People already can block individuals easily though. But I agree on the problem with centralized control. Preemptively removing posts/comments should only be done for things that clearly violate rules or are such low quality that it is very likely seeing the content would be to the detriment of most viewers, such as spam or advertisements.

It would be interesting to be able to vote on tags that apply to content so you could ignore stuff that was political for example, but that would just be abused more than current systems.

Thank you for sharing this. Mod abuse is both important to call out and entertaining to see when drama unfolds.

It also helps that there isn’t a competitive mode yet. Until recently it didn’t even track your stats in a visible way. Also, people can only get in by being invited, so you have to have had at least one person who has vouched for you in some way, which probably selects against the most toxic personalities.

Yeah I actually work in a dev team where about half of us picked up programming outside of college. That includes our boss, who’s also the most technically proficient in my opinion. He went through a Microsoft-certified boot camp instead. Some of my uncles are engineers that had college paid for by their company, since they were already shown to be valuable workers without it.

I get the appeal of being able to just look for a candidate’s school instead of doing more heavy-lifting when evaluating a candidate, but the growing over-reliance is to everyone’s detriment. Companies will be missing out on some real talent, and qualified applicants have trouble getting the opportunity to prove themselves.

I am not a lawyer, but consumer protections should generally kick in when an issue is actually evaluated in a court. If you are being charged for things you believe to be unfair, you would need to refuse to pay, then see them in action after the business escalates it. Often, a predatory business will give up when it knows it doesn’t have a case. But it’s pretty hard to work on behalf of a citizen if they ultimately are convinced that they do have an obligation to pay after all.

I agree with the other commenter on the first issue. If you have been paying the amount you were charged, and then hit with surprise retroactive charges, you would have a serious case in small claims. I expect a judge would favor you if it’s as described. $1000 for late fees is exorbitant, especially when the glitch was from their software and not rectified quickly. Unless you’re leaving out relevant details that explains the situation better.

For the second issue, needlessly cumbersome cancellation processes are considered dark patterns and may be illegal in some cases. These cases are being enforced more recently, even against large companies like Amazon. For your pest control case though, if you face pushback when cancelling it’s pretty simple to tell them you won’t be using their services and will refuse to pay. If you already paid, you may be able to issue a chargeback after explaining the situation to your bank. Seeing as how you would be being charged for services not done, I don’t see how the business could contest that after being informed of the cancellation. You would still be on the hook for a (reasonable) cancellation fee, as lost business from a cancelled reservation does represent real damages.

We are a country with a litigious history and we have recognized considerable rights for consumers. Just because you feel powerless doesn’t mean you are.

There is very little flicking, certainly less than Overwatch. Time to kill being much higher, longer sightlines, more predictable movement and third person means it really isn’t twitchy. Shooting most characters’ guns probably feels closer to Orisa’s or Sombra’s than anyone else.

I’ve felt the same way about Overwatch as you, and I’m enjoying Deadlock much more lately. I would give it a shot.

Of course, and any job will expect some degree of training anyway. But there’s only so much that can be tested for before hiring someone. A degree is just a reference from the university that you meet their standards of mastery at whatever major at whatever level. Some jobs expect you to have one just like some expect you to have references from individuals, but others will have other tests for qualification which may even just be an interview conversation. Apprenticeships are pretty similar; each is an individual or group staking their reputation on vouching for your competency. Even a GED or high school diploma is a reference, just from an organization or a public institution.

In the gameplay showcase, they said “every age can be played on its own, or woven together into a full campaign”. So I expect you will be able to set up a game with one age and no turn limit. If not, that will be the very first mod.

Gigantic: Rampage Edition is free to claim on Epic Games this week, so if you might be interested in the future, it would be worth grabbing now.

It seems bizarre to me that the only user I have seen actually trying to provide constructive criticism for the bot so far in this thread is the one that already likes it. Especially when others instead advocate for things like the mods taking a political stance to endorse and using mod powers to reinforce it.

I like the bot. It’s valuable to have context for the organization pushing a story. I agree that others are reading too much from the orgs they like being labeled as biased. It’s assumed a news source will have some bias, and trying to avoid acknowledging that is dangerous. The takeaway is simply to be wary of any narrative being pushed (intentionally or not) by framing or omission, and get news from a variety of sources when possible. Instead, people tend to think identifying bias is advocating that the article should be disregarded, which is untrue.

To your suggestion, I do think adding more sources for reliability and bias judgements is a good idea. It would give more credibility if multiple respected independent organizations come to the same conclusion. More insight into their methodology in the comment itself could also be nice. The downside of adding these is that it would make the comment even longer when people have already complained about its size.

Other than that, I have seen people dislike using the American political center as a basis for alignment, but I have yet to see a good alternative. I expect a significant plurality of users are from the US, and US politics are globally relevant, so it seems to be a natural choice.

