it's not renting that's being criticized here; it's specifically landlords.
renting is perfectly fine.
what is not fine, is that a public necessity is tied to a private individual or company that can charge whatever they want.
that last part is the problem.
vienna often gets cited as a notable example for large scale, affordable public housing projects, and while that is fair, the reason those are affordable, is because they are owned by the public, i.e. the city of vienna.
THAT'S how rent is supposed to work: for the people, by the people.
it's how a society gets affordable housing, not this price gouging nonsense that neoliberal politics has popularized...
the entire purpose of policy is to provide legal means of regulating what is NOT working in society without it.
and the reason policy is required, is because landlords, in general, are greedy bastards that see their fellow brothers and sisters as nothing more than sacks of money walking around. their ghouls. parasites that provide absolutely nothing of value, and demand payment for "the privilege".
when people talk about landlords, it's never about the sweet old person renting one flat to supplement their income slightly. it's always about the ruthless property conglomerates that own half a city, or the random guy owning 15 apartment complexes.
renting out surplus rooms, or a second home is not an issue, in general, because the people that do so usually rent to others in a very similar economic bracket as themselves. that means they know, from personal experience, about how much some in that bracket can afford. so prices stay pretty much reasonable.
but that's not true for, let's call them, "Big Landlord". they don't give a fuck, if anyone can afford the units they provide. these are the assholes that only see 'funny number must go up!' and literally nothing else.
there seem to be 2 feet, right next to each other.
the keys are weird, but it might just be compression artifacts: since I can't spot any other of the typical continuity errors...i think it's real?
the gray tech boxes have neat continuous lines, which ai usually fucks up, the carpet seems properly rectangular, the hair doesn't have that weird ai shine to it, the shoes have proper patterns, the hand seems mostly okay; might be a weird shadow, the mountains seem too good for ai, the curtains' folds seem too believable for ai (fabric usually has continuity errors, afaik), probably some other stuff...
i think the keyboard is really just compression artifacts, since the big tree on the right has similar artifacts. the cable holes also seem too orderly for ai, too neatly arranged.
might also be photoshop or some other cgi but i dunno... doesn't seem all that obviously ai to me...
...unless there's been some very major advancements i missed?
like i said: I'm not entirely sure either way...
eta: also the vase on the right has what seems like proper reflections
on the flip side there's the million "orphan crushing machine forgot to crush one orphan today! so wholesome!" type posts that are even worse imho...
you know the ones: "kids save up to buy wheelchair for classmate", "kid works 80h weeks to pay off lunch debt", "kid works at meat packing plant after school to afford bicycle", and on and on.
each is more depressing than the previous.
these types of posts are the exact opposite of wholesome, yet frequently get upvoted on wholesome communities and it's just...what is wrong with people? why would you think that shit is wholesome??
neither the stuff you mentioned, nor the orphan crushing machine stuff should be on wholesome communities.
tbf, i noticed the popular wholesome comms seem to be doing a lot better on this front lately! waaay less orphan crushing machine, and way less of the "x died, yippee!" posts.
they were saying that the "patriots" (so maga, not actual patriots) are claiming that they would step in and stop tyranny, but are actually doing the opposite.
and them claiming that that's the reason they need their guns is the most prominent reason that constantly comes up in discussions about gun control. which is true.
so they are saying that particular argument is utter bullshit, and that gun reform should disregard that argument.
and gun reform/gun control doesn't mean nobody can have guns.
it just means stricter rules on who can have them. which, yes, is a necessary legislation that every civilized country already has.
saw a setup like that at work, until it was determined to be a fire hazard. which it was.
had to short the start pins of the MoBa with a paperclip to start the damn thing.
we called it "the scorpion", cause it would shock you if you touched it wrong, and it kinda looked like a scorpion with the cables hanging out all over the floor...
turns out the mosquito nets are devastating local fish populations, because people use them to fish, since they get them as a finished product instead of having to knit nets themselves. and starvation being a bigger immediate threat, they prioritize that over malaria.
the nets are also laced with toxic chemicals (against the mosquitoes), which are extremely toxic to fish.
they also have much smaller holes, so they catch the young offspring as well, leading to rapid depletion of stocks.
so, yeah...good idea in theory, but didn't turn out so great...
