Game passes exist for PC as well, and offer even more variety there.

Boot time should never take 30sec on PC as well. But most consoles are actually not much faster in boot and loading times. People tend to compare a PC booting from cold with a console just booting from sleep/hibernation mode.

Boot times on PC however can easily be further optimized, especially when not using Windows for gaming. A gaming Linux distro will be faster by leagues, even in a cold start.

“self-Determination” and “decision-making” are conscious, complex processes. A single cell is incapable of that.

On the other hand, how do we as humans form decisions? We use sensory input from various organs, process those by combining with existing knowledge/memories and form decisions based on that. But in the end, it’s still all based on “chemical and mechanical reactions”.

You quickly get into philosophical territory there: is our conscious self more than the sum of all the processes in our brain? Is there some extra “spark” that allows true self-determination, or are all our decisions a given result of the exact state of our brain and body?

Technically true, but I think everybody knows exactly what kind of dlc is meant, and because they still make up the majority of dlc content and addon-sized dlcs are so rare, it’s fair to call them that.

Moneygrab empty dlcs ( shiny horse armor! ) are stupid, and history has shown that people are not fiscally responsible enough to not be lured into spending absurd amounts of money for very shallow or plain empty content. “Vote with your wallet” doesn’t really work in the face of more and more insidious marketing efforts.

*rogue Roguelike

Though rougelike certainly sounds like an interesting genre too 😉

Id2 is the actual successor. It’s planned to be the first VW “affordable” EV with a starting price below 25000 euros when it releases in 2025. At least they now try to target the budget market, but I’d never recommend a VW. They have done so much bad quality cars since the late 90s…

Laying even 10 times the cable should not be more difficult when you have 60 times the total population (335mio in US vs 5.6mio in Finland) and hence more resources.

And sure, Alaska definitely it’s expensive and inefficient to service, having a pop density of about 0.5 inhabitants per km². But unlike Northern Finland, most of Northern Alaska is in fact entirely void of human life and more akin to a desert. There really mostly are a handful of oil industry clusters and native communities. And still, the extremely low pop density means it’s only 730 000 people living in Alaska. That is 0.2% of the entire population of the USA. If you were to completely ignore and not service Alaska, you should have a an even easier time providing service to the vast majority of the US population in all the main states. I think it’s pretty clear this is a political failure and not a matter of financial resources or natural obstacles.

You are absolutely correct that distribution matters. However, Finland has an even more uneven population distribution than the US. 75% of the population lives in the costal cities, with 30% of the entire population living in the capital region( density of 193 persons/km²). The entire rest of the country is not empty dessert ( which would require no services), but very sparsely populated rural woodlands, down to 2 people per km².

Density still is an overall useful quantifier given that extra knowledge, as providing services for a small population of only 5.6mio inhabitants is not easy either. Sure, providing coverage for the 75% in the cities is fairly easy. But that still leaves 1.5mio rural residents, which require huge investments in cable to supply with broadband. And due to the vast distances, you definitely cannot cover them with wireless alone, if you were thinking that.

Finland is not a small country compared to its population density and distribution.

Finland has 18 inhabitants per km².

USA have 35 inhabitants per km².

What’s your source on the reverify thing? I use matrix a lot, and this hasn’t been an issue I ever experienced anymore since they introduced cross-signing a couple years ago.

Same goes for the common clients such as element. It has been clunky in the past, but after the past major overhauls ( also years ago now) everything has been silky smooth for me, if not better than others. The one thing left I prefer from Signal is the one-time photo share.

Matrix is great, clients are great too, only the server part still is annoyingly complicated and messy. Would only recommend that for tinkerers, on that case it’s a great path to learning about the complexity of addressing lots of security concerns that others gloss over.

Edit: to add - there’s a reason why the French government and the German military decided to build their secure internal IM infrastructure on Matrix. Obviously they are hosting their own private network, but if the concept is good enough for European government and military, it is an indicator for quality especially in terms of security and privacy.

That alone sadly is not even the issue. Only when stealing from the government comes in, you can expect to actually get prosecuted.