Nearly every critic I have seen so far just thinks it should be removed entirely because they find it annoying. I would say even if it isn’t considered useful for the majority of users, the amount of value it provides people who do use it justifies whatever minor annoyance it is to others. Anyone who gets really tired of collapsing the comment or scrolling past it can block it in seconds.

Thank you to the mod who created this thread. Even if it’s good to gather feedback, it’s obviously not easy to get bombarded with negative comments. I’m impressed with the patience you have shown in this thread.

At 15:05 it isn’t clear what is meant by a “full campaign”, but it does sound like you can set up games to be only one age. I hope so, as I am skeptical about swapping civilizations. It was actually the primary thing that put me off Humankind, rather than a selling point. Resetting not only your Civ’s identity but also the world’s resources, map size, and the tech tree is concerning. If one age isn’t an option, I am sure mods will save us at least.

Mod support and multiplayer are huge interests for dedicated fans, so hopefully we will get more information soon. VI improved a lot from V, so I expect it will be good.

I prefer the new graphics to Civ VI’s overall, but I don’t want to say it actually tops V until I’ve played it myself. A few screens seemed visually unfinshed. Story events, navigable rivers, leader skill trees, and the calamities at the end of ages seem intriguing at least. No mention of a world congress, hopefully they have a better system in mind than VI’s.

Still curious about culture progression. They didn’t show a card system like VI, so that at least makes me hopeful. Ideally I would like a permanent unlock/upgrade tree and a way to temporarily boost something at a cost in another system, like edicts in Stellaris.

Looks like districts and wonders still take a tile to build, but now other buildings do too? Cities sprawl out a lot, and are diverse within. Perhaps we will be able to build duplicate buildings that were previously one per city, especially since they mentioned city specializations. It also seems like workers/builders might be attached to a particular city rather than movable units.

Overall, I’m a bit less excited and more worried. There were a lot of changes from V to VI that I was disappointed with from the onset and honestly they did not grow on me.

There doesn’t seem to be a pattern for whatever name politicians become known by colloquially, except last name is most common. Hillary makes sense to distinguish her from Bill, but I remember people generally using her first and last. Kamala is usually Kamala, but you see Harris too. Trump is Trump, but you’ll see people use his first name at times (like r/TheDonald). Biden is still referred to as Joe occasionally. Bernie was much more common than Sanders. For supreme court justices, it’s usually last name or first and last. I’ve never seen anyone refer to AOC as just Alexandria. Obama is Obama, but I’ve seen Barack in really informal contexts. Nancy Pelosi is first and last. Elizabeth Warren is either first and last or just last.

I frequently see people get negative scores for politely expressing an unpopular political opinion. And people at c/UnpopularOpinion get downvoted for it all the time. Reddit is probably worse though

Op discovers fiat currency.

Least popular opinion on c/UnpopularOpinion

But seriously, no one likes feeling like their time is being disrespected, and it’s hard to convince the audience that “all just a dream” is a good resolution to a story they’ve invested in.

There are stories that can justify having a large sequence as a hypothetical/“what if” scenario, but often this trope is used as a crutch when writers either want to ignore canon to effectively write fanfiction for a while, or to retcon something that didn’t land well by deciding it didn’t happen after the fact.

I always recommend Aldi if it’s a local option. It’s where I do most of my shopping and I honestly have no idea what people are talking about with increasing grocery prices. It’s probably gone up there too, but not enough to notice when I get my receipt.

Non-interference is a good default position to have, but we are capable of acting on behalf of others when we have a certain threshold of confidence for what they would want in a situation. Otherwise, we would consider it wrong to give CPR to an unconscious person.

When it comes to life, people overwhelmingly prefer to continue existing when they have the power to choose. So it makes sense for us to presume that a hypothetical person would choose to be born given the opportunity.

For general rape, the victim is typically capable of giving consent but chooses not to, meaning we know the rapist is violating them. For situations where the victim is incapable of consenting, it is true that we are assuming a position for them. As a society, we have observed that being made to have sex in a vulnerable position is a negative experience, so it makes sense to extrapolate they would be opposed if they were capable of choosing.

For life, the observation is different. Once people have the power to knowingly “opt out” of existing, they rarely do. Most people instead prefer existing and consider it to be positive. So we should assume a hypothetical person would also choose to be born when acting on their behalf.

I only played Stellaris off and on, but I went years without buying an expansion and always thought the new systems were complete and better than what they replaced when I returned. Breaking current saves is frustrating, so I guess you would need to delay an update if you had one you planned on returning to.

If you didn’t know, you can roll back to older versions of steam games with some work. A few games have a built-in system, but most of the tile you have to manually replace files after redownloading the old versions.