What’s really clobbered Firefox has been the rise of smartphones, where Firefox has very limited uptake.
That’s fucking crazy, because Firefox has been far better than the default options for as long as I’ve had a smartphone. I only recently dumped chrome on desktop for Firefox, but I took one look at Chrome when I got an android and immediately dumped that shit.
Not for the Dominoes trip specifically, but they were paying for me to be there. I would assume that the local Dominoes got some kind of money out of it.
I’m not saying that the Chik-fil-a thing is something that would have interested me as a kid or that I would pay to send a kid to it. For one thing, the focus on customer service stuff does make it a bit weirder to me. Just pointing out that I had a similar experience and that it was something I enjoyed.
Some kids would probably love getting to see what happens in the kitchen, making something, and eating it. As long as it’s safe and age appropriate, and assuming they aren’t actually being used as labor, I don’t see how this is harmful.
When I was a kid a summer daycare program I was in took us to a Dominoes and I got to make my own pizza. It was awesome.
Not in a million fucking years Sony. I would have gladly given you my money, but apparently that’s not good enough for you.
I guess Sony didn’t want my money after all.
Don’t worry, it might still bubble up to the surface in the hallucinations of an AI.
I definitely want more games like New Vegas. I’m just not sure how much Obsidian wants to go back to Fallout as opposed to doing their own thing. It’s also been a decade and a half, so I’m not sure how much obsidian has changed since then.
My point was that if I was Microsoft, I would want to get a Fallout game out while there is increased interest. Bethesda can get around to making Fallout 5 sometime in the next decade, but in the meantime, I’d have other teams working on other Fallout projects.
These don’t have to all be massive new games that push every conceivable boundary. They just need to be good games that can satisfy audiences who are craving more Fallout. I wouldn’t rush things at the expense of quality, but I would try to plan things with a more narrow scope and efficient design.
For example, I’d probably want to remaster Fallout 1 & 2, as well as 3 and New Vegas. Don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just update them for modern systems, polish them, add some modern conveniences, and maybe a little new content.
Simultaneously, I’d have someone working on a new Fallout game that takes place in a new location, (Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, whatever seems fun). This doesn’t get rushed, but it also gets a limited scope. Solid core gameplay and an interesting setting with good writing.
I’d also be open to something other than an open world rpg. A city builder, a real-time strategy game, an xcom style turn based tactical game with base building, Pokémon but with irradiated mutants, metroidvania in a vault, whatever. As long as there is also a more traditional Fallout game in the works, there’s no reason why you couldn’t also do something weird and different.
Ideally, I would have started work on this stuff as soon as the show got the greenlight. But even if they started right now, that’s still better than waiting for Bethesda.
If they can have something nearly complete to cash in on hype from the show, and something else they can announce that keeps people excited, even if that thing’s another year or two away, that would be perfect. And if not, they can at least get something out while the show is still relevant.
If I’m the guy pitching a Fallout project right now, I’d probably be pointing to Baldur’s Gate 3 as an example of how much desire there is for a quality role-playing game. Quality being the keyword.
“When is Season 2 happening. What are we doing on mobile. What are we doing in [Fallout 76]. What are we doing with this thing. What are we doing with this other thing. And when are these landing. And again if I could snap my fingers and have them all be out and ready I would. But the main thing is how do we deliver these at a high quality level. That is always most important.”
I shouldn’t be surprised that mobile is the first thing he brings up after season 2. But it’s still a terrible indicator.
Honestly, if I was Microsoft, I’d be looking to get a new Fallout game rushed into production immediately. And it probably wouldn’t be Bethesda making it. Not necessarily Fallout 5, but a new game in a new, interesting location. Something that can capitalize on the interest generated by the show, especially if it can come out near the release of season 2.
And that’s just the high level corruption. There’s more theft, bribery and fraud at every level. With each step in the procurement process, another chunk of that budget is negated.
Also, at least historically, a lot of Russia’s budget goes to things that aren’t playing a primary role in the fight for Ukraine, like their nuclear arsenal, a lot of their navy, and big R&D projects that produce little more than the appearance of a modern military.
