Smoke

Oh, it occurs from time to time. Jones will shotgun tons of contradictory predictions, then quietly drop the ones that don't work out and never shut up about the one that actually happens.

Not only that, but trust from a self contained community is not the same as safe for the general public outside of context. Imagine asking for a summary of the Gamestop shortsqueeze and getting an answer from Superstonks.

honestly, not sure I -ever- found a useful answer on Quora.

Reading them taught me one thing, Quora had/has a weirdly strong hardon for Steve Jobs and is/was all too happy to talk about anecdotes of him buying the authors' lunch or reconciling with his estranged daughter. The only time I read criticism of Apple or him was when the question specifically asked for it.

In fact, if we look at BBC as an example, they’re publicly funded and maintain high credibility and a high degree of press freedom.

Indeed, the BBC cannot be seen to give in to government pressure.

There's ways to rate limit, like increasing response time per IP address per hour to make rapid, massed requests slower and easier to handle. Taking them all down at once is an extreme move.

Let me add one thing more, that a realistic aesthetic brings with it certain expectations. For example, I don't question how Security Bots in Bioshock refuel themselves, or fly, or recognise intruders. I don't ask how come the turrets in Portal never run out of bullets (though it's answered as a gag in one of the videos). They're not presented as realistic, and I don't expect them to be. But when you make the choice to use realistic miniguns in Talos, those questions are going to bubble up to the surface, like "Where's the ammo box on that thing?" and "Who's maintaining these on islands in the middle of nowhere?" and "Scratch that, who's making them?" and "If Elohim (yeah real subtle name there) did all this then why bother with a machine that requires maintenance in the first place instead of a magic pillar of fire or smth?"

The author is the host of Behind the Bastards, and produced a pair of episodes to accompany the article on the same subject: https://pca.st/episode/96a1d3d1-7966-412b-bc8b-492c817b9f93

I can say I was put off at first glance by the "realistic" aesthetic, with props like jammers and minigun turrets that have an unnecessarily detailed, grounded look when as a puzzle game, graphics should not be the focus of the experience. A stylised, or minimal, graphical style would put the focus firmly where it belongs - on the puzzles themselves.

The commentary said they wanted to do rival criminal gangs, which would have made a lot more sense than the construction magnates they went with, but my guess is they realised West Side Story already did it.

but yeah, why wouldn’t they just use standard anesthesia gas? or nitrous oxide?

Because the suppliers don't want to be associated with executions, so they won't sell any to the state for that purpose.

Okay yeah, but that's not the discussion. You'd might as well say all methods are equally bad because it's the act itself that's the problem, and at that point the state can break out the human mincing machines knowing it'll get just as much or little pushback no matter what it picks.

Funny, I remember nitrogen gas being promoted as far more humane than lethal injection or existing gas execution. For years it was touted as the solution no one was using because of I guess sadism. Now someone is using it, and of course it's instantly denounced. You just can't win...