According to the box photo on the GameStop site, it does not say that it is a key card.

Nintendo has said that, for now, all first party games are games on cart, though not for games that Nintendo is only the publisher/distributor for (see Pokopia).

It is a manufacturer suggested retail price. If a store wants to sell it for more or less, it is their right (and I am not aware of Nintendo having a Minimum Advertised Price policy).

The issue is that it is just an upgrade. The biggest difference between the Switch 1 and 2 is just better graphics/frame rate. With only a few exceptions, both systems play the exact same games. Why would a customer pay $450 (minus a small trade in credit) for a Switch 2 when they already own one or more Switch 1s that play the exact same games the exact same way, except a bit uglier? Nintendo customers tend not to obsess over graphics quality (if they were, they would be playing on PC or PlayStation).

There are a handful of games that take advantage of the Switch 2 mouse controls and now there are starting to be more and more exclusives, so there will be a stronger case to upgrade, but for the first year, it was kind of weak.

Remember, only shop on Bandcamp Fridays, when all the money goes to the artists. The corporate owners are not playing nice with the employee union.

The bigger issue is not just how bright the headlights are, but how high off the ground they are. On a small sedan, it makes sense that the headlights are just below the level of the hood, any lower and they would be scraping the ground. If you take the same hood-to-headlight arrangement and put it on a pickup truck or SUV on giant wheels and then lifted, those headlights are no longer pointed at the ground but are now pointed into the cabins of sedans and the faces of shorter pedestrians.

I have not been following the Pacers this year, but how are they this bad? They made the finals last year. I know that Hali is out for the year, but he doesn’t seem to be a great enough player to turn the worst team in the league into a playoff favorite.

Did I miss the news when they sold off all of their rotation players or is the coach intentionally throwing games?

That is not sufficient cootie protection. A properly trained physician will follow it up with

Circle circle, square square,
Now you have it everywhere

A lot of the Lakers luck has nothing to do with league tampering and everything to do with the fact that players’ licensing income does not count against the salary cap. Do you think a guy would rather make $1,000 shooting an ad for Big Bill’s Discount BBQ or get $5,000 to make an appearance on opening night in Dr. Dre’s new club? Do you think a player prefers to spend his day off shoveling snow from his driveway or go swimming on Venice Beach in the morning and then film a fight scene in the next Fast and Furious? Do you think his wife would rather shop at the mall or Rodeo Drive?

The Lakers don’t get players gifted to them, they sign big name free agents at a discount and trade for expiring contracts knowing that the player will take an extension. They get traded so many players because they are on every players’ preferred list of destinations because every agent makes sure it is there because the agent wants a cut of any Hollywood cameos and rap album features their player gets.

The Pau Gasol trade is a perfect example of this. He did not get traded for nothing. He got traded for his brother, Marc. Pau wanted to get out of Memphis, so the teams made a deal with him: if he could nag his baby brother into moving from the Euroleague to the NBA, Pau would get to win a ring with Kobe.

I like the idea of allowing more teams to be draft eligible, since it gives hope to teams stuck in purgatory, not good enough to seriously contend for a title but too good to draft guaranteed talent in the draft.

I don’t like the idea of limiting the lottery eligibility of a team that finishes at the bottom for consecutive seasons (if they are not already ineligible for getting a high pick). It seems like unnecessary cruelty for a team to finish in the basement (because their best players all got old or left in free agency or something), then they lose the lottery despite good odds, and get told that next year they won’t get a good pick either. At that point, the team would have to spend 2 years with a roster of bench warmers.

Hopefully, if there are more strict anti-tank rules, they can get rid of the rules against resting star players. The restrictions are arbitrary and enforcement is random and unpredictable.

The FAQ makes no mention of Pokemon Home integration (though by saying that there is no online play, they might be implying that there will not be integration).

Also, to maximize nostalgia, I wish they ported the original Red/Green/Blue, not the remakes. I realize that I am probably in the minority on this.

Overall, I am just a bit disappointed that the FAQ all but says that none of the mainline Pokemon games will ever be released on Switch Online. I was planning to get NSO the day they start adding the Pokemon games, which I assumed was just around the corner. Too bad, so sad. One less subscription to pay for.

This was already widely known. If a Waymo taxi does not know what to do, it stops in the middle of the road and calls a support center where a human plots a route for it. The tech media has been reporting on it for years. The only fact in that article that I have not heard is that they are outsourcing the jobs to the Philippines.

It is rated as water resistant, capable of withstanding a jet of water.

Repairability depends on what breaks. If water getting into the phone fries the CPU, it does not seem fixable. Glancing at the site, I could not find a part on sale, probably because the cost of a replacement part would cost almost as much as replacing the phone.

In the US, libel requires you to prove that the writer knew that what they were writing is not true and that they did it to hurt you. Doing lazy research and trusting an AI is not going to meet that standard.

I would hope, but I would want to check reviews to be sure.

I have, but decided against it. I am clumsy and my hands are big enough to barely use my phone one handed (but not hold it securely when I do).

I will have to consider Fairphone when I am looking for my next phone. Looking at their site, my only hesitation is about water resistance. I understand that repairability comes at the cost of making everything glued and sealed shut, but I drop my phone in water once every couple of years. If that risks killing it, it is not going to be a phone that will last long in my hands.

The issue with that phone (and seemingly everything coming from HMD) is that it only gets 2 major OS upgrades. Also, it launches a major version behind, so it is actually only a single upgrade.

I am quite upset about it. I had a Nokia 6 (made by HMD) and loved the well made, durable hardware and very clean no-bloat software. I have been saddened to see that while most phone brands have been extending their OS support window, HMD has been shortening it.

Yes, actually. Michael Phelps (American swimmer) was rumored to smoke weed so he could get the munchies and consume more food, giving him extra calories to burn training.

It could also be that they were using marijuana as an illicit pain reliever.

I don’t understand the Warriors trading for Porzingis. Curry and Draymond (and Butler) are on the wrong side of 35, so their time in the league is coming to an end and injuries are going to keep increasing in frequency. A sensible move would be to build a consistent core that can go on win streaks when the veterans are able to suit up and keep the ship afloat when they cannot. Porzingis is a very gifted and skilled player, but the only thing consistent about him is his ability to find his way onto the injury report.

The DS, like the Wii, had a lot of games that drew in people who were not “core gamers”, such as Brain Age and Nintendogs.

The fragile hinge between the two screens also reduced the number of cheap used systems on the market.