/ot/ - Off-topic

Hey
I'm girl from russia
my dream is to have a yumeniki. Plz send moni

0.02238

comer un bolillo es como tener un buen matrimonio

ya comete el maldito bolillo

https://herman.bearblog.dev/cities-need-more-trees/

01 Jul, 2024

I grew up just outside of Johannesburg, which is touted to be "the greenest city in the world". During the summer, when seen from above, it's a verdant, green landscape, with the tops of buildings popping through the canopy.

Joburg trees

Yes, there's a full city beneath those trees.

However, this is not what the land originally looked like.

To cut a long story short, Johannesburg was established following the discovery of gold in 1886. It's known colloquially as eGoli, or "The City of Gold". Gold extraction here is vastly different to other parts of the world. We don't have gold veins running through the rock like in old Western movies. Instead it's mineralised into the rock itself which requires significant processing to extract.

This form of extraction leads to the crushing of millions of tons of rock, which is then dumped creating large, dusty hills around the city. These hills are (especially to the communities surrounding them) toxic and radioactive1, and when the wind picks up yellow dust clouds used to envelop the city.

One of the proposed solutions to suppressing this omnipresent dust was the planting of trees (1.2 millions as of 2024) on sidewalks and pavement, and millions more planted privately in back-yards and plots. Due to Apartheid in South Africa, which economically and socially disadvantaged the majority of the population based on race, these planting efforts were not equitably distributed. You can still see a stark difference between rich and poor neighbourhoods to this day based purely on tree cover.

But I'm not here to talk about the socioeconomic problems facing South Africa. Instead I'd like to focus on how the planting of so many trees affected the city itself.

Since these trees were originally planted to manage dust, they are generally big and leafy. This has the benefit of creating a lot of shade throughout the city, mitigating a lot of the "heat island" effect which is pervasive in any city since asphalt and concrete are great at absorbing visible spectrum light and radiating it as heat2. Walking down a shady street on a hot summer day is such a pleasant experience when compared to being out in the blistering sun.

Trees are not just great dust sinks and heat shields, but great sound barriers as well3. Having tree lined streets not only reduces the noise of traffic (and the dust kicked up from their tyres), but also protects pedestrians and infrastructure on the sidewalks from stray vehicles.

On top of that it just looks better. I'm certain humans have genetic biophilia4, which is why we love being in nature or taking walks in the forest. Having trees around us, teeming with birds and other life just feels good. Speaking of birds, trees increase the biodiversity of insects and other small critters in urban environments. It also gives birds a safe-haven from the deadliest hunter of all: the humble house cat5.

I've been to many cities, all over the world. Some that do trees well, and others that fail miserably. And I'm always shocked at the contrast. Given two cities with a similar climate, I'm significantly more likely to do things like walk to a local coffee shop and browse corner stores, or sit on a park bench. But only if the walk is pleasant and shady.

Planting trees as a form of environmentalism or carbon capture is generally a hit-or-miss strategy. The vast majority of planted trees never reach maturity6, and depending on where the trees are planted it could have a net heating instead of a net cooling effect due to the change in the environment's albedo7. However, planting trees in cities is pretty much all upside with almost no downside (except that birds tend to shit on my car).

Dead car

So the next time you're enjoying a walk down a lovely shady street, take a look up and appreciate the trees.

Footnotes
Radioactive city: how Johannesburg’s townships are paying for its mining past↩

Urban head islands↩

How do trees reduce noise pollution?↩

Biophilia hypothesis: The idea that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life.↩

The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife↩

Phantom Forests: Why Ambitious Tree Planting Projects Are Failing↩

Could tree planting warm Earth? Science behind the albedo effect↩

>>26566
This is beautifully written anon. Did you make this?

>>26568
No. I just came across it and downloaded it for posterity.

