That doesn't make sense, the average gamer will play more than 15 hours a month, that's a tiny bit over 3 hours a week. At that point, you'd just not bother with a console that costs hundreds at all.

So Microsoft is misleading, obsfucating or just flat out lying that only 4% will be impacted. Plus it makes terrible business sense for your cheapest product to meet the needs of your 96% of your customers, its the "2nd cheapest bottle of wine" effect, if you know nothing about wine you buy the second cheapest bottle as it's usually a fair bit better than the cheapest for a fraction of the price extra. So effectively your cheapest product is there just to be shit and drive people to slightly more expensive options. You want most customers buying the 2nd tier (or 2nd and 3rd if you've got a 4 tier system) which isn't much more than the bottom tier whilst your top tier is expensive.

Consoles were always money sinks, however I suspect Microsoft has gotten sick of subsidising them.

PCGMR here, steam quadrupled the price of my subscription this month, as they do every month... let me run the maths... 4 x £0 is still £0.

Don't think I'll be cancelling, even though I still get to keep all my games.

Time to admit the XBox and PS are both effectively dead. And nothing of value was lost.

Remember ladies and gentlemen, you're sharing the footpath with drivers who think a car without an instrument binnacle is a good idea.

Wealthy people don't physically protest, that's just for the proles.

Wealthy people protest by calling their bought and paid for politicians (or merely rented if they're not wealthy enough) which is far more effective.

The rich would love to have everyone tracked except for them. What Nineteen-Eighty Four didn't mention is that the inner party members were not subject to the same rules as normal party members (or proles).

They're a minority, but there absolutely are people who are tired of democracy because it keeps thwarting their massively unpopular ideas, and they're well-represented in the Trump administration:

https://theinterestingtimes.su...

His crime was getting caught. Never, ever let the authorities, let alone the general public in on the scam.

But I wouldn't worry, this isn't Kalshi telling Santos he's unwanted, this is Kalshi telling Santos to cover his tracks better. His secret, illegal account is still safe and active... Oh crap, I shouldn't have said he has a secret account... Oh crap, I certainly shouldn't have said it was illegal.

This is entirely performative to maintain a very thin veneer of legitimacy.

Some of them live in their own bubble of unreality. Murdoch and Fox News have had over 30 years of being their sole source of untruth to make that bubble. Americans tend to have a tenuous relationship with reality at the best of times but the MAGA crowd turn it to 11 and then some. When confronted with evidence they don't agree with they will find any excuse to handwave it away, no matter how much they suffer because of it, they'll vote for more of it because the Fox News man tells them to do so. And we're not immune to it, AFD (DE), National Front (FR), Vox (ES), Refrom (UK) are all using the same tactics. I can't speak for all European nations but the British Reform voters are literally the turkeys voting for Christmas. Reform has promised to cut benefits (welfare) and it just happens that most of the Reform voters are in the most deprived towns and counties in England. Clacton, where Nigel Farage was elected, has over 47% of it's working age population economically inactive and 1 in 5 have never held a job at all. They just assume it'll be someone elseâ(TM)s welfare that gets cut... Hell, as it happens they'll still blame anyone but themselves.

If that were a roadblock to creative legal reinterpretation, the US would still be following a 1790s-1960s interpretation of the 2nd amendment today.

There's a loophole in the 22nd amendment you forgot about that Trump is aware of, the vice-presidential switcheroo:

https://www.politico.com/news/...

Apple under Jobs was always sleaze city... it's just that it's now the Reality Distortion Field has broken down and people are seeing through it.

Just 10 years ago, Fanboys would be defending the idea of putting ads in as revolutionary, unprecedented, imaginative and groundbreaking whilst jerking themselves silly. Now days the Apple crowd are 40 yr old dads in socks and sandals (and not the fashionable style of hippy, no this is Derek from Accounts Receivable socks and sandals) that has too many kids so no MX-5. I remember when ./ would melt down over every apple rumour, now days a motoring forum I frequent has more attention given to major product releases from Apple and we're talking about one thread in a small "computers and stuff" section of a car forum.

Apple's always been a cult, hence the tolerance of sleeze but it's not the cool cult that Tom Cruise joins, it's the cult that your boring dad joins.

I am a 40 something, but have a 2 seater sports car and no Apple devices (hence I can afford the "kid free" ride).

I have a Motorola Edge 60 Neo, it was a reasonably cheap phone at £300 when it was relatively new (I think it's around £250 now. I'm yet to find all that bundled crapware the GP speaks of... hell it didn't even come with Facebook. I've gone and disabled all the AI stuff so it's now a decent phone with quite good hardware for the 300 quid category.

I bought my mum a G56 and it was largely the same story, except no AI as that was an older and even cheaper model (about £150). She loved it as it weighed half as much as the ancient Samsung she was lugging around.

I'm not particularly brand loyal though, I previously bought Nokias (HMD Global) but nothing they make is remotely good any more.

What people forget is that hardware isn't particularly expensive when you're buying it in bulk, especially before the recent RAMAGEDDON (which makes the full 8GB in my 60 Neo even more amazing). So production of cheap and mid range phones isn't that expensive especially when you're not customising the software to the Nth degree to preserve your brand. Margins are probably razr thin on a sub £400 phone but they're not being sold as loss leaders in the hopes of selling £800 phones to people who want £200 phones... You deserve to go out of business if you think that'll happen.

And this is just how much power the US has lost due to the Republicans. 25 years ago, just after Clinton the idea that you'd say no to the US was absolutely unthinkable for a nation like Canada, Australia, Mexico, et al. anyone who was an ally of the west. The US used to literally put laws on the books of foreign countries via trade treaties, even the EU wasn't powerful enough to give an outright "no". This is how US drug laws and US copyright laws became "international". I watched it happen to Australia in the 90s and early 2000s but then the US elected Bush and that power began to wane. The Australian and UK prime ministers followed Bush into Iraq with tails wagging like the sycophantic little lap dogs they were. This was when the US started losing it's power because it became embroiled in a war it couldn't win despite Bush declaring it won (TBF he didn't do it 17 times).

Now Bush, to his credit, what little there is didn't abuse this power too much but countries were finding the new copyright laws to be... well, frankly retarded as the MPIAA tried to do speculative invoicing in Australia and constantly running up against judges who would actually apply the laws fairly and justly (you know, "activist" judges as they like to call them). This was the late 00s. Obama came in and realised he'd have to start negotiating because the power the US had lessened. Started building up good will. Then you had Trump that pissed all that away... the Republicans kept doing damage as best they could through Biden and now you've got Trump 2, you've got nations that were once willing lapdogs telling you to go do one.

The Canadians, one of the, if not the nicest nations on the planet is telling you to fuck right off... if a British politician had done this we'd have quietly shuffled him off to the Svalbard consulate with an Apology to the Norwegians made on a copious quantity British vodka so that the worst he could do is offend Pingu.

American history is filled with such moments, trail of tears, Wounded Knee, et al. up to Mai Lai.

Kiwi history only has a few smudges in comparison.

Covering up such crimes is as American as selling beads to natives and then force marching them.