As evidence, the lawsuit cites unnamed "courageous whistleblowers" who allege that WhatsApp and Meta employees can request to view a user's messages through a simple process, thus bypassing the app's end-to-end encryption. "A worker need only send a 'task' (i.e., request via Meta's internal system) to a Meta engineer with an ...
it's a kind of mathematical function that takes the entire code as input and outputs a unique result.
the result is just some string of symbols (which really just represent a unique string of 1's and 0's).
this unique string of characters is, as mentioned, unique for any given input.
this string can then be compared to any arbitrary other string, and if they match, then you know it's the same code.
so in the case of signal anybody can download the source, compile it, and verify that it matches the fingerprint of the compiled code on their own device.
that's why it can't be faked: you compare the already compiled code.
if even a single digit of the code is out of place, it's not going to result in the same string, and thus immediately get flagged as a mismatch.
Taken together, independent assessments paint a consistent picture: Brexit has reduced UK GDP (estimates commonly span roughly 2–8% to date, with central academic estimates clustering around 6–8% by 2025), slashed business investment (commonly estimated down 12–18% by mid‑2020s and in some scenarios far larger over decades), and trimmed productivity (roughly 3–4% in many studies and up to 4% in OBR scenarios), and they identify trade frictions, uncertainty and misallocation as core drivers—facts that point to policy levers on trade facilitation, investment incentives and productivity reforms if the UK seeks to narrow the gap with its peers [2] [4] [1] [3].
damn near all economy experts agree on a negative, long-term impact fo the UK economy. they just can't be entirely sure how bad it was, just that it was quite bad.
single digit percentage points don't sound too bad, but when it's entire percentage points pf an entire economy that actually works out to billions in lost economic activity.
the stats you provided do not show any comparison to a no-brexit/remain scenario, which is what should be compared.
if we only ever look at past data, and never compare that data to alternative scenarios, then it gets really difficult to make better decisions in the future.
in circumstances where the sample size is naturally limited to just 1, it is necessary to perform simulations in order to gain insight into the outcome of any given event. there's not really any other way to do this.
what you call "wank estimates" (very scientific, thank you) is a collection of well established research methodologies that have been used with great success in both predicting future outcomes and analyzing past outcomes.
this is evidence. it provides mathematical certainty, in this case about brexit.
this is factual evidence, not simply "wank estimates".
and the evidence suggests that the UK economy would be significantly better off without brexit.
this is simply fact.
that the UK economy did mostly fine on its own is not relevant, because that's not the point.
the point is, that it would have been better for the economy, if the UK had remained.
you are arguing from ignorance, ask for evidence, then reject said evidence in the first paragraph instead of reading the entire thing because of a boilerplate disclaimer (which you of course do not understand to be boilerplate).
you read the executive summary, even though you asked for the methodology, which is explained in the studies linked under the sources of the article.
you need to click through to the actual study to see the methodology.
the link i provided is just a summary of multiple studies.
the studies lack this disclaimer, which was added by factually, probably for legal reasons, not because the data is faulty.
since you're apparently too lazy to even click the links already pointing to the exact information you asked for, here's the abstract of the NBER/Stanford paper (most relevant part at the end highlighted):
This paper examines the impact of the UK's decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) in 2016.
Using almost a decade of data since the referendum, we combine simulations based on macro data with estimates derived from micro data collected through our Decision Maker Panel survey. These estimates suggest that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, with the impact
accumulating gradually over time. We estimate that investment was reduced by between 12% and 18%, employment by 3% to 4% and productivity by 3% to 4%. These large negative impacts reflect a combination of elevated uncertainty, reduced demand, diverted management time, and increased misallocation of resources from a protracted Brexit process. Comparing these with contemporary forecasts – providing a rare macro example to complement the burgeoning micro-literature of social science predictions – shows that these forecasts were accurate over a 5-year horizon, but they underestimated the impact over a decade
from the CEPR/VoxEU article (already in plain language and easy to read):
So, taking all this together, what’s the bottom line? First, the public is right. Brexit has damaged the UK economy. But, inevitably, the mechanisms and hence the impacts have been considerably more complex than economists could incorporate in macroeconomic or trade models, with their inevitably simplifying assumptions. To simplify hugely, however, it would be reasonable to say that the impact on trade overall has been broadly consistent with predictions so far, that on immigration much less negative (and perhaps even positive) and on investment somewhat worse.
so, yes, brexit has been bad for the UK economy. definitely, without question.
what IS still in question is how badexactly it was.
