Regarding the fact that these ads promote playing games instead of having sex … umm, that’s basically what happened. Sounds crazy but, ya, young people are having less sex today, and the birth rate has dropped precipitously. You can list a dozen other factors that would impact this as well (economy, education, etc) but access to video games does seem to correlate. Sometimes correlation IS causation.
Umm, US Customs has been asking for social media accounts from everyone entering the country for years… since trumps 1 st term. Perhaps the “for a visa” part is new but they’ve been loyalty checking for ages already.
GrapheneOS said they won’t implement age verification. That not them “being brave”, that’s them literally doing nothing at all. “Brave” would be getting the governments implementing this shit to change the laws.
Linux distros without age verification will be prohibited from distributing to regions where this law is enacted. Of course, circumventing the law is also possible, but that leaves either the project – or you – open to prosecution. As I said, your fight is with the politicians pushing through this ignorant law, not with the people, companies, or projects that are forced to comply.
Imagine being so horrible at your job as a “journalist” or an editor or a publication that you would allow an article like this to be written under your name or publication without ever mentioning the fact that age verification is being pushed by governments, not phone and computer companies (they are trying to fight its implementation), and that it is equally coming to ALL platforms (yes, even Linux) – as required by law. If you want to fight this ridiculous age verification shit, petition (and vote out) your government. I would also argue that this author and publication should be permanently blacklisted for purposely publishing this obviously biased and misleading misinformation.
Something about America being the home of free speech… lol
Only some of the pages were redacted in that way – probably one department didn’t know what they were doing. There’s plenty of redacted material still.
Just un-redact the Epstein files, you coward!
Also, if you press the power button 5 times on iPhone it does a hard lock requiring the passcode to unlock.
lol, found a short of all the Lara Croft walks… I was referencing the first one, obviously.
I think for me, the only female I remember in a video game was the princess in the arcade version (because consoles didn’t exist yet) of Donkey Kong. And she seemed kinda cute, for a blob of coloured pixels.
Much later, I do remember being quite entranced by Lara Croft’s walk in Tomb Raider… I think that was the first time I thought a computer generated female looked attractive. Honestly, the image quality was still horrible but they nailed that walk.
“I have nothing to hide therefore you have no reason to look”
Can’t believe nobody mentioned Last of US.
Ya, I’d just take dump right there in front of that machine. There’s a special spot in hell for whoever dreamt up this dystopian toilet paper dispenser.
“Huge REACTION to GENOCIDE” — there, I fixed it for you, you gigantic piece of shit, Netanyahu.
I’m currently in Asia and – in this country at least – you are basically required to have a smart phone to do anything. Credit cards don’t exist. And they use QR payments for most things. So that implies a camera and a banking app (for your bank). Many places don’t accept cash anymore (!) - I don’t really get how they can do that because not everyone has a smart phone (poor people (obviously) & tourists (not even allowed to get bank accounts here) come immediately to mind — of which there are millions of both). I think so far it’s not a big deal because these people just spend their money elsewhere, but I worry this will become entrenched.
Anyway, I tried “dumb phoning” my iPhone and there’s just way too many things I rely on daily that require a smart phone: paying by QR code, banking, international banking, translating, navigation, ride booking, accommodation booking, messaging on iMessage, Line, Messenger (almost everyone in this country uses the last 2). When travelling in a foreign country, these things aren’t really optional. If I can’t pay for a bus ticket or food, I could be really screwed.
Now you might say some of things in my list are doable without apps; like accommodation booking… sure. But even if you find a place old skool style, how do you contact them? Most don’t have web pages, they use Facebook pages. And the contact info is usually a Line or Messenger id. Even if somehow you managed to find a phone number, they are unlikely to speak English. I’m old enough to remember travelling before the internet and honestly it was great and worked well, but that was because everyone was on the same footing. We’ve lost that and I actually think it’s much more difficult now.
I’ve gotten rid of most social media (except fediverse) which has helped my screen time a lot, but I think going back to a feature phone is, unfortunately, impossible here. I do hope that they see how economically unfair requiring a smart phone is though and at least pass some laws that require shops to take cash payments (last I heard these laws did exist in the West).
The Orange TACO demonstrating why the only way to deal with America for the next 4 years is to completely ignore them and work with the rest of the world for trade. Trump doesn’t honor the trade deals that HE negotiated (Canada and Mexico, for example) and has no problem throwing out the any deal when someone whispers in his ear about some new thing. Negotiating is utterly pointless. He is the boy who cried wolf and clearly there is no wolf at all. Why should the world care if America wants Americans to spend 200% more for magnets? Or oil? Or electricity? Coffee? Cars? Groceries? Etc… etc… etc. They voted for this. Let them suffer. The rest of the world will be just fine. This is the path Canada is taking and the rest of the world needs to wake up and cooperate — without the USA.
Thailand literally told them (publicly) that they don’t need their help… and then he tries to take the credit anyway. He truly is the biggest loser.
While this is obviously true now, in hindsight, it’s certainly not fair. The entire western world put all of their eggs in the USA basket… why? Because after WWII there was a real sense that the USA was trustable. That they would work toward freedom, democracy, and (importantly) expanding markets in the world. The USA made the basket and the rest of the world piled in their eggs. Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (Panama, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc all), the world continued to believe the lie that America was happy promulgating. Nobody reasonable believed America would take a hard right turn to fascism and voluntarily elect a leader that would throw the basket — the basket they made to always favour America — in the trash. But here we are. Yes, the world never should have agreed to America putting itself at the top of the pile. But we did and now the world is busy re-orienting without America. I think that’s for the better, but then again I’m not American. I think Americans are in for a rude awakening when the Trump policies actually come home to roost… of course he’ll be gone by then and they’ll just blame whatever democrat inherits the burning hulk of America that he leaves behind.
Well, a couple of points about my post that seems to have generated far more discussion than I would have guessed.
I was being a little tongue in cheek, as anyone with any scientific understanding at all knows that “correlation is not causation”. And with a topic such as this, it would be almost impossible to isolate the direct causes for a) young people having sex and b) for dropping fertility rates.
Sweden is only one country. Certainly not one that I was focused on (at all). Generally speaking, fertility rates are dropping amongst western (and Japan) countries. Of course there could be outliers. I don’t think that an increase of .1% is statistically significant considering the rates in some countries are about 1/2 what they were 50 years ago.
the main point of my comment was that young people are having less sex today. That was an actual study. I’ll link it if in a find it again. In Japan, it’s gotten so acute that 50% of people in their 20’s are self reporting as virgins and 20% in their 30’s. That’s insane to me as a couple decades ago, Japanese people were considered by the west to be promiscuous. However, they were also considered the gaming epicentre at that time. So perhaps the effects take a decade or so to be noticed? 😉
Or perhaps there’s no correlation at all.