That sounds like it's specifically talking about being able to read at that level in English. Most of my family would struggle with that bar, despite including nuclear physicists, rocket scientists and (unfortunately, not brain) surgeons because they're immigrants from a vastly different linguistic base with no pressing need to learn English beyond fundamentals for living.
I wonder how the numbers would look if it was expanded to include native tongue. And if it already does... Oof. That is kind of low.
Automated systems like this easily breakdown; one game I played had a rather prominent guild leader auto-banned during a key period because people were being paid to group up with him during open-join (no acceptance necessary; anybody in the area is automatically flagged as a group) events and report him.
The ban only lasted a few days before it was reversed, but it was enough to put them out of the running for a competition.
I have about 40 keys unredeemed right now-- mostly from buying bundles and getting things I can't play (anything FPS gives me migraines), already have, or have no interest in. And the last time I tried trading, I realized I spent about 45 minutes for 3$, so nowadays, I just host a giveaway on a few communities I'm in once a year.
As an avid gambler and video gamer who follows legal trends in both fields, I'd say a quick and dirty test is how easily the value can be officially extracted from the system.
In a casino, I take my chips, walk 30 feet to a counter and get cash. In most online games... There's no official mechanism, just black market exchanges against the ToS. In parts of Asia, you put money in, get points, redeem for a tsochke, sell the tsochke to a store across the street. In an arcade, you put money in, get tickets, redeem for worthless junk. In different parts of Asia, you put money in, get points, redeem for actual products that people want or gift cards.
I'd say that 1, 3, 5 are definitely gambling, 4 is arguably, 2 is not because you're not supposed to be able to remove value. But the line gets more complex with games that DO allow it, like the D3AH.
As I recall, there is legislation specifically in place for cosmetics that basically says 'The people featured in this ad got the results from actually using cosmetics.' There was one manufacturer a few years ago who got in trouble over accusations of this because people couldn't believe that she looked that good without digital enhancement. In the end, they got through it by documenting the process... and it really was just a good makeup job.
There's a rather notable tidbit I didn't see in this article that I saw from another: "Alienware is using its proprietary Dell Graphics Form Factor (DGFF) cards for GPUs in the Area-51m, and since neither Nvidia nor AMD has promised that they’ll make future chips compatible with that format, Alienware can’t promise future upgrades either."
I purchased a Surface 4 Pro a few months after they launched as a secondary device and I'm very happy with mine, but I have specific requirements that don't fit everybody's use:
Able to run Photoshop, Acrobat, and MS Office (or 100% compatible equivalents, including security validation features) concurrently with spare capability for a number of Windows-only proprietary applications Webcam and microphone Approximately A4 paper sized and less than 1in thick, including keyboard if removable, when closed Reasonably good stylus support, first or third party, that allows direct input on the screen A recognizable fairly neutral brand (basically, 'not a Chinese company')
My entire office switched over to using Surfaces for on-site contracts after me, barring a few people who go to great lengths to avoid to using computers except when absolutely necessary and meticulously prep and carry around literally about a thousand pages of documents all the time.
Having said that, I definitely would not recommend a Surface unless you're actually using it for its more distinctive features.
I go the other way: I show up, buy whatever's cheap (based on years of getting groceries), and figure out what to do with it afterwards.
The upshot is that it's cheap, usually means you'll pick up whatever's in-season, and you get exposed to all kinds of random stuff. The downside is that some of this random stuff is... interesting sometimes. I ended up with okra for the first time from this in my 20s (having grown up in an area where its unheard of) and thought the entire batch went bad, with how slick and goopy it is.
Not really. Based that infographic, there's a range from -15% to +42% from their baseline, a far cry from "2-3x the price", unless you're jumping from the bottom of the list. I've never even heard of half the places on that list either.
I'm more likely to leave my ID behind than my phone: Just the other day, I was trying to cash out 5-digits at my local casino: They wanted to verify ID, and I realized I left my wallet in my car. I got a security escort, casino management, and police escorting me to my car. And they already have all my info on file anyways.
