They absolutely did. AOL in particular used a buffer overflow bug in AIM to execute arbitrary code to determine if the client was actually AIM or a third-party client pretending to be AIM.
MSN Messenger and Yahoo IM both cried foul about this and called out for interoperability, but then turned around and denied third-party clients access to their own networks once they got big enough.
Blocking accounts still prevents them from showing you promoted tweets. I think the only thing that stopped working was the ability to share and subscribe to block lists.
What do you mean by "reload" ? I just tried on iOS to "exit" the app (swipe up in task manager), restart the app: it kept showing me the chronological timeline, like I picked last time.
Also- this random behavior is totally different on my couple of alts on the same iOS app.
I have had the exact same discussion as we're having now many times since Twitter released the For You timeline. Never managed to pin-point to a specific behavior, everyone seems to get a different one.
Not surprised than Elon's Twitter's isn't better. In one hand I welcome their revert to tabs for "For you / Timeline", at least, it's easy to know you aren't reading the correct timeline…
Back when I played it, there was a 50 game skill test for new players which determined which of the major rank pools you were placed in.
Those first 50 games were crazy because you were matched randomly with other new and established players, so sometimes you would play someone really good who would steamroll you in the first 5 minutes, and sometimes you got someone who had at most played the scripted campaigns against the AI and thought they could sit there for the first 30 minutes slowly building up an army.
It was actually pretty fun not knowing which way it would go, and whenever we matched with newbies my partner and I got to experiment with a bunch of different strategies that would never work in a real game.
> played the scripted campaigns against the AI and thought they could sit there for the first 30 minutes slowly building up an army.
This right here is my fundamental problem with multiplayer RTS games. The fun I get out of them is in the slow burn long buildup, but other players always find ways to optimize the early game so they win fast and never actually get to the fun part where everyone has massive bases lobbing nukes at eachother. The fun way to play is not the optimal way to play.
It's now been about 10 years since I've even bothered trying an RTS online.
I don't mean to be rude (I'm a very bad Starcraft II enthusiast) but most people who complain about this problem seem to want to play a solo game for 30 minutes and then eventually meet the other player in the field of battle at the half-hour mark. That's an obvious no-go, you can't ignore 90% of the game and expect to have fun.
The way to beat players who play strong openers is to play a strong opener yourself, but not necessarily all-in aggressive. If you want to get to the late game you enjoy you must get better at the early game. Harass the other guy early, scout their build, make sure you're building counters to what the other player is playing. Defend well. Deny their economy here and there. Inevitably crush them with nukes and capital ships after 30 minutes of solid fundamentals.
(Starcraft is still a lot of fun and I'd encourage you to get back in to RTS playing)
> you can't ignore 90% of the game and expect to have fun.
I think maybe what you meant to say was "... and expect to _win_"
Plenty of people have fun turtling (:
This is one thing I liked about Total Annihilation — defense tech was relatively strong, so some amount of turtling and racing to get high tech artillery (eg) was a viable approach.
There's plenty of turtling for Terran and Protoss in SC2. Defense tech like cannons, planetarys, shield batteries, and bunkers help. It's definitely not fool proof but is classically something people struggle against.
I think a larger issue is that there's like 3-5 games to get ranked and then a bit more to get really ranked properly. And by SC2 design the early game is resource constrained so decisions are important and even with the right decisions execution is hard.
Try playing Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance Forever - it's a Total Annihilation sequel that's now community supported. It's got a decent AI and an active community of all levels. It's on Steam and often goes on sale.
Well, honestly both! SC2 in particular is a game of rock-paper-scissors, you must know what your opponent is building in order to stay alive. If you turtle blindly against a half-decent player you'll get eaten alive.
I used to play Age of Empires in treaty mode. You had XX minutes where you couldn't attack one another so just focused super hard on macro. Utter chaos when the treaty period ended as everyone had max size armies. Lagged the hell out of my computer. Good times
It was a fairly popular variant of the game too, never had trouble finding matches
Yeah I've felt the same way at times, especially when the armor/weapon types make it very rock paper scissors. It wasn't as blatant in the original StarCraft, but WarCraft 3 and StarCraft 2 seemed to go hard into counters against certain types of units, so someone who either scouts a bit better than you do or picks an army composition that happens to perfectly counter yours will mop the floor with you.
