They probably are, but it's not really about cost, it's about fear. I fear that while it costs $x to switch to Unreal Enigne now, it'll cost $x+10 after a few weeks when they do their next decision, and $x+20 a month or so after that.

I didn't read the article yet and this is basically what I expected. Hardly a secret, and a fairly good summary. The economy is going to downturn anyway because people just can't afford the new housing. For a two bedroom anywhere with people, it's 650,000 and up. At that point you have to be married to someone who also works full time to have any reasonable chance of being able to afford the mortgage. At the average interest rate of 6% you're paying $4,100 per month, which is about the average pre-tax income (~$54,000 per year, so ~$1038 per week). Of course, that leaves very little wiggle room to save, and if either of you were to lose your jobs or the interest rate goes up, you'd probably default.

I think out of all the things I've heard about Elon Musk, this might be the thing that disgusts me the most.

I remember Yudowski being a thing like a decade ago, and people were making fun of his "AI" research even then. It's scary to realize that not only did some people take him seriously, but those people are at the helm of AI companies and making decisions affecting tens of billions of investment capital. I think there was a quote by Kurt Vonnegut that "true horror is waking up one morning and realizing your high school class is running the country".

For the other poster lower down, I'd almost successfully forgotten about his Harry Potter fanfiction, people kept praising it so I actually read through a bit of it, it's painful reading. He also wrote a Superman fanfiction and that's even worse. I think they both say a lot about his internal mental state and his perception of other people though.

I read the BBC article on the recent shooting, you're right, it's tragic and wrong. Two gunmen shot up a restaurant and then started exchanging fire with an IDF unit and the child was shot in the crossfire. This is awful, but has nothing to do with Palestine being an independent nation since this happened in the west bank, not the Gaza strip, which as I understand it, are different.

Israel pulled out of Palestine in 2005 and Palestine elected their own government, at that point they're an independent nation.

What? Why? Where did I say that? What the fuck are you talking about?

I asked how this conflict was different and you started talking about a completely different topic like stategic bombing. But Israel isn't using strategic bombing, they're using artillery and missiles. Just like how the allies did against Berlin and other German cities when fighting the Germans. So how is this different?

But you're still ok with using artillery against a city if the city has an army in it?

My impression is that at least half of fediverse.

I got that impression too, and the fediverse has lost a lot of its shine recently. People are rushing to say that they support "both sides" and Israel can defend itself... but just not in any way that would be able to stop another attack like October's from happening. It feels like a lot of people just want to side with Hamas, but don't want to actually say that out loud.

Ok, I have to ask. How would you apply this to any other conflict. For example the Allies fighting against Germany. Where did the German civilians fall in the spectrum of evil. Was fighting Germany justified, knowing that German civilians might suffer? If so, how is this situation different?