I would expect a typical thief would grab beer, cash, or technology, and not a hot jacket in the middle of summer (even if Las Vegas nights can be fairly cool), especially if there were multiple break-ins. I mean, if it was some homeless guy that was cold, just pick any car that seems to have a lot of luggage and break into that one vehicle alone. If they were people looking for something of value, they could've taken what was actually worth money. Punks screwing around for fun? Would they turn down a few gallons of beer?
Instead, nothing of consequence was missing from my car, nor that of the other people I was chatting with in the lot who were also broken into. The only other money involved would've been for the casino, and I was staying there anyways so no point in keeping me at the property longer that way, or the glass repair.
Sure, it's probably just paranoia... but I'm still wary.
Decades of watching movies has trained us to accept 24fps as "cinematic" motion, but in reality it just looks bad. 24fps is just barely on the cusp of fluid motion, and it gives some of us headaches. That's part of why video games consider 24fps unacceptable, as well as VR, and IMAX. Some people will say that it "takes getting used to" but it really takes getting "un-used" to the bad quality they shoot in today.
Which is something I've always found interesting; I can't watch anything relevant at a higher (approximately 50FPS) frame rate as it gives me migraines and runs contrary to the usual advice of raising the FPS to alleviate problems. Instead, I usually just cap my FPS at 30 and go on my way. Meanwhile, everybody that's watching me is freaking out about how it's unplayable.
Anything that can start a chemical hazard should not be handled by robots. Humans can make judgment calls on the spot far better than robots can.
Not really. I used to work in jewelry manufacture and often dealt with some pretty nasty chemicals. One time, I received a package with a large cut on the side, probably from a boxcutter. The contents were fairly inexpensive and compartmentalized so I wasn't interested in making a damage claim, but I informed the shipper of the damage and advised caution as the contents were hazardous and could be explosive if there were other residues on the floor of the truck.
His response? Told me he wasn't responsible, poked his finger into the puddle on the counter, which was sizzling and licked it.
I had my car broken into in Las Vegas, through the rear windshield.
They ignored the three growlers of beer in the rear footwells and accompanying two-thirds pizza, the rather sizeable stack of cash buried at the bottom of the center console, and the tablet in the glove compartment.
What did they steal? A 30-year-old wool coat. In the middle of summer. (I had the sneaking suspicion it wasn't a smash and grab though, seeing as like 15 cars had their windows busted, nothing of note stolen, and a mobile glass replacement company was onsite the next morning.)
That's basically how it works in some industries-- in real estate, the FHA covers discrimination because of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability and the presence of children.
If it's NOT listed, you can basically come up with some kind of arbitrary reason to reject an individual.
Because they often don't interact on a personal level with people who are in a lower financial class. They really don't comprehend the problems, also the lower financial class doesn't understand the problems the rich have as well.
That came up a few weeks ago between a friend I was helping and her boss-- she was lamenting how she had to spend an extra ten minutes walking to get to Walmart for their cheap money orders to pay her rent since her old local place closed.
Her boss heard that and basically launched into a ten minute speech about how she should just use a checking account for extra convenience and lower costs. It was followed by a rather awkward silence that she broke by saying she couldn't afford it. It then went in circles for a bit about how you can buy checks on sale, and how that wasn't really the problem until I felt like I had to interject that the problem was she didn't have the savings to meet the checking account minimums. Mrs. Boss was floored by that-- that people may actually not have enough money to meet basic necessities was a tremendous shock to her.
(Mind, she was a Chinese national trying to start a wholesale company in the US with her factories in China in one of the most expensive territories in SoCal, so her perception of things was... exceptionally interesting.)
Disclaimer, I'm a fairly heavy gambler with actual money, often seeing 5-digit swings in a single day.
I've played a fair amount of games with loot boxes, some more hostile and overt than others, and have to say that I definitely do not consider them gambling in any kind of formal or legal sense. One of the key distinguishing elements is the ability to officially extract real world value out of the resultant product. This fails in almost every game: Once you spend currency on the game, whether you buy extra lives, boosters, or the random loot box, there is no way to get any kind of money out of it; money has entered a closed system. (While there are grey/black markets available for some games, those I'm discounting since they're unregulated by the game company and are almost always a violation of the ToS.) For games where you can officially sell the resultant product for cash, or a direct cash equivalency, this point is moot. (The only one I know of off-hand is Armello, though I'm lead to believe some more recent games allow for it.)
