The really big thing here, at least the way I see it, is rental stores and libraries, where it is much more likely that any (legit) game a consumer gets from there has passed through many hands and is more likely to cause issues. We're also only a few months into the generation, and I see a lot of "infected" cartridges and unusable second-hand systems in the future. Nintendo isn't just trying to shut down the used market. Nintendo is trying to shut down the library.

That's also a big use case for me. Sometimes you just want a block of text with none of the extra formatting applied.

At current prices and interest rates, where I live (in Utah, which is supposedly low-COL 'flyover' territory) the median single-family home listing is around $700,000, which would take a family income of around $270,000 to be 'affordable' by conventional measurements. Getting into a top-level university seems like a bargain compared to that. Only 10% more than being able to afford a median home!

Do I make anywhere near that... dear god, no. Even with how much everything else has gone up, I'm still spending close to double on rent+utilities vs every other spending category combined, and it's in-line with a normal apartment... and my landlord is forcing me to move because he's not extracting enough from me and the next place is almost definitely going to cost more.

How do I afford it? Uh... rice, oatmeal, and maybe a cardboard box if I lose my income. Housing costs basically doubled once Covid hit, and I'm paying a whole lot more for a whole lot less than I had before.

And probably wouldn't cause any kind of uproar, either.

I believe that people were getting upset about autotune in music, instead? But I suppose on a very base level, the two are similar, but this does sound less intrusive.

When something like a Taco Bell Chalupa (which isn't a lot of food) costs $6 and a nearby counter-serve authentic taco place can sell me a variety of items for the same $6 with not only vastly superior quality but larger portions, as well, I have to wonder how Taco Bell even stays in business, especially as Taco Bell has gone with uncomfortable 'modern' design elements that make even being in the building unpleasant. Of course, I don't expect the local place to be able to keep doing what they're doing, but it's a much better alternative, for now.

I'm as much for ending the change as anyone else, but just, scientifically, how is summer sunlight at 4 AM a good thing, on any level?

Later sunsets in the winter seem like a good thing all-around, and more impactful than early morning light, IMO, and any loss of morning light seems less significant than the sleep-disrupting impact to of extremely early light in the summer.

//And I'm tired of the privileged viewpoint of 'it doesn't matter what the clocks say' Most people have their schedules dictated to them regardless of personal preferences, so the numbers on the clock very much matter for all but the privileged few. That's a "let them eat cake" argument if I ever heard one.

If life/work balance gives workers no time for families, and insane housing costs make having even a stable environment untenable, how would they even manage it?

If a company, say, Monster Cable, doesn't release a product in a category other than, let's say... cables, for a period of over 5 years, should that mean that shouldn't have a legal ground to stand on when a mom & pop laundromat uses the word 'monster' in their name? I really don't understand how this stuff works, since I clearly see a 007 movie in 2021, a rerelease of a 007 game (Goldeneye) in 2023, a TV series in 2023, and a whole website with a ton of merch in a wide variety of categories, from plastic models to board games, to stationary.

And both are rather frustrating. It's of course frustrating when looking for a job, but it's also very frustrating when on a team that's looking to increase headcount, and the manager is continually 'I kind of liked that person, but I'm not sure...' for months on end as we keep going through candidates and they don't want to outright reject the good-but-not-sure-if-good-enough applicants, all the while the team is short manpower it sorely needs.

But he's rich. Shouldn't that reduce the sentence down to 6 months or so at a glorified golf club for fellow billionaires? Maybe a little longer if he wants to complete the end-of-season golf tournament.

Before the pandemic, I had a mortgage on a house. My employer chose to have a huge layoff, and I was forced to sell. Now, I'm stuck in someone's "investment property" that he scooped up with a next-to-nothing interest rate and got taken away from being ownable by working families. I'm paying 40% more than my house was for 50% less space, and I'm told that that's a bargain at current costs. As a bonus, he can raise the rent any time I ask him to fix anything and I can be forced to move the moment that he decides that I ask for too much. Well, at least he's getting wealthy off of it.

I've been forced into having subtitles on for many years now. Movie producers seem to think that people want the sound effects (and sometimes music) mixed at drastically louder volumes than anything else, so if I set the volume so that the sound effect track is tolerable, I can barely hear the dialog. I'd rather them just record things at more even level to begin with than have to mess with the tracks like this, but it's needed with the way that movies are recorded these days.

...And feel like a wreck unless I somehow manage to get more, but it usually takes 3+ hours to get back to sleep. Getting up just ensures that I feel like a wreck. Even if I do get a few more hours of sleep, I'm still falling asleep over and over during the day. Sleep studies showed some hypopneas, but were corrected with a mandibular adjustment splint years ago, and that my oxygen levels are now normal, but problems persist. I don't know what to do...

...in part, because many streaming services (such as Netflix and Amazon) don't actually let you chose the quality of the stream. Their bandwidth detection algorithms set it to whatever they want. I've got Google Fiber, which is 1000/1000, and sometimes, especially at the beginning, the video is an artifact soup. Is there a problem with my internet? Nope. Just their algorithms. As for the cost of the service... Am I paying more than Comcast? Yep, but not a lot, and even if the advertised speeds were the same, it would be worth the premium to not deal with Comcast.

In my last job, I survived for 5 years. I watched them go from a shared office for my team, to cubicles, to an open office, to an "open warehouse" noise-filled hellscape. The building was large enough that it would take maybe 20 minutes to walk around, and you could see out the windows on all four walls at the same time. The company wanted to be "industrial" so there was lots of rust in the furnishings, bare concrete for a floor, and a few tiny phone booth-type installations that were too small to do any real work in. Between that, and them requiring me to be in the office past 2AM multiple nights a month, I switched jobs really fast. Now, I'm in "just" an open office, and even at the new company, I started with cubicles and they cut down. It isn't even a space concern at the new company, since we're not packed in nearly as tightly as the last one. It's just because the CEO (with his own private office, of course) likes it. Even management-level employees don't have offices.