First, only parents of minors, severely disabled people, and the elderly get those things -- in the case of the parents, they're only allowed to get it for at most 60 months. Those groups also are barely given enough money to sustain life (shitty section 8 housing, low-quality food, clothes from the dollar area, maybe a POS car that gets horrible gas mileage)... It's not enough to result in a decent quality of life: there's no dental coverage (which is expensive even if you're willing to rely on dental students' work), it's extremely difficult to find most medical specialists and most are low-quality (which disabled/elderly citizens tend to need), the nutritional quality of food tends to be subpar for disabled/elderly citizens as many physically/mentally can't cook full meals entirely from scratch, it takes YEARS of being on a waitlist in many states for a section 8 voucher and then the housing tends to be the places you'd lock your car doors...
That's just for starters. Trust me, it's pretty damn heartbreaking to watch one's own mother age 10 times faster than anyone else in the family, lose her teeth plus all of her energy/spunk & seem mentally 20 years older than she is because of the effects of chronic poverty -- and be unable to do anything about it because you're also far too disabled to hold any job. I can't imagine anyone remotely sane *wanting* to live this life that has actually experienced it.
If you're wondering, I'm able to be online because I have my 10-year-old college laptop and share a $20 Internet connection with my mother (she uses a computer that my brother got when his employer was about to toss it).
more and more people are leeching off the few people who actually produce something tangible.
Or intangible -- well, that is, unless you dedicate yourself to a professional level of ability in every form of entertainment you use, producing every form of information you've relied on, and learned everything you know (including formal education) entirely on your own from the ground up. Otherwise, guess what: you've been "leeching" off the creative & academic professions as much as anyone "leeches" off the creators of the tangible items they have.
Of course, that's ignoring that a person only "leeches" if they fail to give the creator/owner something of similar value in return -- buying services or goods doesn't qualify.
When I was an undergrad at Berkeley in the late 90s & early 00s, I believe the students and professors together added up to around 40,000... Everybody chose their own username (profs almost always used their first initial & surname), but the subdomain changed: everyone from around my time got user@uclink4.berkeley.edu, there were a *few* professors on uclink3, and I believe I saw only one uclink2. The last time I looked at the student paper a year or two ago, all of the addresses appeared to be at uclink.berkeley, however.
In any event, that worked well for us (at least on the user's end)... Also, given undergrads were in a massive faceless bureaucracy for the first time and often felt like we were walking student ID numbers, I think most of us really appreciated being able to choose a username that conveyed something about ourselves. Students have to transition into the adult world of boring "first initial lastname" official addresses soon enough, after all...no need to rush if it doesn't bring huge tech benefits.
I'm assuming one room with at least 2 WeMos for simplicity's sake... As preparation, I'd have to place wireless cameras at the windows and make sure I can see every angle from my Base Of Evil Operations.
I'd let the lights behave normally for about the first 10 minutes they're turned on with somebody in the room, then make one "flicker" (like an electrical issue might cause) and shut off. Wait for the person to approach the light, turn that WeMo back on, wait for them to head back to wherever they were at, flicker off again when they pass a certain point.
After a couple of times doing that, I'd then start affecting that light plus a second one when they pass close enough to it, and so on with all of the lights in the room. When they get frustrated/upset, turn all the lights back on right after they leave the room, keep them on when they return and sit down......well, that is, keep them on just long enough for them to relax, then repeat with some variation, always making sure it always appears to happen in response to something they do or somewhere they go, so it doesn't look random enough to tip them off.
Another version of this for somebody that has a partner currently doing something in another room would be to either just flicker the lamp for short bursts (maybe "WeMo Rocks" in Morse code) *or* do the earlier lamp flicker-die/on/off trick. When the person leaves to tell their partner, wait for the two of them to come, then have it act completely normal, like the original victim was imagining things or something. Wait for the partner to leave, then perhaps make one light at a time flicker and die, or do it to all of them except one -- whatever gets the best reaction.
