Normal is humans living in caves.

And still, those humans would go outside and check when they heard an odd noise, so they could ascertain if it was a threat or not. This is more of this.

It's "free" if you want it to be.

Depends on how it's done.

Trusting that process to be done well is probably not the greatest plan.

I believe the idea is to offer simulation of ideas to test out new tasks AND something like dreaming.

I have a similar outlook atm as one of "those guys."

Everything takes so long, nobody is held accountable. The most likely result of pushing for any type of positive outcome for basically anything is some form of punishment or social degradation.

And so, as of October 2024, I don't do it anymore.

I will also note that most of the things I see "being corrected" these days are entirely fictitious.

As an example is the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in Canada. They tossed out a valid complaint about Shaw (during Rogers buyout) for jurisdictional reasons. Then they are on the news making odd statements about (exclusively) OpenAI not being honest about using your data?

It's all a show it seems. I figured it needs to get a qhole lot worse before it can get any better.

I have moved to internal tooling creation and have airgapped a machine/tool each month this year so far. Just a laptop and my social phone remain networked.

> And so, as of October 2024, I don't do it anymore.

I feel you. I wish the world was a better place, but here we are. I don't know what else to say about it. I feel you.

There are times where working on the inside to make changes is a valid strategy, but it is definitely trending down, especially if there's just a single voice. The only other option is the public shaming route, but they've pretty much gotten to the point of being able to survive that as well now. It takes significant numbers to move the needle, but there have been recent examples of companies reacting to negative press.

When did you last try with the OPC? I also have experience (a few) and noted a sharp decline post covid. My first go was for Freedom Mobile (success) but the representative from the OPC was borderline harassing me to accept the currently (STILL) completely broken authentication. When I tried again it was 'out of jurisdiction' and no sort of appeal process.

Calling it functional is not something I would do. Judges are also extremely critical of the compensation process a have essentially been forced to take it over. It's also still too new and risky so lawyers are reluctant unless it's paid up front.

If anyone with any say is reading this, I can still break into any Freedom Mobile account in under a minute, including the admin ones.

It's reasonable to predict that as physical media is phased out by the likes of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, that the value of offline capable inventory will shift to an investment instead of a liability. Increasing their percent cut as a result.

Their margin was highest on used physical media, which continues to plummet. Physical sales are down from $13b in 2015 to $1.5b in 2025, while total sales of physical + digital went from $23.5b in 2015 to $60b in 2025. Physical media is a tiny fraction of current game sales, even if their margin skyrockets, they're stuck in a tiny kid pool of potential sales.

Not to be harsh on people who like this stuff, but reminds me of whenever people bring up how big vinyl record sales are now. Which is like, yea they're "big" just because it was a tiny market for the last decade and they're profiting mostly on nostalgia. Vinyl's not making some huge comeback, but it will probably sustain some niche resellers for a long time.

GameStop in Canada owns stores in active malls and in standalone locations. Hard to see the store empty, even at 1030am on a weekday in November.

Gamestop in Canada isn't owned by Gamestop in the US. They were also historically unprofitable so people might be in the stores but they aren't buying enough.

Now that you mentioned it, I seem to recall that news. The point stands that in some areas, that type of store can still perform.

Perhaps they would come to an agreement.

Speak for yourself. There's a reason places like Once Upon a Child and their parent stores exist. There's even other entirely digital stores on the sell for pennies instead of donating market.

People are broke. Just not everyone.

Spending days of negotiating on eBay with annoying strangers and packing it all up for a few lousy hundred is not my idea of a good time.

Let the workers at the recycling center sift through the stuff they are welcome to it.

On the opposite end of that is the plethora of psychiatry/psychology professionals whom are terrible at their profession and are likely causing more harm than good.

I see it along the same lines as brands, your typical Great Value psychologist will greatly underperform the Kirkland psychologist who will greatly underperform the ... and so on.

Then there's the subset of the population whom have been abused in the most horrific ways by psychologists.

Not to counter your point, just as additional discussion.

Sure, I've had my share of issues with therapists, but I think the solution is to fix the therapists, not to YOLO it by self-medicating with weed.

Great, how does one fix the therapists? Or is this another one of those tricky systemic generational problems that means that I'll have to YOLO something for my own life before they're fixed?

I'm not claiming I know how to fix it, but I am quite confident that the solution to fixing issues with depression, focus, or any other number of psychological issues is not reading a Reddit post about weed and/or mushrooms and pretending you understand enough about pharmacology to fix these problems.

Therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists require training and as such will still be considerably more likely to help you than weed. Obviously there are bad professionals; I've hired bad electricians before but that does not imply I should try and do all the wiring in my house myself.

You seem to be assuming that everyone can afford a therapist.

If only there were some sort of system where everyone who had money gave it to some organization, percentage based so rich people gave more, and then this organization used it to pay for therapists, and everything had access to therapy and other stuff like that? Totally insane crazy idea, I know. It could never possibly work. But just imagine if it did! Everyone would be able to get the therapy and help they deserve. What a world that would be. Alas.

No, I would say making therapy affordable would be part of fixing it.