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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • That kind of punishment is used all the time in the USA. It’s criminal and/or civil forfeiture depending on the circumstances. But just as in the case in China it’s mostly applied on people who can’t fight back. Big mega corporation are mostly safe from it. But occasionally it hits rich people.

    Civil forfeiture is even heavily abused in the USA because the police department gets to keep the seized money and the burden of proof is shifted. The person who’s assets have been seized needs to provide proof of their innocence.








  • Monk 1/ Druid 11 works and is probably stronger than Druid 12. You gain Unarmored Defense and get to add your Wis modifier to your AC. That’s the only way the combo really works. And it basically plays like a full Druid. Obviously doesn’t work if you go down the Heavy Armor route.

    Ranger 3 / Monk 9 works. You would take Gloomstalker and Way of the Shadow for some strong turn 1 shenanigans. If you go weapon Monk you even get to use Ensnaring Strike and Hunter’s Mark otherwise you have a few support spells. But doesn’t sound like the way you want to play.


  • Non of your suggestions have any real synergy. You are mostly just giving up things and don’t gain much of value in return.

    For example Cleric/Druid makes no sense. You will have the same caster level as a single class Cleric or Druid but just won’t have any known 6th level spells. You just gain a few additional known 1st and 2nd level spells. But considering Cleric and Druid spells overlap a fair bit, it won’t even be that many.

    Cleric 7/ Ranger 5 might be the best option. You still get the extra attack from the Ranger and get the Domain Spells Guardian of Faith + Death Ward. Your caster level would be 10. So still a lot of spell slots available. For leveling it kinda depends on the rest of your party but I would say the first 5 level go into Cleric, then you use Withers to respecc 5 into Ranger to gain the extra attack. Then put the rest in Cleric again. Any Bow build with a single attack will feel rather underwhelming. Yes you lose out on a feat but you are basically trading a feat for a 2nd bow attack. Cleric 8 for Radiant Strike would be pointless anyhow since it’s melee only.

    Druid 7/ Ranger 5 might work in a similar way. Espeically if you like Moonbeam you can still have a single 5th level Moonbeam. Going higher in Ranger would hurt your Caster level too much.

    But again, you don’t really gain any real advantage. For example Wizard 1/Cleric 11 is the same as Cleric 12 but you have access to all Wizard spells you can learn from scrolls including 6th level wizard spells. Or if you Mutliclass Ranger with Rogue to gain sneak attack, or with Fighter to gain action surge. That would give you some actual advantages.


  • Firefox loss in market share is more complicated. It’s mostly due to growth in areas Firefox never had a foothold. Mainly the mobile browser and the Asian market (which mostly is mobile on top of it). On the desktop front in US and especially Europe the situation isn’t nearly as dire as the global stats imply.

    Firefox Android recently implemented extension support, so perhaps we will see some increased use there. But the majority of mobile users simply don’t care and considering how interlocked Google and Android is, there is little hope for a third party browser gaining a foothold.

    Brave had a lot of controversies and that’s because their aggressive marketing strategy is so expensive. That’s why they did shady stuff like hijacking links and insering their own affiliate codes. Something I don’t want Mozilla doing with Firefox. Also Brave uses Chromium and the future of Chromium seems bleek. If it actually starts disabling support for adblock extensions then Brave has no future at all.


  • Mozilla can’t compete against Google. Any attempts of growing their marketshare by advertising is going to fail. Google will just outspend them. Then Mozilla will either go bankrupt or have to recoup their investment by jumping on the data collection train. I much prefer they stay sensible with their business modell and focus on being sustainable. Firefox will naturally grow as people start caring more and more about their online-privacy.

    Same with any kind of new innovations or projects. I don’t want to outright discourage them but I much prefer their current pace of doing things slow and safely. Because if we lose Firefox due to Mozilla taking some kind of gamble the alternative browsers remaing don’t really seem appealing.


  • If normal poses a challenge you might be too conservative with your resources. It’s perfectly fine to have a short rest after each fight to regain your abilities. And even long rests are basically free, so unless you are in one of the rare time sensitive moments use them a lot.

    Also consumables should be used more freely. Elixirs last until a long rest, so are usually good for at least 3 fights. Potions and weapon coatings also add up, that additional D4 of the lowest poison does a lot. And it’s just a bonus action to apply and lasts 10 turns .

    Scrolls of spells you have already learned should be used if you are out of spell slots. You don’t need to save them for a harder fight. You can always have a long rest before entering a hard fight. But they can make that random encounter you entered with few spell slots much easier.

    And all of that goes hand in hand with organizing your ability bar. It’s a pain to do but being able to see what you have available is so valuable. At the very least make use of the individual tabs for “Class abilities” “Spells” and “Consumables”. They give you a better overview than the default bar.


  • You can’t always come back. I would say most things give you 2-3 chances and the order doesn’t matter but certain decisions are a one time chance only and if you miss it, it’s gone. And if you miss those 2-3 chances, things are also gone for good.

    For weapons the best example is during the “Prologue”. While you are still on the Nautiloid there is a strong enemy with a burning sword. If you play as “intended” and ignore the enemy, you won’t get it. And there is no option of getting it later (to my knowledge).

    Then there are a lot of other decision where you aren’t sure of any long-term consequences. During the first 3-4 hours this bothered me and I did a lot of reloading trying to find the “optimal” way. But by now I embrace it. I finally have a solid idea behind how my character would act and just go with decisions inline with that. And I will have multiple play throughs of the game almost certainly.


  • Most likely yes. It’s not uncommon for platforms to remove some bad ratings in situations like this. And I would even argue it’s legitimate. Not all of these reviews are genuine. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people created multiple accounts to leave multiple bad reviews. And if Google detects that, they are of course going to remove them.

    They also do it with fake positive reviews. Not nearly as diligently but that’s because no one puts attention on them. While you can be sure Reddit was complaining about some reviews.


  • I agree that the insurance company has a right to regular inspections to spot potential risks and take action before something happens. But they should then come up with a solution rather than cancel the policy. If they told the homeowner to clean up the backyard or they will have to increase the policy/cancel it then that would be acceptable. But letting insurance companies cancel whenever they feel like it makes no sense and defeats the purpose. What’s next? Flood insurance cancels your policy because heavy rain is expected?

    But they definitely should have to schedule a time for the inspection. No one should be able to just film your backyard whenever they feel like it. There are tons of things one might do in their backyard they don’t want others to film.


  • Right now the system is still just theoretical so the specifics are undefined. But the idea is that they wouldn’t. I assume they could still figure it out by tracking the IP addresses of those who access the token and matching it to a company. But the company doesn’t have to send a request. I assume you are just generating a link that says “This person is age X”. So the link itself serves as the verification. The link would only be valid for 5-15 minutes, so you can’t just steal it to impersonate someone else.


  • I came around the idea of stricter enforcement of age verification for online services. But the way it is implemented doesn’t make any sense. I wouldn’t trust porn sites with any personal information of mine.

    I like the idea France is working on, a double anonymity age verification service. A third-party (hopefully the government) is used to verify your age and generate a token and that token can be used on any site to verify your age. The site verifying your age doesn’t know for which service you are generating the token and the site doesn’t have any access to personal data.

    Whether or not pornographic material should be accessible to people under the age of 18 is another topic. I am not sure what a good age cut-off would be. But I definitely agree that there should be an age limit.