My partner and I had way more fun in those early games when we could stretch it out to 30-60 minutes sometimes. Once you're playing against ranked people who are there to win it's just a mad rush to the first or second tech tier.
Yeah, I was aware of the different armor types in SC1, but I thought they turned it up to 11 in SC2. Maybe they brought it down to the first 2 tiers of units? It didn't feel like armor types really came into play as early in the game. The impression I got was that you could get away with massing a single type of unit much more easily in SC1.
There's a game mode in AoE2DE where everyone's behind strong walls at the start. It takes a while to be able to bring them down. So you get to turtle for a while. A game mode like this is what you'd like to play.
> A China-based team at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, planned to use the TikTok app to monitor the personal location of some specific American citizens, according to materials reviewed by Forbes.
Agreed, Siri is already a little too sensitive. I was raking leaves the other day and Siri muted my music temporarily because the swish swish sound of the leaves somehow activated her!
Russia did that. They've damaged/destroyed their own pipelines before in order to avoid penalty clauses in contracts or to get out of a bad deal after the price changed out of their favor, and that's why they did it this time, too.
No. The US (or some deputized vassal at the direction of US) did it to destroy German/European industrial power and sever any potential alliance of European industry and cheap Russian commodities/energy flowing through Euro denominated trade outside $ system, along with the massive geopolitical alignment changes this would bring threatening US power/hegemony.
Peeling Europe away from a US alliance through energy partnership and trade, especially trade denominated in Euros which greatly benefited Europeans, was such a powerful lever to play in Russian geopolitical strategy that people claiming Russia blew up their own pipelines and threw this lever away have worms in their brain and simply haven't paid attention to the long term dynamics.
Having Germany/Europe on your side, vs them being on your biggest adversary's side is such an order of magnitude net benefit than saving money on contracts, this is just ridiculous.
Additionally, even if consideration of blowing up the pipelines ever made any sense whatsoever for Russia, blowing them up right now before winter, before further deterioration of Germany/European industrial economy, and before potential financial/energy crisis really bites right around the corner or next year is absurd. If this was a few years from now we could entertain theories of why not having the pipes and trade with Europe is better than having them (it still wouldn't make sense).
But Russia "panic bombing" their own pipelines right before pressure on Europe is about to increase which would potentially get them to capitulate on their sanctions is silly.
This is US propaganda and you bought it. Many different political leaders in congress, the white house, and the administrative state like Victoria Nuland, Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz, Joe Biden, Trump, Marco Rubio, Condoleeza Rice, Lindsey Graham just to name a few have for years attacked the project and promised destruction of Nord Stream.
Anthony Blinken wrote a book in 1988 called "Ally vs Ally" that speculated about blowing up Soviet gas pipelines flowing into Europe, and discussed the Reagan administrations deep opposition to expanding energy trade between Europe and Russia. This is a long term existential threat to US hegemony and dominance of European affairs.
If Russia maybe having to pay a few fees, which I'm sure they could just avoid if they wanted to, was more important than potential energy alliance between Russia and Europe, then multiple US administrations would not have talked and acted to end the project so intensely.
This is another example of the all to common delusional thinking that for some reason, the world hegemon that controls financial system, trade lanes, has massive military power and spending advantage, whose empire is very dependent upon global reserve currency and influence of energy trade, won't actually act like a hegemon and apply their power to suit their interests and thwart rivals building their own power.
What makes you think the US who promised Nord Stream would be stopped, wouldn't stop it with kinetic force and sabotage? This is the Occam's razor, "cui bono" explanation.
Your article claims Russia hasn't called the attacks attacks. They have.
Also, it correctly states that destruction of the pipelines "signals a point of no return". Yes, exactly, which is why it makes 0 sense for Russia to do it, and complete sense for US (either directly or through deputized vassals like UK) to do it.
Why would Russia want to reach a point of no return on potential alliance with Germany/Europe against the US?
See Mackinder's heartland theory on potential global power emanating from control of the "world island"/Eurasia:
Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
who rules the World-Island commands the world
A particular path to this goal that he and many others leading US/NATO/UK security strategy saw was a German/Russia alliance, something US has wanted to prevent for over 100 years. Putin would never throw away potential for this, something he was building towards for decades, in a matter of weeks before circumstances could lead to its realization.
This is a very long list of your unsourced "opinions" when all nations that have inspected the damage and assessed the intelligence have pointed the blame at Russia. Everyone but Russia.
