I wonder if some kind of mesh might work. Maybe like a secret Santa type deal. By that I mean everyone who connects, gets a randomised, anonymous partner or partners. Everyone in the swarm streams for each other.

Maybe you could hang around downtown with a sign around your neck advertising “Free Hugs”.

Not so sure that will work. ESIMs are really convenient and cost effective for travelers and people who flit between countries. You can even load up an ESIM before leaving for a country. Your other option is to pay through the nose for roaming. Or arranging a pay as you go SIM in a country where you may not have a full grasp of the language.

Not gonna lie, if this were a real product, I’d be tempted. You see, for Android phones, ESIM registration uses propriety Google code. A programmable device that can present to the phone as a regular SIM would be a boon.

I’m not sure. If that is their strategy they’re dancing on a razor. I mean, the market is pretty slim. Basically, you can get a pretty sweet gaming PC for the price they’re offering. And if you project the amount of games you’ll get and estimate the price differential with prices of the same games on a PC you might be able to uprate the specs a few times. I would say that a PS5 with a reasonable amount of games is probably worth a similar amount to a $1k PC.

Without knowing why people change their wallets, it’s hard to nail down a solution. But, perhaps a smart contract wallet whose access is controlled by an underlying wallet that can be swapped out may help. In any case, all transfers or smart contract execution attracts a fee. Even sending money between wallets.

You’re right. But, all this good stuff is to obfuscate the central fact that you don’t own the property you bought. Sure, Valve has claimed that should they go away, as their last act, they’ll provide the ability for users to own their purchases, but who actually believes them?

And now, the physical licence path is even less accessible. The thing with the physical licence key is it’s transferrable even if the actual data is stored elsewhere. It’s a thin veneer, I mean, Sony could gate access to this data to the first account/machine that activated it. So even this advantage is taken away.

This is yet another nail in the coffin of physical media. Or, in other words games you actually own instead of long term lease.

I think Sony never wanted a physical media PS5 console. The design made it seem like an after thought. Like a growth on the side of sleek lines.

That’s quite a privileged point of view. Take a look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Notable_hyperinflationary_periods. In the crypto world, this is the very definition of a pump and dump. Except the pumping in the fiat world is the money supply and a dumping is the value. As for scam coins, I disagree, the scam isn’t usually the currency (we’ll, not more than fiat) it may be created and used to facilitate a scam, but unless the creator programmed in a flaw that can be taken advantage of, it currency itself isn’t the scam. And since scam creators are usually lazy, ignorant, or just optimising for returns, most of the code behind their coins have been forked from other, more legitimate crypto projects.

What I am trying to get through to you is, just like how the LIBOR scandal doesn’t implicate fiat, scammy crypto projects doesn’t implicate crypto. My criticism of fiat is it’s fundamental systemic weaknesses. It seems your criticism of crypto is it’s used by scammers. A criticism that, incidentally can also be levied at fiat.

The main difference between these “shit coins” and fiat is once the shit coin scammers eventually pull the rug, they cannot just print more of that coin. Fiat scammers can just print more of that currency.

But in both situations one does need to look at the economics of the coins, and the priors of the people in control.

I think I didn’t make myself clear. When I said “by volume” I meant was the amount of value the different systems hold and the amount of if not outright fraud, negative aspects of the systems. The fiat money systems’ money supply has a fundamental weakness, it can be created out of thin air so is constantly loosing value. Think of all the investment vehicles or other assets that tie themselves to this loosing value asset. Trillions in USD. And what’s it all backed by? Ultimately guns. Well most crypto currency is backed by maths and no matter how many guns you point at it, you cannot make 2+2= anything other than 4.

While I support crypto you gotta pick your asset. And, boy this is a dud.

I would say the fiat money system is the biggest con, at least by volume. What with all the quantitative easing and fractional reserve banking.

I wonder what he had to give up in the plea deal.

Had a quick glance at this study. Forgive any mistakes, but I have a few “faulting” observations:

• over a third of the sampled people were people seeking immigration to the US. It could be argued that it could be argued that this points purely to the type of conservatives that seek entry outside their home country. Not the general population of conservatives.
• this study only looks at a statistical correlation. It’s dangerous to infer causation from correlation as correlation does not equal causation.
• intelligence measuring as had a long and troubled past. For instance, some tests were used to “prove” black people dumb. Turns out these tests relied on prior knowledge denied to black people. It can be very difficult to account for culture.
• maybe the tests used in this study only measure for people that are good at taking tests.

That’s just the point. These failings are common. That means we all fall prey to these faults from time to time. Just remember when you point a finger, at least three get pointed back to you.

I think calling conservatives “dumb” is needlessly inflammatory, and what’s worse, is it’s incorrect. They just fall for a common human failing: confirmation bias, amongst other well known fallacies.