THAT'S were the uncertainty is.
whether or not it was detrimental has been answered with abundant certainty: it was bad.
modders also often do commissions. that's entirely fine, because in that case people pay for the devs time, not the mod, which is still freely available or entirely private, both of which are fair game.
but you can't put a paywall in front of mods.
there's many reasons for that, but most importantly for the community: it ruins the community.
dependencies are a common practice in modding. they allow for modularized packaging of software, making maintenance easier for devs, and content choices easier for users. win-win.
paid mods hinder this by incentivizing modders to put frameworks - which would be the most profitable - behind paywalls.
low effort slop:
see the horse armor bullshit, or any other time bethesda tried to introduce paid mods, including creation club (which is literally paid mods). every time this happened the "stores" got flooded with low effort, low quality, but super expensive bullshit.
this then buried high quality content under mountains of shit, made worse by rampant bot abuse and algorithm manipulation.
this is the obvious result of paywalls in modding: when it's not about passion, it's about money. and when it's about money, there is no low that sellers won't sink to.
incompatibilities:
with paywalls in place modders will actively seek to interfere and break other mods. this has already happened in free modding, also many times, but that were either instances of egotistical infighting between modders, or straight-up malware deployments.
what's different when mods are paid, is that there is a financial incentive to build a walled garden. to build a system of software only compatible with your own creations, and nobody else's, so users can't mix and match and have no choice about where to buy from.
this alone would effectively end modding entirely.
cost:
paywalls would be stupidly expensive. again, the best (or rather worst) example of this is bethesda. CC content is stupidly overpriced, and at the same time lower quality than what is available for free. the cost alone is so absurd, that it would definitely destroy the entire community of any game that implemented paywalls, because, again, the incentives align to encourage high prices to target whales instead of normal users. this is the case for every single paywall in gaming, and it certainly applies to modding.
and more:
paywalls in modding are a legal nightmare. I'm not a fan of the current copyright system, but at least right now modders don't have much incentive to enforce their IP with DRM tools. paywalls mean there would definitely be DRM tools in mods.
apart from that there's also the issue of law itself. in the EU for example the return policy for digital goods would probably force some kind of compliance check into any software that tried to do paywalls for mods outside of the original companies stores; that's why bethesda only sells on internal stores. that and vendor lock-in.
vendor lock-in itself would be catastrophic for many communities. this would basically mean that some company controls all aspects of modding, including what content you're allowed to create. so say goodbye to anything credit card companies, i.e. the U.S., doesn't like, because all of that is immediately forbidden.
remember the porn ban credit card companies tried to enforce on steam and itch.io a couple months back? that's a guaranteed scenario for paywalled mods. someone has to handle the "pay" part of the paywall, and credit card companies will enforce their weird moral guidelines on everyone if paywalls become a thing.
any single one of these would ruin a community.
and you seriously couldn't even come up with a single one?
none of that is how this actually works in practice.
again, all of this has happened before, and I've laid out how it turned out.
there's no "maybe", no "perhaps", no "possibly" about any of this.
the reason it can't happen, is because corpos will not ever allow a secondary market to form around their IP. because that would mean less profit for them. in the corpo mindset any profit someone else makes off their IP is profit stolen from them. it's bullshit, of course, but that's how it is.
why do you think ALL of the paid mods are only ever available in in-game stores that the company controls?
there is no scenario under capitalism where a corporation allows random people to make money off of their property. zero chance for that.