Eu dou a bunda pra vários homens, chupo um monte de pinto, dou a bunda pros caras, eu vou bater o recorde mundial em dar a bunda. Eu sou um estuprado, eu sou um arrombado, eu dou a bunda para 2050 homens diferentes. Os cavalos comeram minha bunda, eu dei a bunda pros cavalos, os cavalos gozaram dentro da minha bunda. Eu dei a bunda para 2050 homens diferentes, 2050 homens diferentes comeram minha bunda e gozaram dentro. Eu dei a bunda para 2050 homens diferentes. Eu dei a bunda para 15 cavalos diferentes, 15 cavalos diferentes comeram minha bunda e gozaram dentro, 15 cavalos diferentes comeram minha bunda e gozaram dentro. Eu dei a bunda para 15 cavalos diferentes, 15 cavalos diferentes comeram minha bunda e gozaram dentro. Eu sou um arrombado, eu sou o cara mais arrombado do mundo, eu tenho a bunda arrombada de tanto dada, estou com a bunda comida. Eu tenho a bunda violentada, tenho a bunda rasgada, eu tenho a bunda comida por 2050 homens diferentes. Eu dou a bunda no meio da rua, dou a bunda no matagal, eu dou a bunda para vários homens no matagal, no matagal eu dou a bunda para 2050 homens diferentes, eu bati o recorde mundial em dar o CU. Eu sou um estuprado, eu gosto de ser estuprado, eu amo ser estuprado, eu AMO ser estuprado. Eu sou um estuprado, eu tenho a bunda arrombada, eu sou um estuprado. Eu estou oferecendo minha bunda para vários homens. Homens, vêm comer minha bunda, eu estou oferecendo minha bunda para vocês, homens. Homens, comam bastante minha bunda; gozem dentro de mim, homens. Homens, venham gozar dentro de mim, gozem a vontade dentro da minha bunda que eu gosto. Gozem dentro de mim, homens. Homens, venham gozar dentro da minha bunda, encham meu cu de esperma, homens. Homens, tô pedindo para vocês, venham comer minha bunda e gozar dentro. Fiquem à vontade, comam minha bunda e gozem bastante dentro. Homens. Homens comendo minha bunda e gozando dentro(3x). Eu dou a bunda. Eu dou a bunda para 2050 homens diferentes comerem e gozarem dentro. Eu bato recorde mundial em dar a bunda. Eu sou o cara que mais dá a bunda no mundo. Eu bato o recorde mundial em dar a bunda. Eu tenho a bunda comida, eu tenho a bunda deleitada, eu sou um arrombado. Eu dou o cu. Eu dou o cu no matagal. Eu dou o cu para um monte de homens, os homens comem à vontade meu cu e gozam dentro. Esperma dentro do meu cu. Cavalos comendo meu cu e gozando dentro, eu dou a bunda para os cavalos, eu dou a bunda para os cavalos. Os cavalos gozam dentro do meu cu. Os cavalos comem o meu cu e gozam dentro, os cavalos comem o meu cu e gozam dentro. Os homens comem o meu cu e gozam dentro. Eu dou a bunda, eu dou a bunda no meio do matagal, eu dou a bunda no meio do matagal para um monte de homens. Eu gosto de dar a bunda no meio do matagal, eu dou a bunda no meio do matagal para vários homens, eu tiro as calças no meio do matagal e dou a bunda para um monte de homens.

August? It's Octo(eight)ber!

8 = Octo
Why isn't October the 8the month then?!?

>>26772
Because July and August were added in ancient Roman times as part of a plan to change the calendar from a lunar one to a more precise solar calendar system. They are named after Julius and Augustus Caesar.

The introverts are winning
Technology is enabling us to retreat from the outside world. But we should resist the urge – for ourselves and for each other
– by Marie Le Conte –
JULY 2024

There have always been and will always be splits within society. For the most part, they make our lives richer. How dull would it be to live in a world where everyone agreed on everything and shared the same personality traits! Diversity is good. It makes it interesting to be alive.

That doesn’t mean it’s always easy to navigate. The pandemic came and went and it shone a light on a split most people probably hadn’t thought about all that much before then. Everyone knew there were introverts and extroverts, homebodies and socialites, but it had never really mattered. The two groups complemented each other and managed to peacefully cohabit.

This ended both when the world went into lockdown and when it came out of it. Suddenly those seemingly mundane differences began to define us. Some people thrived while stuck at home and others fell into pits of despair. When restrictions eased, some people leapt out of their houses as quickly as they could, and others secretly wished it could have lasted a bit longer.

Perhaps most interestingly, those differences did not fade with time, as the population got vaccinated and meeting up became safer. Most, but not all of us, rejoiced. In late 2023, campaign group More In Common polled British people on their attitudes towards pandemic life. According to their polling, just under a third of people aged between 18 and 40 reported feeling happier in lockdown than they did in normal times. This might help to explain why a third of 25 to 40-year-olds backed closing nightclubs again, 29 per cent were keen to bring back “the rule of six” and 28 per cent would have been comfortable with “only allowing people to leave their homes for essential shopping, 60 minutes of exercise, or work”.

