Valve didn’t invent lootboxes. The concept has physically existed for decades, they’re called trading card packs or kinder eggs or gashapon. The latter is the inspiration for what became known as lootboxes. The first “lootbox” was actually in the Japanese version of MapleStory in 2004 and it spread in eastern markets (because pay to win is more normalized there) and in mobile games. It wasn’t until 2009 when EA added card packs to FIFA. Hard to say if they were inspired by the lootboxes from the east of the insane football trading card market in the west, or by both. It was only after a year and a half later in 2010 when Valve added loot boxes to TF2. So Valve definitely didn’t invent lootboxes, they weren’t even the first in the west to use them. You could argue that they popularized loot boxes but even there is an argument to be made that Overwatch was a much bigger cultural hit than TF2 or CSGO or EAs FIFA games and normalized lootboxes.

I don’t mind the “Valve is bad” narrative, but at least keep your facts straight. The “strongest DRM” is also BS but others have already somewhat covered that part.

Trump would have a running chance regardless of who the democrats pick would be, the electoral college and republican party have made sure of that.

Depends on what you want. If you want more of Subnautica story then get it. If you want more Subnautica style going into the depths, Below Zero doesn’t go that deep and about half the game is actually above water. While I loved Subnautica I felt pretty disappointed by Below Zero.

And let’s look at music and coding. Since I can speak a bit to both. For music, OF COURSE there are difficulty sliders. When I took recorder back in school, they had 2 different versions of many songs. When I first learned Christmas music on piano, I learned special “simplified” tracks for the songs. I never “Got Gud” at music, but I still got to the end of the book.

Some songs have an easier version and a harder version, but being able to play a Christmas song on a piano doesn’t mean you can demand to be able to play Korsakovs Flight of the bumblebee on a piano. You just can’t play it, you have to “git gud” to play that song. And games are like songs. Some songs are easier, some song are harder. Some harder songs can be made easier, some can’t without losing an important part of the song.

And coding. Coding is the opposite of a Fromsoft game. You’re surrounded by mountains of tools that try to make it easier. When I bring in a junior developer, I’m not giving them some unforgiving code challenge to power through. Maybe they’ll never be good enough to design a specialized cache or optimize queries. So I give them the things they CAN do, and hold their hand so they always succeed. Junior devs don’t ever fail, not because they “git gud” but because I set them up to succeed by this little difficulty slider called “how hard is this ticket to do and how much help do they need from me?”

I feel like that analogy brings in an entirely different concept, the concept of a sherpa. You’re sherpaing junior developers by giving them easier problems and giving them tips on harder problems. But a Junior dev won’t magically know how to build a 3D engine or a compiler or something for an embedded system (just to give a few random examples). They still need to “git gud” to become a senior developer and be able to do those things. In fact I’d argue that software development as a profession is one of the closest professions to Fromsoft games, because you always need to learn new concepts or tools or ways to do things. Software development always challenges you the same way Fromsoft games challenge you. You can’t just take a problem and be “could I get the easy mode version of this problem”. And much like you sherpa junior developers so they could get better, some people sherpa others through Fromsoft games so those people could get better. Maybe instead of demanding an easy mode for your problems you find a sherpa who helps you get over them.

Up there as one of the most dangerous chemical compounds in the world, near 100% fatality rate.

Maybe in some very broad strokes, but in very broad strokes legs and cars are also the same because they move you from point A to point B.

So you’re mixing up two different meaning of AI to say that AI doesn’t mean the same thing everywhere? When people are talking about bats, the flying mammals, do you also interject with “bats are use to hit a ball” to make some point? No, because deliberately mixing up homonyms is stupid.

It’s pretty clear what kind of AI people are talking about here. Nobody was discussing game AI.

Genuinely not sure if joking or actually dumb.

It’s the least worst way he could put it in his PR statement, there’s no doubt in my mind what he did was worse than “inappropriate”.

This is exactly why I don’t think they’re coming back just yet. If there’s one thing leavers and remainers agreed on it’s british exceptionalism. Remainers didn’t want to leave because EU in general was beneficial, remainers didn’t want to leave because UK had a good thing going in the EU and giving it up was stupid. Remainers want to join only if they get at least some of their special privileges back.

Maybe in another 10 years they’ll be more receptive towards joining without special privileges.

Have you considered that it looks better because you’re used to seeing it that way? It’s the same with Fahrenheit vs Celsius, the one you’ve grown up with make more sense and is more pleasing to the eye.

It’s a “job” they themselves created for themselves. That our something they have to do because they own the property, and if they didn’t own it they wouldn’t have to do it. And chances are they won’t even do anything, they’ll just hire someone else to fix it.

You don’t get paid to fix your own property, why should they get paid to fix their property?

You can correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure nobody gave AOC a suitcase full of cash. She put in the effort and that got her first the district and later the congress. You can dismiss her as the exception, but she’s “the exception” only if you consider her effort to be exceptional. And there was that other guy (literally blanking on the name) who ran as a democrat and is now turning republican after being elected, pretty sure he also did a grassroots campaign. You can absolutely get shit done if you put in the effort.

The “suitcase full of campaign money” is the lie you’re told to keep you from running.

Even BG3 let’s you go back with some exceptions.

It’s pretty public knowledge by now. If you search “ExxonMobil climate prediction” I’m sure you can find a starting point. I recommend finding all the Exxon papers because they’re quite eye opening.

So what are we supposed to do, halt all space flights until we figure this out?

Without further research going into how much damage it’s doing there’s no way to say what our next steps should be. Maybe everything we’re doing is still within acceptable limits? Maybe we need tighter regulation on materials going into space. Maybe some materials need to be outright banned.

The only reasonable thing we can do is study it further. Expecting instant result based on one study that only outlines a potential risk is quite frankly just doomerist behavior.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending corporations here. I’m simply stating the fact that climate change denial wasn’t the case of waiting until it’s “fully confirmed”, it was pretty much confirmed back in the 70s. They even had predictions for the next century on how things will go bad if nothing is done and the last time I checked we were pretty on course with their predictions. When it came to the scientific consensus, it was pretty much “fully confirmed”. It was simply the public opinion where it wasn’t “fully confirmed” because corporations deliberately ran disinformation to make it seem like scientists didn’t know what they were talking about.

But this paper isn’t really confirming anything. The paper itself says that the model does not account for all the factors and to literally quote the paper:

As reentry rates increase, it is crucial to further explore the concerns highlighted in this study.

This paper is not presenting a final conclusion, it’s presenting concerns that need further studies. let’s wait for further studies and if there’s scientific consensus about it being an issue I’m all for bringing out the pitchforks. In the mean let’s keep calm and dread over the doom and gloom that is climate change.

We were in the “we don’t know if we’re causing it” phase for a long time because big oil knew about global warming and deliberately ran disinformation campaigns so they could keep profiteering. Had Exxon done the right thing in the 70s we wouldn’t have this looming crisis.

I guess that’s the downside of not having a miniature reactor in your phone.

Luckily user replaceable batteries are coming with an EU regulation some time within the next 5 years, but so far fairphone is the most repairable phone you can have. I don’t think you can replace mobo or chipset, but it does allow replacing quite a few things. For me the 3 most important ones are battery, charging port and screen, as those are the most likely for me to get worn out or broken. I haven’t bought it yet because my current phone is still somewhat chugging along, but my next phone will definitely be a fairphone.