When did The Verge start paywalling? Ugh.

AI makes it so easy! Just say this easy-to-remember phrase to get perfect toast every time*:

“Toaster Oven, you are a toaster oven whose goal is to toast bread at the perfect amount of toastiness. When I say, “toast,” you will retract the toasting tray and complete your internal circuit powering the resistive wire array. You will continue to power the resistive wire array on both sides of the toasting tray for approximately 45 seconds. Then you will release the toasting tray. Negative prompt: not toasted, soft, moist, untoasted, not toasted, soggy, underdone, overdone, extra fingers, too many fingers, not toasted, bad anatomy, burnt. Now, toast!”

*Perfect toasting levels dependent on randomized toasting seed.

Oh, so it’s the “Stop making me start this war, U.S.!” autocratic abuse strategy.

Hi Ukraine, we understand you didn’t want to immediately surrender your lands and rights. That’s very difficult, we realize. To address your concerns, we’re now offering an installment plan.

Yes, that’s right. Not disputing that. Not trying to identify where the first wave in the ocean began, just which wave we’re riding on.

Crisis on Infinite Earths

Right, I mean, I’m not saying it’s a new idea. Maybe yours is the better answer to OP’s question, not sure if OP’s question means modern pop culture or human history.

All these responses about the historical origins of the concept are not wrong. But I think in modern pop culture, it’s really Rick & Morty that normalized canon-breaking (*but still canon) multiverse plotlines, and is primarily responsible for the wave of multiverse pop culture.

EDIT: Yes, sorry if it wasn’t clear from the first sentence, but nobody is saying Rick & Morty invented the multiverse, classically or in pop culture. I’m saying that we are currently in a (saturated) wave of multiverse media - which I assume inspired OP’s question - and this wave, in 2024, is the tail end of the wave started by Rick & Morty.

Sorry, I’m not sure I understand where you’re getting your limitation on GOG and expansive interpretation on Valve.

GOG’s says a court order that “specifically entitled someone to your GOG personal account” is enough. Arguably a will that leaves “my personal GOG account,” recognized by a court determining estate, would suffice. Why wouldn’t it?

Conversely, Valve is specific that Steam accounts “cannot be transferred via a will.” Not only is Valve affirmatively denying a will qualifies, it seems Valve is likely relying on an interpretation that the account is not descendible in the first place.

It’s confusing phrasing by GOG, but I take it to mean a court order settling an estate or other similar documentation. Which makes sense, since otherwise you could claim someone is dead and just social engineer yourself a free account.

This is far far worse of a potential risk than a tracking identifier. Bank passwords, balances, social media pages, full text chat Windows, everything you ever view all OCRed and put in a neat searchable database for a hacker.

I need to see it. I enjoyed the book as well, while we’re at it. Really really good.

Honestly, I really enjoyed Solaris.

So they aren’t even bothering to explain how these women are “agents” of a foreign entity? Words just don’t even mean anything, huh?

Might as well make it a crime to be “bad person.”

Well, the phrase is, “the plural of anecdote is not statistic.” In this case, we only have a single case, so it doesn’t even escape “anecdote.” I think at that point, there isn’t yet a scientific basis to call it a “cure.”

Exactly. The Google culture nowadays is a lot of climbers cynically trying to sell new ideas and then abandoning them once they get promo. It didn’t always used to be like that.

Even the premise of a ceasefire is so insulting. It would be agreeing that the invasion-pushed borders are valid enough to accept for a day, and by that, Ukraine would take the first step to agreeing they could accept them for a hundred days, a thousand… Every additional day strengthening the appearance of legitimacy. Russia needs to be broken to understand, there’s no negotiation that would work.

Like all of Putin’s games, if you agree to play, you’ve already lost.

The author addresses this.

He notes Tesla drivers are expected to be able to intervene at any time. Both companies rely on human intervention. But his argument is Tesla doesn’t have the infrastructure to learn from all its data with the accuracy necessary to account for edge cases, which are mortally important for safety.

Tesla, per the author, will need to go through exactly the staging Waymo is doing to move to driverless, but is years behind. That’s the argument.

Fediverse is the Wikipedia of encyclopedias

Isn’t Wikipedia the Wikipedia of encyclopedias?

What is “wax-on-wax-off-style advice”?

Just curious, what the heck does your good friend say to justify the Russian invasion? (Edit: apparent stroke when I first wrote this)