This was more than a year after the last legal restrictions were lifted in the UK, in line with global health policy. (The World Health Organisation declared an end to the “global health emergency” in May 2023.) There are many reasons for people to be in favour of continued restrictions, some of them altruistic, but personal experience must surely play a large part.

While these findings seem shocking, perhaps they weren’t wholly surprising. In the years after restrictions were lifted, many naturally outgoing people – this writer included – have found it that bit harder to get their friends out of the house. Plans somehow require more effort than ever to get made, and are always at risk of getting cancelled at the last minute. A spontaneous pub trip, once a cornerstone of British social life, now takes work to organise.

One culprit could be changing work habits. Back in 2019, only 12 per cent of workers had, according to the Annual Population Survey, worked from home for at least one day in the past week. In 2023, that figure had risen to 44 per cent. Meanwhile, the cost-of-living crisis means that fewer people can afford to buy endless rounds in pubs or choose to spontaneously pour themselves into a restaurant for dinner.

Still, according to French philosopher Pascal Bruckner, there are bigger problems afoot, and society is changing for both good and bad. The pandemic may have been a global catalyst, he argues, but the world had already started feeling less safe outside the home. There had been waves of terrorist attacks across Europe, and endless headlines about the climate emergency coming for us all. Our lives feel more dangerous than they once did, he says, and we have collectively decided to deal with it by hiding out in our living rooms, safe and cosy in our cocoons. He calls it “the triumph of the slippers” and, in a book of the same name, seeks to explain why we should resist those calls to shut ourselves in.

“The pandemic was a moment of simultaneous crystallisation and acceleration, one that consecrated a historical movement that long predated it: the triumph of fear and the paradoxical enjoyment of a fettered life,” Bruckner writes. Still, he argues, “life means excess and profligacy or it ceases to be life. But the pandemic gave a strategic advantage to the forces of stunting. Our future hinges on the tension between those two camps.”

Who will win the war? Bruckner is proudly fighting on the side of the extroverts, but he isn’t exactly optimistic about what’s to come. As he points out, wannabe hermits have a powerful weapon at their disposal: the internet.

Until a few decades ago, deciding to live the life of a recluse was a choice you had to make consciously, and there were consequences you could not avoid. Sure, you had the joy of staying home and living a mostly predictable existence, with few unpleasant surprises, but there were drawbacks.

>>26792
You could not work from your couch, or speak face-to-face with people living elsewhere, or gain any real insights into whatever was happening outside your front door, aside from watching the news on television. It was a choice that had weight, and that you couldn’t make almost by mistake, or without thinking. The 21st century is different. As Bruckner puts it, “a new anthropological type is emerging: the shrivelled, hyperconnected being who no longer needs others or the outside world. All of today’s technologies encourage incarceration under the guise of openness.”

It is quite coarse language, but he isn’t entirely wrong. As Deloitte found in a study last year, 50 per cent of millennials and Gen Zers view online experiences as meaningful substitutes for in-person interactions, and 48 per cent of them say that they engage with others on social media more than in the real world. Were these attitudes informed by the fact that hanging out online is cheaper than seeing people outside, or is the choice partly or entirely a personal preference? It is impossible to tell, as Britain hasn’t thrived economically for some time, so correlation and causation cannot be satisfyingly disentangled from one another.

In any case, in 2024 it is possible to eat delicious food you didn’t make yourself, watch movies that have recently come out in the cinema, buy all manner of clothes, tools and fripperies, do the food shopping, speak to friends and family and earn a wage – all without ever leaving the house. Why should we, then? What’s in it for us?

There are a number of ways to answer those questions, not all of which will appeal to everyone, but it is worth setting them out. Living a real, physical life outside the home is good because humans need friction. Convenience is alluring but it is dangerous, because getting used to it means forgetting that being alive isn’t meant to always be easy. We should run our errands in person and queue at the Post Office and eat in restaurants because it is good to remember that sometimes we have to wait around, or go to several shops because the first one didn’t have what we needed. Resilience is one of the most important traits a person can and should develop, and it works like a muscle. Glide effortlessly through life and, when something bad does happen, because it always will, you won’t know how to react.

>>26793
On a similar note, forcing ourselves to go out even when we’d rather stay on the couch can remind us that good, surprising things usually tend to take place when we least expect them. You may bump into an old acquaintance while out buying a pair of shoes or a carton of milk, or see someone you’d forgotten even existed. You may get to pet a very cute dog, or have a nice laugh with an old lady who struck up a conversation with you, or help someone else who got knocked off their bike and feel good about it, or, or, or – the possibilities are endless. That’s the entire point.

