Nobody casually says they're "playing licensed [GAME]”, they just say they're "paying [GAME]", but they might say they're playing a pirated copy. This meme is saying that, in Russia, people just say they're playing a game, and the assumption is that it's pirated, unless they specifically clarify that it's a licensed copy. The expectation and use in conversation is reversed.
1.06 births per woman is going to lead to a population collapse, and I don't think China is attractive enough to immigrants to make up for the gap.
The developed world would be having similar challenges, broadly, but have higher birth rates, generally, and much higher immigration.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but I think fears of a Chinese-led hegemony replacing the current US-centred regime is becoming increasingly unlikely.
Edit: I was curious, so I looked it up, and it's even worse than I thought:
The net migration rate for China in 2021 was -0.252 per 1000 population
Shigeru Miyamoto is a legend. He comes off as very humble in this interview, too.
Nintendo must be unique in their retention of talent long term; it was really cool reading the part of the article talking about the intergenerational teams, with original designers working alongside developers who played their games as children. Can you imagine going to work with those responsible for your childhood favourite games?
I liked that bit, but the argument that most resonated with me is that property taxes disincentivize development, but land value taxes encourage density.
Rosedale, the wealthy single-family-homes community with massive lots close to downtown Toronto, should not exist. It's insane. A single person should not reasonably be able to afford to own an acre of land close to an urban core. That whole neighbourhood wouldn't exist if land value taxes had slowly increased over the last century.
I think we need a 10-20 year plan to shift from property taxes to land-value taxes, at maybe 5% a year. Give the market enough time to respond, to buy up and develop the land.
Throw in minimum mixed zoning requirements to get commercial spaces embedded in the new communities, too, while you're at it, so we can actually get some walkability.
There's no use using logic to argue someone out of a position they didn't arrive at by logic in the first place.
They just hand wave anything away as "this is a test of faith in this life, but it is only the eternal afterlife that matters." There's literally no arguing with it.
Not sure if I should post since I've just had mine for a week, but my highlights so far are Stardew Valley and Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed.
Stardew Valley is a charming game that's really nice to play while watching something with my wife. It's chill, and doesn't take much attention usually, so it's perfect for the mobile nature of the Deck to play in bed.
Sonic Racing I've been playing with my 5y.o. son. I suck at it, lol. I can't consistently get 1st place in normal mode yet, but it's fun, looks great, and plays smooth as silk.
The one game I tried and immediately put down was Against the Storm. I'm really excited to play it, but the controller is just moving a mouse cursor around. From the little I played, I was instantly frustrated that I needed to move the cursor over small UI buttons to open menus; it doesn't seem to have a sensible control scheme for the Deck, and I mostly play in bed, so a mouse isn't really an option for me. Disappointing, since I was so excited for it!
Yeah, D4 and PoE aren't very good "pick up, put down" games. If you want an ARPG on the Deck, I would think that Grim Dawn would likely be the best, but I haven't tried it yet. I played it with a controller, so I assume it should work great.
The enshittification of all the paid services is just making piracy that much more attractive. Just last night, we searched up a new comedy special, found it was on Netflix (which we have access to), but just watched it through piracy anyway. At this point, it's easier to pirate content than figure out which streaming service it's on.
Austerity is government spending, not interest rates. They're decoupled from each other.
Agreed, that we don't have sufficient support, for lower-income and homeless Canadians, in particular. But the central bank did largely the right thing (I cry into my variable-rate mortgage). Interest rates needed to go up to chill inflation, and it's possible the BoC may have threaded the needle on that perfectly.
To add to the other poster, when someone is telling you about themselves, particularly about areas of passion, it's probably worth hearing them out before you dismiss them.
In this case, the author makes a very compelling case, and expanded my worldview.
Also, it's borderline unkind to dismiss OP's post (and this author's article) so vocally and rudely, imho.
Seriously, though, I'm not a programmer, but I picked up enough from context cues and background information that I think I got most of the big ideas. It's fun to read about computer science.
I wonder where my life would have gone if I'd made a different career choice, away from CS.
It would have been nice to have a connection made to Flow, since that's what was being alluded to throughout, but maybe excluding Flow was deliberate in some way I'm missing?
Research shows it still affects you, though. You'll have more brand awareness, whether you want to or not. Everyone in the US & Canada know what a RAV4 and Forester are. You don't need that explained to you when your coworker tells you about their new car.
And even if you don't drink pop at all, you still know Coke is better than Pepsi.
I stopped setting book completion target goals when I realized I was choosing shorter books to hit my target. I then switched to a page-count goal for the next year, but that didn't survive January. (Too much paperwork.)
In the genres I read most (progression fantasy and LitRPG), some of the books are massive web serials, like one "book" this year was ~18K pages. I'm still only about ¾ done since I took a break to read a few shorter series.
Now, my only real goal is to read every day (4 years+ and it's effortless, now) and to try to read at least one non-fiction book/month. (Fell behind on that one this year; life got busy/stressful, so I've been reading exclusively "popcorn fiction" for the last 4 months.)
Also, I read a lot (100-300 pages/day, typically), so one non-fiction/month I don't count as a reading target; it's just about diversifying my reading and doing some self betterment/education/professional development.
Nobody casually says they're "playing licensed [GAME]”, they just say they're "paying [GAME]", but they might say they're playing a pirated copy. This meme is saying that, in Russia, people just say they're playing a game, and the assumption is that it's pirated, unless they specifically clarify that it's a licensed copy. The expectation and use in conversation is reversed.