I never understood why console players always get so worked up about exclusives. People say the stupidest most absolutely nonsensical things like “the PS5 has no games”. What the hell do you mean?? The PS5 has lots of games, you’re just salty that other people can play those games too. Why can’t people just be happy that more people can enjoy the games? They have to have that feeling of superiority I suppose

What a fantastic article.

Epic charges less than 30%. I think it was 10-15%. That’s their whole selling point. And when I say it is their whole selling point, I do genuinely mean it, because the platform and software itself are pretty bad compared to Steam.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the concept of ANPRs (automatic number plate recognition) as these are called in the rest of the world. It’s more of an issue that there is a complete lack of laws surrounding how that data is to be used, and especially when it’s controlled by a private company. If there were strict laws limiting the situations where ANPRs could be used, such as requiring a warrant to begin searching for plate numbers and automatically discarding data from non-matching plates, I doubt people would complain as much about these.

It’s more a question about why Omani officials haven’t thrown a fit on the international stage about this blatant violation of their sovereignty. I’m not stupid enough to think that Iranian missiles stop at the international border.

Side question: Why, in this whole debacle, can’t ships just sail within the territorial waters of Oman, on the southern side of the strait? Why does Iran get to dictate what happens in Oman’s territorial waters? 've heard surprisingly little said by or towards Omani officials about this.

As someone living in America, I really hope that the next administration puts these clowns on trial and we make the systemic changes necessary to rejoin the democratic world order. Living under this wannabe fascist sucks.

I can’t believe the Board of Peace got the mandate for Gaza. They are absolutely openly corrupt. I expected France or the United Kingdom to issue a veto against it.

This is probably fine as long as they can suffer the shenanigans from the Board of Peace until 2029. The problem is that the UN gave an implementation mandate to the Board of Peace. This is extremely problematic as the Board of Peace lacks credibility and its leadership structure is completely centralised around its chairman for life, Donald Trump.

After the next US president takes office, I think it’s highly likely that the United States will use the threat of withdrawing from the Board of Peace and freezing its bank accounts (the Board has an account at the World Bank which is empty; all funds are currently held in a private account under the control of Trump at JP Morgan, an American bank) to force Donald Trump out of the position of chairman, or try to get the Security Council to withdraw the mandate. If the US withdraws all support from the Board of Peace, it would probably crumble without access to American resources. This would provide a good reason to transfer the mandate away from the Board to the UN’s own Trusteeship Council. At least the Trusteeship Council has a reputation for mediocrity when it comes to overseeing its territories.

That’s okay, Microsoft can just have Copilot subscribe 40 million times to pad out the numbers.

I definitely think Google is guilty of what the Commission has accused them of here, but I also can’t help but think: if pre-installing Google Search and Chrome are anti-competitive, why is Apple not guilty of the same thing? In fact, I’d argue that Apple is ten times worse in this regard because you actually can’t use any browser but Safari on iOS (all other browser apps are actually just re-skins of Safari under the hood). Does being a vertically-integrated company excuse such behaviour?

I didn’t say I use Windows. I only said that 7-Zip is the best archiving software available for it.

Unlike 7-Zip, which is actually free and also open-source as well

7-Zip is by far the best archiving software on Windows

On the backup line you can subscribe to the cheapest data-only plan for like $5 a month and then just add $20 worth of pay-as-you-go credit, which never expires and will be used for calls, at 1 cent per minute.

It will save you $5 a month on the backup phone plan, making it even cheaper.

If you spend US$3,000 on the Steam Machine your brain must be made of tofu.

Fun fact, Reddit users probably had a hand in this.

I’m not defending this action from Microsoft, but for most people, they buy a Microsoft product and then happily use it for years, none the wiser to any of Microsoft’s other nonsense happening in the background.

A: gets scammed by company

B: You’re so stupid, you should have known that company was going to scam you.

Urban Dictionary for people who actually want to know what words mean

In my opinion Wiktionary is probably the best English dictionary on the planet and probably the best English to other language dictionary as well.