Damn, if I had enough free time I'd go look through the BOFH website for ideas...
Not to be rude, but apostrophes slant the opposite of your accent mark: I’m rather than I`m. Also, with some fonts, that accent mark is nearly invisible or high enough to look like it's superscript.
If you prefer the way a formal apostrophe looks, there's a really good website of Win/Mac/Linux character keyboard shortcuts that might be very helpful; it's the only reason I know how to produce them on the fly in Linux. If you're like me and feel that's too much work most of the time, then please just use the old-fashioned typewriter style as I am here; it's still considered correct, or at least more correct than abusing accent marks.;)
Unless you only have 1 neighbor, it doesn't seem neighborly to kill access for everyone because of one lazy parent. It would've been much better to say "OK, let me know the MAC addresses of those devices so I can block them." If the guy doesn't know how to find the MACs, try to look apologetically helpless and say, "sorry, that's the best I can do -- but there are some great tutorials on the web if you just search for them." Chances are the lazy bugger would go home and realize that taking the kids' devices away or spanking them requires far less mental effort.
What's sad is that those reactions used to be in favor of challenging the tech status-quo in favor of improving things for society or others in general... I think we lost it when the average Slashdotter morphed from people driven to work hands-on with all aspects of technology they could over to people that like talking about the often-high-priced tech they've bought.
For a tech news website, there are an astonishing lack of tech solutions in the comments here.
Exactly. I only get routers that can run DD-WRT/Tomato so I'll have multiple SSIDs, QoS, etc. and I'm not even a 'real' geek (can't program, majored in English, etc.), so after hanging out on/. since the 90s, it's disturbing to see how few people *here* know this stuff. It's one thing for a community to lose awareness of the old things that are no longer really relevant, but the way things are these days, it's more important than ever to know the basics of how to gain full control of our devices and know what they're up to.
BTW I run both an insecure open guest SSID called "Up With Sharing!" and a private (still-visible) encrypted SSID for my family's devices, which have priority over guests; we have only 1 DSL line, which on a really good day might hit 300KBps (or kbps: whichever FTP, BitTorrent, etc. uses). I websurf & periodically download things, but my mother websurfs & constantly watches videos, but ever since I set a SSID that makes it clear it's deliberately open, guests started being very polite about it -- no major slowdowns traceable to guests rather than just our crappy connection.
Or faith that a country full of citizens that are out-of-shape, overweight, have little-to-no ability to accurately shoot or handle a firearm, and little more in terms of obtaining their own food (if going to the store becomes dangerous), fixing broken items or any form of non-gas-powered transit have a chance in hell of overwhelming the most overgrown military on the planet.
Yes, people in war-torn rural countries that are used to pushing beyond pain and have been dealing with poverty their entire lives do well against our military. That's a far cry from the average urban/suburban desk jockey...and don't forget, when our military has tackled urban/suburban areas, it has usually turned out overwhelmingly in their favor.
Anyone that seriously believes we'd beat the US Military ought to get into playing tactical games of paintball or laser-tag whenever possible... See how long it takes to sustain a hit somewhere that would be totally disabling or deadly if the ammo was live bullets, how well your team does at the tactics that would supposedly make a big difference, how often you manage to shoot someone else before they manage to take you out, and so forth.
Any organ in the body can have structural/functional anomalies at birth. Considering there wouldn't be any Neanderthal babies/kids to compare the first one to, how would humanity determine whether its development, sensory perception, organ structure, longevity, etc. are "normal" for its species?
It's because since '04 they've had sporadic commercials starring modern "cavemen." I haven't seen them either despite not leaving the US, though -- I rely on Hulu, which for some reason only plays Geico commercials that star the gecko.
The "willpower" issue is easily cured with an exercise buddy, routine, and appealing entertainment material. I've been working out 2-3 nights/week at 24/Hour Fitness with my nearly-63-year-old father as "exercise buddies" for almost a year (plus went from 2000-05) -- we fire up our music, and for 30-40 min. I read books on a recumbent bike while he watches TV from a treadmill or gliding (?) machine, followed by ~20 min. on weight-training machines. On frustrating afternoons, I've started to actually look forward to relaxing with the book while working off my frustration and feeling like I've accomplished something that day.
