lvxferre

Double reply regarding Stripe's open statement, as it's related to this topic:

Stripe is claiming to be "pressured" by an unknown party. But it's going out of its way to defend that party, by not naming it and by claiming it's a "partner".

What they’re saying is: “we haven’t called out any specific games, but we told steam if they can’t prove a game is “lawful” well cut them off”.

That interpretation is inviable because Mastercard is claiming to allow "all" lawful purchases on its network. And, given a purchase is lawful unless proved contrariwise (as a consequence of innocence unless proved guilt), it would need evidence that a purchase is unlawful, in order to prevent it.

So it's more than just dictating what can be sold without actually stating it - people there are lying.

Now the real issue is that at the end of the Mastercard is in a position where this matters and they can influence things. Should work just like cash and leave the government to decide what items are legal/illegal.

Full agree.

Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations.

Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law. Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. At the same time, we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.

So, Mastercard is claiming either

1. that the content Steam and itch were forced to remove was unlawful; or
2. that they absolutely did no pressure to force either to remove the content

Either way it smells like bullshit.

Solanum is the tsundere genus - half of the species want to feed you, the other half to kill you.

On a more serious note:

The researchers found that each ancestral parent contained one key gene that—when combined—allowed tubers to grow. Tomatoes contributed the SP6A gene, which acts like a master switch to begin tuber formation. And from the Etuberosum side, another gene called IT1 controls the growth of stems that become tubers.

I did some websearch to check what the SP6A gene does in tomatoes, apparently the SP stands for self-pruning; it probably tells the plant to stop growing an appendage. I couldn't find much info on the IT1 gene from Solanum etuberosum, but if I had to guess it tells the plant to dump carbs in the rhizomes.

If that's correct, IT1 makes the plant keep pumping carbs into rhizomes for further growth, then SP6A says the growth is over, the carbs accumulate and you get a tuber.

...well, not like I was planning to move my blog (that nobody reads) to a Neocities page... that might be the final push.

On another matter: I think the right approach is to pressure governments to make hate discourses illegal. Yes, it's tempting to screech 'DEPLATFORM!', and short-term effective, but

1. It's a stop-gap measure; eventually they migrate to another platform. We shouldn't be playing whack-a-mole with this shit.
2. If you give power to a private entity, to get rid of harmful content (like hate speech), eventually it'll remove non-harmful content when it gets some benefit out of it. Cue to recent events regarding the payment mafia and NSFW games.

Google is only better because you can see results that aren’t on reddit.

Nah; Reddit search is so bad, but so fucking bad that people would rather search Reddit content in Google than directly in Reddit. (Cue to the "$query reddit" pseudo-hack).

And this discrepancy will get even bigger with both sides worsening their searches with AI.

Both sides are doing it. Except Google has enough resources to make it slightly less terrible.

Confirmed: not even Greedy Pigboy uses that fucking shithole. If he did, he would know that Reddit search sucks major balls, and that it would take a lot of money to fix it.

And this would also taunt Reddit's effective suzerain Google/Alphabet. Whose core monopoly is... well, search. Probably finding ways to wreck with Reddit.

They is running late?

Singular "they" triggers agreement with the same verb forms as plural "they". Just like "you" - no matter if I'm saying "you are a muppet", it's still "are" (even if singular), not "art" or "bist" (as you'd use with "thou").

(inb4: the analogy between "you" and "they" is perfectly valid, because "they" is following the exact same path as "you" - even if one refers to the second person, another to the third.)

From your other comment:

I’m not the one disregarding the grammar rules. You are.

They aren't. You're the one getting things wrong, by conflating grammatical number with agreement, as if they were in a 1:1 correspondence.

Well, she is the demon of control after all.

(She'd also ban shitty movies.)

The world would be better if Microsoft was gone.

Turing is gone for years; got replaced with Midgard and then Tiberis, the current machine. Here's Tiberis:

inb4 my desk is a mess and to be replaced, and I need to clean Tiberis' guts. The pics highlight how dirty it is.