Voroxpete

For anyone curious why ripping out LiDAR was a bad idea.

That said, I suspect this is also meant to pre-empt what's been happening to Waymo recently where a small number of protestors were summoning robotaxis and either boxing them in or sabotaging them to use as barricades. With how people feel about Tesla right now, I imagine a whole lot of these would soon be summoned to remote locations to be met by a masked person carrying a can of gas and a lighter. That's also why they're demanding a credit card on file.

Also the 2001 Authorization of The Use of Military Force, which has no expiry date, and allows unrestricted military action against anyone the administration believes played a role in the 9/11 attacks. As far as I'm aware all Trump has to do is claim Iran produced or sheltered terrorists at some point (even if it was in the past) and he's more or less legally in the clear. There's already precedent.

Under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the 2001 AUMF was used to justify the deployment of US forces to Afghanistan, the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iraq, and Somalia.

https://www.businessinsider.com/a-bill-to-repeal-the-aumf-just-passed-2017-6

Again, past decisions.

A single gunshot in an indoor space can cause permanent hearing damage, not just to the shooter, but to everyone around them. Especially infants and young children.

Fuck ICE, but the suppressor is not the problem here. It's literally the only part of that image that isn't a problem.

So, in a scenario where a law enforcement officer actually has a good reason to fire a weapon indoors, should they ask the suspect to wait for ten minutes while they hand out earplugs to every innocent bystander present? Don't forget to bring extra small earplugs for any infants with their highly sensitive eardrums.

I'm not suggesting that a group of jackbooted thugs like ICE ever manages to find themselves in a scenario where use is force is actually legitimate, but if that's your issue then your comlaint is with the existence of ICE, not with the use of suppressors.

Thank you, I'm glad to see someone else making this point. Like you said, there's plenty about this that's seriously fucked up already, the suppressor is not the problem.

But most people only know about this stuff from Hollywood (not their fault, if anything I'm grateful that the average Lemmy user has little personal knowledge of firearms, the world would be better if everyone could be so ignorant), and thinks that suppressors / "silencers" are some kind of devious tool only used by people looking to do surrupticious murders, because that's how they're always portrayed.

The far better question is why they need assault rifles?

A suppressor is actually a good thing to put on any weapon. That's why they're becoming standard in the military. Guns are unbelievably loud, to the point that they can cause serious and permanent hearing damage to people around you when you fire them. If you're accepting the premise that an armed police force is a good thing (I disagree, but that's a separate discussion) it at least makes sense to minimize collateral damage. The sound of gunfire is especially dangerous indoors; if an officer was forced to fire their weapon in an environment like they could actually seriously injure innocent bystanders just from the noise alone.

On the other hand, collateral damage is exactly why a 5.56mm carbine makes no sense as a police weapon. Those rounds will go straight through a human body, straight through a brick wall, and still be lethal. You could end up killing someone you can't even see. It used to be that when law enforcement wanted extra firepower, they used submachine guns and shotguns, weapons with very little potential for overpenetration. But then police forces all started freaking out about the idea that every criminal was going to be wearing level 3 body armour and demanding to use the same guns soldiers use (not helped by the fact that cops in the US are allowed to buy surplus military equipment at knockdown prices).

This doesn't come from an operational need, it comes from the fact that every cop wants to cosplay at being military, but without all the hardships that actually come with that. That's why you see federal agents and SWAT all running around in multicam and other military camo patterns, despite the fact that those patterns really don't do much of anything in an urban environment. It's all just dress up to make their peepees feel bigger.

The friction of people rubbing off of each other for the first time creates so many wonderful opportunities for storytelling, and forming bonds naturally through play, instead of prescribing them in a clinical session 0 context, tends to make the players much more invested in those bonds, in my experience.

Doesn't have to be a solo session. If you have the right group for it (big IF there) you can jump back and forth between the individual characters, essentially running four solo sessions in parallel. This relies heavily on your players being the kind of people who are invested in the action even when their character isn't present, but it can be done.

That said, I think for the most part the "Solo movie" should really be a character's backstory. This is why I don't like D&D, or at least the D&D presumption of starting at level 1. It leaves no room for characters to have an interesting history if they're basically at the level where the average house-cat is a threat. If I run D&D, I start people off at somewhere around level 5 - 10. Give them enough ability that they can actually have done some interesting things already. Get the solo movie out of the way before the game even starts.

No, Obi Wan and Luke found Han through contacts Obi Wan had at Mos Eisley having lived on Tatooine for years and gone to the trouble of maintaining underworld connections knowing he was on the run from the authorities, and they didn't just rock up and say "Yo, we're buds now," they employed Han and Chewie to smuggle them somewhere, that being the job of a pair of smugglers.

Inflation takes a while. Shocks that affect consumer confidence can actually increase spending temporarily. What's happening in the US right now is that people are spending more in order to get in all their long term purchases (car, tv, phone, computer, kids toys) before some combination of inflation and tariffs push the prices up. But this will only last as long as people's excess of spending money lasts. Then consumer purchasing will, if nothing changes, recede massively.

It's actually even more hilarious than that. Musk's kids are all IVF. He pays for sex selection. He only wants male kids. So he spent a stupid amount of money trying to make her a boy, and she turned out a girl anyway.

Pity they're putting robotaxis on the road soon. How well do you think this autopilot is going to work when there isn't anyone to put their hands on the wheel?