My DSL's only ~100-200kbps most of the time, but I share without impairing my family's ability to use the 'net (including my mother's habit of constantly streaming videos). Just install DD-WRT on the router & set up WPA2 for your household, then make a wireless VLAN (so you can have it open without turning off security for your household), turn on QOS and assign "Premium" priority to all of your household's devices.
What women want is as varied as what men want, and the vast majority of us born after 1965 have no interest in a guy's money. Just like men, what hat we look for financially speaking varies all over the place depending on our own abilities & future plans. We're not in an era where women plan to stay home for the rest of their lives tending kids anymore, you know...
There are no "types" of feminism that are about "trashing men" -- and secure, non-sexist modern guys have no problem dating feminists. There's certainly countless guys & feminist women like that in my area, and contrary to whatever weird stereotypes you're going on, most feminist women get particularly attractive & successful guys. Funny thing, all of the anti-feminist, sexist guys I've known were also the "desperate" sorts that considered themselves the "nice guy" because they were passive-aggressive but not overtly abusive, and victimized because women supposedly "all" women want handsome rich buff dudes.
As far as divorce, that's statistically much harder on whichever spouse makes far less money, which is almost always the woman. It's extremely rare for someone to pay more in alimony than they keep for themselves, and child support rarely covers the actual expenses of raising the child -- that's assuming that alimony/child support are paid, of course, when in a significant percentage of cases they aren't. The one thing that is far worse for women when it comes to divorce is that they're far more likely than guys are to be attacked or killed by their soon-to-be-ex as a result. (Happened a year or so to a woman in my town, in fact; an elementary school teacher was shot to death by her husband while walking back to her car after seeing the lawyer.)
To be blunt, the people with an ax to grind are the ones that speak up, and tend to hang out with others that share their views -- folks without a grudge feel no need to mention it. The resentful crowd interprets everyone else's silence as meaning they have no experience, rather than that the person had a positive or neutral one. My father, ex-stepfather, Dad's GF's ex-husband, my paternal & maternal grandfathers, and my maternal uncle don't have a horror story about their divorces, which is how I know that it leads to them seeing no reason to bring the divorce up or hang with guys likely to rant on the topic.
...all I saw in the stores were lubricants that were flavored with cinnamon and paprika, or designed to somehow "heat" your private parts. No way, Jose! (I experienced the "heat" thing personally once after an adventurous incident with a toaster. I'll stick with "room temperature" from now on, thank you very much.)
I know what you're thinking, "Dave maybe you should ease up on the porn, the kids haven't seen you in weeks." "My god, the cats all white and sticky" To that I say: shut up and mind your own business, if I want to spend my free time drinking jack and wackin' it to some teen runaway making bad life decisions well that's my business. And I'm sorry about the cat but I ran out of tissues. Anyway I highly recommend this product, it's the perfect gift for Mothers Day.
You're mixing up people playing those games with stereotypes about regular gamers. The casual crowd drawn to Zynga's fare plays it primarily in spare moments while standing in line, during brief mental downtime, for a few minutes before bed, and so forth -- they're still living full lives, holding jobs and/or attending school, and having kids if they're remotely interested in being a parent. Games aren't a reason that a person fails (or decides not to) reproduce or have a loving relationship; personal & economic issues are the cause for those decisions.
Actually, spectrum folk aren't lacking in empathy -- it's more of a "Mars vs. Venus" situation between us and non-autistics, with most members of each side communicating & reacting just differently enough that they can seem oblivious from the others' perspective. If you're interested in the high-quality scientific research backing that claim, the Autism & Empathy site has plenty of it, as well as anecdotal essays by neurotypical allies (friends, parents, siblings, partners, etc.) and autistics all over the spectrum.
