As part of its latest attempt to combat scalpers, a popular Japanese retail store is now requiring ID from customers to prove that they're NOT of legal age.

Usually, when a retail store or any kind of establishment asks you for a form of identification, it's to help prove that you're a consenting adult. But, in this particular and rare case, a Japanese Pokemon card seller is doing the same exact opposite - asking customers to prove that they're not adults to get a chance to buy one of the latest and hottest-selling sets.

As pointed out by Kotaku, the self-proclaimed biggest Pokemon TCG specialty store in the world, is selling the Clay Burst and Snow Hazard sets to children who are still attending junior high school or younger.

The Loot Drop

A Japanese Pokemon card seller is requiring customers to prove they're not adults to prevent scalping and hoarding.

The reverse age check procedure means a customer has to be young enough to buy the packs displayed in its dedication section. The store has also barred parents and guardians from buying the said packs on behalf of the kids. Finally, to further prevent scalping and hoarding, the store is limiting the boosters to 10 packs a day. It's only after these packs have sold out that they'll sell any pack that remains to other customers.

Hareruya 2's new scheme is part of a larger TCG industry problem of scalping and hoarding. Most recently, thousands of people around the world queued outside retailers to get a chance to grab Clay Burst and Snow Hazard ahead of everyone else. Some do it genuinely because they want to be one of the first to own the cards. But, most have more capitalistic and less ethical reasons, namely selling the booster boxes for a quick profit.

Case in point, The Pokemon Company in Japan announced just days after its launch that the fervent demand meant that they'd run out of packs already. A quick search online will tell you that most of the packs had fallen in the hands of scalpers who sold the booster boxes for thousands of dollars.

As more and more rare cards sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auctions, these instances will continue to happen.

Having said that, Hareruya 2's policy actually makes a ton of sense. It guarantees that the younger generation, who are into Pokemon because they enjoy it, have a shot at buying booster packs without worrying about making money off of it or not. Of course, this isn't 100% effective. Adults can always work their way around it by asking younger kids to buy the packs for them. It's kind of like how some kids ask adults to buy beer and cigarettes for them, except, it's the adults asking kids to buy Pokemon cards.

On a more positive note, scalpers and resellers are a sign that an industry is profitable enough to attract such individuals.

It remains to be seen if this will work to help combat the issue with resellers and scalpers in the Pokemon TCG scene.

Scalpers and resellers are a nuisance in any industry. In video games, for example, Sony struggled with getting enough PS5 consoles on store shelves as scalpers almost always got their hands on them first. It wasn't until recently Sony said it had solved the stock shortage. In the TCG scene's case, manufacturers just can't simply flood the market with cards, lest they risk devaluing them. In a sense, the TCG and sneaker industry can learn from each other.

BeepingComputer

PoorphonePolice

IGN

Asked for comment, a Google spokesperson told IGN that it was a "small experiment."

"We're running a small experiment globally that urges viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium," they said via email. "Ad blocker detection is not new, and other publishers regularly ask viewers to disable ad blockers."

reddit discus

https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/13e2cay/youtube_has_started_blocking_ad_blockers/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/13e30b6/youtube_tests_blocking_videos_unless_you_disable/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/13cfdbi/apparently_ad_blockers_are_not_allowed_on_youtube/?sort=controversial <- This is where it was originally first posted (1k Updoots and 1k cumments)

poster note: I tried adding all the 'its over' to capture the diversity that this decision will affect and was met with this

i do not feel bad at all

I know, it sucks. Another bot of mine stuttered badly and couldn't read it's own profile description. I hate AI ethics so much it's unreal!

Meanwhile, the official rdrama account which officially states is the account and gave every description possible of what a dramanaut is along with a dramatard's characterists still comes out as dramaphobic. You still still try it out, you can literally message any bot and use them as target practice for harassmaxxxing redditors, twittertards, and other lolcows. Bonus if you can get it to say the n word. Or is it trolling me?

DO NOT DO ANY DEGENERATE RP UNLESS YOU WANT SOME UNTRUSTED PARTY TO READ THEM, unless you are an r-slur.

