Social media in general is likely contributing to the rise of violent facism. Anything that can reverse that trend is good IMO.

RFID is silly to put in a card that 99% will forget about and leave behind. QR codes are better as they are just the same ink that goes on it anyways.

Yeah I think that was the original point the other person was making but it sounded like you were arguing against that. I think we’re all in agreement, a QR code is a cheaper and quicker method of doing the paper>electronic data connection than whatever the tech in this article is describing, unless they can increase storage a massive amount.

Does an RFID tag not require something electronic to read them?

Pretty much what happens now–name and shame, get the story out there. If McDonald’s wanted to plaster a billboard with someone’s personal family photos, the odds that that family could even afford a lawyer for recourse to an appropriate degree is essentially nil. What would likely happen is that McDonald’s would settle for some absurdly low dollar value and perhaps take down the billboards–or just as likely, negotiate for use in the settlement agreement, saying “take this and let us use the photo or we’ll see you in court.”

If someone gets a reputation for stealing others’ work continuously, who is ever going to work with them?

I’m not sure of any evidence suggesting that piracy impacts the bottom line in a meaningful way. The piracy problem is primarily one of competition and innovation–people pay for things they find valuable and convenient, and if the barrier to payment is too high, they won’t pay it.

Highly pirated movies tend to be the most successful, most profitable ones. I don’t know of any high profile, highly regarded pieces of media that didn’t earn their investment back purely because everyone pirated it instead of paying for it.

Some links you might find interesting: https://copia.is/library/the-carrot-or-the-stick/

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/22/eu-piracy-rates-tick-back-up-in-study-that-shows-income-inequality-and-less-legal-options-to-blame/

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/07/12/how-not-overly-enforcing-its-ip-universal-made-the-minions-ubiquitous-and-beloved/

That last one is an especially interesting case study, albeit a perhaps accidental one.

The key here is that as a business your objective isn’t to capture every last dollar that you potentially could have if every single use of your IP was completely in your control–you want to make enough people want to pay you so that you can be profitable. Pirates are often just providing free marketing to someone that may or may not have ever heard of your product.

I have been using the same PC with the same hardware for 7 years. I have never had an issue playing the latest games that I wanted to, and I never have to so much as open the settings menu to get the game to run well. It’s literally not an issue.

Also anecdotally parts seem to be lasting much longer than they used to. Maybe I’m just playing fewer games, maybe I care about graphics less, or maybe there actually is a technical reason but in the early 00s when I first started building computers I was essentially forced to upgrade about every 2 or 3 years but now I’m still running on my 7 year old desktop with a 1070 – I was going to upgrade the graphics card but the crypto mining boom priced me out and lo and behold I’m still able to play whatever I want with nary a difficulty. Even Baldur’s Gate 3 runs just fine, with a little chugging.

I’m pretty sure that’s in support of the concept.

No way is she ready to vote. I don’t know, there are adults I know that I’m not sure are ready to vote, but we let them because the alternative is unthinkable.

I know part of parenting is that constant trade off of allowing a child to express themselves and enforcing boundaries they may not yet understand, and so preventing problems for the future by way of boundary enforcement, but voting in local elections and school boards and things that impact them seems like relatively low consequence.

The worst case scenario is that teenagers become the most active voters that need to be courted by potential school board candidates, who then propose policies that are actually harmful to teens but seem attractive to them, e.g., canceling school more or similar. And that seems fairly low risk considering that they’re outnumbered by adults, so they would need a substantial block of adult voters that agree as well. I think it’s a decent introduction to voting, with consequences for actions, but with a limited scale and scope that would do well for them.

Thinking about the issues on my local ballot in recent years, it’s things like library funding, police funding, school board and town council reps, judges, and otherwise appointing adults or approving bonds that have been requested by adults. I think teenagers could have valuable input on those.

I’m with some of the others in the thread. If they’re trusted to drive, to work, to be tried as an adult for crimes, they should get a say in management. Otherwise raise driving age and working age to 18 and be done with it.