My understanding from relatives is that the games are primarily played in short bursts when visibly socializing isn't an option and the person wants a little mental downtime, so it'd have little-to-no bearing on what kind of social life the person has. I faintly recall some kids in my younger brother's crowd being like that with the tamagotchi toys they were into back in the 90s, and becoming emotionally attached to one or more objects (real or virtual) one collects or focuses on during downtime is hardly a new concept for humanity.
broadcasting false mouse events as my hands pass over the touchpad.
Don't recent versions of Windows have a way to filter those out? In Linux, I believe the built-in standard for at least the past few years is to ignore the touchpad while the keyboard is in use plus a user-customizable number of seconds afterward... If Windows doesn't come with that ability yet, perhaps there's a third-party program that can handle it.
General purpose forums have proven impossible to moderate with all have access- Usenet was the first example of that.
What? The vast majority of users didn't need or want mods, which is why they were always add-ons and never the main newsgroup... When the rest of us didn't feel like wasting time on the relatively rare trolls would just tell their newsreader to ignore the latest one and any replies to him/her. It was a great hangout into the early 00s, when spammers deluged it in so much crap that our newsreaders' filters couldn't keep up, ISP-wide blocklists interfered with users' posts being seen around the world, and NNTP servers started dropping posts all over the place.
The only thing that Barr did correctly was look up WHOIS info on the People's Liberation Front's website after an Anonymous guy claimed to be "Supreme Commander" of the PLF... When Barr confronted him, the guy claimed it was a joke, so Barr pointed to an innocent man instead. (Ars Tech article on the 'correct' Commander X.) Otherwise, Barr's tactics -- including analyzing what the people wrote -- gave him completely wrong answers.
Slashdot Mirror
First, only parents of minors, severely disabled people, and the elderly get those things -- in the case of the parents, they're only allowed to get it for at most 60 months. Those groups also are barely given enough money to sustain life (shitty section 8 housing, low-quality food, clothes from the dollar area, maybe a POS car that gets horrible gas mileage)... It's not enough to result in a decent quality of life: there's no dental coverage (which is expensive even if you're willing to rely on dental students' work), it's extremely difficult to find most medical specialists and most are low-quality (which disabled/elderly citizens tend to need), the nutritional quality of food tends to be subpar for disabled/elderly citizens as many physically/mentally can't cook full meals entirely from scratch, it takes YEARS of being on a waitlist in many states for a section 8 voucher and then the housing tends to be the places you'd lock your car doors...
That's just for starters. Trust me, it's pretty damn heartbreaking to watch one's own mother age 10 times faster than anyone else in the family, lose her teeth plus all of her energy/spunk & seem mentally 20 years older than she is because of the effects of chronic poverty -- and be unable to do anything about it because you're also far too disabled to hold any job. I can't imagine anyone remotely sane *wanting* to live this life that has actually experienced it.
If you're wondering, I'm able to be online because I have my 10-year-old college laptop and share a $20 Internet connection with my mother (she uses a computer that my brother got when his employer was about to toss it).
No, the conclusion would be that you don't need to use patents if you don't intend to profit from your creation.
more and more people are leeching off the few people who actually produce something tangible.
Or intangible -- well, that is, unless you dedicate yourself to a professional level of ability in every form of entertainment you use, producing every form of information you've relied on, and learned everything you know (including formal education) entirely on your own from the ground up. Otherwise, guess what: you've been "leeching" off the creative & academic professions as much as anyone "leeches" off the creators of the tangible items they have.
Of course, that's ignoring that a person only "leeches" if they fail to give the creator/owner something of similar value in return -- buying services or goods doesn't qualify.
When I was an undergrad at Berkeley in the late 90s & early 00s, I believe the students and professors together added up to around 40,000... Everybody chose their own username (profs almost always used their first initial & surname), but the subdomain changed: everyone from around my time got user@uclink4.berkeley.edu, there were a *few* professors on uclink3, and I believe I saw only one uclink2. The last time I looked at the student paper a year or two ago, all of the addresses appeared to be at uclink.berkeley, however.
