I choked on my latte

I did use the Xitami webserver in anger or years back in the early 2000s though, and that very much was Pieter's work! It was amazing!

Maybe this resonates in the American case where cops are notoriously undertrained and over-violent, but I gotta say it sounds extremely dystopian to me. All-power computerized control isn’t “intelligence”.

It’s also a false dichotomy. You can have lots of automation with humans in the loop. Humans can use automation to be faster and this is common.

Sure, my tone was dismissive but that’s because what I understood the article to mean was clearly, obviously ridiculous and I tried to make that clear.

I also clearly introduced myself as someone not knowing anything about economics, having to google “MC”.

EDIT: I now understand “durable” to mean “something that lasts long”, whereas I thought it just meant “non-perishable” (ie not fruit or flowers).

Gotta admit I still don’t understand how the original theory resonated with anyone though. I can’t even come up with an example. What monopolist sells a durable good? Games aren't a monopoly. Most other monopolists sell subscriptions or consumables (eg a train ride).

EDIT I still don’t understand it, I think. My read is: someone named Coase theorized that monopolists of durable goods will actually sell their products at marginal cost because of some weird mind game with their customers (the obvious unwritten corollary being that monopolies are fine). This is obviously untrue and we all know plenty of examples (pharma anyone? plenty pills are mega durable). Nevertheless, somehow economists cheered at this theory and called it beautiful, despite how obviously ridiculous it is. But now the authors of this post debunked it with real data to, I hope, nobody’s surprise.

That can’t be it, can it?

It’s never useful information. It’s like asking a class of highschoolers to explain in a report why they made certain choices in an art project. The real reason is “i liked it like that” but if you ask them to produce 10 pages of fluff justifying the choices based on nothing they’ll be happy to. (except of course for that one uber diligent kid who actually thought about concepts etc before starting, sorry if that was you, my point is that the AI isn’t like that)

This thread is like me complaining Google face-scan-gated Google Docs and people are saying “he can just sit down with the friend and learn LaTeX together!” Yeah, no.

Fwiw he does Godot too. It’s fun, but it’s purely solo. Godot’s answer to collaboration is Git, which is a complete non-starter for a 13yo. Note, I don’t judge them for it, they compete with Unity, not with Roblox.

I mean his classmates argue with their parents about whether they can install TikTok (and most parents lose). Meanwhile I’m denying my son the right to make a game together with a friend. It’s so creative and so educative and I’m saying no to it. It sucks and I hate Roblox for making something so cool and then taking it away for such stupid reasons.

I’d happily pay a license fee or sth. But I’m not gonna let them scan my son’s face.

How is, of all things, an age verification app going to make that worse?

I mean I understand your argument in principle but it seems you’re arguing against ~every present-day functional government and not against an age verification app.

I agree that Roblox is a hellscape when you want to make serious games, eg make money from it or sth, but if you just want to mess around making a “supermarket horror tower defense” game full of in-jokes and then have all five of your friends join it, and It Just Works, sorry but nothing comes close to Roblox.

Until they required age verification for that ofc.

Also, just don't ever buy any Robux and kids will auto steer away from the shitty games that need it. That filters out 95% of the badness of Roblox right out the gate.

Thing is, the status quo is absolutely worse. My 13yo son likes making Roblox games. Suddenly, some months ago, Roblox made a change where you’re not allowed to share your games with friends unless you do “age verification”, apparently in some misguided bid to beat the pedos. In Roblox’ case, this means sharing your 3D likeness with some sketchy American business who pinky promises to delete said data after. I don’t want random American tech companies to have my kids’ biometric info like that, able to sell it to whoever asks. Nor my passport or anything like that.

I’d much prefer a government supplied app, that’s guaranteed to protect my privacy, and has no business incentive to sell my data, where I can see what data about me (or my son) is shared with Roblox or whichever sleazy business wants it.

Obviously this only makes sense if the government is less sleazy than the average American tech business, but for all its faults, I think that currently holds for the EU (and most of its member countries). There’s plenty precedent of EU governments doing privacy-conscious apps right (the Dutch covid tracking app comes to mind).

I hope they see reason and fix this here issue.