TehPers

people are often nasty when others ask questions they assume to be stupid.

It sounds to me like you might want to reevaluate the communities you’re in. This sounds incredibly toxic.

And I agree, for simple questions, it can be helpful. I would caution against overreliance on the answers though. Even the best models available today hallucinate regularly. Always verify answers when they are important.

Also, learning to read documentation directly is a valuable skill to develop. Even if you don’t rely on the documentation directly, reading a lot of it will make it easier to write documentation as well.

I think the post (well, this translation anyway) is best read as a fantasy rather than associated with reality. It’s predicated on a lot of assumptions, including the assumption that AI has the ability to develop large software almost entirely autonomously, that large brands have no means to lock users within an ecosystem, that people will be able to articulate exactly the software they need and how it should be designed, and so on.

The future being described by this post is the elimination of all roles of software and product development, spanning from developers to designers to even product managers.

As a thought experiment, it’s interesting. It shouldn’t be confused as reality, though.

I would narrow this down to including monetary cost and reward.

A game of primarily chance, such as slots, roulette, poker, blackjack, or even MTG’s Ante variation where something of value is offered (money, chips, resellable cards) and something of value is rewarded would be gambling. Note that chance would be a primary mechanic of the game, but skill may still be involved.

Seeing as I can’t see the thread anymore for previously mentioned reasons (yet oddly I can reply to you because you pinged me), I’m not sure which mod currently holds the reins over this community, but feel free to just delete the whole thread.

There’s a discussion in another post that is almost certainly related to this one. I alluded to it when I came to that conclusion, which might have confused you.

Is this even a surprise? Giving away free access to Copilot hemorrhages money and only exists to convert those users into paying customers. It costs them nothing to take away some features from these users.

The only real ways to prevent this are local hosting (which is much more realistic these days) or an explicit contract stating that the features you want will remain for the duration of the contract. The latter is not an option with GH Copilot, as far as I’m aware, and is basically nonexistent with any modern services.

Edit: Hey everyone, you can disregard the above comment by TehPers, because they clarified that they actually aren’t claiming booster packs are illegal:

If you are only arguing about what is or isn’t legal, then you’re wasting your time. I’m not a lawyer, nor in a position to rule on laws. I don’t know if something gave you the impression otherwise.

;P

Thank you for clarifying to all of us that you do not comment in good faith. It makes it much easier for me to know which people to block.

And yet are not “gambling” as the colloquial understanding of the regulated activity stand, nor certainly things that people want to be covered under gambling regulations.

I didn’t say they were gambling, though trading shares is often associated with gambling. But in all of those examples, you receive something with value that changes in a way that is impossible to accurately predict.

And since this is about what should fall under the regulated activity, doubly-irrelevant.

And here you’re changing the topic to suit your needs. I replied to a comment discussing the definition of the word “wager”. As I’ve told you not long ago today, I don’t care much about the semantics of specific words. I’ll engage in the discussion though.

And since this definition is irrelevant to the regulated activity, it’s irrelevant to TCGs or loot boxes if you are pushing for those to be considered regulated gambling.

What? I’d like to remind you that you responded to me and solo’d out TCG boosters. In my response, I said very clearly that I am not a lawyer, nor do I make any claims as to what they should say in their case.

If you are only arguing about what is or isn’t legal, then you’re wasting your time. I’m not a lawyer, nor in a position to rule on laws. I don’t know if something gave you the impression otherwise.

If you’re arguing about what should or shouldn’t be legal, then it’s not an unpopular opinion that TCG booster packs should be regulated to some extent.

Anyway, I’m disengaging. As you mentioned before, we assume good faith here. That is my initial assumption, so I engaged with the discussion. At this point, I believe you are arguing for the sake of arguing.

By this definition, buying anything is a wager.

Mostly correct. Buying anything which retains value after the purchase is a wager. This includes shares in a company, collectible items, even a shipping crate of RAM.

You’re not betting on a specific outcome in that definition, which is the “gamble” part of “gambling”.

In the case of TCGs, the bet is that the value of the cards contained in the pack exceed the money spent on the pack. This is very common. And within TCG communities, there is a common understanding that this is gambling.

That’s of course not to say that all purchases of a booster pack are with the intent to gamble. I’ve also played poker and blackjack for fun, and those games are full of wagers, bets, and outcomes. But the bar has never been that all possible reasons to do something are to gamble, just that gambling is a common motivation to do it.