In any event, that worked well for us (at least on the user's end)... Also, given undergrads were in a massive faceless bureaucracy for the first time and often felt like we were walking student ID numbers, I think most of us really appreciated being able to choose a username that conveyed something about ourselves. Students have to transition into the adult world of boring "first initial lastname" official addresses soon enough, after all...no need to rush if it doesn't bring huge tech benefits.
I'm assuming one room with at least 2 WeMos for simplicity's sake... As preparation, I'd have to place wireless cameras at the windows and make sure I can see every angle from my Base Of Evil Operations.
I'd let the lights behave normally for about the first 10 minutes they're turned on with somebody in the room, then make one "flicker" (like an electrical issue might cause) and shut off. Wait for the person to approach the light, turn that WeMo back on, wait for them to head back to wherever they were at, flicker off again when they pass a certain point.
After a couple of times doing that, I'd then start affecting that light plus a second one when they pass close enough to it, and so on with all of the lights in the room. When they get frustrated/upset, turn all the lights back on right after they leave the room, keep them on when they return and sit down... ...well, that is, keep them on just long enough for them to relax, then repeat with some variation, always making sure it always appears to happen in response to something they do or somewhere they go, so it doesn't look random enough to tip them off.
Another version of this for somebody that has a partner currently doing something in another room would be to either just flicker the lamp for short bursts (maybe "WeMo Rocks" in Morse code) *or* do the earlier lamp flicker-die/on/off trick. When the person leaves to tell their partner, wait for the two of them to come, then have it act completely normal, like the original victim was imagining things or something. Wait for the partner to leave, then perhaps make one light at a time flicker and die, or do it to all of them except one -- whatever gets the best reaction.
Damn, if I had enough free time I'd go look through the BOFH website for ideas...
Not to be rude, but apostrophes slant the opposite of your accent mark: I’m rather than I`m. Also, with some fonts, that accent mark is nearly invisible or high enough to look like it's superscript.
If you prefer the way a formal apostrophe looks, there's a really good website of Win/Mac/Linux character keyboard shortcuts that might be very helpful; it's the only reason I know how to produce them on the fly in Linux. If you're like me and feel that's too much work most of the time, then please just use the old-fashioned typewriter style as I am here; it's still considered correct, or at least more correct than abusing accent marks. ;)
Unless you only have 1 neighbor, it doesn't seem neighborly to kill access for everyone because of one lazy parent. It would've been much better to say "OK, let me know the MAC addresses of those devices so I can block them." If the guy doesn't know how to find the MACs, try to look apologetically helpless and say, "sorry, that's the best I can do -- but there are some great tutorials on the web if you just search for them." Chances are the lazy bugger would go home and realize that taking the kids' devices away or spanking them requires far less mental effort.
What's sad is that those reactions used to be in favor of challenging the tech status-quo in favor of improving things for society or others in general... I think we lost it when the average Slashdotter morphed from people driven to work hands-on with all aspects of technology they could over to people that like talking about the often-high-priced tech they've bought.
For a tech news website, there are an astonishing lack of tech solutions in the comments here.
Exactly. I only get routers that can run DD-WRT/Tomato so I'll have multiple SSIDs, QoS, etc. and I'm not even a 'real' geek (can't program, majored in English, etc.), so after hanging out on /. since the 90s, it's disturbing to see how few people *here* know this stuff. It's one thing for a community to lose awareness of the old things that are no longer really relevant, but the way things are these days, it's more important than ever to know the basics of how to gain full control of our devices and know what they're up to.
BTW I run both an insecure open guest SSID called "Up With Sharing!" and a private (still-visible) encrypted SSID for my family's devices, which have priority over guests; we have only 1 DSL line, which on a really good day might hit 300KBps (or kbps: whichever FTP, BitTorrent, etc. uses). I websurf & periodically download things, but my mother websurfs & constantly watches videos, but ever since I set a SSID that makes it clear it's deliberately open, guests started being very polite about it -- no major slowdowns traceable to guests rather than just our crappy connection.
