https://prisonjournalismproject.org/2024/03/31/popular-video-game-banned-federal-prisons/

From my prison cell in Colorado, I conquered sites on alien planets, used conveyor belts to supply my factories, and organized weapons to defend against enemy attacks. I was playing Mindustry, a world-building game that relies heavily on logistics and strategy.

For less than $2, I could lose myself in my Android tablet at night — then, when I slept, my dreams about the game replaced my usual nightmares. And I wasn’t alone: Inmates talked about the game over meals and at work.

Then came an announcement from officials last July. Mindustry would no longer be on our prison-issued tablets.

“I knew a lot of people would be upset when I read they were taking it away,” one inmate from Nebraska said. “I could walk around the chow hall, my work assignment and other areas — everyone was talking about it.”

According to a statement from a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson, Mindustry was removed because it was “found to jeopardize the safety, security, and orderly operation” of federal prisons.

When Prison Journalism Project asked for specifics on how the game jeopardized safety, security and orderly operation, the spokesperson said the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not discuss specific security practices or internal procedures for security reasons.

The game’s fans here in Federal Correctional Institution at Englewood, a federal prison in Colorado, included a retired colonel for the U.S. Army.

“All they’ve left us with are stripped-down children’s games,” he said.

Another player had one of the most elaborate mining and distribution centers I’ve ever seen, the fruit of many hours of thought — which, of course, is one key to fighting recidivism.

“Whenever I’m feeling upset, I can pick up my tablet,” the player told me. “It calms me down and changes my whole mindset.”

Users have come up with their own explanations for Mindustry’s fate. One theory goes that players had used the game’s drawing pad to sketch dirty pictures or leave secret messages.

Whatever happened, people are disappointed.

“I wanted to buy a tablet,” one person said, “but now that they’ve taken Mindustry I don’t want one.”

Sentiments like that are understandable. We are still without many of the tablet features we were told to expect, including free e-books through Project Gutenberg, video messaging, and a life skills program through Khan Academy.

In a statement, the prison bureau said that games are controlled by a vendor, and that the bureau has “the right to remove any game that it deems inappropriate.”

I miss the game. When I played it, I could stop dwelling on my past or my unknown future. And it encouraged me to be more social with others, especially when we would discuss strategy. My tablet now lies neglected in my locker.

The player who put together the elaborate mining center isn’t shocked that Mindustry is gone.

“It’s not uncommon for the BOP to take away something we like,” he said.

This sucks. :(

I don’t get the banana trick. What do I do after pinching? I just end up ripping through the skin of one while trying it out.

Or just always look at the 100g column.

I’m just picking on a point that’s not relevant to your comment’s core idea, I’m not saying we shouldn’t share software or other goods and services with worker coops:

worker coops, which don’t violate workers’ rights.

Under capitalism worker cooperatives will also violate the rights of its workers even if less than traditional companies, because that’s what capitalism demands for their survival on the market.

I think it’s kind of challenging to legally define what makes a party “worthy” of making use of the software or digital work. I think you would need to go on a case-by-case basis, but at that point it probably makes more sense to just make software source-available and actively encourage people to reach out to you to get permission to use the software and to modify and redistribute it.

a degree in game programming

That’s a thing?

that considers the rights of both software users and developers unlike copyleft

Kind of in the vein of what Redis attempted to with its relicense to SSPL

It can be found here for anyone wondering: http://loginzlib2vrak5zzpcocc3ouizykn6k5qecgj2tzlnab5wcbqhembyd.onion/ and here: http://zlibrary24tuxziyiyfr7zd46ytefdqbqd2axkmxm4o5374ptpc52fad.onion/

I don’t have a clearnet link since the mirror I’ve been using appears to have been seized, but the onion link should be the most reliable way to access the z-library.

Why does dumping water out of boots have instructions? Isn’t it like dumping water out of any other container?

Thanks for the warning.

When people say perl, they normally mean Perl 5. Perl 6 is now called Raku and is considered a different language.

I thought Mordor is part of it?

You can also do git diff --cached to see all changes you added to the index.

You are only censored on lemmy.ml, not on the rest of the network. You can write whatever you want, but lemmy.ml has no duty to tolerate racists in their house.

In other videos you can also see him being dragged off by bystanders in the end.

You can search for communities across all federated instances by clicking on “All” in the communities page: https://lemmy.ml/communities?listingType=All

https://hexdocs.pm/google_api_content_warehouse/0.4.0/api-reference.html

If it’s like Lisp, then ? is just part of the symbol and doesn’t have any special syntatic meaning. In different Lisps it’s also convention to end predicate names with a ? or with P (p for predicate)

I think this is a sort of anti-license, so I think the sort of people who use it reject copyright law.

If you have a fever.

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