ITT: people think emulators are only the ones you can download

The first game I remember doing this is The Witcher 2. Not sure if that’s the first game to come up with the idea, but it’s the earliest example I can remember.

Depends. Echo chambers are also created by upvote/downvote ratios. If the majority are upvoting a lot of content you have no interest in, filtering that content is also a way to avoid an echo chamber from dominating your feed.

I browse a lot by Everything because my limited list of subscribed communities don’t yet publish enough content to really fill a day’s worth of browsing, so there are a lot of things I’ve blocked just because it’s not interesting to me, or if I am not really the intended audience (e.g. a lot of sports communities for teams I don’t follow, german-speaking communities from feddit.org, etc).

I don’t often have to resort to blocking specific users, but there’s a very small handful of names who post a large volume of content I want to filter but also don’t use consistent communities or keywords that I can cleanly filter instead.

I get that the content isn’t for everyone, but could always block OP or just keyword filter depending on what frontend/app you use to hide the content if you don’t want to see it.

I never saw as many fences in my life as I did when I took a trip to the South. So many people in that “fuck you, got mine” mindset.

The US needs the sort of “right to roam” laws that other countries have.

It’s not a spiritual successor, just a normal successor. It’s the latest entry in the “Mario & Luigi” series.

They keep one-upping themselves with every new title.

The popular argument I’ve heard is that they have a vertical integration model which has been deemed monopolistic within other industries in the past.

The common example that would have been used is the old Hollywood studio system, when studios not only owned their lots where the movies were made, but they handled all of the distribution, owned most of the theaters where the films would premiere, owned their own film formats, and locked their big-name stars into contracts which had strict non-compete agreements.

It wasn’t impossible to be an independent theater owner and have the ability to choose what films you wanted to show, but it was very hard and required accepting a number of conditions:

• You will pay more for movies than the studio-owned theaters effectively do, which means your tickets need to be more expensive to pay your costs.
• You are subjected to “block booking”, where you can’t show only popular movies, you are also forced to buy a studio’s less popular films as bundles and give them appropriate screen time or the studios won’t sell.
• You also need to buy a studio’s proprietary projection equipment, because it is made intentionally incompatible with the formats of other studios.

The studio system was eventually deemed monopolistic by the US Supreme Court in their ruling US v. Paramount, and that allowed independent theaters to thrive and for artists to switch to contract work without the strict non-compete agreements. But I have to say “the common example that would have been used,” because the conservative-stacked Supreme Court revisited their ruling in US v. Paramount that banned the vertical integration model in Hollywood and decided it was no longer needed, so studios are once again free to resume those old practices if they wish.

So in the case of Apple, the monopoly criticism applies to their vertical integration model which draws some parallels to the old Hollywood studio system that was once deemed monopolistic:

• Apple designs and produces their own devices.
• Apple produces their own operating systems, which are exclusive to those devices.
• Apple produces their own suite of core apps, which are given preferential treatment by their operating systems.
• Apple develops their own technology standards, which are not available to third parties without additional licensing fees (e.g. the Lightning connector, up until the EU forced them to start adopting USB-C).
• Apple hosts their own app store, which is the only app distribution method allowed on their mobile platforms.
• Apple requires third-party apps to agree to their store’s terms to be published on the platform, which prohibits any pricing model in which Apple does not get a cut.

For third-party app developers, it means that even if you have your own revenue model beyond Apple’s involvement, you are not allowed to extend that to your iOS app without giving Apple their cut, which is why you see so many apps now just declaring that they are “for subscribers” without allowing you to subscribe in the app or giving instructions for where to subscribe. And it’s not possible to publish an app on iOS without going through Apple’s store and agreeing to their business model because Apple does not allow third-party app stores and heavily restricts sideloading.

Because Apple also gives preferential treatment to their own apps, it is hard to be “as good” as their own offerings, and there will always be a risk of Apple deciding to make some new category of app for a use case that third-parties currently satisfy but may get shut out of.

Tchaikovsky YES.

TCHAIKOVSKY ALWAYS YES.

I’m assuming it’s to make sure there’s not long waits to try them. Giving a set number of tokens to visitors means they can roughly control the amount of time someone spends with those games. One person can’t just buy 100 coins and spend all day on the same game.

Could have just done a ticketing system reserved in advance with fixed time blocks, though. But then your museum tour is on a schedule.

I guess it could be said that Edge has an unfair…edge?

And only if the PS5 isn’t user 1’s home console, which if it is, the license extends to any other user on that console.

Glad I deleted PayPal ages ago.

That’s the same conclusion I arrived at, but wasn’t 100% sure. Since the act of downloading a game and the act of obtaining/transferring licenses both require the console to be online, I couldn’t see what difference there would be to the user experience compared to before, even if the order it does those steps in is switched.

You’re fine if someone else pees on your pants.

I am trying to think of scenarios where this will screw with normal users because companies never do moves like this unless they’re after some sort of grift.

But I am not seeing it at present. Maybe I’m just too tired and my brain isn’t working, but if a game is downloaded digitally and the license comes with it, there’s effectively no difference. Take it offline, you still have the license, no issues.

The only potential impact I can think of is if you have two users on a console that is the home console for neither person, and both of them bought the same game digitally. User 1 downloads the game, the license comes with it, and they take the console offline. User 2 then uses the console, tries to play the game they own, and gets a license error because the console is offline and doesn’t know they own it and therefore it can only be played by the person who downloaded it. But I think that’s how it works already, since User 2 would still need the console to be online to import their licenses.

I guess ask the Romans about half of those.

The last time I saw a TIL about this sort of thing though it turned out that “Aluminum” was the original but some academics thought “Aluminium” sounded fancier. My understanding is that it relates to the oxide names, which in the case of aluminum is alumina, after which the -a is swapped for the -um, similar to how magnesium oxide is magnesia. But I’m too lazy to fact check.

Also Molybdenum exists too, so it’s not like Aluminum would be the one exception that is just -um and not -ium.

I once had this pizza topped with tortellini, glorious.

But I also like the burrito pizza the place down the street from me makes, they use like a black bean base for the sauce and it’s so good.

Greek style pizza is otherwise the norm here and I generally prefer it to the charred mess that is “authentic” New York style pizza.

I will admit as a kid when I wanted tea I used to just fill a mug with water and stick it in the microwave for a minute.

That’s the thing, the answer for a lot of people in the US is no.

After coffee, the most common need for boiled water in US households is probably for pasta, and a kettle’s not really the tool for either of those.

People that do eat a lot of instant ramen or drink a lot of tea in the US are more likely to have electric kettles (as some people I know do) but most don’t eat ramen often enough and tea just isn’t as big here.