The outside is where the unknowable can and will take place, and that’s what makes it so wonderful. A life without any serendipity is hardly worth living and yes, chance is precious enough that it is worth its cost.

These are the most popular reasons why people ought to resist the siren calls of the blanket and the slippers. This next one is arguably the most important, but the hardest to make a case for. We should all make an effort to leave the house more often not solely because it may benefit us, but because the world needs us to. Small business owners need customers to browse in their shops. Little local restaurants brighten every neighbourhood, but the competition of delivery apps is making many unsustainable.

>>26794
We like knowing that life is out there waiting for us, just in case we do decide to venture out, but it won’t remain there for much longer if everyone relies on everyone else to do the sometimes tedious everyday living. This doesn’t mean that even the most introverted among us ought to be rounded up and forced to go to their local pub three times a week. Instead, everyone should attempt to leave their comfort zone once in a while.

Bruckner was right to point out that today’s world isn’t especially welcoming, but retreating from it is an ultimately selfish choice, as it ensures that things are unlikely to ever get better. Future generations will then shun each other even more, and things will get even worse. In order to function, a society needs its inhabitants to reach out to one another. If they collectively choose to retreat, it will stop existing.

The only way out of the spiral is to remember that no man is an island, and we all eventually left the womb for a reason. Slippers may be comfortable but will you, on your deathbed, really wish you’d spent more time in them?

This article is from New Humanist's summer 2024 issue.

The body was too short or empty.

Tsung-Dao Lee, 97, Physicist Who Challenged a Law of Nature, Dies
At 31, he and a colleague won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering that subatomic particles, contrary to what scientists thought, are always symmetrical.

>>26824
Tsung-Dao Lee, a Chinese American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for overturning what had been considered a fundamental law of nature — that particles are always symmetrical — died on Sunday at his home in San Francisco. He was 97.
His death was announced in a joint statement by the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute at the Jiao Tong University in Shanghai and the China Center for Advanced Science and Technology in Beijing. Dr. Lee was a longtime professor at Columbia University.
The theory that Dr. Lee overturned was called the law of conservation of parity, which said that every phenomenon and its mirror image should behave precisely the same. At the time he challenged the theory, in 1956, it had been widely accepted for 30 years.
Dr. Lee was then a young professor at Columbia, where he had been promoted to full professor at age 29 — the youngest in the university’s history at that point.
He had become intrigued by a problem involving the decay of so-called K mesons, which are subatomic particles. These particles decay all the time, forming electrons, neutrinos and photons. Experiments had shown that when K mesons decayed, some exhibited changes that suggested that each differed from the others. But they also had identical masses and life expectancies, indicating that they were the same.
This apparent contradiction created quite a conundrum for physicists. They had assumed that weak nuclear forces, like meson decay, obeyed the law of conservation of parity just like the two other fundamental forces that govern quantum physics: strong nuclear forces, which bind protons and neutrons together in the nucleus, and electromagnetic forces, which govern the attraction and repulsion of electric charges and the behavior of light. In other words, scientists had assumed that the orientation of weak nuclear forces could always be reversed.
Dr. Lee asked a research group at Columbia to perform a simple experiment to see if that was the case. The results suggested that it might not be.

>>26825
He called on Chen Ning Yang, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, whom Dr. Lee had worked with and had also known as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and together they went back through all the studies and experiments involving weak forces.
Dr. Lee and Dr. Yang came to the conclusion that there was only one reasonable answer to the problem raised in K meson decay: Unlike strong nuclear forces and electromagnetic forces, weak nuclear forces did not obey the law of conservation of parity. It was a revolutionary idea because it meant that in nature, some particles are, in effect, right-handed while others are left-handed.
In the fall of 1956, Dr. Lee and Dr. Yang published their theory in the journal Physical Review.
A groundbreaking experiment by the physicist Chien-Shiung Wu involving the decay of cobalt atoms was performed later that year, confirming that Dr. Lee and Dr. Yang were right. They were awarded the Nobel Prize the following year.
Dr. Lee was just 31 when he accepted the prize; he and Dr. Yang were the first Chinese-born laureates.

