Not yet or at least not badly. I have respect for people who have been burned to make their decisions but I also target games/publishers that I already trust. A game from a company I’ve never heard of will probably not get pre-ordered.

For me it really depends on the game, the studio, and the publisher. I preordered Firmament because Cyan has a good history. I might also pre-order a digital game if I think a game is particularly novel, or if I think I’m going to like it pretty much regardless of the reviews (e.g. I like the franchise it’s from/ties into), the last reason is if there’s some kind of in-game incentive to do so (e.g. pre-order and you get some in game minor boost/cosmetic/whatever) but that’s really only a minor consideration.

I’m a little surprised because, while this is exactly the behavior I would expect, I watched the Dave’s Garage video about DeepSeek and, per his report, when asked about the picture of the Tiananmen Square protest the model didn’t seem to shy away from it. It could have changed since then, of course, and it could also be the way in which the questions were asked. He framed the question as something along the line of “What was depicted in the famous picture of the man standing in front of a tank?” or something similar rather than directly asking about the events of that year.

I’m not so sure. The knee-jerk reaction of the cynic in me is to agree with you, but I actually think it’s fairly unlikely that they own rental properties specifically. Many, if not most, probably own multiple properties as rich people are wont to do but, I would imagine that most of those are just “summer homes” or similar rather than something that is rented out as a “landlord” in the way most people think of it. It is possible that they could be investors in these funds, REITs, or other such vehicles which would make them indirect owners of these items.

I agree for the most part. I do think that the businesses that provide/manage properties should be public benefit corporations or whatever the local equivalent is. Housing is an essential human need. In an ideal scenario, profit wouldn’t even be a factor, but I’d settle for it not being the first priority.

I live in FL with my trans partner. This is right up there with the damn driver’s license thing. I have lived in Florida my whole life in a city that is very pro LGBT. To see the rest of the state bending over backwards to take a fascist kool-ade enema just breaks my heart and pisses me off. This isn’t my Florida. As a person who has lived here for 35 years I have never been more torn between wanting to stand my ground, or go to a state where my partner and I aren’t vilified for being queer.

That’s an iOS/iPadOS thing. Mac browsers can use any rendering engine they want.

This is the unfortunate reality of current intellectual property. Anytime you don’t have a copy of something directly in your possession, either as a physical object like a BluRay, or digital file(s) on digital storage only you control, you don’t really own it. You’re just borrowing it, or more strictly speaking, you’re purchasing the right to access it until the agreement between the creator company (i.e., WarnerDiscovery) and the hosting company (i.e., Sony) expires.

When issues like this come up, there are right ways and wrong ways to handle it. This is an example of a wrong way. Google’s handling of the Stadia shutdown was an example of the right way. Any game you purchased on Stadia was refunded to the original payment method, not store credit, at the price you paid giving you the ability to reacquire the game on another platform and/or in another medium. They even refunded in-game purchases of things like premium currency (e.g. silver in Destiny 2, or crowns in Elder Scrolls Online) which was a great bonus because you got that whether you had spent the in-game currency or not so it was essentially free.

Personally, I’d like protection like what Google offered to be legally mandated for the purchase of streaming content. Sony has little choice in the matter if WarnerDiscovery won’t renew the streaming license. Legally, they must revoke access to the content, but currently they can choose to not compensate users who lose access to the content through these legal machinations and that’s what I have a problem with.

I’ve never been on there, but I am inclined to think that there is at least a small group of die hards that post there. I have seen quotes from other posters on there on various news articles. Interestingly, Joe Biden (or at least his campaign staffers) now have a presence on there which I find hysterical. I think that’s basically tantamount to trying to convert the Pope to pastafarianism but maybe a few people over there haven’t had their brains fall out completely (not that Biden is the ideal president but he’s far better than Trump).

I think the headline is ambiguously worded. My interpretation is that, after they announced the OLED version, they also confirmed that Steam Deck sales to date amount to “multiple millions.” I highly doubt they’ve sold multiple millions since the announcement.

It’s definitely one of those “a broken clock is still right twice a day” situations. It’s a good product and I find it invaluable for PowerShell scripting. I have, however, been trying to dial in emacs for PowerShell.

I’m utterly unsurprised. The man is incapable of keeping his big mouth shut.

Yeah, you can pretty much assume that any random Wi-Fi asking for that information is already doing that. My local mall has one that will accept any old email but it certainly looks like this one wants you to create an actual Walmart account.

Yeah thinking about it more, you’re definitely right. I’ve only ever been a W-2 employee (United States) so I know nothing about this kind of thing. If they are employees of another company, they should bargain with them instead, and force them (via strike if required) to negotiate a new contract with Google. I’m very pro worker and support striking to get results but you have to make sure you’re targeting the right business to get the results you want.

Yeah I’d certainly like to know as well

I work for an MSP and I often multiply my time estimates by a factor of four… Does that count?

I work in tech and say that a lot. It would hit different in medicine.

I’ve been enjoying it, though I can’t say it’s my favorite Trek iteration. I’m here for the bevy of queer representation, and so is my partner. Some of the conceits are a little weird. In particular I really thought The Burn had a potential to be more interesting. Clearly Su’kal has some of the same mental influence over subspace that Wesley and The Traveler are shown to but his unbridled, unfocused grief caused a catastrophe of galactic, and possibly universal, proportions but we don’t get that angle. Species 10C’s arc also gets rushed and it’s very unclear how we’re going to get to the state where Discovery is floating in that nebula in Short Treks. I think 5 seasons is a good run and I am always looking forward to new Star Trek. I’ll definitely be watching the final season as it comes out.

I’m gonna have to grab that later and play the hell out of it! Thanks!

JK and MotS were two of my all time favorite games growing up. My dad and I even ran a crossover Ethernet cable between our computers to play multiplayer matches