kruczek

Some already stopped rewarding such behavior. It's the precise reason why I chose Vive over Oculus.

> facebook doesn't owe you anything for using their service

I do not use their service, and yet they stalk me around the web, with countless tracking pixels and like buttons, assembling my shadow profile. Yes, they are abusing privacy as much as real-world stalkers are.

> This contract is clearly entered only because Facebook is making it a condition of using the service

The contract is entered when a user registers at Facebook. However Facebook seems disagree about what the contract involves. Any sane person (well, 96% of them, as the article claims) would say that the contract is for delivery of means to communicate with other people; Facebook seems to argue that the contract is for delivery of personalized ads.

> Posting about how unfair that is is not going to change anything.

It won't change anything, unless enough people complain. And even just recognizing that things are not right is the first step required to make a change. Of course, I won't hold my breath waiting for Google to change their ways, but I think it is in fact important to make a clear note their is not the right way. As the guy writes:

"Maybe it is just so, that big companies ignore small external senders who are sending mail to them, simply because they can, and we can't do anything about this (however, it's always worth trying to check whether we really can't - and that's what I'm doing by posting my issue on this list). But even if we can't do anything about this, we should not pretend that everything is OK, they are correct, and it's the sender's fault. No, on the contrary: we should state it explicitly and clearly that this behaviour is not OK. Maybe we have to live with it; but it doesn't make it less bad."

> Plus car drivers are advised to give a bike the same room as a car, so on mixed use roads a bike effectively takes up the same space as a car.

Yes, that is one case. On the other hand:

1. The fact that such advices are given doesn't mean they are followed. I also heard that car drivers are supposed to leave at least 1 meter of space between themselves and a bike when overtaking said bike. In my experience that happens only on an empty wide road; otherwise car drivers won't hesitate to overtake as close as possible.

2. In case of bike lanes, bikes obviously do take much less space, both when driving and when queuing.

3. Even in case of mixed road, there may be multiple bikes which do not need to stay so far away from each other.

4. Also on mixed road, when queuing together with cars, bikes will usually position themselves alongside cars, therefore effectively taking zero space in the queue.

5. Finally consider also requirements for parking. A single car parking space could probably fit 10 bikes.

> First, the angle for cars results in a closer, more zoomed in picture than for the bus and bike.

That's true, but I don't think it makes much of a difference. I couldn't fix the angle, but here's the same picture with second and third images also zoomed in similarily: https://imgur.com/a/2GMcSlE

> Second, it assumes 1 occupant per car, but a full bus. More likely, each car will probably average more than 1 occupant, and buses will probably be less than half full, if not 25%.

Actually, below is an example for a few countries. Average number of persons in a car seem to be decreasing with 1.8 in the 80s, down to around 1.4 in 2005. At the same time average seat occupancy for buses seem to be around 70%. This matches what I observe everyday - vast majority of cars has only the driver inside.

https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/occupancy...

> Now imagine how many bikes you could fit on a two lane road vs how many cars

No need to imagine:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_9F9_RUESS2E/S7tbclwxiPI/AAAAAAAACmw/uI...

> The fact that people were willing to accept the idea that they needed a diamond is as much the responsibility of the people who wanted to buy them, as it is the responsibility of those who marketed and sold them.

They were marketing diamonds to girls in school [0], shaping whole new generation to value diamonds. How can we expect children to defend themselves against such manipulation? I find this whole campaign amazing in its reach and abhorrent in its content.

[0] "N. W. Ayer outlined a subtle program that included arranging for lecturers to visit high schools across the country. 'All of these lectures revolve around the diamond engagement ring, and are reaching thousands of girls in their assemblies, classes and informal meetings in our leading educational institutions,'"

The author isn't talking about content of the matrix here, rather they mean only level names: 2^n, n^2, n, log(n). Sufficient knowledge of alogirthms would make a person understand the relevance of those names (the big O notation).

In case of bicycles, isn't the danger coming mainly from the fact that they are often used on roads alongside cars?

