Tildes already replaces some of the functionality of downvoting with its tags (troll, flame, off-topic). What if we replaced voting with "positive" tags: helpful, interesting, etc.? This would play off of people's indecision when faced with multiple options. A binary decision is very easy - upvoting vs. downvoting. But if you just want to vote on something because it backs up your political opinion you might pause to think for a second if you need to declare the comment "interesting".

The number of positive tags could still be aggregated into a score. Perhaps we could list the positive tags at the bottom of the comment e.g.: "10 x helpful, 5 x interesting".

Those that have pursued a career that deals with any type of computer science, what advice would you give to students before they get a job in it? What do you do on a daily basis? What would you have wanted to know before you started?

Everybody's talking about Fallout 76, Smash, Mario Party, Spider-man... What are some games out there that you're excited about and haven't gotten a whole lot of spotlight that you think others should really know about?

I'm personally really excited about Dreams (which is made by the same team that created Little Big Planet) and this weird indie farming/exploration game I found on kickstarter called Garden Paws.

you head to the gas station to catch a 6-pack and maybe a bag of chips or some rillos. you pass the cashier a twenty, and they mention your change will get you a couple lottery tickets. you're in a good mood and we all hate coins, so you just tell 'em you're down and to choose random numbers.

a week later, you wake up and see the winning lottery numbers on the news.

hopeful curiosity turns into a flooring disbelief as you pause the tv and check the numbers four times over.

you scramble to find and unlock your phone, heading straight to google.

"winning lottery numbers"

"how to tell if you won the lottery"

"lottery number checker"

everything checks out.

"how to claim lottery winnings"

you go to claim your prize, and you can choose between $130,000,000 in post-tax cash now, or $210,000,000 spread equally over the next 30 years.

which do you choose? what do you do with it?

My vote is for bounties god damn near everywhere. The Rider adventure is cool and I really enjoy Gambit so far.

Not a huge fan of the weapon mod perk reworking, the grind feels longer than ever before.

Maybe I'm just not very well versed in this sort of thing but I couldn't find anything online. I've always been sort of paranoid that a company might not be truthful in their privacy policy. Is there any sort of law to keep them honest or do we just have to take their word on it?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

I do the following:

• Use a VPN (NordVPN)
• Use Firefox with a tweaked about:config and the following security extensions:
  • uBlock Origin
  • NoScript
  • HTTPS Everywhere
  • Privacy Badger
  • Decentraleyes
  • Cookie Autodelete
  • Skip Redirect
  • CanvasBlocker
• Run Linux Mint (I know, Ubuntu-based distros aren't ideal but I'm a Linux beginner)
• Don't have any social media as of a year ago
• Don't use any Google services, including YouTube, Google Search, or Gmail
• Use a password manager (KeePassXC)

The next step would be for me to switch from iPhone to Android running Lineage OS, but money is a bit tight right now. As for day-to-day lifestyle choices, I try to use cash whenever possible and never sign up for things like store rewards programs.

What's your setup? Do you consider yourself a privacy-minded individual? Are you more concerned with protecting yourself from corporate or government entities?

on some goth shit
meditating in the graveyard
tarring up my lungs while
i'm walking down the boulevard
sad little white boy
crying, thinks his life's hard
you don't know pain,
there's a genocide in Myanmar
people get their throats slit
believing in the "wrong" god
you had a girl make you high
and you fell hard
families are dying
and you want to be a rockstar
so why you taking drugs?
what you trying to get numb for?

i just want a life that
might be worth waking up for
share my music with my
friends and maybe do an encore
invite some people over, get
some liquor that forever pours
their lessons or their lesions,
ask them all about their open sores
sixtysevenhundred people
either shot or burned alive
you're dreaming of a good girl
that you could probably call a wife
this is how real loss looks
this is real strife
you drew a bath of henny
and you want to take a deep dive

on some goth shit
looking out through your red eyes
shades always on like
a blanket to hide behind
bleeding out, wounded
at the first try at real life
how does this shit balance,
do you think you deserve to cry?
praying for a goddess, "i
pray you'll come and cleanse me"
a nation full of people
down the barrel of a cleansing
Jekyll and I'm hiding in
and out of all my draining
should i even feel like this?
there's no way it's the same thing.

Those two words and their relationship with "consent" and "freedom" fascinate me. I've sort of ruminated about it in the back of my mind for a while, but haven't sorted a lot out.

It would be nice for two people to be able to make any agreement they like between each other without restrictions. "I'll do this for me and you give me that in return". If there aren't restrictions on what sort of agreement two private people make, in some sense, that can be maximum freedom.

But then exploitation and coercion come into the mix. "If you don't sign this contract, I will kill you" is a clear example of an agreement not being free. "If you don't sign this employment contract, you won't be able to afford to buy food" is still fairly clear, but a little further removed. "If you don't sign this employment contract, you'll be able to get food, but the food you can afford will be heavily processed and laden with oils and processed sugars, and you could suffer poor health in the future" is getting into a lot of grey area.

We talk a lot about minimum wage workers being exploited. It's true that most of them (almost all of them?) hate their jobs. It's also true that life necessarily requires sacrifices. I don't have a good framework for thinking about what point something becomes exploitative or unethical.

It comes up in personal relationships as well. "If you don't have sex with me, I will kill myself" is clearly abusive and manipulative. "If you don't have sex with me, I will break up with you" is slightly more removed. "If you don't quit using heroin, I will break up with you" is a little grey.

At what point is someone being coerced in a relationship vs two people acknowledging sacrifices they have to make to stay together? I don't have a good framework for thinking about this.

Further things to think about: at what point of mental illness can a person no longer ethically enter into an agreement? What about a normal person who suffers from the usual human psychological biases? At what point is it exploitative to use psychological biases when negotiating with someone? This can go all the way from the benign (ending a price in ".99") to the damaging (designing casino games with flashing lights and buzzers, etc.)

I don't expect someone to be able to give me a pat answer to this. If you think you can give me a 1-line "Exploitation is ...", I think you're probably missing something. But I am curious how other people think about these things, and what examples or what books you've found that have been helpful to you sorting things out.

I started prioritizing GOG a couple of years ago, buying most of my games there because I love their DRM-free stance. I have an entire backup of my GOG gaming library on my hard drive, so even if something happened to my account I'd still have everything I've bought from them over the years. On the other hand, their Linux support isn't great. For example, GOG Galaxy, their all-in-one frontend, is still not available on Linux despite being out for other platforms for years.

Steam, on the other hand, is DRM-agnostic, and there isn't an easy way to separate my games from the service. I worry about what would happen if I somehow lost access to my account. When a game is available on Steam and GOG, I opt for GOG each time because I'd rather have a DRM-free copy that I can control. Nevertheless, Valve has done a lot to support Linux gaming, especially with their recent debut of SteamPlay and Proton. Right now, Steam gives a much better user experience to Linux users and supporting Valve helps move Linux gaming forward. It also helps that their selection is much greater than GOG's, (though that's less of a pull for me as I do appreciate GOG's heavier-handed curation).

I'm torn because I want a little of column A and a little of column B. I keep hoping that GOG will eventually catch up with Steam with regards to Linux support, but that's already been the dream for a while (and a lot of people are done holding their breath). At this point I'm wondering whether I should just hop on the SteamPlay train and start putting my eggs back in that basket. Anyone have any thoughts? Who do you choose to buy from, and why?

Specifically I'm curious about how your lives have changed with the introduction of medications to assist with mental illness. I realize there is still some stigma associated with mental illness and health issues, but if we talk about it, then hopefully that stigma can erode away, and more people will seek the help they need.

Thanks for commenting!