It's similar to arcades-- use cash to buy tokens, put tokens into a game (Wheel of Fortune, where a wheel spins and you get a random amount of tickets depending on where it stops, maybe?), get tickets, exchange tickets for an item. Most people wouldn't call this gambling, despite how this very process has been used to circumvent gambling laws in numerous jurisdictions around the world (cracked down upon in some cases).
In common parlance? Sure, it's gambling. So's skeeball, or whoever wins the coin flip gets the fries at the bottom of the bag.
In a few of the real estate offices I've worked with, Surfaces have become standard equipment. They primarily want Office, strong PDF support, and support of various proprietary features on websites. The latter two are especially useful, since a single contract, including cancellations, edits, drafts, etc. can normally take a full ream of paper. By going digital, they can save on the paper and toner. Most of them already have some degree of experience working with Windows systems, so the familiar interface is useful and the pen is much more intuitive to work with than signing with a finger. And, more importantly, looks like an actual signature/faxed signature which means it's trivial to get legally recognized, even if it doesn't go through an official e-sign service.
While it's not for everybody, there are definitely pockets where the Surface is popular and encouraged.
That might not actually be stupidity-- I know a similar game that used to be available in some districts of the US where it would offer a preview of the next game and if you weren't an absolutely ignorant of how to play it, you could use that preview to determine if the next game was a winner.
The reason was that implementing such a system made it a game of skill ('ability to read the results' or something like that) rather than a game of chance, and thus permitted in that area.
Slashdot Mirror
That sounds like it's specifically talking about being able to read at that level in English. Most of my family would struggle with that bar, despite including nuclear physicists, rocket scientists and (unfortunately, not brain) surgeons because they're immigrants from a vastly different linguistic base with no pressing need to learn English beyond fundamentals for living.
I wonder how the numbers would look if it was expanded to include native tongue. And if it already does... Oof. That is kind of low.
Automated systems like this easily breakdown; one game I played had a rather prominent guild leader auto-banned during a key period because people were being paid to group up with him during open-join (no acceptance necessary; anybody in the area is automatically flagged as a group) events and report him.
The ban only lasted a few days before it was reversed, but it was enough to put them out of the running for a competition.
I have about 40 keys unredeemed right now-- mostly from buying bundles and getting things I can't play (anything FPS gives me migraines), already have, or have no interest in. And the last time I tried trading, I realized I spent about 45 minutes for 3$, so nowadays, I just host a giveaway on a few communities I'm in once a year.
As an avid gambler and video gamer who follows legal trends in both fields, I'd say a quick and dirty test is how easily the value can be officially extracted from the system.
In a casino, I take my chips, walk 30 feet to a counter and get cash. In most online games... There's no official mechanism, just black market exchanges against the ToS. In parts of Asia, you put money in, get points, redeem for a tsochke, sell the tsochke to a store across the street. In an arcade, you put money in, get tickets, redeem for worthless junk. In different parts of Asia, you put money in, get points, redeem for actual products that people want or gift cards.
I'd say that 1, 3, 5 are definitely gambling, 4 is arguably, 2 is not because you're not supposed to be able to remove value. But the line gets more complex with games that DO allow it, like the D3AH.
As I recall, there is legislation specifically in place for cosmetics that basically says 'The people featured in this ad got the results from actually using cosmetics.' There was one manufacturer a few years ago who got in trouble over accusations of this because people couldn't believe that she looked that good without digital enhancement. In the end, they got through it by documenting the process... and it really was just a good makeup job.
There's a rather notable tidbit I didn't see in this article that I saw from another: "Alienware is using its proprietary Dell Graphics Form Factor (DGFF) cards for GPUs in the Area-51m, and since neither Nvidia nor AMD has promised that they’ll make future chips compatible with that format, Alienware can’t promise future upgrades either."
