It's complicated, but first things first you need to differentiate between the philosophy and the EA "movement", led by Giving What We Can and others. The latter is shill bullshit and rich people power plays.

The former, set out mostly by Will MacAskill, is an application of future conscious utilitarianism within a capitalist system.

Or in a less wanky way, given you as a poor schmuck can only afford to give a few quid to charities each month, how can you "help the most".

At the simplest level, giving £5/m to a local soup kitchen ran by volunteers who spend all of that money on food is probably more effective than giving the same amount to a major charity with hundreds of employees.

I hope that example also suggests how it itself is not actually straight forward. The local charity with volunteers may just objectively be shit at what they are trying to do, and all the money is wasted.

Point being, you, nor EA, know that unless you do the work to find out. While the principal of harm reduction is absolutely valid, it does not replace advocating for changes to the underlying system.

There is a certain poetry to them recreating the problem they solved.

Is that it?

Very sensible toddlers.

All pretty straight forward, insurance company pays for fixing the cross, driver gets prosecuted for damaging a listed building, premiums of dumb cunt wagons 10x to cover it, and Chelsea cunts get radge.

Right?

The threat being what exactly? That MPs are members of the soveign body and can make whatever laws they please?

Oh Petey, get to fuck already you pathetic little bitch.

Go on....

Something something in hock to the bond markets something something.

Exactly.

Since when is solidarity with Ukraine a political ststement?

OK, so pay for it.

Pretty simple really.

I can understand Apple refusing to do repairs under warranty, or even invalidating a warranty, if someone has broken their phone after digging around inside without knowing what they are doing, but bricking a phone the person owns through a software lock is absolutely insane and stinks of attempts at service capture and fighting right to repair laws.

Yet another reason I'll never give them a penny.

Fairphone gang rise up!

I mean, tarot is fucking stupid as well.

Does anyone else find a bit odd to phrase basic labour rights as 'perks'?

With this level of knowledge of Irish history, I can only assume that whoever made this is a proud Irish American.

I don't want to be all old man yells at cloud, but back in my day popular games were played a lot because they were primarily enjoyable for the story, the achievement of completing a particular level or boss, playing against friends, etc. And sure, you'd have the odd bad parent trying to claim their kid was addicted to Counterstrike 1.6, but it was broadly speaking nonsense. The vast majority of games were offline, or had very limited online modes built around direct competition with other players (FPS, sports games, etc), and publishers would get all their money from the initial sale, with only a few games having expansion packs, most notable The Sims.

But in the early 2010s a few things changed:

• broadband internet became ubiquitous in markets with high levels of existing gamers
• distribution of games swapped from physical media to downloads
• 'everyone' had a pretty powerful computer in their pocket making it much more accessible
• a bunch of people in the industry started reading about positive psychology - the idea that you can create habits through rewards - and apply them to video games to increase playtime
• those mechanics turned out to be very powerful in driving particular user behaviours, and started to be targeted at monetisation models - and so we got loot boxes, etc

So we went from a situation where video games were fun for the same reasons traditional games, or sports, are fun, to one where many video games include a lot of gambling mechanics in their core gameplay loops - loot boxes being the obvious one, but any lottery-based mechanic where you spend real money counts - in an industry with no relevant regulation, nor age limitation.

It is definitely possible for people to get addicted to these mechanics, the same way people can get addicted to casino games, or betting on horse racing, especially when for some games that is literally what the developer wants.

In my experience, even with a diagnosis you don't stop feeling broken.

The core purpose of KYC - to make it harder to launder money, and for the ultra rich to hide away their ill gotten gains - is not evil, far from it.

The fact the very same people which benefit from a perception that KYC is evil and/or ineffective, are the same people making the decisions to penny pinch on security which directly lead to data breaches, is obviously a complete coincidence!

Man who sells thing says you need thing he sells.

More at 11!

I agree that pornhub, et al, should be liable for abuse their platform distributes, but how on earth is AI meant to help in sex trafficking?