It looks more like they're just hoarding a massive personal collection of games... No mention of if this is open to public.
Or if they're even digitizing the games for some use of preservation. I always feel like when you hoard things in one location like this, one fire or other natural disaster and the entire collection is gone!
Pretty much every game ever published has been digitally preserved already. I don't think you're going to get much out of feeding a binary into a pretraining dataset though.
Those quotes around monopolized are really doing some heavy lifting considering that it is utterly trivial to use alternative marketplaces on (edit: flavors of) VS Code.
Seems to me this is plainly the community wanting its cake and to eat it too.
Letting unchecked greed guide decision-making is not a new phenomenon that came out of Web 2.0 though. To use your metaphor, the heroin was human attention. Web 2.0 was, at best, the syringe.
In the US, a collection on your credit report can tank your FICO score by more than 100 points, affecting your ability to borrow at the best rate, rent a home, or get certain jobs. This would be a very risky move if the purchase was made in such a way that you are personally liable.
And in Europe collection means all of your bank accounts get frozen and in some countries they even have the power to direct your salary from your employer straight to them until the debt is paid. You definitely don't want to end up in this situation.
Depending on who you're talking to, none of those are realistic prospects anyway. Your borrowing rate will be crap, no matter what, because of your age/credit history/place of residence/skin color (and, if you really need funding, you turn to the BNPL shadow lenders or GFM); you will never earn enough to rent an entire home, or an apartment with a corporate landlord; none of those jobs will ever even look at your resume.
We are reaching a critical mass of people who have no buy-in to these structures because they've been previously cut out.
This has been my experience as well. I was involved with some payment dispute with the New York Times many years ago. I switched from credit card to Apple Pay and they sent my account to collections. I took no action on this because it was in error and my credit score was 830 before and 830 after. The only thing that's ever had an impact on my credit score was buying a house; went down to 800 after that.
It was an error on their part so take that as you will, but... scary letter != inability to borrow money.
(And just for the record, I no longer subscribe to that rag.)
A rather famous example of this is when Columbia House sold off accounts from their scammy operation to a debt collection agency, with many folks unaware that the company claimed they owed money.
>In the US, a collection on your credit report can tank your FICO score by more than 100 points
True, and it sucks, but you can also keep contesting it. I got a few random things off my credit by using the tools provided by the credit agencies to contest them.
Unsurprising that it did after the story itself devolved into a partisan flame war though, emotions are running high when the same sort of misinformation and lies are finding their way into previously sacrosanct topics like space exploration.
Yeah, VIP Temporary Flight Restriction involves the closure of airspace around Air Force One to business & general aviation craft[1], which could mean a fair amount of rerouting depending on the situation.
If it ends up a public service by providing some excellent art to the masses, I truly do not care if the return on investment was low or negative for one of the most profitable businesses in history. There’s more to life than “numbers go up” after all.
I think most folks believe at this point the election itself will be fair. The real question is whether those in power will accept the election results or not.
That is a lot like saying that a college degree is financially straining or outright impossible. In many respects, developing open source is a lot less straining, as there are no large fees, with the main expenses being living expenses. This is why it's important to live far below one's means when one does have a job.
This take totally disregards very common family situations that are much less likely during college years: putting kids through school, health issues, caring for/supporting aging parents.
Remember not that not everyone is a coastal techie with loads of extra cash to put away.