> How are you going to pay for a home anyways, without a job?

For example, with UBI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

I'd phrase it differently:

If we would scale down to only productive essential jobs, most people would be siting at home doing whatever they like.

So no, I am not happy that people do bullshit jobs just for the sake of having a job at all.

Definitely. I remember at the beginning Climbey would cause minor confusion if I'd unexpectedly fall, now it doesn't faze me at all.

The downside is that I think I used to be more "immersed" at the beginning. Now while I do still enjoy "being" in the 3D environment, at the same time it seems I am more aware of actually being in my room (which at least protects me from motion sickness and from hitting furniture so often).

Fortunately it is not as grim as you describe. People have different levels of resistance to motion sickness. Even with titles that offer significant disconnect between physical and virtual motion (e.g Climbey), an hour is something that for me is easily achivable and enjoyable (and even beyond that it's more a problem of getting physically tired of the activity, than of motion sickness). I believe I am not that unique in that regard and there is actually significant percentage of population who could also easily go beyond those "15 minutes of VR".

Regarding occlusion issues - Vive lighthouses can be connected together with a cable, so they don't need to see each other (and as for seeing the headset and controllers - I don't think ceiling fans would be an issue here, as user would be significantly lower).

Repeating setup if moving, and the sensors getting moved - from my experience it depends how much space you have available and how fully you have to utilize this space for VR. If available space is large enough, then I notice that it doesn't matter much if the boundaries get moved slightly, if I keep enough buffer between virtual boundaries and physical objects.

> Having a bus or lorry use an active runway is just a single, malicious UDP packet away...

Nonsense. It all depends on what is implemented on top of UDP.

That's a bad example, because drugs typically have all kinds of warnings about negative effects. They certainly test on more than 3 patients, and they won't tell you the drug is a beta, but I'm sure they will still claim they are not responsible, because they warned you about very small chance of failure.

I don't know the others, but I played Terraforming Mars and, compared to MtG, it is a very simple game - even without taking into account the vast difference in number of available cards.

In TM there is almost no re-using of cards. Once a card is played, it either is discarded (red), provides a one-time bonus (green) or provides passive/active effect (blue). Only blue cards could be considered as being re-usable, but even that is only as far as the actual passive/active effect goes (which is separate from the effect it may generate when entering the game). Compare it with MtG, where many cards provide effects which allow discarded cards to be returned to the game (ranging from simple "ressurect creature" effects to such that allow shuffling whole stack of discarded cards back into the deck).

Also there is no stack in TM. And gaming the stack to your advantage is one of the core mechanics of MtG. A card you played may have different effects depending on cards your enemy plays in response, and these may have their effects altered by the cards you play in response, etc.

For me it works fine. Whole page reloads in maybe 3 seconds, while browsing mails is pretty much instant.

I also read many articles claiming that it is legal to watch copyrighted material, as long as it is not redistributed. However I'm not sure that's actually true.

As per https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Polish_Copyright_Law

Article 23, paragraph 1:

> It shall be permitted to use free of charge the work, which has been already disseminated for purposes of private use without the permission of the author.

Article 6, point 3:

> the disseminated work shall mean a work which, with a permission of its author, has been made available to the public by any means whatsoever

So, it is legal to access the work without permission, if author gave prior permission to make it available to the public. However I'm not sure if selling a book in a store or showing a movie in a cinema would automatically mean that such work can be downloaded freely from the Internet - technically the work is available to the public, but I'm sure the author did not give permission for the work to be available on the Internet.

> Equating games to watching football is disingenuous at best. Games tire you out mentally.

I'd say such blanket statement is disingenuous as well. I can understand that playing complex games (like the ones you mentioned) can be mentally draining, but I don't believe a simple shooter or racing game would have the same effect.

And the same is true for watching videos - it all depends on the content you play/watch. If I'd be watching a video of someone teaching quantum physics, then I'm sure I'd also find myself mentally drained afterwards, even more so.