>>26826
Dr. Lee had an exceptionally long and productive career. He retired from regular teaching at Columbia in 2012, at age 86, but continued to contribute ideas to particle physics research into his 90s. His name is affixed to two theorems, the Lee Model and the Kinoshita-Lee-Nauenberg theorem — and he developed important theories on black holes and dark matter.
He was also a prominent physicist in the field of relativistic heavy ion colliders, and from 1997 to 2003 he was the director of the RIKEN BNL Research Center at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, which houses the laboratory’s collider.
In a 2007 interview with the Nobel Institute on the 50th anniversary of his Nobel Prize, Dr. Lee attributed part of his success, particularly his insight into parity nonconservation, to his nontraditional education.
Tsung-Dao Lee, who was often known as T.D., was born on Nov. 24, 1926, in Shanghai, the third of six children of Tsing-Kong Lee, a merchant with a background in working with chemicals, and Ming-Chang Chang. Dr. Lee said he grew up “in a family of learning.”
He was in high school when war broke out between China and Japan, forcing him to abandon his studies. It was during this time that he discovered physics. Stumbling across some science books, he was immediately intrigued, but as he was no longer receiving a formal education, he was left to teach himself. It helped him develop his own approach to solving problems.
In the 2007 interview, he recalled tackling Newton’s laws, particularly Newton’s famous equation of force equals mass times acceleration, based on what he could glean from the books.

>>26828
“Newton realized the force is a function of space, and he knew the function,” Dr. Lee said. “One was elasticity. It’s linear in the distance. And the other one is gravitation. So once the left-hand side is a nonfunction of space and the right-hand side is acceleration, then you can solve it to be right. I thought, ‘That’s interesting.’ But that was not the thing that was stated in the book, so this was my approach.”
In 1943, despite not having a high school diploma, he was admitted to National Chekiang University (now Zhejiang University), which had moved to Guizhou because of the war. Though he started as a student in chemical engineering, he switched to physics when his professors discovered his talent in that field.
The continuing war with Japan forced Dr. Lee in 1945 to switch to National Southwestern Associated University in Kunming, where Dr. Yang, his future collaborator, had also studied. At the university, Ta-You Wu, an influential atomic and nuclear physicist, nominated Dr. Lee for a Chinese government fellowship to study in the United States. By 1946, Dr. Lee, who had completed only two years of college, was at the University of Chicago, having been accepted as a doctoral student.
At the time, the University of Chicago was one of the world’s premier centers for the study of physics. The department was led by Enrico Fermi, the Italian-born physicist who had overseen the first successful nuclear reaction and who had been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1938. Dr. Lee became Dr. Fermi’s sole doctoral student in theoretical physics, meeting with him every week.
It was an extraordinary learning experience, partly because of Dr. Fermi’s teaching technique, which Dr. Lee explained in the 2007 interview with the Nobel Institute.
“‘You see,’ he said, ‘there are things that I would like to know,’” Dr. Lee recalled Dr. Fermi saying. “‘Lee, why don’t you look up and give me a lecture next week.’”
“I was very happy to teach Fermi,” Dr. Lee added. “Of course, this is an excellent way of building the student’s confidence. And then he would ask me questions and I would have to answer.”

>>26829
Dr. Lee received his Ph.D. in 1950. Over the next three years, he worked at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wis., as a guest lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He was then hired by Columbia University as an assistant professor.
Dr. Lee received many awards aside from the Nobel, including the Albert Einstein Award in Science, and he had a minor planet (3443 Leetsungdao) named for him.
In 1950, he married Jeannette Hui-Chun Chin. They had two sons, James and Stephen. Dr. Lee became a United States citizen in 1962. (Complete information on his survivors was not immediately available.)
Dr. Lee remained fairly modest about the discovery that brought him the Nobel Prize. It was the product of insight about something that, it turned out, was hiding in plain sight.
Nobody saw it before “because it was a mental block,” he said in the 2007 interview. “Nobody looked for it.”
Alex Traub contributed reporting.

Thorsday

Rain and lightning and thunder signifying…. NOTHING

Roblox is Already the Biggest Game In The World. Why Can't It Make a Profit (And How Can It)?
MetaverseVideo Gaming
Aug 18, 2024
Written By Matthew Ball

Everyone knows Roblox is huge. But as COVID receded into memory, Roblox shifted from “new” to “familiar,” and gaming experienced its largest contraction in nearly a quarter century, the platform continued to grow. And grow. And grow. As a result, there is now a significant disparity between the perceived size of Roblox and its actual, unprecedented scale.

