…and the world was a better place for it.

You know, I’ve always thought of Metroidvanias as 2D experiences - but reading your comment and mulling it over, I have to agree: Arkham Asylum is very much a Metroidvania, and a great one at that!

Millionaires billionaires.

It’s a dick-measuring contest from more civilised times.

IP/trademarks/copyrights/etc.

This is likely going to be the main reason for the takedown notices, Sony will be exercising their legal rights in order to defend their trademarks & copyrights on Concord assets.

If a company doesn’t defend them vigorously, then any unlicensed works that are allowed to exist are then used as legal precedent moving forward to null/void such copyrights and trademarks.

As an aside, Sony is a global corporation and can likely choose to write down these losses in the most preferred region to maximise the tax offset - so likely either the US, or Ireland.

Sabotaged by the stupid placement of the microphone and earpiece… I still remember the taco phone memes of the day. Shame, it could have been great!

Touché, that definitely does sound like it would have been a a fun job!

I still feel like I lucked out compared to my classmates who were either flipping burgers at Macca’s, stacking shelves at the local supermarket, or waiting at a chain restaurant. Being a “Toy Tester” every December was just 👌🏼

Stocking shelves, helping customers and tidying up at Toys R Us was literally my first job during high school, and it was probably the best work a 16yo kid could in the early 2000s.

I will never forgive Bain Capital (and Mitt Romney for founding it), for its intentional sabotage of that business. Absolute scumbags.

I’m not saying AI will go away, or not continue to improve - but we are very much at the tail end of the current mania phase, and we will see some market pullback as AI startups begin to go out of business when all of those lofty promises of AI fail to materialise.

Diminishing returns on ever increasing investment, circular investments based on speculative returns, these are all signs of the tail-end of a stock market bubble.

The best way to think of them is as cousins; they are similar - but not exactly the same.

They focus more on higher VRAM and CUDA cores compared to GPUs, while forgoing 3d acceleration capabilities.

But they both come out of the same factories; so when the demand for AI cards is as high as it is now - and Nvidia can sell as many as it produces with a higher margin than GPUs, there is little incentive for them to produce more GPUs and sell them at a competitive price.

So when the AI bubble bursts, demand for AI cards will crater - and there will be no financial incentive to mass produce them in such high quantities. This frees up production capacity at the TSMC factories, incentivising production of lower margin products like GPUs.

Economics is largely a game of supply & demand; when supply outstrips demand, prices fall as sellers search for buyers. When demand outstrips supply prices go up as buyers search for sellers.

Absolutely; but you just know that Publishers will just push to outsource development to 3rd party “contractors” so that they won’t be eligible, or some other such bullshit.

In a lot of places, rotisserie chicken are a loss-leader - they are sold below cost in order to entice more shoppers in the hopes that they will buy enough other things to more than make up for it.

Costco does this, not only on their hotdogs but also on their chickens also.

A lot of other times, raw commodity materials are more valuable than finished goods because of the implied value; ie there is an opportunity cost associated with transforming it into a finished good.

Assuming the AI bubble bursts before then, we might actually see somewhat reasonable pricing for next-gen consoles.

A major reason why prices have remained so inflated for so long post-COVID is because data centres have been sucking up every bit of silicon that TSMC has been able to pump out for both Nvidia and AMD.

But that would be honestly a very small upside, compared to what would likely be the Mother of All Stockmarket Crashes. The market cap of the Top 10 AI-related stocks is greater than the current US national debt, they aren’t in a position to be able to reasonably bail out those companies when it all eventually goes to shit, like they do in 2008.

It’s more about the console’s lifecycle, rather than it remaining the ‘current generation’. They’re implying that they will continue to ‘support’ the PS5 for another 5 years, whatever they determine that to mean (likely just keeping the online store open, maybe also multiplayer servers, and whatever PlayStation Plus features ).

Eufy had those widely published security issues previously, they have apparently been addressed since - but their initial response has always left a bad taste in my mouth.

I’m happy with my TAPO C420 local recording and doorbell setup, but I know that they have also had a number of security concerns and required firmware updates.

If money is no issue, or rather - it can fit within your budget - Ubiquiti would be my pick, but it also requires an bigger investment into their ecosystem.

Oh, absolutely - but a lot of perpetual/evolving media has similar issues where previous canon ends up being recontextualised, reframed or outright retconned in order to better fit the overarching story currently being told.

Sometimes it’s for the better, others for the worse (cough, Shadowlands, cough).

Still, it doesn’t stop it from being an otherwise great example of world building - evident in part by just how many people actually care about the lore!

They popped up on my YouTube shorts feed a few weeks ago; as best as I can tell they’re a fan-made set of booster cards, with the purpose of parodying/piggybacking on the current booster cracking (gambling) craze - right down to the fact that it has its own set of rare ‘chase’ cards.

I just find the low-effort art style and names charming, without ever feeling the need to participate.

Content is 100% valid.

Just wanted to jump in and say that this map looks like it was drawn by the same guy that made Pokenots:

World of Warcraft; Azeroth (the planet) lore is quite detailed and fleshed out - building upon the foundations of the original RTS trilogy.

It’s a bit of a shame a lot of it gets swept under the rug every major expansion and patch cycle, so it’s hard for new(er) players to catch up.

Beyond Android phones, it should also be good for the emulation scene on macOS.