So many amazing characters throughout the series.

Some examples I’d say:

Stetzer, Edgar & Sabin, even edgelord Shadow has a fantastic backstory. VI had such a large cast with such unique stories all round, I only wish a few were fleshed out a little more, Locke felt a little bland in comparison, but that could simply be translation not giving him as much of a personality, or maybe I’ve played it too many times.

Vivi in IX will always have a really touching story, the whole concept of trying to understand the world and his own existence from a very naive perspective. The fact that they still managed to portray that with wisdom and grace within that naive framework was just pure poetry, imo, and very much a staple of Japanese cultural fable/storytelling.

I remember reading that thread! Well, kindly asking my half-german wife to translate it for me. It was very helpful!

You’re not a musician, are you?

Because what you just described is just the classic: “Oh, we’re not going to pay you for this gig. You’re getting paid in exposure. Sorry kid, just business.”

Can do all of those things without premium if you have the right apps.

But besides that, absolutely not. I remember when YouTube was free with no ads, I remember when the adverts first started appearing, and that’s when it became obvious that they were trying to annoy you into a pay model. It took a little longer than expected, but sure enough, they ramped up the ads until “YOUTUBE PREMIUM! PAY FOR NO ADVERTS!”

Fuck that, I had no adverts before and they took that away. But the worst part is that they harvest my private data and make money from me already. As far as I’m concerned, that’s my subscription to their shit, in their perverse data selling.

No fucking way I’m going to also pay them for the privilege to have my private data sold.

Oops, yes, this. A perceived doubling!

I wouldn’t imagine noise cancelling headphones would have the ability to output high enough for serious damage. But some people do experience discomfort and pressure when using noise cancelling headphones for the first time, this could be due to a number of factors though.

Yes, sorry, I didn’t phrase that well at all. The sound pressure is actually cancelled out, but with the hypothetical example of the jet engine, anything going wrong could double the dB level instead of cancelling, and because we’re talking milliseconds difference, it would be quite easy to go wrong in this sense.

Absolutely, this is spot on, but if they can find ways to work around this like with these microphone swarms they’re proposing, then there could be a lot more applications for it. Some quite scary.

I’ve always thought phase cancellation technology could potentially be crazy revolutionary. Seems these guys know what they’re doing, but the real challenges come with high decibel levels if I remember right.

If you tried to phase cancel out the sound of a jet engine, it would work and you wouldn’t hear it, but you could also have easily just burst your eardrums too, because the sound pressure level is still present, even if the actual sound is inaudible. It’s a crazy phenomena.

Edit: the sound pressure level IS cancelled out by destructive wave interference, but if this is knocked even by a matter of milliseconds, the wave is doubled and that’s not good for anyone.

Also, on retrospect, phenomena was poor word choice. It’s physics.

Totally get this, and the argument that free services can only remain so from selling your data to keep running. But it just seems like such a predatory thing, there was no negotiation in this. It was just inflicted on Internet users within ridiculously lengthy terms and conditions.

I understand the logic of it, but I completely disagree with how we got to this stage. It feels very perverse. And I am in total agreement that something definitely needs to be done- soon.

So many companies now collect our data, and sell it to advertisers, then want us to also pay for them to do this.

Fuck that, if you’re selling my information, then I’m already paying for your product.

We should be demanding royalty payments.

Votes do count, of course they do. (Depending on the country), but the problem is the industrialised propaganda machine consistently convincing people to vote against their own interests time and time again in order to protect the wealth, status, and motivations of the richest in society around the world.

They drum up news stories on culture war bullshit and pick scapegoats to direct anger towards. Immigration, LGBTQ+, Race, currently Trans people appear to be the popular target. They do this so we continue to direct anger at each other and not the people in charge.

If you can convince someone the reason they didn’t get a payrise, or are struggling during an economic crisis, is because of someone else, then nobody is going to be aiming at the few who are hoarding all of the wealth and building their own mini-empires.

Trickle down economics is the best lie ever told.

Spot on here! I’ve only just been using stable Diffusion for a couple of weeks now to help me visualise characters and locations in my world building. It’s such a great tool when you really have no artistic skill. But the limitations soon become apparent and a lot of problem solving goes into trying to regenerate the simplest things.

Can generate a near perfect image in a minute if the prompts are right and you get lucky. But the details take hours, where an artist would be able to simply visualise and draw it in.

I think the key is to develop basic skills to draw a really shit mockup of what you want, then img2img it from that… I’ll get there, maybe.

Fun fact, this company eventually became Rockstar.