Ha, this was no fucking discussion. You moved the goal posts, I pointed out why that new goal is still not a problem today, and you’re now trying to worm your way out by saying you didn’t read my response.

Classy. Fucking classy.

Real fucking problem, yeah.

But think on this scale:

• Cheats built into game and anyone can turn on
• Cheats downloaded for free
• Cheats cost money and sophisticated
• Cheats require hardware and setup time and probably more money

The number of people that will cheat is less at each tier right? What if we remove the risk of ban at each tier vs a higher risk of ban?

If a dev does fucking nothing at those mid tiers, more people will cheat. If they build a reputation and ban a bunch of people, it encourages more people to give it up. Stubborn ones persist and go down to the next tier but they will be fewer in number. Ideally we make it so the cheat doesn’t work at each tier but each one is also harder to prevent.

It’s about playing the numbers. 1 in 100 players cheating sucks. 1 in 1000 cheaters isn’t great. 1 in a million? That’s a lot better risk.

So what happens if devices become popular and common? Great question. I guess everyone that gives a shit quits playing games? Every game is locked down with stream fed into AI, wave our hands and “magically” a server is making the decision for us?

I don’t know.

Until we get to that point, I accept the tools that work for now.

Not to mention you just cannot ever trust the client to be running the the code it says it is on the hardware it says it is.

And this is the problem. I really don’t think you’re aware of how fucking sophisticated cheats are. Anti-cheat software isn’t looking for people with high K:D’s or or snappy aimbots. The server can’t tell if you can see through the walls. The server has no way to know what’s also running on your computer.

Anti-cheat is looking for signs and signatures of those tools cheaters use. And, no, it’s not as easy as looking for a process called “TEH-HAX0RS.exe”. It’s borderline virus levels of sneaky, simulating regular processes. And, just like malware, there is business incentive for these people to be a step ahead of the anti-cheats because stupid kids still keep buying these fucking things. Antivirus and Anticheat are both fighting basically the same people.

I’m not going to disagree that it sucks and some games just make it too fucking easy to begin with by having poor code and structure, but by and large, if it was easy to detect cheaters in the server, it would have been done by now.

If privacy is your number one priority, abso-fucking-lutely don’t play the game. Or at least use a dedicated PC or game console. That said, ruining the enjoyment of the game for everyone else by letting cheaters have a field day will be less acceptable to the game buying public.

At best we get fresh new EULA’s to click through on our way to play our game.

I’ve signed a lot of petitions over the years, and I’d sign this one too, but it’s pretty naive to think this will actually do anything useful.

You hurt my brain.

Welcome to Microsoft marketing, you’ll make a great fit!

Finally! This is peak dopamine hit. Distilled and so pure. I can finally look away now.

Not this shit again!

There would likely be some extreme vortexes especially in the accretion disk. The pressure differences would absolutely create a suction effect.

It’s all probably as negligible as legs on a cow to astrophysicists but I would reckon on its own (without the umpteen solar masses of gravity distorting your results), at human scale I would estimate that it “fucking sucks”.

Pure speculation on my part.

New Orleans circa Hurricane Katrina…?

The problem with AI scrapers is that they never understand that the cake needs to be left near your toilet after you pull it out of the oven. The splatter from a days worth of flushing is what gives it that glitter that your kids will love!

I thought this was a writing prompt for some future dystopian hell but, no, turns out it’s our current dystopian hell.

Must be a theoretical physicist. Has some real “spherical cow” energy.

Yup, as long as the current staff (by and large) are still at the helm of the Ars orbiting HQ, I’ll continue to go there. I’ve lost too many other good tech news sites in the last decade, I can’t lose another one.

The rest of Conde Nast is hot garbage.

Me, the one time I order something every year: “Oh shit oh shit oh shit are they gonna bring it to my door? the depot? Or maybe they’ll leave it at the post office again or shit maybe they’ll try to find my house but can’t because google maps sucks here and they’ll take it back and someone will give me crap for living in a place that doesn’t exist oh shit oh shit oh shit I’m never ordering something ever again it’s all gonna fail! I better call the depot and let them know that something might be dropped off with them…”

Meanwhile, my wife who orders 5 billion things that all arrive without incident: “Oh neat! Another parcel! I forgot I ordered this!”

Until June 5th for anyone wondering.

I bought a pile of Steam sales early on, and Humble Bundles to the point I can’t bring myself to spend money anymore on games I won’t play… my backlog is too much, but damn, the Epic store’s freebie of the week? You can bet your ass I’m building up a backlog in that store too. There has been some junk in that but every now and then they have a fun little puzzle game or something - which is about my pace these days.

And it’s detrimental how?

They’re very open about who sponsors. And you can’t tell me that their production quality is cheap.

Can confirm. We had an infestation of house hippos last year and didn’t even notice them until half way through winter and realizing all of our mittens were missing.

“Does a bear shit in the woods?”

Might be a regional thing but people would often say this as a sarcastic but emphatic “Yes” reply to people, particularly “obvious” answers.

Truth is, my personal observation is that they will make every opportunity to come out on the nearest road or field and shit there.

Obviously one could argue the pedantry (eg rural = woods, or most shit is in wooded areas) but my point is back to there actually being enough nuance to argue the point that they aren’t making the point they think they are when they say that.

I’m fun at parties!

And that’s how you know for sure they are full of shit, or at the very least schizophrenic.

If I saw aliens, and some dude in a suit hushed me with a billion dollars, I’d be living on a yacht the next day.