The final question presents a false dichotomy that it is the end of the internet or that the authors are pushing an agenda. This is a belief “that most people think [is] unreasonable and unacceptable” (as you put it) in the context of this specific article, which is what their comment was in response to.

I have no issue with anything that precedes that, obviously.

US law does not view TCGs as gambling, but by the colloquial definition, it is gambling. You say there’s no wager on an outcome. The wager is the price you spend on a pack, and the outcome is the resale value of the contents of the pack.

As for the case against Valve in particular, I make no claims as to what they should or shouldn’t argue in the case. I am not a lawyer. I can’t imagine most people in this instance are either.

Colin Hathaway, a millionaire businessman in Washington, said he’s concerned the proposed tax would treat the money earned by his roofing company as income, even though he’s putting most of it back into the business.

Bullshit. The tax cares about adjusted gross income for individuals. Business expenses are a deduction. Making $1m and putting $900k back in as business expenses deducts that from your income. This is all assuming you even have $1m as personal income, which is not necessarily true depending on how your business manages its finances.

I don’t think they understand what “dissent” is. Dissent is very often opposed and persecuted. It’s not often legal.

Making it illegal doesn’t make it go away. It makes it louder.

I added a second edit it appears after your comment, but repeating it here: what’s the point of this? To me it seems like an argument over the semantics of a word which I honestly couldn’t care less about. Are you defending that the commenter’s comment reads like a sane interpretation of the article?

Nobody here is saying that it’s ridiculous to question your sources or try to identify potential bias in articles. Those are things you should always do. That’s not what this commenter was doing, though.

The suggestion that the authors of an article have ulterior motives is an extreme position to take, yes.

At no point did I ever say that it’s a bad thing to hold that position, nor did I say it’s an invalid position, nor did I say it’s an incorrect position*. But in the society we live in, that position is pretty extreme

*Edit: as a general claim, and obviously only for trustworthy sources. For this particular article, it is a ridiculous position to take though.

Edit 2: I’m really confused what the point of this is. Are you defending that this article might reasonably be published with ulterior motives? Are you arguing over the semantics of the word “extreme”? Are you defending that the original comment reads like a sane interpretation of the article, even if flawed?

Booster packs in card games like Pokemon and MTG are gambling. They contain random cards with published, known odds. The cards are worth monetary value. The consensus across the board for these games in their communities is that the packs are gambling, and it is pretty much always better to buy single cards from a third party if you need specific cards.

So are they arguing it should be “legal gambling” here? Because I’d argue the opposite - booster packs are also illegal gambling.

if we don’t do it, our adversaries will do it

“If I don’t stab you, someone else will. Therefore I have an obligation to stab you.” - crazed mass stabber

By extremist, I was referring to the absurdity of the statement. Either it’s the end of the world, or the article authors are conspirators. Surely it can’t be something simple that isn’t on one end of a spectrum. This is what leads to radicalization.

Do you think that government intrusion into media, or the existence of online influence campaigns, are “extremist” conspiracies rather than proven realities?

They are both. An extremism can be real. A conspiracy can be proven true, and in your example it is.

There is no evidence, nor reason to believe, the authors of the article in question are conspirators. There is no reason to believe the contents of the article are intended to be anything more than informational, even if with the inherent bias all authors posess. To perceive it as such would be a sign of extreme radicalization or, as you put it, an “online influence campaign” which would be conveniently set before a midterm election in the US.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting the commenter actually is part of some campaign. I wouldn’t know. I do believe its contents are extreme though.

Australians must prove they are over 18 before they can access adult content such as porn, R-rated video games and sexually explicit AI chatbots under new laws.

Oh no! Not R-rated video games! Protect the children!

Research by her agency found that one in three children aged 10-17 had seen sexual images or videos online.

It also found that more than 70% of children had been exposed to online content showing high-impact violence, self-harm and suicide material, and information on disordered eating.

Did that same research find that those children were negatively affected by the online content?

You’d also think they would catch the first sentence talking about them living their new life in Australian. One would think to name a country there, not its adjective form, nor the name used to refer to a citizen of the country.

Are you sure? Those seem like the only two options to me. Clearly the purpose of the article is to convince people to feed their children to the rich.

Seriously, I’ve seen an increase in these weirdly extremist comments recently. One would have to wonder if they are the ones serving another’s interests.