I purchased a Surface 4 Pro a few months after they launched as a secondary device and I'm very happy with mine, but I have specific requirements that don't fit everybody's use:
Able to run Photoshop, Acrobat, and MS Office (or 100% compatible equivalents, including security validation features) concurrently with spare capability for a number of Windows-only proprietary applications
Webcam and microphone
Approximately A4 paper sized and less than 1in thick, including keyboard if removable, when closed
Reasonably good stylus support, first or third party, that allows direct input on the screen
A recognizable fairly neutral brand (basically, 'not a Chinese company')
My entire office switched over to using Surfaces for on-site contracts after me, barring a few people who go to great lengths to avoid to using computers except when absolutely necessary and meticulously prep and carry around literally about a thousand pages of documents all the time.
Having said that, I definitely would not recommend a Surface unless you're actually using it for its more distinctive features.
I go the other way: I show up, buy whatever's cheap (based on years of getting groceries), and figure out what to do with it afterwards.
The upshot is that it's cheap, usually means you'll pick up whatever's in-season, and you get exposed to all kinds of random stuff. The downside is that some of this random stuff is... interesting sometimes. I ended up with okra for the first time from this in my 20s (having grown up in an area where its unheard of) and thought the entire batch went bad, with how slick and goopy it is.
Not really. Based that infographic, there's a range from -15% to +42% from their baseline, a far cry from "2-3x the price", unless you're jumping from the bottom of the list. I've never even heard of half the places on that list either.
Global warming?
I'm more likely to leave my ID behind than my phone: Just the other day, I was trying to cash out 5-digits at my local casino: They wanted to verify ID, and I realized I left my wallet in my car. I got a security escort, casino management, and police escorting me to my car. And they already have all my info on file anyways.
I would expect a typical thief would grab beer, cash, or technology, and not a hot jacket in the middle of summer (even if Las Vegas nights can be fairly cool), especially if there were multiple break-ins. I mean, if it was some homeless guy that was cold, just pick any car that seems to have a lot of luggage and break into that one vehicle alone. If they were people looking for something of value, they could've taken what was actually worth money. Punks screwing around for fun? Would they turn down a few gallons of beer?
Instead, nothing of consequence was missing from my car, nor that of the other people I was chatting with in the lot who were also broken into. The only other money involved would've been for the casino, and I was staying there anyways so no point in keeping me at the property longer that way, or the glass repair.
Sure, it's probably just paranoia... but I'm still wary.
Decades of watching movies has trained us to accept 24fps as "cinematic" motion, but in reality it just looks bad. 24fps is just barely on the cusp of fluid motion, and it gives some of us headaches. That's part of why video games consider 24fps unacceptable, as well as VR, and IMAX. Some people will say that it "takes getting used to" but it really takes getting "un-used" to the bad quality they shoot in today.
Which is something I've always found interesting; I can't watch anything relevant at a higher (approximately 50FPS) frame rate as it gives me migraines and runs contrary to the usual advice of raising the FPS to alleviate problems. Instead, I usually just cap my FPS at 30 and go on my way. Meanwhile, everybody that's watching me is freaking out about how it's unplayable.
Anything that can start a chemical hazard should not be handled by robots. Humans can make judgment calls on the spot far better than robots can.
Not really. I used to work in jewelry manufacture and often dealt with some pretty nasty chemicals. One time, I received a package with a large cut on the side, probably from a boxcutter. The contents were fairly inexpensive and compartmentalized so I wasn't interested in making a damage claim, but I informed the shipper of the damage and advised caution as the contents were hazardous and could be explosive if there were other residues on the floor of the truck.
His response? Told me he wasn't responsible, poked his finger into the puddle on the counter, which was sizzling and licked it.
I had my car broken into in Las Vegas, through the rear windshield.
They ignored the three growlers of beer in the rear footwells and accompanying two-thirds pizza, the rather sizeable stack of cash buried at the bottom of the center console, and the tablet in the glove compartment.