Or faith that a country full of citizens that are out-of-shape, overweight, have little-to-no ability to accurately shoot or handle a firearm, and little more in terms of obtaining their own food (if going to the store becomes dangerous), fixing broken items or any form of non-gas-powered transit have a chance in hell of overwhelming the most overgrown military on the planet.
Yes, people in war-torn rural countries that are used to pushing beyond pain and have been dealing with poverty their entire lives do well against our military. That's a far cry from the average urban/suburban desk jockey...and don't forget, when our military has tackled urban/suburban areas, it has usually turned out overwhelmingly in their favor.
Anyone that seriously believes we'd beat the US Military ought to get into playing tactical games of paintball or laser-tag whenever possible... See how long it takes to sustain a hit somewhere that would be totally disabling or deadly if the ammo was live bullets, how well your team does at the tactics that would supposedly make a big difference, how often you manage to shoot someone else before they manage to take you out, and so forth.
They'd treat it like a regular child...
Oh, you mean like the kids at the Judge Rotenberg Center? *raises eyebrows*
Any organ in the body can have structural/functional anomalies at birth. Considering there wouldn't be any Neanderthal babies/kids to compare the first one to, how would humanity determine whether its development, sensory perception, organ structure, longevity, etc. are "normal" for its species?
It's because since '04 they've had sporadic commercials starring modern "cavemen." I haven't seen them either despite not leaving the US, though -- I rely on Hulu, which for some reason only plays Geico commercials that star the gecko.
I plan to: T-Mobile has $30 for 5gb 4G+unlimited txt+100 min. talk and Ting's plans are only for smartphones; both get good reviews.
The "willpower" issue is easily cured with an exercise buddy, routine, and appealing entertainment material. I've been working out 2-3 nights/week at 24/Hour Fitness with my nearly-63-year-old father as "exercise buddies" for almost a year (plus went from 2000-05) -- we fire up our music, and for 30-40 min. I read books on a recumbent bike while he watches TV from a treadmill or gliding (?) machine, followed by ~20 min. on weight-training machines. On frustrating afternoons, I've started to actually look forward to relaxing with the book while working off my frustration and feeling like I've accomplished something that day.
My DSL's only ~100-200kbps most of the time, but I share without impairing my family's ability to use the 'net (including my mother's habit of constantly streaming videos). Just install DD-WRT on the router & set up WPA2 for your household, then make a wireless VLAN (so you can have it open without turning off security for your household), turn on QOS and assign "Premium" priority to all of your household's devices.
What women want is as varied as what men want, and the vast majority of us born after 1965 have no interest in a guy's money. Just like men, what hat we look for financially speaking varies all over the place depending on our own abilities & future plans. We're not in an era where women plan to stay home for the rest of their lives tending kids anymore, you know...
There are no "types" of feminism that are about "trashing men" -- and secure, non-sexist modern guys have no problem dating feminists. There's certainly countless guys & feminist women like that in my area, and contrary to whatever weird stereotypes you're going on, most feminist women get particularly attractive & successful guys. Funny thing, all of the anti-feminist, sexist guys I've known were also the "desperate" sorts that considered themselves the "nice guy" because they were passive-aggressive but not overtly abusive, and victimized because women supposedly "all" women want handsome rich buff dudes.
As far as divorce, that's statistically much harder on whichever spouse makes far less money, which is almost always the woman. It's extremely rare for someone to pay more in alimony than they keep for themselves, and child support rarely covers the actual expenses of raising the child -- that's assuming that alimony/child support are paid, of course, when in a significant percentage of cases they aren't. The one thing that is far worse for women when it comes to divorce is that they're far more likely than guys are to be attacked or killed by their soon-to-be-ex as a result. (Happened a year or so to a woman in my town, in fact; an elementary school teacher was shot to death by her husband while walking back to her car after seeing the lawyer.)