Well, I doubt frameworks would become for-pay. There are not enough modders to sell to for that to be a realistic business model.
there definitely are enough modders around to sell frameworks to:
Script extenders for literally all fallout and elder scrolls games, highlander in games like xcom(2) and ark, vanilla expanded framework in rimworld, cyberpunk has the atelier store and a couple others, various modloaders like forge, neo-forge, and fabric for Minecraft, and on and on the list goes.
there's potentially millions of "customers". (in quotes, because without frameworks almost nothing works)
all you need to do to see how ignorant of a comment you made is go on nexusmods and check the skyrim pages for most downloaded/unique downloaded. the top 5 alone are:
6 Million (Framework/Utility/QoL)
5.9 Million (Patch)
4.9 Million (Utility)
4.3 Million (Framework)
4.0 Million (Graphics)
that's just a single game, and a single platform. there's many more platforms and modding communities out there. that's the kind of scale we're talking about here. and we haven't even looked at Minecraft yet, definitely the biggest!
I expect most mods would not be paid. There is a thriving community of modders who make things without charging a cent. Why would this paid VR mod change that? I expect most mods are not worth paying for. But I could imagine, say, paying for a very high quality mod, like a set of well-reviewed and cohesive portal map packs.
i touched on that in the first few paragraphs, but that's the core of the issue right here:
this is NOT a free and open market!
if paid mods become a thing, you will not (legally) have the choice "just not pay". it will be either you pay, or you get no mods. this isn't even a question, of course that's what would happen, because bethesda tried to do exactly that, at least twice already, and it's been a catastrophic failure every time!
on top of that, the mod creators would be paid next to nothing anyway, because now they would need to be paid by the company that owns the store, and they obviously don't want to pay a fair value for their labor, and will instead squeeze every damn cent out of modders. of course this won't go over well for most of the truly talented modders, so slop is all that's left in the end.
this is all just simple enshittification, like with everything else.
As for slop, I will point out that there is a LOT of slop in mods. I mean just look at how many low-effort sprite hack mods of sonic there are. Nonetheless, I concede that with a monetary incentive, passionless money-seekers will be attracted to the market to sell slop. However, that is the state of many markets already; so why do you insist mods specifically must be protected? Pick a lane -- either oppose capitalism everywhere, or accept that people can sell software modifications.
i have picked a lane here: free and open modding. never changed my mind about that. and definitely yes on the oppose capitalism everywhere part. of course that's the lane i pick, why would you assume otherwise?
current slop in mods is harmless, because users get to choose to use it or not. there's alternatives.
with paid mods incentivizing companies to remove that choice, slop is all that is left!
As for corporate shoe leather -- back off, please. I'm not trying to start a fight. I hate big corporations more than most. But the big guys don't get a cent from somebody's 3rd party VR mod.
yeah, alright, that was a bit far and unnecessary. sorry about that.
still, why would you be so hell-bent to open the doors to enshittification of an entire hobby for the sole reason of profit and think that's a good idea? name one hobby that got better for the community when payment got involved!? because i sure can't think of any!
no, this is super toxic to the entire modding ecosystem.
if even a single modder starts charging for access to mods, the entire system becomes utter shit over night.
this isn't theoretical: it has already happened multiple times.
the most famous example, i think, is skyrim.
bethesda tried to create a modding economy with paid mods, and immediately the entire store was filled with extremely low quality bullshit, with little information as to what the mod actually does, with the sole intention to rip users off for basically no effort. quality content got buried, bots were rampant and pushing slop to the top. a complete mess.
this is the guaranteed outcome of any such monetization scheme.
random people can be just as shitty as corporations, if they are financially incentivized to be.
that's why most modding communities are extremely opposed to paid mods, not because they like corporations.
you're on the same instance, .world, so if they are actually following you around you can report them to the admins for harassment...preeetty sure that's against.world rules...
if you're going for a gaming distro, do yourself a favor and go with bazzite!
it's kind of the unofficial SteamOS for desktop and has a general philosophy of "it just works", comes preloaded with basically all relevant gaming communities!
prism is in the app store, bazaar, and literally just a click to install ;)
A discussion of why you feel the topic is important and worthy of study (or not)
An application of the study or results to your own experiences
the submission failed on both these points, and thus it is automatically disqualified, no grading is even applied.
there was no discussion in the submission.
