I can't answer all of this questions, but "why not offer 2 versions and allow the user to choose" was mentioned here [0].

Helldivers 2 is a multiplayer game, for the game 2 start, everyone in the lobby needs the game to be fully loaded. If one person would choose to have a slower version, it would make everyone wait longer. Which is definitely not a trade off you are willing to make as a game developer because makes the experience for other players worse.

There could be other options and better optimizations, such as lower textures that you mentioned, but I agree with the developers on having only a "fast version".

[0] https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/helldivers-2-dev-explai...

While I understand the need to have this type of conversation in our current society and economy, I think it is sad that we need to discuss the merits of going to college on a economical basis. Ideally, I think the goal of college is to further education in a specific field. Reducing it as a opportunity for return can be counter-productive with the goals of it on the long term. Of course, this is ideally speaking, the real world doesn't function like that and there is a need for a return both on a individual and societal level.

I am sorry if this question is dumb, but how does proof of work deter bots/scrappers from accessing a website?

I imagine it costs more resource to access the protected website but would this stop the bots? Wouldn't they be able to pass the challenge and scrap the data after? Or normal scrapbots usually timeout after a small amount of time/ resources is used?

There are a few ways in which bots can fail to get past such challenges, but the most durable one (ie. the one that you cannot work around by changing the scraper code) is that it simply makes it much more expensive to make a request.

Like spam, this kind of mass-scraping only works because the cost of sending/requesting is virtually zero. Any cost is going to be a massive increase compared to 'virtually zero', at the kind of scale they operate at, even if it would be small to a normal user.

Put simply, most bots just aren't designed to solve such challenges.

As a long term user of Mullvad, I appreciate when new companies try to innovate on existing ones while acknowledging their value. While I have no interest in changing VPNs right now, I will keep an eye on Obscura. Hope you the best

I am from Brazil and I find this funny because in my circle of friends/co-wroekers we mostly use "coding" when speaking English, or "codar" (code as a Portuguese verb) with other Brazilians. I am not sure why, but I think it is because "program" has a strong association with prostitution in Brazilian Portuguese.