MystikIncarnate

Okay, I'll just say it.

Everyone has it rough right now. Mostly because we've been thoroughly railroaded by corporations for most of our lives, but still.

Everything sucks.

Oh Jesus.

Anyone have some valid Stargate addresses? I'm done with this stupid planet.

I think this is the first time I've seen a still picture move this much.

Hot damned.

It'll snuggle you for the rest of your life.

Agreed.

That's a very normal reaction. You're putting your life in the hands of technicians and engineers, to build, maintain and service the aircraft so it functions, qualified inspectors to certify that the plane is safe to fly, and pilots to fly the aircraft, and you, safely to your destination. Pretty much everyone you're putting your life in the hands of, you've never met, never will, and it's unlikely you'll even know their names.

It's a lot of trust to put into people you don't even know, to keep you alive in your chair in the sky.

If that reality doesn't at least give you pause, or some concern, then I'd be worried there's something seriously wrong with you.

Rest assured that statistics are on your side. It's far more likely for you to get to your destination without any significant complications then it is for any complications to happen, including any that might lead to a crash or a fatality. Statistically, it's comfortably one of the safest, if not the safest, method of travel.

There's nothing wrong with having some apprehension, fear, or worry, over placing your life in the hands of complete strangers; despite how qualified each and every one of them might be, they're still strangers.

All I can say is, if you're bothered by it, learn how to parachute solo. It'll take a while, but learn it. Then just pack your own parachute any time you fly. Problem solved. If you lose confidence in the pilots to keep you alive, bail.

Thanks. I think a lot.

Probably too much

Not a stupid question.

Between the training required for a solo parachute jump, and the cost (and more importantly) weight of the equipment, plus the relative safety of commercial flights, it's simply not justified.

In more than a few cases we've seen airliners make emergency landings that are gnarly, but the majority survive. In more cases than I can count, there's checks and balances that ground flights because of safety concerns either at the departure point or at the destination (icing, high winds, etc), or due to mechanical concerns.

It's rare that a fully inspected and functional aeroplane will fall out of the sky, and we do everything in our power to ensure that all planes that leave the ground are fully inspected and functional. Short of a freak occurrence, like a fast forming weather phenomenon, there's so many checks and balances that airliner crashes are exceedingly rare.

So not only is a crash rare, there's no guarantee that a crash will be fatal, usually the pilot can at least get the plane on the ground without killing everyone aboard, and the fact that it's a massive amount of extra weight that requires training that the average person doesn't have, there's little point and nearly nothing to gain from doing something like that, while it would have significant downsides on flight efficiency and increase the costs of fuel per flight due to the extra weight.

Then there's the consideration of, even if they were able to successfully parachute to the ground, what then? It's pretty much a guarantee that nobody has a radio, and that you're far enough away from civilization that your cellphone doesn't work, so now you have hundreds of people spread out over potentially thousands of miles of terrain/water/whatever that you now need weeks to search and rescue everyone. Taking weeks on search and rescue, pretty much guarantees that you'll find people who landed safely, then died from exposure to the environment.

On the flip side, if everyone is in the plane when it crashes then all you need to do is find the plane; everyone will be in that general area, whether alive or dead.

There's just too many downsides to having parachutes on board to make it feasible.

The people that voted for this shit have the biggest blinders on right now. I'm sure they're trying to ignore that anything has gone wrong.

I hope someone with enough money to make this a problem for the policy makers gets after this in court soon. The USA needs to either pass a federal law stating that abortion is legal, or they need a new roe v. Wade judgement on the books. Until one of those things happens, this continual and unnecessary loss of life will continue; it is inevitable.

For people who call themselves "pro-life" they sure don't give any shits about people continuing to live.

Anyone who is anti abortion, this is for you: 🖕

Sincerely,

• your horrified neighbor to the north.

I'm not going to defend Ubisoft here.

I will make a comment about NFCs. Basically, if you're trying to validate a set number of items in a digital market, NFTs are not the worst way to do it. In the context of a video game, it would be that you have the NFT for, let's say, a limited character skin, associated to your game profile/account/whatever. As long as that token is attached to your account, you get access to that skin. If you trade it out, you lose access to that skin in the game... As an example.

NFTs would accomplish that goal, while being (at least in theory) decentralized, and in theory it's immune to errors and exploitation.

All of that being said: there are much better ways to accomplish the same with less. Any blockchain, by its very nature, will eventually become a slow, unmanageable mess because anything written to the ledger is immutable. So the ledger will continue to grow and grow and grow until it's so large that it's unmanageable, slow as shit, and just garbage to try to use/work with.

For shit like digital art or whatever, NFTs make even less sense. All you're actually buying is essentially a receipt that you paid money to someone for the receipt. It's a lot like going to a store to buy air. You pay for it, get your receipt and now you "own" some air. The only thing that proves you "own" air, is the receipt. If you lose the receipt, oh well, you can't prove you "own" the air anymore, but you're still 100% able to use the air, to fill your lungs, and breathe for another day, whether you "own" it or not.

The only difference with a "web3" game is that owning the NFT may give you access to stuff inside the game that you otherwise wouldn't have.

Great in concept, horrible in practice.

I think when the hype dies down in a few years, we'll settle into a couple of useful applications for ML/AI, and a lot will be just thrown out.

I have no idea what will be kept and what will be tossed but I'm betting there will be more tossed than kept.