There's effectively no difference between single and multiplayer in NMS. Multiplayer isn't so much a distinct mode of gameplay, as merely hanging out in the game with another player. Think "playing Legos with a friend". Same activity, just more than one person. There are a few features intended to focus on multiplayer, like the nominally co-op Nexus missions - But I'm not aware of any exclusively multiplayer content, and even the Nexus missions are IMO easier to solo than trying to coordinate with someone else. And even in purely single-player mode, you can still see/visit bases/etc from other players, you just won't see the other players themselves.

I suppose a proper answer to your question depends on what you really mean by single-vs-multiplayer, though. There's a core storyline that's honestly more like a long tutorial mode, and they put on events roughly every two months (which are again often about showing off new features); but there's not really anything you'd call a proper "campaign mode". It's fundamentally an open-world exploration / survival / building game, from start to there-is-no-finish.

And just in case anything I've said here sounds negative - NMS is a mind-blowingly good game. Strongly recommend, particularly in VR.

...in the hands of a competent, careful and passionate programmer like Linux Torvalds.

What I worry about is when Bob in the junior software dev team, who does his job to put food on the table, and just good enough to keep his job, uses it to vibe-code company data as his day job.

Well, I do believe that the odds are that Ukraine will be defeated, but then I also believed that the odds were that North Vietnam would be defeated. So I'm clearly no expert in this area.

At the refrigerator end you're talking about grocery stores. I think you have unreasonable expectations. KISS. No remote control, only remote read. Have a technician come by and make and change commands. That shouldn't be needed very often, and you can monitor (but not control) it remotely.

Monitoring is one thing. Control is something else.

Sorry, but no, only sometimes. Often it's not known what the test would need to be, but it's known how to test the answer.

You have more certainty about the future than I do. I *do* doubt that the full projected build-out will ever happen, and that will definitely hurt some overcommitted people. It *might* crash thoroughly, but I see no reason to put that at higher than a 10% chance. More likely a bunch of planned construction never gets ordered. And *when* does that happen? This year? Next April 15th?

Yeah, it will crash, just like the internet build-out crashed. Some folks will get hurt. But it won't return to what it used to be. AI will continue to be important...and become more important. (And there will be lots of mistakes made in using it.)

Whether AI will start setting it's own goals is less certain. If it does, it may be safer than if it doesn't. Things could get really wonky if a strong AI starts pursuing a stupid goal because it was told to do so.

Sure, we'll just assign "master all things x509" to engineer #78 of 205... in our four-person shop.

Everyone in this conversation seems to be assuming every company has a massive IT department with folks just standing around picking their noses waiting for real work to show up and break the monotony. Outside Silicon Valley and Fortune-500s, that's an extreme rarity.

There's also an implicit assumption we're all running major-vendor enterprise-grade software written within the last twenty years; rather than an actively automation-hostile "best of a bad breed" industry-specific solution cobbled together by the nephew of a paranoid former CEO around the time I was graduating high-school, and it's sadly still the top tool of the trade.

Those who enjoy the luxury of never needing to leave Entra to do their jobs should stop throwing stones, take a step back, and realize their world isn't representative of the real world of IT.

Current AIs are only useful in areas where it's easy to recognize invalid results. (Ideally, easy enough that the AI, itself, can recognize that they are invalid, perhaps by invoking a deterministic tool.)

Well, they can also be valid for generating lots of "plausible ideas", like "What molecule would bind to this other molecule?", which can then be tested...but which can't be relied upon without testing. That's faster than experts can make guesses, and often has a higher success rate, but it needs testing.

Well, they're also useful for creating convincing bullshit.

So I guess my original "only" was too restrictive...but not *that* much too restrictive.

OK, why "August 4th, 2037"?
It sounds like you're following a particular story-line, but I don't know enough to recognize it.

Well, don't expect the board to support your policy. And most people that support the board have other criteria that they apply than "did they sign that stupid contract" (unless it's likely to bankrupt the institution).

You realize you don't have the power to "press charges", right? Whether or not Flock is happy with the situation, they have zero ability to compel the police to do a damned thing about it. Now... Sure, nobody can promise the feds won't investigate (though they wouldn't even have jurisdiction without abusing something like interstate commerce), but most colleges "are" their containing town, including the local PD. Remember why Cornell is currently in the spotlight for how poorly a particular investigation went down? Why would a purely external police matter reflect poorly on Cornell?

As for what I'd tell anyone who did investigate - Nothing at all, because 1) read the above, 2) absolutely nothing we ignore our fifth amendment rights to say will be used for our benefit, and 3) we'd need to be a complete moron to show our faces while cutting down a flock pole; and while I may be no genius, I'm also not a complete moron.

And you don't understand what he was saying. He was saying that the people who would decide that someone was incompetent were involved in, and approved of, the decision.

The poles are 20lbs of high-quality aluminum - Ironically, jokes about letting tweakers know about the gold in the e-waste Flock keeps leaving on the side of the road aside, the poles themselves are the single most valuable part of an installation (as scrap).

More importantly, a simple hacksaw will go through them like butter.

Maybe not, but this is a college campus. Simply make it known nobody's going to investigate their disappearance, and they'll be gone by morning.

I'm actually surprised this played out as long as it did - Had the same battle taken place at my alma mater, I can promise you I'd personally have cheerfully harvested them for parts the same day, and I'm by no stretch unusual in that regard.