During the average day, more than 80MM people log onto Roblox. As a historical point of contrast, this means that more people log onto Roblox every 10 or so minutes than used Second Life in a month at its peak. On a monthly basis, Roblox now counts more than 380MM users according to RTrack – 2x as many as PC gaming leader Steam, 3x that of Sony’s PlayStation, 3x the number of unique annual users of the Nintendo Switch in a year, and 5x as many as have bought an Xbox console in the last decade. After accounting for duplication across these platforms, as well as the gap between monthly and annual Switch users, it’s likely Roblox has more monthly users than the entire AAA gaming ecosystem combined. What’s more, NPD/Circana reports that Roblox is typically one of the 3–7 most played games on PlayStation and Xbox (Roblox is not available on Switch or Steam), and SensorTower says that in 2023, Roblox averaged more iOS/Android monthly active users than any other game (including Candy Crush!).

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Compared to its most similar competitors—the social virtual world platforms, Minecraft and Fortnite — Roblox has about 5x and 2.25x as many monthly players. For non-gamers, Roblox has about two thirds as many monthly users as Spotify and half as many as Snap (though it probably has a lower share of daily-to-monthly active users) and is roughly as popular as Instagram circa Q4 2015, and Facebook in Q3 2009.

Each month, players spend close to six billion hours using Roblox. This time excludes the viewing of Roblox content on Twitch or YouTube, the largest video platform on earth and which counts non-live gaming content as its second most popular genre, with Roblox one of its five most watched games. Most estimates suggest the average Disney+ account watches no more than 20 hours per month, which would mean about 3.1 billion hours in total monthly watch time—barely half of Roblox’s total.

>>26938
Since late 2022, Roblox has begun to prioritize new ad units and technologies to support its burgeoning ad business. In 2024, for example, Roblox launched in-world billboards that, unlike other ad units, could advertise whatever (e.g. an upcoming music, real world sneakers, etc.), and could be programmatically bid upon by advertisers and served across any worlds that chose to support billboard ads. This sort of advertising has existed “unofficially” for years (a developer would just build a billboard and either sell the ad slot directly or, more commonly, hook into an outside ad network to have the unit filled). In 2023, however, Roblox began to block developers from pinging a third-party server for ad units. Developers are still permitted to sell custom ads inside their world, but programmatic insertion, dynamic pricing, and/or targeting all require the use of Roblox’s ad network.


Another new unit are “Immersive Ads,” which are portals that enable a user to travel directly from one Roblox experience into another. In this case, Pepsi or Nike might (programmatically) purchase a “portal” inside hit sports-themed worlds (e.g. a Golden State Warriors world, a FIFA world, etc.) that make it easier to directly acquire these world’s users compared to just throwing up a digital billboard. This format, too, was originally “hacked” by independent Roblox developers whom would cut their own deals with other world developers, but Roblox has since built it natively into their platforms and requires developers to use their system. Developers can still try to bypass Roblox through custom deals, but only Roblox's platform provides advanced analytics, such as tracking how many users entered the portal, how long they stayed in the destination, and what activities they engaged in, and advertisers can only programmatically purchase immersive ads through Roblox.

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The last new ad unit lets advertisers sponsor items that users can claim for free. For example, Nike might do a deal through Roblox whereby any users who visit Developer World A on a given weekend would receive a free virtual pair of Air Jordan Sneakers. Again, this could be achieved through a direct deal between Nike and Developer A, but Roblox’s own platform offers programmatic placement, better analytics, a greater number of partnering worlds, related tools, etc.

It’s not clear how big Roblox’s advertising business might become. In November 2023, Baszucki told Ben Thomspon “Yeah, I don’t think we’ve ever said advertising is going to be the meat of our business” – but he also argued “the size of the potential immersive advertising experience is uncharted right now. It’s immersive, there’s so much time spent there, the memories are really profound when I go with a friend to do that. So I do think it’s uncharted and very big.” Baszucki also mentioned “someday on Roblox, when we go to Nike World, we will not just be trying on virtual Nike shoes. We may be buying the physical versions as well from that place because it’s been such a connection for us with that brand.” Regardless of any physical tie-ins, it’s obvious that with over 350 million young, and otherwise hard-to-reach players, Roblox has the potential to generate meaningful revenue even if most of its business is based on user subscription.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/21/russia_memo_ukraine_invasion/
Russia tells citizens to switch off home surveillance because the Ukrainians are coming

Forget about your love life too, no dating apps until the war is over
Connor Jones
Wed 21 Aug 2024 // 15:01 UTC
Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs is warning residents of under-siege regions to switch off home surveillance systems and dating apps to stop Ukraine from using them for intel-gathering purposes.