Ukraine is a major global food supplier. The war has directly impacted food prices. And if Russia succeeds, it will only encourage more conflict of this kind. And that’s ignoring the possibility that this will escalate into an even larger conflict because Putin decides that NATO’s resolve is weak enough that article 5 is no longer a plausible threat.
Also, that stupid argument applies just as much to funding schools, cancer research, fighting climate change and basically all other functions of government that serve the public good. We should do more to address economic issues, but that doesn’t mean we should stop doing everything else.
My dad used to tell me “It’s a lot harder to carpet the world than it is to wear shoes.”
Ambitious redesigns of existing infrastructure are neat, but they are rarely more efficient or practical. Especially when you are overengineering to solve an issue that’s already been dealt with. A self cleaning room requires a lot of additional hardware, all of which has to be designed, built and installed, and has to be powered and run by software that needs to be programmed. It also needs to be maintained, and depending on how it’s cleaning things, it may also be dangerous, or at least capable of damaging property (ever have a motion activated light turnoff while in a bathroom stall? now imagine it triggers steam jets). Not to mention the potential hazards of water damage on a room if anything goes wrong.
Or, you can buy a mop for 0.1% of the price.
Humanoid robots can escape this problem because versatility adds value. The upfront cost may be tens of thousands of dollars, but for that price you’re getting something that solves many, many problems. They can potentially go from task to task, filling a multitude of roles, and ideally with minimal down time.
It also helps that we can use existing processes to train them. They can observe human workers performing a task, attempt to replicate that task, and use feedback to improve. And that’s critical because the hardware is the easier part, it’s software that’s the real challenge.
It’s easier to build a specialized robot for one task than to create a general purpose robot to handle that task. However, as the technology matures, I think it becomes much more practical to create a general purpose robot that’s capable of performing millions of tasks than to create millions of different specialized robots. Not only is that far less to design, source parts for, build and maintain, but it also makes it much easier to repurpose them as needs change. The same basic design can potentially be used for factory work, household chores, new construction, search and rescue operations, food service, vehicle maintenance, mining, caring for kids/elderly/pets, building and maintaining other robots, etc. We’re not there yet, but that’s where this kind of technology could potentially take us.
The advantage of a mostly humanoid robot is that it’s versatile and can use existing solutions built for people. Yes, you could replace the legs with wheels or treads, and you’d probably be just fine for most functions with a Johnny 5 type design, but there will still be exceptions. Being able to climb up or down a ladder for example means that you don’t have to engineer a solution to deal with getting onto a roof or down into a tunnel system. We’ve already spent thousands of years solving those problems for humans.
This assumes that they only ever have the names they have now. Call me crazy, but I suspect that immigration policies will probably shift a little at some point in the next 500 years.
Hell, I wouldn’t even be willing to bet that any given country would still be around in it’s current form by then, including Japan.
Competition usually isn’t bad. Unfortunately, Apple has a tendency to not only be terribly anti-consumer, but also tends to be a trendsetter. They do shitty things, and other companies learn from their example. Thus, the competition becomes a race to the bottom.
Lying about testing a product in order to get people to buy it so you can get your affiliate revenue sounds like fraud to me. Seems like the kind of thing that should lead to lawsuits and potentially criminal charges. Not that anyone would actually try to do something about this or most other problems facing consumers.
Prime was a reasonable value for me a decade ago. The streaming side was never the main draw but it was a nice added bonus, especially when Netflix started to lose a lot of the content I actually wanted to watch.
Unfortunately, Amazon’s been flooded with worthless trash, and they made the conscious decision to make searching and filtering as useless as possible. It’s actually impressive that they’ve so degraded their service that it’s usually more convenient for me to go shopping locally than to try to navigate the unending mine field on Amazon.
So of course they try to ruin the last thing keeping me subscribed. I’m done, they can fuck off. I’ve got a jellyfin server, I don’t need these assholes.
Unfortunately, I’m sure they’ll make an obscene amount of money with this move, because apparently the world is full of people who will pay good money to bend over and take it.
If I buy a product, and the manufacturer remotely disables that product in order to coerce me into buying their goods and services, the people responsible should be charged with fraud, destruction of property, criminal conspiracy, racketeering, and anything else that can stick. It should be treated no less severely than if they hired thugs to smash it with a crowbar.
Well… the first time in a while. And just as the last time was exiting living memory.