"discussion" in an academic context is a technical term that means "examining a topic based on evidence from some point of view". you may have encountered something similar in school as a pro/contra essay. in academia this gets expanded on by requiring evidence in the form of citations in order to support one's positions and conclusions (or lack thereof).
since the student did not provide sources, this point of the assignment is not fulfilled.
the same goes for the second point, for the same reasons: insufficient evidence was provided.
the teachers explain this in their response.
since neither part of the assignment is fulfilled no grading is applied: it's an automatic failure.
this is also explained in the response.
you may want to carefully read the responses again, and keep in mind that all of this is happening in an academic context. providing evidence is expected by default.
"i believe", "i feel", 'the bible says", etc., are NOT evidence in a scientific context....
this is normal for every university in the world. everyone that's ever taken a university course knows this.
it's quite literally the scientific method.
it's almost never spelled out anywhere, because students generally have dedicated courses that teach this method and related things like researching, proper citations, writing structures and styles, etc.
usually called something like "scientific working" or something (don't know what it's called in english, german is usually something like "wissenschaftliches arbeiten").
this isn't kindergarten; there are prerequisites and they are expected by default.
the problem here is that this is in a university setting.
the student has almost certainly been made aware of what "discussion" means.
i explained in a different comment (check my profile if the link doesn't work, not sure how to properly link comments...) why this is not a sufficient excuse.
because the previous comment seemed well received, I'll try to give another example of how this sort of course might generally play out:
at a typical university you'll get some general orientation at the beginning of the first semester. this will include things like the rules for exams, the rules for the campus, the rules for the dorms (if there are any), the rules for general conduct and behavior on-campus, and a ton of other shit like safety drills in case of a fire or other catastrophe, laboratory training (if relevant), and on and on. there's a LOT to cover in the first few weeks. you'll probably sign a bunch of forms that say "i have read the rules" in legalese, so that there is proof that you have been made aware of the rules.
this orientation will include, or be closely followed by, a class on scientific work.
this course will cover the scientific method, scientific literature, scientific citations (in the specific style of your field and university), the formatting of all your submissions (there's usually a template you are supposed to use, though this is somewhat dependant on the teacher of any given class.)
there will also be sections on scientific language: the difference between a scientific theory and a "theory" in casual language, what a scientific paper really is and how to tell the difference between a high quality and a low quality paper (or if the paper is just complete nonsense.), and so forth.
this is were the student in the OP almost certainly learned how the assignment given was supposed to be written.
there's literally entire classes for this specific thing.
and yeah, that's because it's actually difficult to do properly!
there's nothing "unfair", or "unexpected", or "insufficiently clear" about this work assignment.
it can seem that way to someone who hasn't been to university, but to everyone who has, it's clear as day.
there is never a need to point out things like "you need to use proper citations in your work", or "you need to follow the scientific method", because this has already been covered and is then expected in damn near every assignment afterwards.
it's the expected standard.
so there are two possibilities here:
either the student hasn't absorbed the material of the previously mentioned class, and just kinda winged it, hoping for the best, and is thus simply an exceedingly bad scientist, which means the failure was entirely deserved.
...or they did it on purpose, and the failure was entirely deserved.
my money is definitely on the latter.
TL;DR:
she damn well knew this submission would be disqualified.
because all students know this.
it's literally the scientific method, and thus one of the very first things they teach you at university.
hope this clears up why none of this is explicitly mentioned in the assignment, but feel free to ask more questions!
that's got nothing to do with being autistic; that's just insanely rude!
yelling is absolutely warranted in that situation.
seriously fuck those people.
you're already in a state of stress due to having major surgery ahead of you. unnecessarily withholding information, for absolutely no reason, would stress out anyone, regardless of wether they're neurotypical or not.
