And the people who think they are those people are the worst.

Okay. Is it your life's work to know about this stuff?

The fuck are you on about? There's a link to more information, if you're like .. somebody who huffs glue and can't infer what the gist of the existing policy is (hint: wear body cameras.) Why it's being cancelled is explicitly listed in the summary.

Do you just need to hear the sound of your keyboard or something?

Just to add on to this, isn't not like I'm saying it would be bad for merchants to include taxes in advertised prices. That could be nice. But "no hidden fees" can also mean just that the fee is listed along side a price. Adding it *for you* to the sticker price is a convenience, as it would be with taxes, but not adding a fee to a product price isn't what makes it hidden - it's not disclosing that that fee even exists up front during the process of shopping before intent to purchase.

You know you will have to pay taxes. You know what those taxes are. The point of saying "no hidden fees" is to prevent merchants for adding fees on at point of sale that you *didn't know about* at the point of perusal and/or adding to a cart.

Merchants take advantages of the fact that you may have spent 5 minutes, 30 minutes, etc trying to find something to add to your cart, and that the consumer will view a "surprise" fee listed at point of sale as a sunk cost to just accept.

The same can't be said about government taxes. You know they exist. You know their values. By definition they are not hidden.

it tells me here's a person who considers themselves technical, but apparently doesn't know how to evaluate or find answers for something they haven't personally experienced. That's hilarious to me.

I've used a ton of stuff, never used a whole ton of other stuff stuff, I've also used a ton of stuff I hate, I've used a ton of stuff I love - and can still formulate answers on why people might need, or want, to use them, not use, not want, etc.

No, either the OP is being disingenuous with the word "struggle" or they truly are not particularly technical.

I strongly question the technical aptitude of anyone who asks these sorts of questions.

Next you can tell us how stupid sock hops are!

To be fair, I've seen some analysts pointing out that some of the increase in other markets may well be to soften the price spike for US consumers given that it's XBox's biggest market.

Seems like a false dichotomy to me. I find it likely that some of the adjustment may be due to plain old increases in cost on their side - the consoles have been out for quite some time, but the US increase has the cost of the tariffs factored in which is why it's proportionally higher? But indeed maybe it was easier for them to swallow making those non-US market adjustments thanks to the forced hand of the tariffs?

It's easy to speculate, but certainly the difference in proportional price increase points to American consumers having to locally cover a bigger gap for tariff related cost increases.

Did they really alter the deal if the thing the user agrees to when they start using it is "We can change the deal at any point"?

that their positions correlate with what they perceive might be better for themselves from a business standpoint

They're raising costs in all markets, but the difference in price varies significantly between markets:

While prices for Xbox consoles and accessories are increasing all around the world, the difference is far greater in the U.S. For instance, in the UK the Xbox Series X is increasing from £480 to £500, only a four percent rise compared to 20 percent. (The Series S is changing significantly more, going up 20 percent from £25o to £300, but that’s still a smaller change than in the United States.)

src: https://kotaku.com/microsoft-x...

If/when true AGI is achieved, only a fool would announce it. What would announcing it do for you? Make you famous? Rich? Cool. Know what's better than all that?

Not telling a damn soul and using the AGI quietly to do whatever the Hell you want. If you want to be rich, the AGI will tell you how to become rich. If you want to be famous, the AGI will tell you how to become famous. You can do both. And you don't have to stop there. A real, vastly superior AGI enables the person controlling it to do anything. The second you tell people about it, you'll lose control over it and then you're the famous idiot who did a cool thing one time. Kids in elementary school will recite your name back on a test. And you could have had everything.

Anyone smart enough to crack AGI can't also be stupid enough to advertise when they do it.

It's kind of cute you think Windows would constitute a significant portion of their code footprint.