Residents of the Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod regions were issued with the warnings amid what seems like Russia being thoroughly rattled by Ukraine's incursion into the country's southwest.

"The enemy is massively identifying IP ranges in our territories and connecting to unprotected video surveillance cameras remotely, viewing everything from private yards to roads and highways of strategic importance," said the ministry, according to Russian newswire Interfax. "In this regard, if there is no urgent need, it is better not to use video surveillance cameras.

"It is highly discouraged to use online dating services. The enemy actively uses such resources for the covert collection of information."

These warnings were just two of many included in a public memo aimed at protecting the identities of high-value Russian individuals, including military personnel, law enforcement agents, and nuclear energy workers.

They follow an unexpected table-turning offensive launched by Ukraine on August 6, during which it surged into Kursk Oblast, seizing hundreds of square miles of land within mere weeks.

Kyiv claims to have captured more land in three weeks than Russia has managed so far this year; Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. Russian officials, meanwhile, say nearly 200,000 Kursk and Belgorod residents have been evacuated following the advancement of Ukrainian forces.

The memo's warnings appear to be driven by fears of Russians with knowledge of Ukrainian interest being captured and having their devices combed for intel.

The military was reminded to avoid opening links that come from anyone other than official sources, and, while they're at it, to avoid using devices at all if they contain a significant amount of state and/or personal information.

Russian police officials reportedly said: "It is necessary to control and moderate chats, and promptly delete from them the accounts of people who have been captured by the enemy, as well as the accounts of people whose phones the enemy has gained access to."

>>26957
If using Telegram, users were urged to disable the app's feature allowing other users to identify people who are geographically close to them. Deleting all markers that tie an individual to a specific affiliation, such as soldiers, law enforcement workers, and those working in the energy sector – especially nuclear power – was advised too.

"If your number appears in search results as recorded by third parties as 'Lesha FSB,' 'Pasha Rosgvardia,' 'Misha 123 Regiment,' this number needs to be changed, it has been compromised."

Social media posts must be audited too, removing any images or posts that are geotagged, out of fear that they could be used to locate Russian troops.

Citizens were additionally asked to avoid posting to social media any footage taken from dashcams or similar equipment, as these may show specific Russian military equipment in transit, which could then be used to locate soldiers.

El Reg approached the Ukrainian embassy in London for comment, but it did not respond. ®

Pokémon: 10
1 Banette LOR 73
1 Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex TWM 141
4 Duskull SFA 18
1 Mew ex MEW 151
4 Shuppet SVI 87
1 Squawkabilly ex PAF 75
1 Dusclops SFA 19
1 Radiant Alakazam SIT 59
3 Dusknoir SFA 20
2 Banette ex SVI 88

Trainer: 13
2 Professor's Research PAF 87
4 Rare Candy PAF 89
3 PokéStop PGO 68
3 Nest Ball PAF 84
1 Earthen Vessel PAR 163
2 Switch SVI 194
1 Prime Catcher TEF 157
4 Night Stretcher SFA 61
4 Ultra Ball SVI 196
4 Trekking Shoes CRZ 145
3 Buddy-Buddy Poffin TEF 144
1 Counter Catcher PAR 160
4 Iono PAF 80

Energy: 1
5 Basic {P} Energy SUM 162

Total Cards: 60

2xCamarilla's Iron Fist

>>26959
I prefer Magic: the Gathering. Black, please.

“Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ego.”

Nietzsche

Ghost in the Shell (2017) - Shelling sequence clip with original choir
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BvhHU5VOKI

Most of those countries such as Canada made certain markets like health insurance public, where it was deemed for the publics benefit not to be run for profit as there's far too many externalities and moral issues. We made the same choice with police and public attorneys. Sometimes, in very rare cases usually invoking peoples health and safety, it makes sense for it to be public.
What doesn't make sense to me is that massive meddling western governments do to prop up these monopolies. Copyright is a perfect example. Or just look a Boeing in 2024 or many Wall St orgs after 2008, special treatment and artificial barriers to completion is a huge and ever growing problem.

And these debates always just dismissed and downplayed because all context gets thrown out and it turns into vague gov regulations vs markets fights, as we see here in this thread.

The cyberpunk future of megacorps ruling the planet will be the result of gov interference in the vast majority of cases. And only a small amount due to lack of any monopoly antitrust enforcement. But both have the same root cause of forever expanding gov technocracy->megacorps define the rules and buy politicians->no one wins.

