Since buying the original XBox I've personally picked it every generation. But perhaps not for the reasons MS would prefer. I've always bought consoles as both gaming device and multimedia player. XBMC, all the way to Kodi on my series X. PS always lagged in that regard.

I don't buy a lot of games. Less than one a year, and none since 2024. I'm the owner of what MS might call stranded hardware.

And now the Apple TV is so good I haven't turned on my XBox on in months.

So I get it. Guys like me freeloaded cheap hardware thanks to the game buyers, but we don't contribute to the revenue streams.

I'm 55. I have a decade of alcoholism with uncontrolled sky high blood pressure accompanying it. My doctor once pointed to my liver enzyme chart and said, "Your liver is very unhappy with you." Then he pointed at my ECG and said, "See that little bump there? That might be what kills you." I had 18 months with a cocaine problem. For two years I partied hard including every psychedelic I could get my hands on. I spent 40 years out of shape, sometimes ridiculously so.

I'm in good shape now, and across the board my numbers are great. ECG is clean. I'm comfortably retired, and at the gym every day. I'm healthy. If you looked at the snapshot at this moment in time you'd think things could hardly be any better... but I know the damage has been done. I'm on borrowed time.

So if I'm going to spent a few uninterrupted hours on MS Flight Simulator, or slashing my way through a few zones on D2: Resurrected, I'm not going to sweat it. In the pantheon of self destructive behaviour this doesn't rise to the level of consideration.

What makes this an American website? Seems pretty well traveled by folks from most English speaking nations. I, myself, have only visited the states.

Stealing something because you don't like terms you are being offered is not a noble act. And patting yourself on the back for it says not much about Sony, but a great deal about you.

I have in my past been a pirate, although not recently. I don't pretend it was anything other than simple theft. Own it.

These past two years have radically redefined what it means to be a military superpower. Nuclear weapons aside, all conventional forms of projected power are either obsolete or under significant pressure. And each time a new advancement is democratized, the problem is compounded,

I say "problem", but it's a problem for some and a relief for others. Small powers move to the middle, and so do great powers. The advantage of hundreds of billions in annual military investment is evaporating. And the barrier to entry is shrinking. Theoretical military matchups formerly seen as decisive, one-sided routs are not guaranteed except in that they will be immensely costly for the traditionally well-equipped.

It's like all the chess pieces are being returned to their origins, and the game starts over with different rules.

This... is going to be interesting.

"Are checks sent through the mail vulnerable to theft?"

Yes.

My guess would be that Apple waited to raise the price in order to not sabotage their launch hype. Reasonable investment.

Talk about a perfect case of misapplied mathematics. It's just nonsense. It's like extrapolating your car's fuel economy from the first 100 meters of driving. Briefly mathematically correct but completely wrong in all real ways.

"It's very important and cannot be skipped, but the danger is not imminent" is a perfectly reasonable classification for risk. You used the word "emergency". They did not.

You would be amazed how many things continue to operate in this middle ground. Like an absurd number of bridges in the United States.

Everything in tech has historically gotten better and cheaper. I paid $1000 in early 90s dollars for 4 x 4 MB of ram. That's $62 per megabyte. My 128GB kit would be unreliable slow and cost me $8 million, not even counting inflation, if what you said was true.

New products are born into the world they must inhabit. Complaining their pricing doesn't look like pricing from years ago isn't completely reasonable. Complaining that DDR5 pricing today doesn't look like pricing from two years ago makes perfect sense to me. Complaining about what DDR6 will cost isn't nearly as clearcut. To be clear, I would like a return to the old paradigm where pricing naturally drifts downward. I liked buying at the sweet spot of 2 year old tech. My current box has 128GB of DDR5 that has quadrupled in price since I got it.

I'm just saying that the news is not 100% bad.

Sure, it's not great for anybody looking to build a new box, but there is an upside. If you're a gamer, your current kit got a life extension. And developers just got a reprieve from having to chase new tiers of hardware performance. I don't think it's a bad thing for the consumer world to just hole up, take a pause for a couple of years, and mature what's already in place. Look at what happens to console game performance on year 1 vs year 5. The hardware doesn't change, but everything gets better.

Of course all of the other things that have ram may become problematic... but a lot of those don't use cutting edge ram. They use old shit because it's plentiful and cheap.

Of course it's a mixed bag. I'm not claiming it doesn't irk me to see prices like this. I'm just saying it's not 100% bad.

That's correct. I don't experience those things. But holy hell... I mean, I've done ketamine, from a tiny bump to the deepest hole. I found it to be the most intensely bizarre experience of all, because it upends all normal relationships, like cause and effect, identity, language... all out the window. But never hallucinations of coherence that retained the trappings of normalcy.

Hah hah... :)

One of the best cars I ever owned.

If it wasn't disclosed, how did you figure it out? Were they hiding it, or was it just not applicable, and therefore not worth mentioning, in relation to this use case?

When I talk about my 1998 Miata I don't mention it was bad at hauling gravel.