge excuse for bad policy.

assuming I’m not leaking national security information

That only applies if you are in a position that has access to classified information, or have reason to believe that a certain piece of information is classified. If you acquire information without access to classified information (i.e. if you see something on government property with binoculars or something), you are free to share that information.

The US largely does not censor people using the power of the gov’t

Not individuals, sure, but there are backroom threats for journalists that can significantly impact what the average person sees. If you get a big enough audience, you’ll start to see these threats.

Here’s the press freedom index the RSF posts, and while the US is better than most, it’s not at the top, and it’s a big reason why I like to read news publications from other areas (Canada and UK).

And yes, China is way worse, that goes without saying. But that doesn’t mean we should completely block them, it means we should be taking an active role in pointing out the propaganda so the world can see through their BS.

This isn’t a case of, “oh, both sides are the same”.

Never claimed it was.

Good point, I’ll consider MOCA. The main problem is that we have three sets (OTA antenna, satellite, and internet), and I’m not sure which are which, but figuring that out should be quite a bit easier than running cable. :)

I’m not planning on getting anything more than gigabit in the near future, though my city is rolling out fiber and claims to support up to 10gbit.

Your experience echoes my own with our team. That said, I think we got a pretty good set of devs on our team, and I think a big part of that is my boss being Indian and worked at the org we hired, so he understands the culture there and how to get a better deal. The net result is that the teams we hired are pretty reasonable and work alongside mine (we actually hired two teams and had them “compete,” and we kept the better one).

The US constitution doesn’t guarantee Chinese citizens, living in China, the right to freedom of the press.

True, but the US constitution guarantees Chinese citizens, living in or visiting the US or its territories, all the rights in the Constitution. So when TikTok operates in the US and provides services to US customers, it gets the protections of the US Constitution, as well as the obligations of US law.

TikTok appears to be a tool of the Chinese gov’t

And this is covered by freedom of the press. There’s no legal requirement for press to be pro-US, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be accurate, it just can’t be fraudulent. If TikTok is being fraudulent, then they should be held accountable for that.

As I stated, if TikTok is sold off so that they’re no longer connected to China, then they’re more than welcome to continue to operate.

Yes, according to the law that they’re contesting.

I’m saying that I don’t think this law is constitutional. I don’t use TikTok, I believe TikTok is dangerous, and I don’t think anyone should use it, but I’m also uncomfortable with the government picking and choosing which apps I can use, especially when the justification seems to be about the speech on that app. So even though I wish TikTok would disappear, I don’t think that justifies using the law to accomplish that.