To be blunt, the people with an ax to grind are the ones that speak up, and tend to hang out with others that share their views -- folks without a grudge feel no need to mention it. The resentful crowd interprets everyone else's silence as meaning they have no experience, rather than that the person had a positive or neutral one. My father, ex-stepfather, Dad's GF's ex-husband, my paternal & maternal grandfathers, and my maternal uncle don't have a horror story about their divorces, which is how I know that it leads to them seeing no reason to bring the divorce up or hang with guys likely to rant on the topic.
A couple more for fun:
...all I saw in the stores were lubricants that were flavored with cinnamon and paprika, or designed to somehow "heat" your private parts. No way, Jose! (I experienced the "heat" thing personally once after an adventurous incident with a toaster. I'll stick with "room temperature" from now on, thank you very much.)
I know what you're thinking, "Dave maybe you should ease up on the porn, the kids haven't seen you in weeks." "My god, the cats all white and sticky" To that I say: shut up and mind your own business, if I want to spend my free time drinking jack and wackin' it to some teen runaway making bad life decisions well that's my business. And I'm sorry about the cat but I ran out of tissues. Anyway I highly recommend this product, it's the perfect gift for Mothers Day.
Now it says customers also viewed "Zanies 7-Inch Plush Squeaktaculars Dog Toy, Pig"!
You're mixing up people playing those games with stereotypes about regular gamers. The casual crowd drawn to Zynga's fare plays it primarily in spare moments while standing in line, during brief mental downtime, for a few minutes before bed, and so forth -- they're still living full lives, holding jobs and/or attending school, and having kids if they're remotely interested in being a parent. Games aren't a reason that a person fails (or decides not to) reproduce or have a loving relationship; personal & economic issues are the cause for those decisions.
Actually, spectrum folk aren't lacking in empathy -- it's more of a "Mars vs. Venus" situation between us and non-autistics, with most members of each side communicating & reacting just differently enough that they can seem oblivious from the others' perspective. If you're interested in the high-quality scientific research backing that claim, the Autism & Empathy site has plenty of it, as well as anecdotal essays by neurotypical allies (friends, parents, siblings, partners, etc.) and autistics all over the spectrum.
My understanding from relatives is that the games are primarily played in short bursts when visibly socializing isn't an option and the person wants a little mental downtime, so it'd have little-to-no bearing on what kind of social life the person has. I faintly recall some kids in my younger brother's crowd being like that with the tamagotchi toys they were into back in the 90s, and becoming emotionally attached to one or more objects (real or virtual) one collects or focuses on during downtime is hardly a new concept for humanity.
broadcasting false mouse events as my hands pass over the touchpad.
Don't recent versions of Windows have a way to filter those out? In Linux, I believe the built-in standard for at least the past few years is to ignore the touchpad while the keyboard is in use plus a user-customizable number of seconds afterward... If Windows doesn't come with that ability yet, perhaps there's a third-party program that can handle it.
General purpose forums have proven impossible to moderate with all have access- Usenet was the first example of that.
What? The vast majority of users didn't need or want mods, which is why they were always add-ons and never the main newsgroup... When the rest of us didn't feel like wasting time on the relatively rare trolls would just tell their newsreader to ignore the latest one and any replies to him/her. It was a great hangout into the early 00s, when spammers deluged it in so much crap that our newsreaders' filters couldn't keep up, ISP-wide blocklists interfered with users' posts being seen around the world, and NNTP servers started dropping posts all over the place.
The only thing that Barr did correctly was look up WHOIS info on the People's Liberation Front's website after an Anonymous guy claimed to be "Supreme Commander" of the PLF... When Barr confronted him, the guy claimed it was a joke, so Barr pointed to an innocent man instead. (Ars Tech article on the 'correct' Commander X.) Otherwise, Barr's tactics -- including analyzing what the people wrote -- gave him completely wrong answers.