The article specifically says that players can “get access to” special content. It doesn’t say the game includes that content by default. The phrasing definitely makes it sound like it’ll be paid DLC.

Yup, odometers were regulated specifically to protect consumers from widespread odometer fraud. Shit like companies requiring oil changes every 5k miles, and the odometer shows 5000 when it’s actually only 4000, so consumers pay for more service than they need. Or cases like this one, where a company is required to provide a warranty until the 50k odometer reading, and then fudges the odometer so it voids the warranty sooner than it should.

Yeah, I came to mention this one specifically. The Legends series was incredible at the time, and there was a lot of potential for a third game with more modern controls. But instead, Capcom has made it clear that they intend to simply sit on the IP and never do anything with it.

A really divisive minigame, to be sure. My wife and I both hated blitzball, (I save-scummed to get Wakka’s ultimates ASAP, then never touched it again) but my buddy probably sank 150 hours into it during his first play through.

Yeah, Chao Garden 2 Battle had some really amazing minigames. One of the best was the ability to play as Sonic or Shadow, and experience an entire plotline. Lots of players missed it almost entirely, because they were just too wrapped up in the main Chao Garden game to bother with the Light/Dark story stuff.

34 or 35, I think. I remember learning that she was around my age.

I would rather not do it and hope nobody else does it.

While this is certainly something to dream about, I live in the Bible Belt. If I hadn’t taken it, there would have been a hundred others lining up to do it.

“Oh, if I don’t use my electrical engineering skills to bomb children for a MIC company then someone else will do it, nah bitch I’ll work in a different field”

It’s a bit of a stretch to equate it with making bombs. And if you have the flexibility to work in a different field, then you’re already speaking from a position of privilege. Not everyone has that luxury. Some people have niche skills or have small tight-knit job fields, where burning a bridge with one company could cascade to other companies as word spreads.

Edit: although I do have to say you have to consider all aspects. If you’re only making content that changes gender to sex and you gotta feed yourself, then it’s a big jump from killing people for a war company for fun.

There are absolutely arguments for why we should require engineers to take engineering ethics classes. Hell, even city zoning departments can be abused by racists. But it all eventually boils down to a cost/benefit analysis for the person considering the job; Ethics studies may cause an engineer to weigh the moral “cost” more heavily on certain topics. But it’s still essentially just a mental calculation when deciding whether or not to take the job.

At what point do the benefits of the job begin to outweigh the moral costs? When you’re going to go hungry if you turned down the work and burned bridges? When your family is going to go hungry? Sure, the high horse may be attractive when it’s just you… But nobody wants to see their child go hungry because they refused work. Eventually, people will compromise on their morals in order to put food on the table. And effecting change is a lot easier to do when you have a good job and can afford to donate (either your time or money) to causes you believe in. Homeless people aren’t exactly known for their political weight.

So I used to do a lot of freelance, and encountered similar situations a few times.

The most blatant example that comes to mind was a charity run. I had the client reach out for AV gear and crew for a charity run. They needed some projectors and a small stage (and all of the AV gear+crew to go with the stage) for a charity event; They were going to be at a college campus, with joggers making laps on a 1/2 mile loop. For every lap, sponsors would donate to charity.

The projectors and stage were to give the MC a place to be, and to keep the audience entertained while the joggers ran. They’d have a band playing, and cap the event off with a movie screening. Sounds fun. I quoted the job like any other gig. The perceptive reader may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned what kind of charity they were raising funds for. That’s because I didn’t think to ask ahead of time. I got there, and discovered it was a pro-life fundraiser. Fucking yikes.

But I still did the job. I needed the money, and didn’t want to burn future bridges with other companies that were involved. I simply made a mental note to ask more questions the next time a charity event came across my desk. But the big takeaway is that even if I didn’t do it, someone else inevitably would have. The event still would have happened, and the charity money still would have been raised. At least with me doing it, I was able to avoid adding another enthusiastic voice (whoever would have taken my spot) to the echo chamber. Even if I had climbed up on stage to interrupt the event, it wouldn’t have changed any minds. Afterwards, I donated what I could afford to Planned Parenthood and moved on.

