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Karpyshyn is back to work on SWTOR: https://twitter.com/DrewKarpyshyn/status/645467697493336064 OMG OMG OMG I'm absolutely indifferent about it.

Clearly that's just good old propaganda, mate. Putin's trying to confuse you. Meanwhile in the land of media ethics...

This just in: sexually attractive males are getting more poontang than unwashed neckbeards. News at eleven. There may be such a thing as confirmation bias at work regarding your analysis. If neither you nor your friends are getting any and it's kind of a big deal for you, perhaps you should find more successful friends. Of course I'm just assuming, so I apologize in advance if I'm wrong. But I get the feeling you wouldn't even have considered this if you were part of the magical 10%. You'd be too tired after constantly porking hot women to ponder such things. That said, I'm going to agree: the sexual revolution (whatever that means) probably won't reduce demand for something that is chiefly a convenience thing, much like it hasn't reduced the demand for prostitution. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know about maybe classical evolutionary biology or taxonomy, but biochemistry and biophysics are as "hard" as science gets. Now, back to discussing sexbots. It was mentioned above that true AI, true cognition is still deep in the realm of science-fiction, and it's true. We don't know what consciousness is precisely, and the Newton of AI probably hasn't been born yet. According to Roger Penrose, "true" artificial intelligence is impossible — it may not possible to build a computer that can replicate human thought under current computing architecture paradigms. However, you don't need true self-awareness in a human sense to build machines that can pass for humans. Some AI scientists have suggested that by 2030 we could have machines that could pass a Turing Test. Throw in a few million pre-programmed facts and rules ("intelligence is ten million rules" says Douglas Lenat), and you have a machine that can fool humans and perform simple tasks successfully most of the time, while still being essentially dumber than a bag of hammers, not truly sentient, and incapable of operating outside of an admittedly broad set of parameters. Those could still make perfectly good sexbots, or hunter-killers. Or both.

Internet:

For science!

Thanks for the translation. So in the absence of other evidence, we can safely conclude that it's an out-of-context snippet. Not that I would object to German Panzers rolling towards Gibraltar, mind. Could use the exercise...

Can it make me a sandwich afterwards? Someone had to ask.

I tried to use the automatic subtitle translator and it resulted in unintelligible gibberish*. I cannot into German. *so working as inteded, amirite?

I was replying to the bolded part in the OP. AFAIK, using apostrophes to signify plurals in initialisms or acronyms is incorrect, whether you use dots to separate the initials or not. OP however said it's an accepted form, unless I massively brain farted and misread, right?

(emphasis mine) Actually, the Grammar Monster link you posted, specifically says: Which is the rule I'm accustomed to.

Do you have a link for this?

I think she's one of those secondary characters that really, really work. When you first meet her on Taris, she's already an ambitious, authoritative politician that isn't above twisting a few arms to get stuff done. Those traits are made more obvious as the story progresses, but as with the rest of the Trooper storyline (which everyone seems to hate for some reason), I felt it was possessed of a degree of nuance and verisimilitude lacking in some of the other character stories. I don't know, the timing, the tone, it really worked. The ability to stage a military coup and put Garza or even Malcom in charge would have been ****ing awesome, though. Impossible to implement due to the game being an MMO, but sweet nonetheless.

To a point, I'd agree. However, consider that they may not have the tools to look after their own well-being: litigating requires money, and money is precisely the thing these people will be left without if they sue their employer, as they are specifically barred from looking for a job while on a H-2 visa. When the choice is starving in your own country or accepting what amounts to seasonal slavery in a foreign country, you don't get to be picky about workplace conditions. Beggars can't be choosers. But beyond that, it boils down to this simple question: do you want to have immigration and labor laws? Or any laws at all, for that matter? (Y/N). If the answer is yes, you need to earmark an amount of what the state makes through tax collection to make sure these laws are upheld. If you don't want to have these laws, well... that'd be an interesting experiment. The argument that you are being punished in the form of taxation for stuff that has nothing to do with you directly isn't entirely without merit, but the rationale is that it's your part of the "social contract" that makes it possible for you to live in an orderly society, much like you have to pay for cops to uphold traffic rules even if you don't drive yourself. The issue at the root is that you are never given an option to opt out of said "contract".

a) Read the court documents linked in the article. As far as facts are concerned, it looks pretty solid to me. You have doubts the story is true... because? b) Think of it this way: due to the way a globalized economy works, immigrant workers in the US are going to happen legally or not, whether you want to or not. It's not about them "having a better time", it's about, among other things, making sure that those who make use of immigrant labor do not gain an unfair advantage over those who don't by breaking the law. Further, do you think that a slave trade can be run only by withholding passports and cooking books? Hello, bribery, extortion, influence peddling etc. c) No need for new laws, really. Just resources to make sure the laws already in place aren't being ignored left and right. A pipe dream, I know...