Mostly it was equipment being destroyed if they destroyed everything.
ahhhmm...no? at least, that wasn't the point being made by the workers.
sabotaging factory equipment was a show of intent: "we are serious about causing damage. this time it's equipment, next time it's you!"
the factory vandalism was a threat.
if the threat was understood as being serious, and working conditions improved as a result, no further escalation was necessary. that's why relatively few escalations happened.
however, A) escalations DID go further on quite a few occasions, and B) the threat preventing the necessity of further escalation was the entire point.
so, no, it wasn't "myth and legend". it worked exactly as intended.
and it worked, because of the couple of times the threat was not taken seriously. those times made it clear that the threat is real.
sure, and that works at small scales and as long as no change is required.
when either of those two change (large projects where interdependent components become inevitable and frequent updates are necessary) it becomes impossible to use AI for basically anything.
any change you make then has to be carefully considered and weighed against it's consequences, which AIs can't do, because they can't absorb the context of the entire project.
look, I'm not saying you can't use AI, or that AI is entirely useless.
I'm saying that using AI is the same as any other tool; use it deliberately and for the right job at the right time.
the big problem, especially in commercial contexts, is people using AI without realizing these limitations, thinking it's some magical genie that can everything.
Grok Exposed a Porn Performer’s Legal Name and Birthdate—Without Even Being Asked ( www.404media.co )
The economic cost of Brexit has just been laid bare – and it’s devastating ( www.thelondoneconomic.com )
hmmm
I totally agree, too much is too much.
And yes, I know people will say block keywords and communities, but people don't understand some communities have rules and people must follow them.
TIL: Multiple Studies Now Confirm Neoliberalism Is Bad for the Mental Health of Human Beings ( medium.com )
Fanart made for someone not afraid to punch fascists
Source ...
Anyone can recommend some good European Indie Devs / Games?
ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering ( alexharri.com )
Discord will restrict your account next month unless you scan ID or face ( 9to5google.com )
Top of the world, ma
so heckin wholesome
Follow the rules!
Lawsuit Alleges That WhatsApp Has No End-to-End Encryption ( it.slashdot.org )
As evidence, the lawsuit cites unnamed "courageous whistleblowers" who allege that WhatsApp and Meta employees can request to view a user's messages through a simple process, thus bypassing the app's end-to-end encryption. "A worker need only send a 'task' (i.e., request via Meta's internal system) to a Meta engineer with an ...
Disposable Median Income adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/ilc_di03/default/map?lang=en
Cyberpunk 2077 VR Modder Hit by Another DMCA Strike, Pauses Patreon, Pulls Access to All His Mods, and Declares He's 'Under Attack' ( www.ign.com )
Looks like the Ghostrunner developers also have an issue with paid mods running off their IP.
Vortex Mod Manager from Nexus Mods will be supported for Linux/SteamOS
https://www.nexusmods.com/news/15433 ...
CD Projekt Red has confirmed that it made a modder take down their Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod [VR Injection Framework: +100 games supported] because they were charging money for it [Patreon subscribers] ( www.gamespot.com )
Sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that! PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch ( www.theregister.com )
"On systems with Secure Launch enabled, attempts to shut down, restart, or hibernate after applying the January patches may fail to complete."
Minimum required effort to not get arrested for public indecency ( lemmy.blahaj.zone )
Signal massively downloaded amid rising tensions, number one in Denmark ( aboutsignal.com )
Granted, the part ...
Title ( feddit.org )
21% of the people using Prism Launcher use Linux*
FYI Prism Launcher is a Minecraft launcher ( ...
Actual text of Samantha Fulnecky's assignment, paper, and professors' comments
I've been seeing this story pop up here and there and wanted to see what everybody was so upset about. ...
Ukraine deal: EU leaders agree €90bn loan, but without use of frozen Russian assets ( www.theguardian.com )
Two-year deal will cover most of Ukraine’s needs, but will be secured against EU borrowing rather than Russian assets ...
Paramount+ Set to Raise Prices, Phase Out Free Trials In the New Year ( www.nickalive.net )
The show I was watching went from "Free" to "Paid" *while I was watching it*
(And I use "Free" loosely because I do pay for Prime Video, so it went from paid to much more expensive) ...
Who can relate?
owner rule
15k likes btw
Oracle made a $300 billion bet on OpenAI. It's paying the price. ( finance.yahoo.com )