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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: April 24th, 2024

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  • It can and does happen to men, and trans and intersex people as well, but its far more commonly associated with women.

    Most of the market for prostitutes globally is men seeking women… but not always.

    It… also happens with children of all sexes.

    Its unfortunately not uncommon for a child to be either abducted or lured into sex slavery, though being technical that now becomes child sex trafficking or sex trafficking of a minor, which usually has even more harsh punishments.


  • … Its totally fine to include a casino as a setting so long as interactive gambling is not a thing the player can do.

    Did you read the article or the actual government literature it links to and quotes from?

    Nothing is going to change about existing Mario game ratings.

    I’d say it would be outlandish for family friendly Nintendo to suddenly reverse course on general world cultural/legal perspectives and re introduce gambling games when they have not done so in years, the same years many countries have been cracking down on lootboxes/gambling in games for their target demo, kids.

    Finally, I didn’t downvote you. I only downvote people who are being exceptionally idiotic or abrasive or rude. I almost always prefer to engage with ideas or comments I take issue with but are not presented horrifically: the point of a discussion board should be discussion, not an internet points contest.





  • Now now, they innovated by turning Facebook from the way you could see what your friends were doing on your feed into algorithmically determining exactly which batshit insane ‘news’ stories from cranks and posts from crazy people would be the most effective rage bait to specifically you once they figured out that anger and rage are the most effective way to cause retention and engagement.

    They basically scientifically perfected trolling, and figured out how to monetize it.

    Sure it widely proliferated dangerous anti science nonsense, bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, fostered the Q Anon insanity mind plague and facilitated it going mainstream, but hey, hate sells.



  • Apologies for editing after you replied, I have a tendency of making a quick point and then expanding on it with an edit.

    Hard to copy and paste lots of shit on a shitty phone.

    But basically, its not a retroactive re rating of any game unless the game is patched to add in simulated gambling or loot boxes.

    While sure, Mario Party 3 has simulated gambling minigames, I doubt its getting patched any time soon, and the upcoming Super Mario Party Jamboree does not appear to have any mini games simulating a casino type game.

    EDIT: sorry for another edit lol, but yes, I do think its stupid that a poker minigame with in game currency only, which cannot be purchased or redeemed for real currency, is rated worse than a game with lootboxes.


  • … I’m sorry, what?

    Do … does any Mario Party game even have microtransactions? You know, specific game content unlocked by an additional purchase with real world currency? Much less ones where the outcome of a purchase is substantially randomized?

    EDIT:

    Games that feature “simulated gambling,” such as casino games, will be legally restricted to adults aged 18 and over with a minimum classification of ‘R 18+.’ Projects that were classified before September 22 won’t need to be reclassified unless they lose their current rating due to “revocation or modification.”

    This sounds like it isn’t a retroactive change, its a going forward change. It’s explained further in the actual guidelines:

    Situations where video games may require reclassification Video games that were classified prior to 22 September 2024, but add in-game purchases linked to elements of chance or simulated gambling content may require reclassification if adding this content is likely to affect the classification of the game. For example: – video games classified G or PG that add in-game purchases linked to elements of chance after 22 September 2024 are likely to require reclassification – video games classified G, PG, M or MA 15+ that add simulated gambling content after 22 September 2024 are likely to require reclassification

    So… yeah, Mario Party games would have to be patched or re released or something to add more gambling content.

    It does seem to indicate that, going forward, a Mario Party game that simulates casino like gambling would get an R 18+ rating, but the Mario Party franchise does not seem to me to have had any minigames that even sort of resemble a casino type game, even with neutered or non existent betting/staking mechanics, in about a decade.

    The upcoming Super Mario Jamboree, though public info on the minigames is incomplete, also does not appear to depict any casino like games.


  • Sex trafficking is basically when you break immigration laws and/or forcibly transport people against their will, or in some kind of unescapable debt/slavery type of arrangement, where you yourself know that the people you are illegally moving are going to be forced into sex work, often for little to no pay, often with the sex trafficked people having no practical ability to leave due to withholding their passports or bank accounts from them.

    EDIT: And also often getting the sex trafficking victims addicted to drugs.

    Its human trafficking + facilitating or operating a business of prostitution or non consensual pornography production.

    Unless you are going to be forcing your gf into prostitution as her pimp following your out of state dinner, then no, what you have described is not sex trafficking.

    If she is unhappy with going to an out of state restaurant but ultimately consents to this, and then consents to sex afterward, this is just an awkward relationship with you being pretty weird and controlling, but its probably not a crime.

    If, however you threaten her or force her or drug her to get to this out of state dinner, and the do the same to coercively have sex with her without her consent, then that’s interstate kidnapping and rape… still not sex trafficking though.





  • A decade ago I was contracting for MSFT as a database admin / data analyst.

    A far older and more experienced contractor told me that he had been part of a team in Saudi Arabia, in 1990, that intercepted computer and electronic equipment bound for Iraq’s air defense command and control systems, flashing the firmware with exploits and backdoors as fast as they could before they were sent to Iraq.

    Supply chain interception has been a thing for a while.