Denmark, Sweden, and Germany have begun investigations but have not blamed Russia [0] and in particular are having issues coordinating the investigation and are individually maintaining secrecy about their findings.
Sweden has elected to have a partial separate investigation apart from Germany and Denmark citing national security concerns [1]. The point here is the issue is not resolved and there is confusion on all sides; aside from US media elements or US politicians, the investigators themselves have not said Russia was responsible and you won't find a European official at center of investigation making claims of Russian responsibility.
You are correct that the issue is not yet resolved. However, throughout the course of Russia's illegal war, US credibility has improved and Russia's has plummeted. They lied about the fact that they were preparing for war, they lied about their reasons for launching the war, they've pillaged and looted like medieval barbarians, and they've committed innumerable war crimes against both civilians and Ukrainian POWs.
In the absence of evidence and with only finger-pointing at this stage, I am inclined to believe that Russia is responsible since they have damaged their own pipelines several times in the past and lied about those instances, too. If Russia had any credibility before, they have essentially none now, and they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
As for their motives, there are several: to avoid paying the "force majeure" penalty, to give an unambiguous signal that no more gas is forthcoming in the immediate future, to threaten Europe's own energy infrastructure with a demonstration, to weaken the alliance by making some EU countries suspect the US, and for Putin to warn Russia's oligarchs that they can't just depose him and resume gas shipments - Russia is now all-in and can't go back to normal anytime soon even after a regime change.
As for Biden saying he would "stop" the pipeline earlier this year, he was talking about a different pipeline, Nord Stream 2 (which had not yet started operation at the time he made that remark), not Nord Stream 1. He was threatening to work with US allies to block it from opening in the first place.
The US has forbidden Ukraine from attacking Russian territory with US weapons, why would we take the escalatory step of attacking Russian infrastructure ourselves? We could have just let Ukraine do whatever they wanted with US weapons and denied responsibility, but the US was careful to avoid provoking Russia too much. It makes no sense that after all that tip-toeing around we would say "to hell with it" and launch a direct attack.
>he was talking about a different pipeline, Nord Stream 2
No. It is it not "different" seeing as that very pipeline was attacked and damaged, along with the other one. Nord Stream 1 and 2 were both attacked and damaged. They run parallel for much of their path except at certain parts.
Yes, and given the energy crisis now affecting Europe and Germany, inflation, and potential shortages of gas when winter comes and/or next year plus industrial needs for natural gas as input, it is exceedingly ridiculous that Russia would preempt these immanent crises and throw away their leverage for potential alliance with Europe in opposition to US right as the mounting pressures incentivize Europe to abandon sanctions and push for rapprochement.
You bring up war crimes and war decisions. First of all all wars involved war crimes, including the current one on the Ukrainian side. But put morality aside for a second, I'm addressing interests and realpolitik. That Russia saw it in there interest to attack is one thing. I dispute that they saw it in their interest to blow up their own pipeline and their primary point of leverage and economic strength towards an alliance with Europe in opposition to their primary enemy. No benefit of the doubt is required here to see this reality.
Biden was saying "we'll make sure Nord Stream 2 never opens" while you were using that statement to insinuate that he was threatening both pipelines. Yes, both pipelines were damaged, but he was not threatening an attack with that statement and he was not threatening Nord Stream 1, either.
It's actually in the US's interest for the Nord Stream 1 to remain operational for at least a few more months so that Europe can fill its reserves. The extra money Russia/Gazprom pulls in from that is not going to make much of a difference to the war effort, while the extra gas will help ensure that Europe's resolve doesn't break this winter. Next winter hopefully they'll have further transitioned to green energy and LNG. So just looking it at that way, the US should not attack the pipeline at this time. Maybe next string, but not now!
I presented numerous possible motives for Russia to damage its own pipelines at this time, as well as a record of similar past behavior. I think I made a compelling case. I can see where you are coming from, but I disagree with your conclusions. If you don't agree with any of my points and won't budge on this at all then that's fine, but there's nothing more to debate here.
America is more than component enough to blow up a gas pipeline, so why was one of the pipes of Nord Stream 2 spared? Pressuring Germany to certify it giving Russia a huge win.
The obvious answer is because regardless of how much text people write, it was clearly Russia who had the most to gain and the easiest ability to do it.
Gazprom has maintenance robots that can be sent down the pipes and could be used to cause an internal explosion.
Much more likely and reasonable than some sort of fanciful special operations mission.
