Sadly, I believe you’re correct on that… sigh…

$500,000 is nothing to billionaires, or even people who make hundreds of millions a year. It’s a lot to average folks like us, but to them it’s the equivalent of going to the casino with money they can afford to blow.

But I do think you’re right about passing it on to the greater fool. They bet it’ll be the next hot product, regardless if they know it sucks or not. Then some bigger bag of money will come in and buy it up, thinking they’ll be able to somehow milk a sustainable profit out of it. You’d think by now that VCs would be smarter about the boom and bust of tech startups, but alas…

Iirc, didn’t the article say that was one of many hypothetical scenarios they try to plan accordingly for? Like you said, it’s been awhile since it came out, so I could easily be wrong. I imagine it won’t be a problem any time soon, though. There are always desperate people, and simply changing policy to allow rehiring people that had previously been fired/quit would open eligible candidate pools back up.

Or, y’know, they could just make working there not be miserable.

I’ve been using a Steam Deck for almost a year damn near daily with maybe 1 OS crash that was largely due to a very unstable game. How is ArchLinux unstable, exactly?

This is the correct interpretation and the crux of the matter in Valve’s view. Why should they be forced to allow other retailers to sell Steam keys at whatever price they want, effectively taking money out of Valve’s pockets, when it’s Steam providing all of the actual services for said key to function?

This should not be confused with gray market key resellers, by the way (e.g. G2A, Kinguin, etc) . Those aren’t the same as retailers like Fanatical or GreenManGaming.

There was another case in 2021 that originated this complaint and some of these plaintiffs in the 2024 case actually broke off from that one to start this one. We’ll see what evidence they actually end up bringing to court to argue their case and how legitimate it is. All I know, is this will likely end up with Valve stopping third-parties from selling steam keys entirely.

They’re only doing this because of the class action being brought against them. It’s cheaper to let this go to court than to try and settle tens of thousands of individual arbitrations. In fact, there are plenty of companies now reversing course and realizing how badly forcing arbitration can backfire.

Edit: For those unaware: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/video-game-giant-valve-hit-with-consumer-class-action-over-pricing-2024-08-12/

I think it’s because PSN isn’t available in a number of countries, so it’s an arbitrary obstacle to an otherwise fully functional game that doesn’t and shouldn’t need an account. Requiring external accounts to play a game is nothing new, but I’m happy to see people reaching their threshold for these ridiculous practices and openly complaining. If people didn’t complain and simply didn’t buy the game, how would Sony know why people aren’t buying it?

What does this mean?

I was super annoyed when they first took away the links. “Pages are more dependably available now,” is such a lazy excuse. Storing the cached content probably wasn’t even that expensive for them, as it didn’t retain anything beyond basic html and text. Their shitty AI-centric web search was likely the main reason for getting rid of it.

I mean, sure, but if it detects something and there’s no reason to suspect it’s necessarily cancerous, then I’d hope doctors would recommend just keeping an eye on it and possibly scheduling periodic checkups to ensure it doesn’t continue growing. No competent doctor is going to recommend invasive surgery right off the bat.

Talk to your primary doctor if they can get you a referral for an MRI. Insurance loves to try and deny MRIs, so I think a referral is probably required due to how expensive they are. IMO, they should be included in annual physicals since it’s one of the only (if not the only) ways to detect brain tumors early, which is critical given how difficult it is to treat brain tumors and the earlier the better.

This isn’t always the case, technically. Dental can be considered for normal health insurance if it’s directly impacting your health (like an emergency surgery). That being said, your insurance may fight the shit out of this and will still most likely require you to list your dental insurance as the primary for billing.

Checking for prostate cancer is super easy now and doesn’t even require a finger in your bum. It’s a simple blood test that is far more accurate than the traditional manual method. I get one done every time I have a physical since they just add it on to the other stuff they check my blood for.

Yeah, this dataset seems very incomplete/limited. I’d also argue that the US probably doesn’t have over 5000, as many of these vendors have their “own DC” that’s just hoteled inside the same giant multi-building complex.

I don’t think Pokemon is first-party since that IP and the dev studios fall under The Pokemon Company, whereas games like Mario and Zelda are developed by studios within Nintendo itself. I could be wrong.

Edit: I just looked it up, and yep, Nintendo only owns 33% of The Pokemon Company.

Yeah, games like Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart, Luigi’s Mansion, etc. are fun as hell and very polished. I can’t think of a single first-party Nintendo game that’s released riddled with bugs in recent memory, whereas the rest of the industry can’t say the same, excepting Sony’s first-party games.

He’d dismiss the sarcasm and make it genuine, “Yes, Timmy, we really are very impressed. Good job, Billy!”

Agreed. HZD always felt like a game that was built around a story premise first and foremost, which sort of makes sense as that studio had never done a game like that before.

I remember an interview where they were struggling to shift gears from Killzone and looking for new ideas from among their staff when one of their devs pitched HZD’s premise. As a result, they approached making an open world action adventure game as complete noobs. This doesn’t excuse any of the poor design decisions. I was hoping they’d learn from their mistakes in FW, but they instead made the open world part somewhat better and then forgot to keep the focus on the main quest and characters in the process.

All valid and fair points.

Regardless, I truly hope we never have to find out either way. The human species is capable of incredible things if we just set aside historical, cultural, and petty differences and worked towards a common goal of lifting everyone up. Wars of aggression are barbaric and unnecessary and I hope one day we all mentally evolve past such tendencies for mass violence. It’s a naive pipe dream, but one can always dream.

If nukes started popping off, there’d be zero reason to send in ground forces until it was all over. Lastly, I’m not convinced Russia’s nuclear program is much better off than NATO’s. So many interviews with nuke watch officers talking about how old and decrepit our silos are. The DoD supposedly approved a modernization package a few years ago for all of them, but I’m still skeptical how efficient the targeting is on everything and how well they’ll avoid missile defense systems.