Does Ed ever miss? I suppose it must be possible, but I have yet to see it.

But there’s no installer, so I can’t reinstall it on another device. With GOG I have an installer just like I’d have with physical media.

I’m well aware — that’s the whole point of DRM-free games.

You still need your gog account to download games though.

I need an account to make the purchase and download, but I can then delete my account and keep the installers on a hard drive.

Because I can download and save installers for GOG games and install them without needing to connect to GOG at all. It’s more akin to buying physical media than it is to Steam or other storefronts.

I imagine GOG is exempt?

Whoa, you should preface your posts with a warning, lest anyone cut themselves on all that edge.

GabeN will name twelve disciples who will spread His word and continue His work.

What’s the value-add over just buying a SFF PC?

That is brilliantly simple. Certainly better than using collector limpets.

That’s true, but what you describe is pretty much the end state of big-box retail. Amazon is essentially the same, if we exclude AWS. It’s all a race to the bottom. The solution, as always, is to buy direct from smaller producers if possible.

I dislike that you’ve put me in the position of defending Walmart, but don’t you find it rather misleading to imply that they made 163 billion dollars in profit when the real number is less than 10% of that?

Yes, but there are many more expenses associated with running their business beyond simply COGS. Their net income last year was 11B, which is pretty average for a company that size.

Not really — it’s because nearly everything they sell is highly fungible, and they compete on price. Nobody is willing to pay a premium to shop at Walmart. Twenty years ago you’d have been correct, but they’ve pretty much saturated the market at this point. They’re trying to find profitability in automation rather than adding tons of new stores.

Slim profit margins my ass. Walmarts gross profit for the twelve months ending July 31, 2024 was $163.786B,

Not to sound flippant, but do you know what gross profit means? They aren’t pocketing all of that. Walmart’s net profit margin is 2.66%, which is minuscule. They make up for that by having enormous volume.

This happened to me years ago (the .com of my full name). I kept checking in at expiry date for 3 years and they eventually let it expire, so I bought it back for normal price.

The biggest surprise here is that as many as 16% are willing to pay more…

I guess this is a sign that I need to update my rig…

I expect any porn model trained on a sufficient diversity of adult actors could be used to make convincing CP even without having it in the training data.

I know I’m wading into the danger zone here, but let’s also remember we’re talking about teenagers. A (for example) 15 year old’s body type will be closer to an 18 year old’s than a 5 year old’s, so the perfectly legal porn model would work just fine for that, uh, purpose.

I don’t think the models are trained on CP. They’re likely trained on widely-available porn.