Considering that they aren't properly separating the two groups, I don't see this "response" as anything but a weak excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway.
Core to the problem is that Roblox’s social media features allow pedophiles to efficiently target hundreds of children, with no up-front screening to prevent them from joining the platform.
For example, in 2018, prior to Roblox going public, a 29-year-old was caught by police with 175 hours of video footage of him grooming and engaging in explicit behavior with 150 minors using online platforms, namely Roblox.
Media and non-profit exposés from 2020 to July 2024 revealed digital strip clubs, red light districts, sex parties and child predators lurking on Roblox. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation in 2024 labeled Roblox “a tool for sexual predators, a threat for childrens’ safety”.
Numerous criminal indictments from 2019-2024 allege that sexual predators groomed children in-game, ranging from 8-14 years old, then kidnapped, raped or traded sexual content with them.
Following years of scandals, we performed our own checks to see if the platform had cleaned up its act. As a test, we attempted to set up an account under the name ‘Jeffrey Epstein’…only to see the name was taken, along with 900+ variations.
Many were Jeffrey Epstein fan accounts, including “JeffEpsteinSupporter” which had earned multiple badges for spending time in kid’s games. Other Jeff Epstein accounts had the usernames “@igruum_minors” [I groom minors], and “@RavpeTinyK1dsJE” [rape tiny kids].
We attempted to set up a Roblox account under the name of another notorious pedophile to see if Roblox had any up-front pedophile screening: Earl Brian Bradley was indicted on 471 charges of molesting, raping and exploiting 103 children. The username was taken, along with multiple variants like earlbrianbradley69.
After we found a username, we listed our age as “under 13” to see if children are being exposed to adult content. By merely plugging ‘adult’ into the Roblox search bar, we found a group called “Adult Studios” with 3,334 members openly trading child pornography and soliciting sexual acts from minors.
We tracked some of the members of “Adult Studios” and easily found 38 Roblox groups – one with 103,000 members – openly soliciting sexual favors and trading child pornography.
The chatrooms trading in child pornography had no age restrictions. Roblox reports that 21% of its users are under the age of 9, a number that is likely underestimated given that Roblox has no age verification aside from users seeking 17+ experiences.
Registered as a child, we were also able to access games like “Escape to Epstein Island” and “Diddy Party”. We found over 600 “Diddy” games, including “Survive Diddy” and “Run From Diddy Simulator”.
Since September 2nd, 2024, third-party monitor ‘Moderation For Dummies’ has reported ~12,400 erotic roleplay accounts on Roblox. These include everything from “rape/forceful sex fetishes” to underage users “willing to do anything for Robux”.
Users seeking sexual experiences on Roblox are so pervasive that there are thousands of Roblox sex videos on porn sites, inviting users of unknown ages to make explicit content on the platform.
We tested out Roblox’s experiences to see what else kids were being exposed to. We quickly encountered images of male genitalia and hate speech in Roblox’s “school simulator” game, which had registered 28.9 million visits with no age restrictions.
> if 80% of women are done with children by age 30
Is this assumption based on anything? Not saying you're wrong, after all the majority of the world's population live in poor countries where people have children younger. But at least In my social circles it'd be more accurate to say 80%+ of women start having children at age 30 (or later) then are done with it. And I know multiple women who had their first child at 40+!
No, the number is made up, I'm saying that there's a point where the advice makes sense. Whether or not that's actually the case now is then a matter of statistics.
where I work, we're not allowed to merge them. we test every change, and we review everything to make sure there are no regressions in all the obvious features. scrolling through our webpage will never break in production, because we use people with a full set of eyes to check before merge.
I believe you but I've literally not worked at a single place that puts that much scrutiny on PRs and I've been working as a professional programmer for 20 years.
Me too, only I'm "only" 42! Got my first job as a programmer at 18 and (in retrospect) burnt out at some point and thought going into managment was the fix.
If you've tried some of those cheap PC laptops the build quality is no where near macbooks (even for laptops twice the price). Macs tend to live a long time and retain their resale value like crazy compared to PCs too.
I bought a macbook pro m1 pro. Its value is 25% in 4/5 years. I bought a second hand dell latitude 7/8 years ago, it was 3/4 years old then. Still running as a server today. A cheap acer bought in 2017 runs almalinux and is surprisingly fast and capable today, I had upgraded ram and put in nvme SSD long back.
Ive owned a lot of macs and PCs over the last 15-20 years (many of them from work so i didnt "own" them but i used them daily), the % of pc laptops that have technical/hardware issues is way higher than macs in my experience. Of course YMMV with either.
If you are satisfied with the build quality and general longevity of an Acer computer then you are wasting your time trying to understand a huge comparative advantage of the Neo. I’d just accept that you aren’t the market and move on.
Yeah, I guess so. I was just wondering when people said it's great value, is it because they believe that the build quality (all metal) is the most important factor here. But then I can get an HP omnibook 5 oled for the same price with "almost" a metal body.
I started thinking, ok I was going to buy an iPad maybe, why not neo? It makes so much sense since my wife could do much more with it. Then I started looking at what the market has to offer for the price and it stopped making sense. The marketing does seem great on this. I am sure it makes a lot of sense to some people who wanted a cheap macOS laptop and got it.
> But then I can get an HP omnibook 5 oled for the same price with "almost" a metal body.
The bargain HP laptops don’t compare at all to MacBook build quality or battery life.
That laptop is also 4lbs and has below average battery life.
We recently got a higher end HP laptop for someone and the build quality on it is marginal at best.
If you’re only looking at spec sheets and trying to treat this like a comparison table of simple points then you’re going to miss the reason why these products appeal to buyers.
> I bought a second hand dell latitude 7/8 years ago, it was 3/4 years old then.
If your needs are satisfied by 4 year old second hand machines and you’re still happy with them when they’re 10-12 years old, that’s great for you.
I think you’re not the target audience. Your decade old Dell Latitude is not even close to the performance or usefulness of a MacBook Neo so the fact that you’re bringing it up is a good indicator that you don’t understand who the MacBook Neo is for.
The MacBook Neo is a great value for anyone who wants a high quality, long battery life, fast laptop for a bargain price.
I would invite you to read my comment again (take a wild guess what my main machine is from the list) and especially the comment I was replying to (like how the build quality is great for other laptops to still be running as a "server" and a capable laptop). My comment might start to make more sense than you think.
We’re in a thread about the MacBook Neo, so that’s what we’re comparing to.
You said you didn’t understand why anyone would buy a MacBook Neo and then went on to talk about old second-hand laptops. You’re not the target audience.
BASIC for 8-bit computers was an interesting language. It was limited in many aspects, but taught a whole generation about how computers actually worked. Apart from non-native data types (strings and floats), it was quite close to the machine - GOTO and GOSUB map very neatly to (in 6502) JMP and JSR.
reply