I used to always own at least one console, despite mostly being a PC gamer. I felt like the console was more of an appliance, really. Power it on and it has one job. Even if I came to accept the idea of buying games digitally on Steam or elsewhere for my Windows gaming PC, I never felt like it should be the same experience on a console. It's nice to own a physical library of game titles your friends or family can look through on a shelf and decide what they want to pop in and play. It has "permanence" - even if the game itself requires an Internet connection and supports online multiplayer gaming.

I guess I could be swayed to be less concerned if the manufacturers would play fair with all of it, but IMO, they really don't. As one example? My wife's kid bought an XBox 360 and owned a number of digital games on it. Microsoft decided to ban him from their network permanently, and without any warning or real explanation. He wasn't running hacks or cheats, and he wasn't threatening other gamers with violence or anything of the sort. He did have an odd nickname/handle (something about killing a unicorn?), so he finally decided that's what offended some people and got him banned. After all that money was lost on the console and digital purchases - the entire family decided to never again buy an XBox of any type.

My wife had a similar hassle involving the Nintendo Switch and her favorite game, Animal Crossing. To be honest, I don't even play the Switch so I'm not even that familiar with the whole thing. But it had something to do with her buying the game on a physical cartridge but then Nintendo trying to move everything to digital games only. They provided a means to use the physical copy to authorize your account to download and play the digital one, but that wound up hampering how she wanted to play the game across three different Nintendo Switch consoles she owned while retaining her saved game.

"Thank you Vera much."

No... nobody I know thinks we're "leading the world in banking technology". We're well aware how backwards the systems are. That's likely a big motivator for people to dabble in crypto and to use all the electronic payment systems that popped up, from Venmo to Cash App.

It's endlessly frustrating. At least 20 years ago, I was sure paper checks would vanish because of the utter lack of security they provide people. It seems like they came from an era where one's signature meant something? (If you think about it, that theme runs deep in our Financial system. Every credit card transaction prompts you for a signature. Yet if you ever have to challenge/fight fraudulent charges, you'll find the card companies don't give a crap if your signature matches what they show was scribbled for the transaction. You're still just as liable for it. Sign with a stick figure .... doesn't matter.) But yeah, give me a paper check and now I have your home address, likely one of your phone numbers, a copy of what your signature looks like (should I want to forge it later) and your bank's routing number + your account number. It's pretty common to ask the person paying to write down their date of birth on the check too. How are people ok with this?

Credit card processing is pathetic too, really. I was selling some 3D prints just a few weeks ago at our booth at the local Farmers'/Artisans' market, and a guy gave me a card that only worked with a mag-stripe. I had to run it with Square by manually keying in his card digits! I thought mag-stripe was rendered obsolete by now!

https://www.space.com/astronomy/mars/did-nasa-just-find-evidence-of-ancient-life-on-mars-perseverance-rover-spots-complex-carbon-in-red-planet-rocks

No need to accept cookie-raping-or-subscription The Guardian, when you can reject cookies from others.

From the summary:

IOW, they're sticking with their marketing pitch.

That's no longer the American Way (if it ever was).

Wind is part of the cause, but the GS itself is an ocean current.

The reported drop ins SpaceX is understandable given the recent IPO.

As for most of the others, is a 2% drop significant?

In a free country, "too big to fail" is to big to be allowed.

I'm not from the future. It's just that time is cyclical.

There are various hypotheses to explain it, such that the universe is cyclical or that we're stuck in a time loop. But the most broadly accepted hypothesis is that a prior civilization collapsed at the end of year 32,767, and it has taken us almost 35,000 years to get back to where we are now.

Of course, our calendar doesn't allow for a year 0, so we may have an off-by-one error. But then again people celebrated the millennium at the end of 1999, so maybe there's a tacit assumption that there was in fact a year 0.
 

Actually, I like watching the stunt men and special effects.

Nah, they're just jealous that other people's fuckups have been dominating the news, and they want some of that old-fashioned media love too.

I haven't been to the cinema since 2917, because everything was already too boring and predictable to watch. Let alone pay for.

Have you ever considered that pointing out that "x is bad" does not in any way imply "y is good".

If "3x more" means proportional, then TT must be about 150% slop.

Probably a pretty good estimate...