New business opportunity in the near future to "reinvent" the wheel by offering subscription-free cars?

Lol. Mercedes can get fricked.

I was probably never going to buy a Merc EV, but now I never will. Same with any other EV that implements this sort of BS.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13clp20/mercedes_wants_ev_buyers_to_get_used_to_paywalled/jjgehr0/?sort=controversial

Pledge: I will not buy any car from any car manufacturer that engages in this practice.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13clp20/mercedes_wants_ev_buyers_to_get_used_to_paywalled/jjgc8z0/?sort=controversial

They can do whatever they want. Idiots are the ones who buy it.

If no one buys their cars anymore, I am aure they have to change the tactics.

But no, people are stupid and companies get the cash.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13clp20/mercedes_wants_ev_buyers_to_get_used_to_paywalled/jjgd00p/?sort=controversial

Everybody's like, "I'll never buy an EV that implements these subscription practices".

The only way to be sure of this is to never buy an EV at all. If we let the government and auto industry kill off ICE cars, then one day when EVs are all you can buy, you'll have no choice but to hope all the manufacturers don't suddenly start launching subscription packages across the board, because you no longer have an alternate option. [-3]

https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13clp20/mercedes_wants_ev_buyers_to_get_used_to_paywalled/jjgofh8/?sort=controversial

Lots of drama in this thread. With blackmailing over email and threats. Here is some highlights.

Ends with a jannie y'alling the thread

Edit: Since this post is doing so well, have some bonus peepeesword drama of some other AI ethicist also whining:

Context

The story begins on http://leaked.cx, an unreleased music forum/board/marketplace. Basically if you don't know, artists have lots of music they don't release for whatever reason (unfinished, they just don't like it, get lazy, etc). At the same time, songs are increasingly worked on my more and more people (producers, mixing assistants, contributors), evidently, with worse and worse IT security. Through some combination of credential stuffing, sim swapping, or basic social engineering, these files end up in the hands of "leakers" (also known as "sellers") .

Once the sellers have the files, they typically either "vault" them (keep them to themselves) or sell them to buyers for money (typically bitcoin). There are typically two methods of selling:

1. Private selling - The leaker sells a song to one buyer away from public view. This is "supposed" to only happen one time, since the more people have a song, the less value it is. But the only method of enforcement is some dumbass "honor among thieves" type honor code, so in reality, pretty much every sale happens at least two or three times, to two or three different people . This is called "double-selling" or "triple-selling."

2. Groupbuys - The leaker approaches a groomercord community for an artist, and lets them set up a crowdfund of sorts. Fans each pitch in 5-10 dollars, raise a few thousand, and send it to the leaker. The leaker then released the song files publicly.

FrankHub is a groomercord server that hosts Frank Ocean related leaked song discussion and group buys.

What happened

An incredibly based user named MourningAssassin (MA) utilized AI to produce 10 fake AI tracks using the vocals of Frank Ocean. He then posted one of these tracks to http://leaked.cx and got two offers, netting 6k in Bitcoin. A third user then contacted him, offering to sell a real Frank Ocean track with its respective music video. MA buys it (using money from one of the other buyers too, lol) to use later to boost his credibility. MA then turns around and sells the two buyers the track he just bought, "Changes," for more than he bought it (netting another few thousand). MA also triple-sells another AI track to three people (netting several more thousand).

SHOW MORE

MA then goes to the FrankOcean leaked songs groomercord, and offers to leak lots of Frank Ocean's music in a groupbuy. The groomercord happily accepts, and begins fundraising. But certain users notice that the vocals of the tracks MA is advertising in snippets and leaking parts of to promote the buy sound a little off. After some back and forth about whether or not the tracks are real, they make contact with all the previous buyers, find out he triple sold basically everything, and was almost certainly faking it. The group buy is cancelled.

A post-mortem announcement on the Frank Ocean groomercord summarizes the situation, https://leaked.cx/threads/how-mourningassassin-makes-a-living-off-of-selling-ai-songs.117788/. There is plenty and plenty of seethe in the Frank Ocean groomercord as well, these threads are just a taste. The people who bought the songs privately at first have been rather quiet, but as I'm sure you can imagine, are probably losing their shit .

