I've never played Diplomacy, but I do remember an 11-hour session of Twilight Imperium back in my university days as one of my peak tabletop gaming experiences. Hours and hours of careful diplomacy and verbal agreements all coming apart in the final hour when three players vied for the final victory. I was never in contention, but I remain proud of not breaking my word in game to this day (and also helping cost the win for the player who screwed me over hardest).

One of my favourite board game memories is from a 3-player Twilight Imperium game where I managed to maneuver myself in such a way that the other players thought I wasn't a problem any more. Which allowed me to snatch the victory right from under their noses.

> (and also helping cost the win for the player who screwed me over hardest).

This is the best thing in games like this. You can actually claw your way back from being a second rate power by picking sides between the big powers and tilting the careful balance of power.

I did this to a degree that the two big players agreed to gang up on me because I was so annoying.

I responded by just fighting one of them, making him lose more and more troops, while barely resisting the other and tilting the balance of power

same. we played 5-6 times I think in uni, but the peak for sure was a marathon two day session with six players. We had cocktail parties with a side table with meals + drinks for the diplomacy phases. Legendary memory, though I also remember every time thinking "that was incredible but I am NEVER playing this again" each time afterwards before going back for more a few months later.

I've long dreamed of a reprise if I ever get the space and friends again, perhaps with dressing up fancy and/or a really nice champagne for that real diplomacy feel

In this metaphor, OpenAI/Anthropic literally started the escalator.

And so the mobile app development wheel turns. All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.

If the argument, which seems to be "code is cheap; let's write implementations for multiple platforms", remains true, what do you think will continue turning the wheel?

Thank you to the effort of building this game in the first place (I'm sorry that I never got to try it then), and thank you for re-introducing it to us today. I'll give it a proper play in my leisure time.

Thanks! would love to hear your feedback.

Welp, time for my annual Dwarf Fortress binge.

> My to-go order is always just an Americano.

Friend: visit us here in Australia. Walk into any good local coffee shop and order a long black (or a flat white if you're feeling adventurous). Your mind will be blown.

I think it's self-evident that that every legal system is both imperfect and unevenly-applied, being a finite resource. It's also a self-evidence truth that money & power buy resistance to the the legal system.

It's hard to put a definition on "unfair", but we all recognise it when we see it. That's why the case of Aaron Swartz is so very visceral for most of us.

This is another reason we can't have nice things. The level of entitlement required to send an angry message to someone complaining about their free resource being offline is mind-boggling, though.

There exists a possibility that they were correct and you are not.

But the larger possibility is that it is the other way around...

It's almost as though people and culture change over time.

To be less glib, that amount of time is more than ample to see a generational change in a sector as fast-moving as technology. Perhaps some robust push-back on his ideas better represents the a zeitgeist of people being less happy with a maximalist winner-takes-all attitude to business or personal success.