Actually it's not. Sommeliers aren't just snobs who say "American" or "Scotch". They understand how flavour profiles pair with food in a way to elevate both. That isn't "professional astrology", that is "professional understanding of what humans like".

Do you have a better solution for building a model of the different regions of whiskey than feeding a trained model? I.e. "AI"? Your cynicism is just stupid. We've been doing this for over a decade, and suddenly now you're upset because the algorithm used by the computer gets a name.

In Kenya? You're more likely to get a bullet.

Concord has nothing to do with ownership. It was a colossally shit game with virtually no one playing it, and everyone got refunded when that stillbirth was pulled.

And just how many years did you play that game for? Give it to me in terms of $ / hour of entertainment. I want to know how entitled you feel to have someone provide a server for you.

I don't think you are anywhere near as marginalised as you think you are. If anything, maybe you got an excuse to try something new in your life in an industry that releases something new multiple times a day (the overwhelming majority of which does not require some back end server).

www.pornhub.com There's more than enough there to get your fill. Not all of us needs that shit shoved down our throats.

People who use the word woke in virtually all contexts use it to mean the same thing. It means "I don't know what I don't like, but I lack the intelligence to describe it".

Woke left has always run gaming studios. What has changed is that morons with a platform complain about it. This goes back to the early days of Metroid where gamers only found out they were playing the role of a power woman after completing the game.

The bigger issue is people are stupid, too stupid to describe what "good" or "bad" means. So you get to a game which is poorly written, buggy, or has some other problem and the only thing the mindless drones (I count you among them by the way) can muster up is "OMG IT'S WOKE". Just look at the most recent Starwars title. People shouting from the rooftops that it's woke. It's not, It's shit. The gameplay mechanics are poor, the story is poor, the AI is rubbish, but it's not "woke" There's a difference. We need to educate people how to identify good and bad elements of story telling maybe then they are empowered enough to not look like a moron with their low-IQ "OMG IT'S WOKE" critique.

And your assertion is that will prevent every accident?

Actually the biggest flops of this year have been free to play, had no bugs, and performed fine even on a potato. The bigger problem in 2024 was that most games were just uninspired and boring. Lots of money sunk into making grind fest clone of another grind fest clone.

The ownership thing only really impacts a small minority of gamers, the vast majority of the industry is now in a position where they've grown up not knowing what ownership means.

Citation Needed. No seriously tell us all which game got review bombed for being feature complete, bug free and not getting updates.

You fucked up your Windows install. It's possible to uninstall the Xbox shit even on Windows 11 Home edition, to say nothing of Pro / Enterprise where you can disable it using group policy.

Along with everything else you listed except for one single point, everything is removable on Windows 11 Home, and it honours that setting through major release updates. Most of those disappear with just a single setting "Suggestions in Start" an easily found setting that isn't hidden at all.

The only thing you list which is not possible to bypass or override is the fact that if you use any of what you list (and again you can disable it all permanently) any links executed from the Start menu, news widget, search, or notification bar does open in Edge. There's no work around for that in Windows itself but there are programs that can fix that.

You not knowing how to use your computer doesn't make Microsoft evil. Yeah the defaults suck, and my mother may be stuck with a system that spews this rubbish at her, but you're on Slashdot, I expect better from *YOU*

*Checks market share* - Nope I don't think you understand people at all.

False, fans are not undying. There are many fans who are the biggest critics precisely because they feel the most hurt when something they love fails to meet expectations. The relevance here is the disconnect only appears for the second album of release. Fans are typically higher rated across the board, but that's not what this story is about.

Don't hold your breath. Here's a fun fact, Austria (listed under Australia in your wikipedia page) has banned nuclear reactors ... just as it's newly constructed one was due to go into operation. There's a lot of elections between when (if) Dutton passes his idiotic policy and the first reactor could potentially come online.

In any case it won't happen. Even if Dutton does win the federal election:
- State laws prohibit nuclear power as well.
- There is no support industry for nuclear power in Australia
- There are no enrichment facilities in Australia and on some occasions even OPAL has had issues sourcing fuel - and they use fuck all of it.
- There's no reprocessing facilities
- None of the states will repeal their ban unless the waste issue is dealt with, and none of the states want the waste in their back yard (ironically given how big the back yards are, I moved to an entire country that is smaller than South East QLD, and the state I live in now takes 45min to drive across).
- The Australian nuclear "industry" is not in support of it.
- No major financer in Australia is in support of it, and you need major financing so you're going to be reliant on overseas capital.
- The major beneficiaries - large industry is not in support of it.
- The construction industry doesn't have the capability to execute the projects as planned so you'll be reliant on overseas labour - that's nice bit of political mindfuckery for the stop the boats party.
- And finally Dutton's plan involves building fantasy plants in at least three locations for which the technology doesn't even exist yet.

Even if they do win the election, and even if they do repeal the legal ban, we're not getting a nuclear power plant.