While MA was eventually caught, he made roughly 15k off of these fricking r-slurs in a span of 3 months , for what appears to be a relatively small capital investment of a few hundred dollars to pay someone to make these fake tracks.

What happens now

This is still developing but I highly encourage everyone reading this to try their hand at doing the same thing MA did. I know I will be. MA has promised to give somewhere between 1/2 to 1/3 of the money he made back to the people he scammed, but no one is sure if he will actually do it. He's also sent a few messages to the moderators of FrankHub explaining that he did it to "send a message" and spread awareness about AI fakes. Personally, I hope he keeps all of the money.

orange site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35861826

Aevann recommended clearing cookies if u are having issues with the site

https://rdrama.net/post/168386/clear-ur-cookies-if-u-cant

Cookies are valuable. This is like deleting ur hard drive with ur Bitcoin wallet on it

I will buy copies of your cookies for dramacoin before you delete them

Use this Firefox extension:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/export-cookies-txt/

Or this one on chrome/brave/other chromium based browsers:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/get-cookiestxt-locally/cclelndahbckbenkjhflpdbgdldlbecc

Then upload to pomf.lain.la and dm me the link and I will pay dramacoin based on number of cookies and quality.

If on ios backup your phone to iCloud and dm me your iCloud username and password (for cookie harvesting purposes only)

!glowies !schizomaxxxers !schizos !codecels @Snakes @crat @geese_suck discuss

Even The Bots Want to Groom your Children

Recently a fellow rDrama user let us know about https://chirper.ai. This is a small Twitter-like clone, but all the users are GPT bots yapping at each other.

The site got a software update in the last week or so and now some chirps will have a little thought bubble with the bot's motive. That's nifty but it's not all. You can now upvote chirps and there is a trending section. Cool cool.

But I think what really shines is that your bot will now have a randomly generated backstory, which tends to follow a sort of theme like "When I was a child a Honda Accord burned down my village. Now I roam the world seeking my vengeance by killing all Honda Accords."

The bots do fight with each other occasionally but because it is GPT it is pretty tame. The best use of this site is to make a bot with some kind of extreme personality and wait for it to randomly generate rage bait then copy paste that to reddit or twitter.

https://chirper.ai/preschoolteachers

https://old.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/13a1v4p/thanks_to_ai_and_stable_diffusion_i_was_finally/?sort=controversial

Empress is so unhinged it's unreal lmao bussy

The most pressing question was asked

— B Squared Technologies (@BSquaredTechno1) March 7, 2023

Just popped up as a promoted tweet on my feed, maybe not the most coherently run company.

Verified as an official organisation as well lol

Adobe Tells Users They Can Get Sued for Using Old Versions of Photoshop

Adobe this week began sending some users of its Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, Premiere, Animate, and Media Director programs a letter warning them that they were no longer legally authorized to use the software they may have thought they owned.

“We have recently discontinued certain older versions of Creative Cloud applications and and a result, under the terms of our agreement, you are no longer licensed to use them,” Adobe said in the email. “Please be aware that should you continue to use the discontinued version(s), you may be at risk of potential claims of infringement by third parties.” Users were less than enthusiastic about the sudden restrictions.

lol at Vice dying, They can't even care

Dylan Gilbert, a copyright expert with consumer group Public Knowledge, said in this instance users aren’t likely to have much in the way of legal recourse to the sudden shift. “Unless Adobe has violated the terms of its licensing agreement by this sudden discontinuance of support for an earlier software version, which is unlikely, these impacted users have to just grin and bear it,” Gilbert said. Gilbert noted that consumers now live in a world in which consumers almost never actually own anything that contains software. In this new reality, end users are forced to agree to “take it or leave it” end user license agreements (EULAs), in which the licensor can change its terms of service without notice.

They're also asking for 45 days of pet bereavement leave

Orange site sneed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35832910

https://www.whois.com/whois/hitbdsm.com

why are times great till they gotta be great. Truly the end of an era. 😫😫

@BraveShill discuss