    EDIT: This is a total off topic aside, but hearing about and seeing shit like that at the various tech jobs I’ve worked is why I laugh when people say ‘oh but alexa only activates on keywords’ or ‘no its totally impossible for phones to listen to your convos and then give that data to advertisement systems’.

    Call me paranoid, I don’t care: If you don’t have a hardware disconnect for your microphone and personally have the source code to every bit of software, at every level, then we just have to take the giant tech corpos at their word.


  • So I wasn’t there for 2042. I don’t know what the rationale was, but for me, it’s like the team tried something new.

    The rationale was to make a 128 player battle royale ala PUBG or Fortnite. You know, shameless trend chasing!

    It was supposed to basically be a spin off, non mainline BF game with the potential to be the next big thing while the next mainline game was being produced, but that only works if BF5 has staying power.

    Which it did not.

    And EA want MONEY, BIG MONEY ASAP!

    So then BF2042 got massively reworked in a tiny amount of time to try to make it into a mainline series game by throwing a ton more developers at it than originally planned, ending up as a rushed, buggy, undercooked mess with tons of crap (half baked half reworked game modes) thrown at the wall to see what stuck.

    That is why distinct armies were replaced with a cadre of mercenaries, as well as the entire 2042 timeframe setting in a world where nation states had basically collapsed already.

    It is also why the maps are gigantic and seem like they were designed for a battle royale.

    I’m guessing also their original plan was to have the much hyped dynamic weather systems serve a similar function as the the closing force fields or bubbles of death that battle royale’s have to force players into conflict and games to eventually end, but they couldn’t actually figure out how to make that work.

    Any questions Vince?


  • Ok, so, she didn’t criticize Spencer in the same video she describes herself as an ex-MSFT executive producer… she’s criticizing the Concord producers… for basically poorly managing the development.

    Here she is in an earlier vid criticizing Spencer:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=69gs773bZRI

    And here is the later Concord vid where she basically blames the devs of multiple MSFT projects she was an executive producer on for just not listening to her.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6IM11RtGLJ8

    Like… I agree with her general message of ‘feedback from players is important’ and ‘don’t vastly misjudge your target demo’ but like… you were the executive producer and … you say your dev teams weren’t listening to yourself, and you are portraying yourself as the player advocate…

    So … shut down development if they won’t listen? Pull the funding, or threaten to?

    Or, if you were just an advisor and tangential contributor with no real power… then what was your job?

    What were you being paid for? Talking at people for them to not listen to you so you could then be smug about it later and just bounce around companies based off of your own clout?

    To me this is the exact kind of bullshit that leads to games with massively inflated budgets and design by committee:

    You have all these corpos that don’t really do anything other than have mixed at best track records, who all act holier than thou and all are somehow involved in development basically so they can network and build their resumes, with little to no actual care that their unnecessary involvement blows up entire studios and ruins the careers of actual coders, level designers, artists, etc who actually make the game.

    All these excess people who just generate conflicting demands and unnecessary meetings and emails that require extensive reworks… otherwise known as bad management.

    Specifically to Concord, we saw how the lead art design person on twitter went from towing the company line about how great the whole project was to basically flipping 180⁰ after the game was canned and saying that development was excruciating with art being redone and redone by committee and then all the higher ups refusing to acknowledge any of their role in the process.

    Its… Its the nature, seemingly, of nearly every single large studio these days that corporate office politics rules all, everyone has to play the game of humoring all the opinions of these overpaid execs, and then when shit blows up, nobody takes accountability for anything and everyone instantly becomes piranhas seeking a scapegoat.



  • On the one hand, I am glad this is finally happening.

    On the other hand, I am 99% certain my father, who’s worked at variously the Everett and Renton plants his entire adult life, is continuing to be a scab, as he has also done his entire adult life.

    Raised me on Rush Limbaugh, last I talked to him he was a Q Anon nut that believed Antifa did Jan 6th and Tom Hanks’ son rapes and kills children for their adrenochrome.

    The 1% uncertainty is not from a 1% chance he might actually also be striking, its the 1% chance he’s either retired or died from a heart attack since I last spoke to him.

    Either way, fuck Boeing.


  • Well, I’d say 100k to 300k qualifies as more money than I’ve ever made in a single year of my life, more than I’ve made in my entire life if we go closer to 300k…

    But what I meant was that the ultimate hiring process is dictated, signed off on or altered, all the way down, by the wealth holding members of society. The top execs, the board.

    And that the society created, and largely owned, by their policies is essentially gaslighting us every day.

    Have you ever spent an entire year applying to jobs… as a full time job? After having had a career, losing it to a disability, then trying to go back after years of recovery?

    With maybe one reply every few months, despite being qualified for everything you are applying to?

    Becoming depressed as everyone around you spends the first month giving you mindless cheery platitudes, then forgetting you exist, then becoming angry when you tell them you can’t afford to do anything that involves money?

    Then when you finally cave and go work some bullshit job you are immensely overqualified for, everyone blames you for not living up to your potential?

    They made it, it worked out for them, why didn’t it work out for you?

    Even though it never once occured to them to maybe help you out monetarily and avoid going into massive debt, or by putting in a good word for you with their network of contacts.