It’s in French, but here’s a link:
https://www.watson.ch/fr/!884988581

Basically, Yen did an interview for Watson (a magazine) where he talked about the swedish government encroaching on encryption. He got political when he started talking about how all of the Swedish government officials were useless bureaucrats, and praised the US government’s methods instead.

And the CEO just did it again, because apparently it wasn’t enough backlash the first time.

The issue with baby formula is that it’s pretty strictly regulated by the FDA, and getting approval is a lengthy (and extremely expensive) process. So there are only a few companies that hold a functional near-monopoly on the production, because they’re the only ones who had the resources to go through the process.

And to be clear, I’m not advocating for looser regulation on formula. Safety regulations are writ in blood. But local formula production would essentially require massive subsidies and fast-tracking to offset the costs and testing associated with starting production.

The Gatcha system is why I never finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The first game was phenomenal… But the second game required a gatcha system to unlock new party members. There were even quests that were locked behind certain ultra-rare party members. It’s an entirely single player game.

Does that really count? As far as I know, the golden keys mechanic was just a way to get some good gear. It wasn’t exclusive gear, and you could get it just by playing the game.

I think a lot of the liberal attacks were more of a “there’s a time and place, and this is neither” issue. The Genocide Joe posters were at their peak right as Trump (who straight up said he’d be worse about genocide than Joe was) was at the height of his campaign. The big difference was more about whether “perfect” should get in the way of “good enough.” Nobody thought Joe (and later Kamala) was the perfect candidate. But they thought it would be better than Trump.

If you live in a state that’s 100% guaranteed to go blue, then sure, abstain your vote in protest. After all, it won’t make a difference. But if you lived in a swing state, then abstaining was the same as saying “I don’t care who wins, even if it makes the genocide measurably worse in every way.” It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face, while also trying to claim moral superiority. Refusing to vote for a democrat because of the genocide was like handing a flamethrower to a compulsive arsonist, because the current administration didn’t do enough to support firefighters.

The end goal should have been to keep things from getting worse first, before you focus on hammering the genocide before the midterms. But apparently people on high horses don’t know how to play the long game.

Personally, I’d be against corporate owned IP. Leave the IP with the individual artists and writers, who are historically shit on by the large companies. Force the massive companies to actually keep the artists and writers around (and pay them well!) if they want to continue using an IP.

While I agree on the surface, the stark reality is that this would inevitably be used as a eugenics program. Imagine the current “speedrunning fascism low %” administration having the legal authority to decide who does (and more importantly, who doesn’t) get a parent permit.

While I agree, my ex once lit the house on fire while trying to make ramen.

Given, she was stoned out of her mind and passed out long enough for all the water to boil off. I got home from work just in time to find the bone-dry noodles burning in the pot.

Yeah, the fact that you can want to go somewhere, and have the resources to do so… And a faceless government bureaucrat hundreds of miles away can just go “lol no you’re not allowed here.” It is mind boggling.

Yeah, 18k games, but a lot of that is going to be shovelware. Steam has a big issue with shovelware designed to look like a good deal. They’ll release like 25 games, one will be priced at like $100, with the rest priced at like 50¢.

Then they do a publisher bundle, which marks all of those 50¢ games down by like 90%, but doesn’t touch the pricey game. So on the surface, the bundle is marked as like $100 for 25 games, at 87% off. Looks like a great deal. When in reality it’s just 24 cheap games marked down, and one super expensive game. And all of them will be shovelware. But it’ll be enough to fool anyone who doesn’t bother to dig into the actual bundle details.

The app has already been inactive for a while now. There hasn’t been any active development in several years. They clearly have no interest in continuing it, and just want to move on to other projects.