erin

Geostationary satellites are not standing still. They’re orbiting the Earth at the same rate that it rotates “beneath” them.

I personally am really sick of frame generation and scaling being the only way modern games are playable. The graphical improvements are minor, but the performance cost is enormous. Your average person shouldn’t need to buy a GPU worth as much as a used car just to squeeze out average performance. Scaling and frame generation are never seamless, and it can’t create information where none exists. Especially in PvP games, I’ve noticed how much worse the graphical fidelity is with distant targets or people peaking around corners. I’d genuinely rather play the game at a lower framerate or resolution than be losing vital information in my computers attempt to make sense of the handful of pixels representing the gun of my opponent peeking the corner, and turning it into a blurry section of wall instead.

In singleplayer games it’s not as bad, but I have found that a game that isn’t chasing perfect true-to-life graphics but has a gorgeous art direction looks far better to me personally. I’m just sick of AAA and tired of having my super computer from 4 years ago struggle with the latest releases in native resolution. Slightly more realistic lighting and realistic hair and cloth simulation are not nearly as important to me as good performance and visual style.

I understand not being able to allow proxies at official events, but your attitude towards printing cards seems to go further than that. I refuse to give WotC my money. My pod has printed every card we play with. We aren’t “counterfeiting,” as none of our cards are even trying to pass as official. We proxy most of our cards with thematic art and designs completely divorced from the official MTG frames and art. Our LGS allows anyone to play with whatever cards they want outside of official events, as long as everyone at the table agrees. Proxies do not only exist as stand-ins for cards you own. The MTG community uses that word to mean any non-official replacement card. Fun should not be gatekept behind artificially inflated prices and draconian business practices.

It’s simply unrealistic and excessive to expect people to stop using one of the most accessible services that comes built in to most phones, and has features that cannot easily be replaced. All my privacy and data options are restricted in maps, but I’m sure they still collect some data. I have no intent though to stop using a service that is incredibly important to organizing and planning my life (traffic, community driven reports of detours, construction, cops, etc, weather specific reroutes, fuel efficiency route selection) because someone online has absolutely unrealistic expectations of others’ data privacy. Navigating to someone in maps is not the same as uploading a picture of them. Google sees my location and my destinations already. All that changes when I turn on my location tracking is that so does my wife. Your argument doesn’t make sense and is unreasonable.

Are you seriously arguing that navigating to someone’s house with Google maps is violating their privacy? When I do share my location, I’m sharing through Google maps, directly to my wife’s Google account. Google can already see my location for maps purposes. They have obtained no new information. If you are in fact arguing that using Google maps violates the privacy of anyone you navigate to, then I just don’t agree and can’t take you seriously. If you’re arguing that somehow sharing my location to my wife’s account in Google maps is somehow fundamentally different for privacy than using Google maps is already, then I just don’t understand you. You’re okay with people using maps but not sharing their location within those maps apps. That’s a very confusing moral stance.

This has nothing to do with the tracking. You should have the same problem with anyone that has location turned on in their phone. Turning on GPS tracking for me and my wife has not given Google new data on our locations, as we use Google maps to navigate as is. I reject the premise that I’m violating someone else’s privacy by doing so. I’ve also opted out of any app using my location without my express permission. You certainly wouldn’t have the right to ask someone to turn something like that off simply because you don’t trust the corporations on the other end, because you have no idea what service, what precautions they’ve taken, and if they’re actively sharing. If you were going to do so, then you should also inspect people’s phones for having location turned on, and check all their apps permissions for location.

Consensually choosing to share my location with my wife is not the same as not caring about my data being collected or sold. I don’t have any intention to break her trust, but that has nothing to do with why we share location. It’s all about safety and convenience. I know when she’s working late. She knows when I made it back to my car safely after a night out. I know when she’s on her way home, even when she forgets to text me, so I can start cooking. As two gay women in a conservative area, it just made sense.

My wife and I share our location. We both trust each other implicitly and neither of us consider it a breach of privacy, but rather a willing sharing of information. I think if this is demanded of someone unilaterally, it would be both a breach of privacy and trust, but it’s just so damn convenient for our lives and makes us both feel safer. If I’m out late in the city to see a friend, my wife can easily see that I’m safe making it to my car and driving home. If my wife is working late and forgets to text, I can easily check and know she’s still in the building. As two gay women, it was a no-brainer for us. I would never demand that of someone. It seems like a lot of people in the comments see sharing location as an intrinsically harmful or negative action, whereas it’s far more context and consent dependent for me. Hell, I even share my location with a friend for a few hours if I’m doing something sketchy.

I cannot see this as a valid and reasonable response to “we aren’t likely to see an AI powered socialist dystopia in our lifetime, if ever.” AI isn’t even profitable for the capitalists that run it, and needs to constantly feed off real humans to avoid decay. It’s definitely not doomsaying to see AI as a bubble and generally a grift as it’s presented now, when it’s likely to fit in a much more specific niche as a tool in the future. Art will stay uniquely human until AI can create without needing constant human training data.