I've received Borderlands titles in various bundles (2, 3 & pre-sequel), tried them for a bit and honestly don't get what the attraction is meant to be. They are arena style shooters where you beat one area (e.g. a base), a gate or something opens in a cutscene and you move somewhere else where the cycle repeats - rinse & repeat. Oh and collecting too much shit through the loot mechanics so half the game is downtime juggling, selling or repurposing stuff.

It definitely has a unique and interesting art style but game & plot wise it is repetitive and dull. I assume Borderlands 4 will have an improved engine but I expect it will mostly be more of the same.

Because they want their users to be violently assaulted by complete strangers.

The right probe is into breaking up TicketMaster, which is a monopoly. e.g. by breaking its ties to venues and tours, requiring sales exceeding a certain threshold (venue, seats, days etc.) to use an open ticket sale model or whatever. The issue of touts is orthogonal to that glaring issue.

The gas ban might kill certain automotive companies who've spent the last 15 years lobbying and otherwise whining about the gas ban and not sufficiently investing to make the transition. BMW has being joining Toyota and others to spread fud about hydrogen power and synthetic fuels and lobbying hard to make governments change their minds. While some concessions were made for synthetic fuels governments are generally sticking to their targets. It's hard to see how synthetics will be anything but DOA in the same way hydrogen was so I don't see it makes any difference.

The funny part is BMW did show some early promise with the i3. But most of their EV offerings of late are just hyper expensive variants of their ICE vehicles. i.e. take the ICE car, slap a battery / motor in it and jack the price up by 50%. And then complain that people aren't buying EVs when specifically they're not buying BMW's EVs because they're expensive and because of that their depreciation is terrible.

But whether BMW like it or not, ICE production is phasing out around the world. They either adapt or they die.

I have a Pixel 7 and I found the e-SIM very useful for a trip to Thailand. I had it set up to receive voice through my home number and data through the DTAC e-SIM I bought even before I left home. There are at least 3 or 4 e-SIM apps for Android that will also sell e-SIMs but IMO they're more expensive and restrictive so if you can buy one from a proper phone carrier in the place you're going you'll get better value, more data and better service.

Even if you travel an e-SIM is viable. Your phone needs to be able to support at least two active SIMs or e-SIMs to be useful though. My Pixel has a physical SIM which has my home account and I use the e-SIM for travel so people can still ring me on the home number when I'm away.

I traveled to Thailand this summer and even before I left Europe I had bought and registered an e-SIM from DTAC for my trip. It had unlimited data and even a Thai telephone number. As soon as the plane landed I turned on the phone and it was active. As I walked into the arrivals hall I could have bought a physical SIM from the multitude of booths selling them but I'd likely have spent 20 minutes faffing around, registering and getting the SIM activated after an already long flight. But I would have had to take my home SIM out to use the other SIM which wouldn't be ideal. So the e-SIM allowed me time to research & buy the best plan for the trip and have it set up even before I left. There are also a lot of online e-SIM services which sell (mostly data) e-SIMs plans - Saily and so on - which are convenient but more expensive.

That said, lots of phones are still physical SIM only and some phone providers are way behind the curve selling e-SIMs. So a physical SIM is still useful and does have some benefits, but I don't think I would mourn its passing. My original point is I think Apple just removed the slot for bullshit reasons and it gimps the phone even more than it already is.

I think most people including the most diehard Apple fans would still prefer their phone can be charged rapidly from a cable, or plug peripherals into it. Besides, it would likely be illegal to sell a phone without USB-C in Europe even if it could charge wirelesslessly.

Also just because a device has a USB-C port doesn't mean it can't be IP67 or IP68 rated. A lot of mobile phones including some iPhones are IP68 rated which means you could drop them down the toilet or into a swimming pool and potentially they'll survive.

What I mean is the thinness of the device has no bearing on whether it can accommodate a SIM or not and a USB requires more space than a nano SIM would. It more sounds like an excuse to remove SIM support and see if they can get away with it.

If they have space for a USB C then they have space for a SIM. That said I like e-SIMs for their convenience and don't really care if they disappear. But the iPhone Air itself is clearly a gimped device which will be difficult to repair and so fragile that people will put it in a case negating any reason for it to be thin in the first place. I'm sure some fools will drop cash for this thing, common sense be damned.

Well duh if you just read a little to the end of my comment you'd see an example. There is plenty happening outside of Apple that Apple aren't doing - phones that are repairable, modular, made from sustainable materials etc. or form factors like flip displays, or ruggedized devices. Instead they just crap out more of the same - expensive, highly difficult to repair devices with built in obsolescence.

And btw I'd reserve some of the same criticisms for other manufacturers. But Apple are the flagship for e-waste designs and they should be held to accountable for it.

New models of existing products, zero innovation. As for a thin phone - good luck trying to repair it when it breaks. I bet most people put their phones in cases anyway so it seems monumentally stupid to buy something thin when it'll be stuck in a slab to protect it. I'd be more impressed if Apple produced a ruggedized phone, one with replaceable battery, screen and other components.

IBM has a corporate culture where innovation, free thinking, moving fast etc are alien concepts. It's managers all the way up (and down). Sales and contracts matter more than ideas. Everything is grey. I assume that's why Red Hat has managed to survive semi independently until now because total assimilation would be the kiss of death. Not to mention IBM's penchant for getting rid of people or making their life so intolerable with petty rules they leave of their own accord.

These low earth orbit satellites have very low latency. Probably no different from what you'd get from a terrestrial system. The bigger issue is contention - the more people under the footprint of a single satellite, the slower your speeds will be. Service could start out with brilliant rates and then slowly suck over time as more people start using it.

Just because someone is on the toilet reading news doesn't mean they're straining the whole time or otherwise altering the duration of time they're actually crapping while there.

The Call of Duty series has been liberally stealing movie scenes and plots to produce it's lame pastiches ever since its inception. And now we're going to get a regurgitation in movie form. I'm sure it won't feel like AI generated slop with a lame script, lame plot that manages to beat every trope to death.