What did they steal? A 30-year-old wool coat. In the middle of summer. (I had the sneaking suspicion it wasn't a smash and grab though, seeing as like 15 cars had their windows busted, nothing of note stolen, and a mobile glass replacement company was onsite the next morning.)
That's basically how it works in some industries-- in real estate, the FHA covers discrimination because of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability and the presence of children.
If it's NOT listed, you can basically come up with some kind of arbitrary reason to reject an individual.
That came up a few weeks ago between a friend I was helping and her boss-- she was lamenting how she had to spend an extra ten minutes walking to get to Walmart for their cheap money orders to pay her rent since her old local place closed.
Her boss heard that and basically launched into a ten minute speech about how she should just use a checking account for extra convenience and lower costs. It was followed by a rather awkward silence that she broke by saying she couldn't afford it. It then went in circles for a bit about how you can buy checks on sale, and how that wasn't really the problem until I felt like I had to interject that the problem was she didn't have the savings to meet the checking account minimums. Mrs. Boss was floored by that-- that people may actually not have enough money to meet basic necessities was a tremendous shock to her.
(Mind, she was a Chinese national trying to start a wholesale company in the US with her factories in China in one of the most expensive territories in SoCal, so her perception of things was... exceptionally interesting.)
Disclaimer, I'm a fairly heavy gambler with actual money, often seeing 5-digit swings in a single day.
I've played a fair amount of games with loot boxes, some more hostile and overt than others, and have to say that I definitely do not consider them gambling in any kind of formal or legal sense. One of the key distinguishing elements is the ability to officially extract real world value out of the resultant product. This fails in almost every game: Once you spend currency on the game, whether you buy extra lives, boosters, or the random loot box, there is no way to get any kind of money out of it; money has entered a closed system. (While there are grey/black markets available for some games, those I'm discounting since they're unregulated by the game company and are almost always a violation of the ToS.) For games where you can officially sell the resultant product for cash, or a direct cash equivalency, this point is moot. (The only one I know of off-hand is Armello, though I'm lead to believe some more recent games allow for it.)
It's similar to arcades-- use cash to buy tokens, put tokens into a game (Wheel of Fortune, where a wheel spins and you get a random amount of tickets depending on where it stops, maybe?), get tickets, exchange tickets for an item. Most people wouldn't call this gambling, despite how this very process has been used to circumvent gambling laws in numerous jurisdictions around the world (cracked down upon in some cases).
In common parlance? Sure, it's gambling. So's skeeball, or whoever wins the coin flip gets the fries at the bottom of the bag.
In a few of the real estate offices I've worked with, Surfaces have become standard equipment. They primarily want Office, strong PDF support, and support of various proprietary features on websites. The latter two are especially useful, since a single contract, including cancellations, edits, drafts, etc. can normally take a full ream of paper. By going digital, they can save on the paper and toner. Most of them already have some degree of experience working with Windows systems, so the familiar interface is useful and the pen is much more intuitive to work with than signing with a finger. And, more importantly, looks like an actual signature/faxed signature which means it's trivial to get legally recognized, even if it doesn't go through an official e-sign service.
While it's not for everybody, there are definitely pockets where the Surface is popular and encouraged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Disclaimer: This particular instance of the video is from 'VeganCentury.com', so I suspect there might be a bit of an agenda with the overlaid text.
That might not actually be stupidity-- I know a similar game that used to be available in some districts of the US where it would offer a preview of the next game and if you weren't an absolutely ignorant of how to play it, you could use that preview to determine if the next game was a winner.
The reason was that implementing such a system made it a game of skill ('ability to read the results' or something like that) rather than a game of chance, and thus permitted in that area.
...Well, I'm not eating for the rest of the day.
Here's the Youtube video from which that image is from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Which is effectively what half of Shakespeare is...
I'd probably take the first one, telling myself "Hey, I'm getting paid for it. I might as well 'earn' it."
It'll be followed by the second one, "Damn, that HURT. I'll transfer to upper management and shock him instead."
Love never should have entered;
It was never in the plan.
We were finally going to have her
And let Joe be damned...
-Monsters, Blue Oyster Cult