Even at 25% off, a $70 game is still a ripoff.

Which is why you only buy games at 90+% off or through game bundles. Unless the developer proves the game is worth the money through all the positive things the community has to say about it.

Chances are good that your backlog is large enough that you can just wait for newer games to be priced reasonably, even if you’re buying games at sensible discounts.

Especially for single player games there is no real reason to play a game on release, other than the hype cycle. You might even be better served waiting a while and not be punished by issues that are patched after release.

Excellent analysis. Especially this part:

It will be much more productive to try to solve this with the handful of Browser vendors than trying to regulate each and every consent banner.

Early cookie banners were a bad experience but they were manageable. But now thing have transitioned into content-blocking modals, dark patterns, forced individual consent/rejection for each and every one of the 943 partners they’re selling your data to, sites that refuse to serve content if you reject tracking and other ways to frustrate the end user.

I’m done with every piece of shit predatory actor inventing their own way of malicious compliance with the GDPR. You either implement the user-friendly consent API or you get no more tracking at all. Paywall your shit for all I care, at least then you’ll have a sustainable business model.

Slugs to be you then, I guess. :P

In all seriousness, the graph shows different species as fraction of total uses recorded. Since the paper is mostly about mice, and behavioural differences under different circumstances, it being unfair to the slugs is probably not such a big deal here.

I work in IT, and different definitions of what SaaS means are starting to wreak real havoc on the architecture as a whole.

We are better served just quitting the acronyms and taking the time to talk about a more detailed description of what the service actually adds in terms of value.

Amazon Prime is a subscription for shipping, video streaming, gaming benefits and more. Since software is not the primary goal, but a means of delivery for these other services, I will not consider Amazon Prime SaaS.

So you’re saying we should just turn the children of all conservatives queer? Alright, bring in the cat girls, 196 memes and let’s pounce!

Joking aside, there’s two archetypes of conservative:

• The Xenofobe, who is afraid of a changing world and that fear is strengthened by anything they experience as threatening to their image of how the world works. These people are more likely to warm to LGBTQIA+ people if they learn they’re not so different, and everyone is just trying to exist, be themselves and love who they love. There is no agenda for taking over the world.
• The Cultist. These people are beyond saving and generally consist of the hardcore christofascist bible belt inbred morons that are generally dumb as fuck, but loud as hell. They are indoctrinated by their own bubble of conspiracy theorists to the point where they are firmly dug into their own story and nothing will change their views.

It is not worth fighting either group with animosity, condemnation or attacks, as they are more than capable of spinning the story their side and reinforcing their ideas that queers are somehow threatening.

But at least we should be capable of showing the xenofobes that there is no monster in that closet (pun intended), or under their beds.

As for Rowling, she is likely part of the cultist group, which means we’re going to have issues. Her status as a celebrity and her wealth further isolates her from the rest of society, which is a real problem because that makes you able to opt out of confrontation with reality. She can just stategically isolate herself from ever coming into contact and having a real human interaction with the people she’s having all these misguided ideas about.

I think everyone should be made more aware of the damage that social bubbles cause to society. Whether it’s conservative communities, religious indoctrination, closed internet discussion groups or just the wealthy and famous distancing themselves from society (which is usually not by choice but because we treat them to a permanent dose of spotlights).

Simple counter: Don’t be French.

My take is that our ancestors definitely fucked up bigtime by leaving several parts of the world with arbitrary borders that have no regard for existing ethnic groups. Just take a look at any ethnic map of africa, eurasia or the middle-east and you’ll see.

Turns out that colonizers have little interest in local culture. Who would have guessed?

Adding insult to injury: When colonizing land where people mostly lived in tribal social constructs, you actually force them to adapt to your own developments. Essentially skipping the feudalism and micro-states step that has taken Europe literal centuries to get out of.

So you have all these ethnic groups that should have found their way to modern societies without outside interference, and you subject them to slavery, the introduction of guns, mining operations and you crush any form of revolt by committing various atrocities.

Development of nations is never going to be fair, with the strongest group eventually elbowing out the weaker ones. The current status quo definitely doesn’t help in finding stability. Foreign interests are still meddling, financial and food aid is causing ridiculous population numbers that can in no way shape or form be supported by the local economies, and as you said, slavery is not truly gone.

Africa can only be an unstable mess as long as we’re still fucking around. Ideal (though not particularly empathetic) solution is to GTFO, use magic to disappear all firearms and modern weaponry from existence, redistribute all wealth truly equally and go from there. The actual way this will play out is that we’ll see war, instability, destruction of natural resources and a lot of pain and suffering until everything stabilizes or until the land is no longer habitable, whichever comes first.