arch_8ngel

I am shocked that some of you played this with the single-controller configuration. This game was the reason I owned a 4-score as a kid.

If I recall the context of the old quote that Dave dug up -- the point of the study I read about was that the 21-and-up is less about successfully having a hard-limit on alcohol access and more about taking measures to mitigate access in high school and lower. Obviously under-21's in college will have access from their near-peers. But there are a lot fewer college-aged kids willing to provide regular access to high schoolers, and it is way less likely that a high schooler can pull off a plausible fake ID to say they are 21 vs 18. And I agree with you that making their own alcohol is pretty unlikely. I think I knew ONE person in high school that attempted closet-wine, and by all accounts it was terrible. It was way easier for someone to just pilfer from a well-stocked beer fridge or liquor cabinet if they had parents that were buying in quantities where it could go unnoticed. Hell, I knew more people that were synthesizing psychadelics than were going through the effort of manufacturing alcohol -- though not saying much, because it was basically the one guy with terrible closet-wine and 2 guys cooking drugs in their kitchen (but I probably knew of at least a few more people growing weed). But all that aside -- I can guarantee you that we had way less access to alcohol than if 18-year-olds could legally buy (i.e. most high school seniors by the time graduation rolls around).

I agree that it isn't as obvious as growing weed, but you must only know some really inattentive parents.

How does the fee structure work nowadays? Wasn't there some kind of sliding-scale on fees related to how quickly you wanted a transaction to take place?

Even a modestly attentive parent is going to notice wine production. And if the parents don't care, those same parents would probably buy their kids alcohol anyway.

I honestly expected salad bars and buffets to be gone for a long time.

Why would I pick either of those over Johnny Mnemonic? (which also benefits from being one of the few movies to skirt the line of plausibly being part of the Shadowrun universe)

I don't think I could put it anywhere near the level of the best from the 80's. There is a grittiness of good sci-fi from that era that very few things have captured since. But in terms of the "timeless" comment -- Matrix went over-the-top trying manufacture "cool" in a way that is hyper-specific to the era and in an aesthetic that was way too easily made "uncool" by the fanbase trying to emulate it. Put simply, they just look ridiculous in hindsight. "Timeless" cyberpunk avoids that with styles that are "weird enough" or "world-specific-enough" that they aren't readily emulated so they stay as a "costume only" sort thing that only really exists in the movie-world where you saw it, versus thinking of the types of people that leaned hard into the black trenchcoats and diet-S&M gear. EDIT: but 10 years from now, maybe I'll rewatch it with my kids and change my opinion, who knows

Exactly this -- and I'd probably rank it higher if they never made the sequels (which I thought just went off the rails and were disappointing as hell). At the time of release, being in the target age group -- it was a big "10". But it is pretty far from timeless, and unlike some 80's sci-fi that I can watch again-and-again, I'm not sure if I'll ever bother to rewatch the Matrix. MAYBE when my kids are older... but I have a feeling it will be really embarrassing to explain why we thought it was "cool" at the time -- versus watching Blade Runner with my parents and being envious that they got to see it in theaters (and then being able to have the feeling of awe of seeing 2049 in theaters). But I can't imagine being excited about another Matrix movie coming out at this point.

I'd be interested in hearing practical feedback on burn-in risk for OLEDs.

1st shot was today (pfizer), second scheduled before end of april. Looking forward to having this done.

My 14TB drives are both finally scanned (took almost 27 hours PER DRIVE to do the "long scans"). Shucked them today -- both are Exos drives! (enterprise-grade server drives) I'll call that a win. Now just a couple of days worth of stuff copying on the NAS to swap these in for the previous 4TB drives -- and then whenever I manage to fill THESE up, it will be time to update to 4-bay system...

Presumably, it's also dramatically easier to prove or disprove claims related to EIC.

I would be surprised if it varied by state -- but the only way I could get the totals to tally up correctly were if the sales tax was included. The normally displayed value for a transaction in Paypal is the "net" value that dropped into your account. But if you look at the details, at least on my account, the breakout shows the sales taxes that were handled by eBay. And it is the total of those "gross" values that worked out the actual reported number on the 1099-K.

It is per-service. As far as I can tell, they don't have any cross-talk -- so Paypal, eBay, Amazon, any other services (Square, Cashapp, etc) are all individually handled with their own separate thresholds.

The eBay-collected-sales-tax shows up as part of the gross reported value on the 1099-K from Paypal -- at least it does on mine. The reported number isn't how much hits your account -- it is the total transaction (selling price + sales tax + shipping) and does not include reductions for fees (either eBay or Paypal).

It's almost certainly by SSN. So you could probably game it with your spouse to double the limit, but that would be about it. If anything, it might serve to drive some traffic to second-choice selling sites -- but probably not much, since the fee structures at a place like Amazon are worse than just paying the taxes

I'm not saying I believe the "sex addiction" label, taken completely at face value -- but I am willing to accept that the guy had serious mental health issues with a fixation on sex and sex workers that manifested in violence. Violence against sex workers by repressed weirdos has a pretty long history, to where it is a very plausible explanation for primary motivations in this case. And yes, I think the specific treatment center he went to is probably a genuine part of the problem that led his attack. But all of that points back to the weirdo killing sex workers, rather than the overt racist killing Asians, as an argument for motivations/root-causes. It seems strange to me that you think explicit bias and intent to violence against sex workers is a "lazy explanation" versus a claim of racism against Asians. It certainly strikes me as a more thoughtful and nuanced understanding of the situation than just looking at the race of the victims alone. I'm not arguing that "casual racism" wasn't at play in the assumption that all of the women in the massage parlors were sex workers. But having actually lived in Atlanta, I can very confidently tell you if the guy's motivation was purely a racist intent to kill Asians, he would have been in a different part of the city and he could have EASILY scored a death toll 10x higher with no additional effort.

I'll try and remember to ask him for a picture -- it is pretty funny.

The "quotas on name changes" part is pretty crazy -- is it that common to change your name in Taiwan that it is likely one of his other relatives has already met their quota? (though they'd need to be able to burn 2 name changes to not get stuck with the same stupid name)

And old-guy-programmer I know professionally has a 90's (maybe 80's) era poster in his cube with a left panel showing a pig in lipstick labeled as "C" and a right panel showing a model in makeup labeled as "PERL".

I think the "some racial motive" is at most racism by association with the types of sex workers he intended to target. The more I read about the story, the easier it is to accept that the guy's primary motive was an intent to violence against sex workers, and that he was just a fucking weirdo.

Supposedly he was in rehab for it at a clinic well known for treating sex addiction as their primary focus.

While I didn't really want this mental image... I'm sure I've seen worse

Turns out when you "release the kraken"... sometimes you just get fucked by the tentacles.