This is what charge backs are for FYI.

“I’m sorry, but you failed to provide a service. Either give me a full refund or I will start the charge back process with my credit card company and you’ll be forced to explain why your refund policy violates their ToS and any penalties that arise from that process.”

You’re right. Had to dig into my memory for this one and fact check myself.

IRC, BBS, and most forums (of the era) used PM or SP. MUCKs and a few other tools used Whisper. ICQ introduced “IM me”. Part of me remebers using the term “DM” for IRC messages, but I used IRC fairly regularly well into the 2010s.

However, the forum I spent a ton of my younger years on used “Direct Messages” which has likely polluted my memory. Since it was a technology related forum, that was probabaly a customization from the operator to distance everyone from the idea of “private” since everything was clear-text and unencrypted back then. That or I’m confusing “IM me” from the ICQ/AIM/MSN days.

Point being, nobody thought “PM” meant secure and not visible to the server operators back then. It just meant that only you, the recipient, server operators, and 1337 h4xx0rz could see your messages.

What a trip down edited memory lane that was. Thanks for fact checking me.

Umm… People have been using the phrase “Direct message (DM) me” since forever in the game and online comms world. Private message wasn’t a concept until after DMs were later encrypted. And we always knew, that if we didn’t control the servers, even encrypted, those messages were subject the server operators.

Your logic is giving me the impression that you’re younger and didn’t go through these experiences.

This has me thinking

The resurgance of sand batteries has been interesting. While not great for converting back into electricity, it’s great for heating and cooling which is a massive portion of our energy consumption. They can also store quite a ton of energy with crazy efficiency, especially when paired with heat pumps. And from what I’ve been able to deduce, they aren’t dependent on beach sand and can use rougher or man-made sand reliably.

First if we could get enough large buildings and neighborhood/home installation sand battery heating & cooling infrastructure operating with heat pumps. Then when during high times of energy production we can dump the energy into the sand battery infra and help keep the grid stablizied and keeping our heat & cooling overall percentage of use down.

In the end, we’re going to need tons of solutions and strategies for storing excess production during low demand times. I’m hopeful to see where we go here, the crazy things were seeing in energy storage is extremely interesting. I’m super excited to see the advances were seeing in calcium and sulfur based batteries expand in adoption and the production lines can scale with demand.

TBH, I never dug into rational wiki. However the timeline is fairly accurate from what I watched what happened to my friends both in the game industry and my former friends that were gamers (hint, i worked in games when this shit was unfolding).

Unfortunately, no other “timeline” source exists, with Wikipedia starting its paragraphs of history with Zoe Quinn creating Depression Quest, and many many other articles starting there as well. Some people like to attribute a slightly earlier event of a handful of journalists critiquing gamers over their reactions to the Mass Effect 3 ending, but that doesn’t really fit with how quickly things snowballed after “The Zoe Post”.

I stand against gamergate buddy.

Your timeline of events and triggers are off though.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Gamergate

I vividly remeber this time period and witnessing these events unfold live. I lost a good deal of people I considered friends at the time due to the misogyny that rose out.

You’re right though, gamergate followers were radicalized by what we now know as the “Alt-right”.

Gamergate started with “The Zoe Post”, not the removal of jailbait.

“The Zoe Post” is a hit piece from an Ex-boyfriend of game developer Zoe Quinn that alleged that she slept with a notable game reviewer to get positive reviews for her game. Said reviewer never actually reviewed her game.

Please don’t re-write the history of these events. Especially since jailbait had been removed for around a year when “The Zoe Post” dropped.

Yes, an article written by a podiatrist, peer reviewed by a podiatrist, and completely cites their credentials, sources, and reference materials.

Just because you don’t think it’s credible, doesn’t make it not credible.

https://patient.info/skin-conditions/excessive-sweating-hyperhidrosis/sweaty-feet#:~:text=In a pair of feet,other part of the body

I mean, you could have easily searched “how much do feet sweat per day” and verified this yourself.

But ok, here’s one of hundreds of the results from podiatry clinics that say roughly the same thing.

https://patient.info/skin-conditions/excessive-sweating-hyperhidrosis/sweaty-feet#:~:text=In a pair of feet,other part of the body.

Feet sweat. A lot. Like a pint (450g) of sweat a day or more if particularly active or you have larger feet.

So for me, daily at the least. On particularly active days, multiple times.

How did Gabe Newell offend you?

The dude has been a bastion of how to run a company that delights its end-users and doing their best to run a company ethically. A staunch group of people that believe in right-to-repair as well as believing in modding and community growth of games.

Yes there’s issues on the publisher/developmer side of things, however Valve constantly works with studios to help mitigate these pain points and on-board to their platform.

To resell them on Amazon for $4.99 a pop to rubes that don’t buy a box on AliExpress for $4.99

And the jobs are rarely worth the stress of picking apart the terribly designed, chock full BizDev rushed ads-on features due to foolish promises, and a manager that’s stressed out due to how few experts they’re are that’s going to try and micro-manage you because his skip-level is breathing down his neck about when something is going to be fixed.

No thanks, not again.

You can buy DRM free books @ your local book store.

BBS predate chatrooms and are proto-forums.