> equating videogames to outdoor activities is again disingenuous

Well, they are obviously different, not only because of the social component (which, as you wrote, is deeper in team sports) or health (but the balance is still shifting due to VR). They are also different because games train the mind, while sports do not.

> IMO Video games are essentially alcohol without the liver-effects. Yeah it's a lot of fun in moderation if you are in control (OR if it doesn't pull you in like it does to addictive personalities) but they can pull you down a rabbit hole too deep to climb out of.

Pretty much anything is "esentially alcohol without the liver-effects", if consumed without moderation. An adult person should know their own limits and be able to stop an activity, before it pulls them in, regardless of the type of activity.

> Saving, and loading to see how each choice plays out means the dynamic is "how can I get the best?" rather than "what would this person do?".

I agree this changes the dynamic of a game. On the other hand, is it a bad thing? If someone is more interested in "getting the best" rather than finding out "what would this person do", then why should they be denied such freedom?

I'd recommend reading the article.

Before the image itself, there is "a School Zone sign, crosswalk, an extended curb and a sign by Preventable that reads: You’re probably not expecting kids to run out on the road". It's hard to imagine that anyone would be going fast enough to cause any damage.

Furthermore the image was there only for a week. I somehow doubt drivers would suddenly start to ignore children, after they saw fake image of a child five times.

The article at [1] provides both a tool and online form to verify if your MAC address is among those targetted.

[1] https://securelist.com/operation-shadowhammer/89992/

Ease of use goes a bit against security. For example in Poland there's a popular intermediary przelewy24.pl, but it is just that - an intermediary. You do not create any additional account there, instead when you make a payment they redirect you to your bank's webpage, so you need to authorize directly against your own bank. Much better IMO than having the intermediary interact with my bank all by themselves.

Article 7 and Recital 43 of GDPR.

Permission must be freely given in order to be valid. It is not freely given, if access to a service requires the permission and that permission is not strictly necessary for the service.

However I believe it is good that such option is forbidden, after all the years of abuse of user data at the hands of Google, Facebook and other advertisement companies. Note that ads can still be shown without all the creepy targeting, and ads could still be used to pay for the service, without stealing user data (yes, I call it stealing, because these companies go to great lengths to trick the user into giving the permission). It remains to be shown if ads without tracking could be sustainable to keep services free.

If you provide a free service which is only accessible after you give permission to data processing, then that permission is not freely given and thus invalid (as long as such processing is not strictly necessary to provide the service) - see Article 7 and Recital 43.

That's not fully accurate either. All that you wrote is true, but user's permission must be freely given - this means access to the service cannot be restricted if user refuses to give permission (as long as that permission isn't strictly required to provide the service itself, but then probably permission is not the right basis for processing data).

I have a Vive and tried Rift once during a demo. I didn't really notice much difference in terms of quality between the two (although Rift was demoed seated, not room-scale).

However personally I mainly decided against Rift because I do not want to support their parent company (Facebook).

I use VR a few times a week. Definitely far less than total time spent on gaming. However, I would still say we "are there" with VR, because I do not consider it to be simply a replacement for gaming.

For me VR is mainly a replacement of other forms of physical activity. And just like I wouldn't spend hours every day exercising, same way I wouldn't spend hours in VR. I simply do not like the idea of going to a gym to pointlessly swing arms or legs; VR gives me a goal, a reason to swing those arms and legs.

Of course, to some degree I also use VR for leisure, playing games which do not require a lot of physical movement (e.g. Euro Truck Simulator or Elite: Dangerous). In terms of time, I may actually be spending more time on this category of VR, than the first one - probably exactly because they do not require physical exertion. But still I'd consider the first group much more important.

As for shortcomings, fortunately I'm quite resistant to motion sickness, so that's not a problem for me; also limited FOV never bothered me. I'd say the main problem for me is relatively low resolution - which is especially prominent in games where you need to look at objects far away (Euro Truck Simulator), or need to read text (Talos Principle).