Trying to pawn off the expenses on your company balance and committing tax fraud, then paying off people to not tell about your tax fraud, that’s what gets you.

I was about to say… What does “suitable” mean? I grew up in the 90s, and “suitable games” ranged from SimCity or the settlers to age of empires, crusader Kings, quake, doom, unreal tournament or half life.

There is no need to over protect kids from the “simple” evils: when I was very young, I didn’t want to play violent or scary games, even knowing they exist. Later I got curious and explored them. Depending on your choice a game such as the settlers, age of empires or crusader Kings could well be classified violent and “unsuitable”. But violence is everywhere, and those were some of the games that I fondly remember for instilling a huge curiosity in history and cultures in me. And yes, we were marketing victims as well: everyone spent way too much on Magic, Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh cards and related toys. But it didn’t infect every part of our lives.

Help your kids reflect on their choices and wants. Help them find out why they really want to pay too much money for that shiny Roblox skin. And offer alternatives with free, open content sharing so they realize they are being swindled. Media literacy is much tougher today because companies got much more insidious marketing vectors to infect kids.

Nowadays there are thousands of games being released per week, in addition to classics such as Minecraft, Terraria, Rimworld, Eco, which still have very strong modding and multiplayer communities.

You can disable camera shaking and some post process features such as motion blur, then it’s no different from any other shooter game in terms of motion patterns.

It’s an adapter for the power to a graphics card.

Most modern cards need the combined power of the two input cables, while many power supply units for compatibility’s sake still only offer the two small cables and not a single big one.

So this adapter now usually comes with every graphics card you buy, and sometimes PSUs too, and they end up lying around.

Don’t forget legit slavery. You literally can catch humans as if they were pals. And then force them to work or fight for you. Or even butcher them…

Which is fine

But that’s boring. Just close your eyes, grab any packet or bottle at random and apply with gusto. This way you will always be surprised at new and fresh taste combinations!

You underestimate how little money such a dlc makes. It’s the same reason why the promised SP addon for GTA 5 was cancelled. Return of investment is magnitudes higher for any GTA online content. Making a new car model is little effort and brings in millions of dollars.

Having to deal with story, level design, voice actors and possibly animators or even Mocap: soooooo much more work. Sure they could do it, and even Earn good money with it. But online pay dlcs are so little effort for so much more payout , why even bother?

Rockstar hated what FiveM did, even threatening them at the start because they were afraid it would compete with their own online service. And now they bought them up, but only after realizing how much more people ( or rather their wallets) they can possibly reach.

Interesting, will have to read up on how that works in Brazil. We also have a separate tax id here ( which is also used for pension and social security ), but that one is even more secure/private than the passport ID. We only provide that to our chosen medical insurance provider ( bc they need to register it with the ministry of finance ) as well as employers ( because 50% of the insurance has to be paid by employers).

It’s explicitly not allowed and intended for generic identification purposes, because it makes it too accessible for identity theft and associated scams.

Where do you live that providing your government id to a business is standard? In Germany, the only one outside of a judge to be allowed to request that is law enforcement ( even then only with proper cause ). Of course, some businesses are legally required to request and process your ID number ( e.g. when booking international flights, medical insurance companies etc), but these are under tight federal control and supervision to ensure data safety.

Age verification sometimes is a thing for purchasing 18+ things ( media or drugs like alcohol & smokes), but even then businesses will only ever perform a visual check of the date of birth on your ID. Technically they can never demand to hold your ID, not even for a short time just to better read the date. You only have to show them your ID. And actually recording and/or storing any of that information would be insanely illegal.

Germany / Europe might have its issues, but we at least try and take our freedom and data privacy serious. I would never dream of handing my ID to a generic business like a club for anything more than the age check.

Isn’t it weird that EU, famous for being so fragmented that they can’t decide on common interior or foreign policy, all while being ridiculed for their large and inefficient bureaucracy, still is the sole entity that manages to stand up to mega corporations?

And those are sometimes fights that have zero benefit to a different wealthy elite, but actually protect citizen liberties.

I shudder to think how the world would look like if EU had not established and enforced the GDPR as well as it does. Consumer protection is probably one of the only fields where the EU had a global positive impact.