The Jiangnan-style cheongsam, also known as Su-style cheongsam, originated in the Jiangnan Water town. This style of cheongsam expresses the cultural characteristics of the water town in Jiangnan and also creates a fusion between the beauty of Chinese calligraphy and Chinese painting, incorporating the hand-painting art of the Wumen School of Painting. It is characterized by the sophisticated neckline and embroidered patterns on the edges of the cuff. The dress is also embroidered with rich pattern motifs which tend to be floral, e.g. plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum, peonies, and roses. The fabrics used tend to be high-quality soft satin and plain crepe satin, etc.

>>26965
power creep
1996 vs 2024

Carlito & Addiction - U Got Me Thinking

Yuki vs Minene | The Future Diaryhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbv_qQUN4pQ

Alone with your thoughts isn't really being alone at all.

LEOPARD

ƶ

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Reverse Spin Kick:
+ Behavior buff: now functions as an overhead, like in HDR.

REASON: is the reason for all the other changes on this move.. It makes Guile a little more interesting, without making him too good. Maybe it could be argued that Guile doesn't really need it, and for the most part that's true, but the Dhalsim match-up is trash and one of the reason for that is the fact that Guile has no decent options when up close, and having an overhead fixes that problem.

+ Behavior tweak: activation range removed.

REASON: Needed for it to be used effectively as a overhead.

+ Behavior tweak: activated only ? + Rh only.

REASON: Otherwise Guile wouldn't be able to move forward with the donkey kick while keeping boom charge, since the range restriction was removed.

- Startup nerf: 7f slower.

REASON: it compensates for its overhead properties. This is 2f slower than it was in HDR.

- Recovery nerf: 3f slower.

REASON: until v0.7.1 it was +0 on hit vs crouching characters, but considering the very good range on it as well as Guile not deserving to have an overhead on most match-ups, I came to the conclusion that it deserved to be nerfed slightly. Now, Guile's overhead is -3 on hit, which makes it recover 1f slower than Fei's overhead, which used to be the one with the slowest recovery, until now. But it still is pretty decent overall.

- Priority nerf: proper hurtboxes during the startup frames, last_start/active/1s_recovery are now vulnerable to low moves, like in HDR.

REASON: it compensates for it being activated from any range. There's 2 (intentional) differences from HDR: the head hurtbox during active was adjusted by 3px so it can beat Claw's slide cleanly and the body hurtbox during active was moved 1px downwards so it can be beat by Blanka's Crouching Strong.

+ Priority buff: hitbox moved 2px downwards.

REASON: so it can be used against a crouching Blanka. At first I left it like it was on HDR on purpose because I thought this could be seen as an unnecessary buff vs Blanka, since he loses the Guile match on ST. But considering all the buffs Blanka received plus the fact that he now also got an Overhead that can be used normally on Guile then maybe it's OK for Guile to be able to have it too vs Blanka.

- Damage nerf: from 26 to 24.

REASON: this move got a lot better since it's now an overhead. This decrease in damage is just to keep it in check, now it does the same damage as Ken's and Blanka's overheads.

o Cosmetic tweak: proper shadow sprites.

REASON: the ones from ST were clearly wrong

Storm Shadow~

This long-range air-launched and conventionally-armed missile equips RAF Tornado GR4 squadrons and saw operational service in 2003 with 617 Squadron during combat in Iraq, prior to entering full service in 2004.

Electric!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=CrHs_1SmHoQ
Studying some Ryu Denjin setups and have stumbled across alot of cool setups to help you vary your approach. Most take alot of time to be consistent.

bear visits house

F-16 ~ creation, engineering & maintenance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhhOin2p5Qs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw4iROXxMMw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmM5KSoW2qA

The Insane Engineering of the F-117 Nighthawk
Real Engineering
https://youtu.be/1zjcnnx7igc

Credits:
Producer/Writer/Narrator: Brian McManus
Head of Production: Mike Ridolfi
Editor: Dylan Hennessy
Writer/Research: Josi Gold
Animator: Eli Prenten
Animator: Stijn Orlans
Sound and Production Coordinator: Graham Haerther
Sound: Donovan Bullen
Thumbnail: Simon Buckmaster
Head of Moral: Shia LeWoof
Special Thanks To Lockheed Martin for providing archival footage

Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images
Thank you to AP Archive for access to their archival footage.

Are you culo?