Yeah that's what I rolled. Going to give Adept a whirl for my Dragonfall playthrough. IIRC melee builds were rather weak compared to ranged in DMS and DF, but they rebalanced it for HK. I tried making a chromed street sam-troll abomination, and while effective (let's face it, combat isn't hard), it was never as effective as a certain melee companion you get. Maybe they've changed it since, been a while since I've fired up DF. That's what I did in HK. The advantage of pumping Charisma, other than obviously etiquettes, is that you can put extra karma you don't know what to do with into Conjuring, allowing you to cast Haste as a mage, for instance.

Well, yes. The whole "LOWEST PRICES OMG" thing is pretty much what I'm talking about, and the reason I avoid retail chains. When low prices are the #1 priority, you know that a) somebody's getting shafted, b) the produce is pure unadulterated ****, c) the retailer is selling at a loss to retain their large customer base at the expense of the competition, or d) any combination of the above. Sure, they cut ties with bad vendors really quick... only to pressure their new vendors to lower their prices using the huge bargaining power that a disproportionate market share brings. I'm perfectly happy to pay more (WAY more in some cases) to know where the stuff I put in my mouth comes from. Less money for hookers and blow but, hey, a clean(er) conscience. edit: my original question wasn't aimed at you, specifically, btw. Just being my usual snarky abrasive self.

Cyberware Affinity (new secondary stat in HK, Body dependent) grants you one extra Essence point at level 3 or so and another one at 7 IIRC. It's too much karma to dump on a stat if you aren't actually going full Jensen, though. Generally it is a very bad idea to install any cyberware on magic users. For each point your Essence is < 6, your spells cooldowns are increased by 1. Problem is, the game rounds down, so even if a datajack is just 0.5 Essence, that means you have an effective Essence of 5. Putting 6 karma into Cyberware Affinity would let you get away with the datajack as a caster, but it's only an option in HK. Decker/Rigger is the obvious combo if you want to spread out a bit, as there is no real advantage in any of the 3 campaigns to becoming an uber decker, sadly.

Nope. I make a point of avoiding chain stores. The point remains, even if neither of us buy our groceries there, many people do. Yeah, I don't know. All these "news" sites look the same to me, and they tend to blur together. I guess that, regardless of the story's merit (and that of the site at large), it's time to talk about immigration, what with elections around the corner and all.

Hmm. You mean you don't buy seafood at Wal-Mart? What is wrong with Buzzfeed? (honest question. First time I've read anything there, and it does have a ton of links which seem to check out, except for one claiming a certain police sergeant being the current police chief, though looking the name up shows that he's a piece of work that likes to tase prisoners for kicks... seriously WTF is wrong with cops in the US?)

Public schools for instance pretty much work as Raithe described: they simply cannot handle gifted children, and more resources will usually be devoted to help kids that tend to fall behind the curve, if at all. However that's not necessarily a SJ thing, but rather the consequence of inadequate budgetary allocation, and the incorrect assumption that gifted kids will succeed on their own, by virtue of being endowed with greater potential. Is helping some better than helping none, considering that by doing so we are committing an injustice? I honestly don't know. Problem is that any measures to help out people who, for whatever reasons, objectively need help, are dismissed as "crippling the elite", "sharing misery equally" and many other anti-SJ mantras that used to be chanted to ward off pinkos not so long ago, though that may not have been Raithe's intent (he did say "half the time", to his credit). In its most extreme form, that sort of strawmanning involves taking the worst from the feminazi crowd, throwing in a bit of racial positive action for seasoning, calling it the "social justice" movement, and suggesting that anything aimed at correcting injustice* is wrong or dangerous by association. It rather pisses me off, but the mental knee-jerk reflex caused by labels that affects most people in both camps isn't going away anytime soon, I think. That said, I tend to agree with GD regarding social engineering, but mostly because those tasked with directing and implementing it tend to be morally and intellectually corrupt, self-serving ****s. Power corrupts, the hubris of leadership, what kind of person wants to rule over his peers and all that. And yeah, the holier-than-thou attitude doesn't help one bit either. And that's enough armchair philosophy for one post. Whew! *I think we can all agree that injustice is not cool? You guys wanna start calling yourselves Social Injustice Warriors?

So the whole thing is a publicity stunt huh? That's actually not so far fetched...

Ooops, I took it a bit literally. I owe you hereby 1000 internets.

Who said anything about obligations? Are you obligated to make irrelevant comments? Sure, the dude who feels punched in the gut ($20 says he hasn't actually ever taken a gut punch) can hire whomever he pleases. Still, firing her over the video is... silly. And what does it accomplish, exactly?