I assume that Microsoft is trying to appeal to two different groups of shareholders. The first sees Microsoft buying up studios and assumes that the studios will be able to put out better games cheaper (by firing support staff like HR). The second group sees Microsoft cutting low performing workers and assumes that Microsoft will be able to get more profits by cutting lots of cost without losing much income. If they time it right, they can get the second group to start buying just as the first group starts selling.

This is GTA 6. The game could just be Hello World and it would still be the best selling game ever. They could have started taking preorders earlier and it could have also been the best selling game of last year.

People know how popular the last game was, assume that this one is going to be even more, and feel like they need to be first to play it or they will be left behind. They feel like they need to preorder the game so that it doesn’t sell out, despite the fact that it is a digital download.

I love using my phone speaker. I do not always have headphones in my ears. I know some people can walk around all day with an earbud in their head, but I am not one of them. When I am messing around on my phone and decide I need to watch a video that includes audio, I can just turn up my speaker and listen. At home only, mind you. I would have to be totally devoid of empathy to blast loud audio in public.

Since this is “no stupid questions”, I will follow up with a question and demand that you not call me stupid: what about the lamp makes it “not food grade”? I assume that both salts are just NaCl, so do salt manufacturers put the salt through some process to remove dangerous contaminants or something?

I would never choose to be reborn as myself with my current knowledge. I would know how my life could turn out without knowing all the steps I did to get there. I don’t think I would be able to get my wife to fall in love with me and I know that I would never be able to find the exact breeder that sold me my dog.

As much as I would love to imagine how much better my life will be if I made the right decision at some juncture, I would not want to lose out on all the treasure I discovered taking the wrong road.

Sure I would be able to see loved ones who have passed, but would I be able to enjoy that extra time knowing that they will soon develop a disease that will kill them?

I remember that time. Putin said that the Russian Army had not invaded Ukraine, not that there weren’t Russian troops there. There were plenty of Russian military members who took a leave of absence to help restore democracy in Ukraine after the Euromaidan riots threatened the elected government into resigning. That was the official Russian position.

I prefer that to anime where they show the protagonist’s pre-teen sister, but say that despite her looks she is actually 18 and adopted.

I am blissfully ignorant of what you are talking about. I assume that the first amendment auditors are just doing it to earn social media creator revenue, so the best thing you can do is to just block them. When you see people reposting their content or discussing them, just downvote and move on. It will starve them of attention and then starve them of food until they find a better way to spend their time.

The only part of my hair grooming that is “for myself” is trimming my mustache so food does not get caught in it.

Everything else is is for looks and other people look at me much more often than I look at myself. Even when I see myself in a mirror, I try to see myself as others would see me. My wife is the person that looks at me the most and is the person whose opinion is most important to me, so I ask for her opinion about how I groom myself.

There was a recent study that took MRIs of people over the age of 40, with and without shoulder pain. In 99% of cases, there was a shoulder abnormality. It was just that most people did not feel it or were not bothered by it.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/02/99-of-adults-over-40-have-shoulder-abnormalities-on-an-mri-study-finds/

Would you trust Eufy? A few years ago, they got in trouble because their cameras might only store footage locally but they stream to the cloud. They claim to have fixed the issue, but it is unclear if they mean that the footage is no longer being sent or if they just tightened security so that only they (and trusted partners) can watch it.

See: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/12/more-eufy-camera-flaws-found-including-remote-unencrypted-feed-viewing/ https://www.cnet.com/home/security/eufy-says-software-bug-that-exposed-users-video-footage-to-strangers-has-been-fixed/

The poll does not break down if people are not buying it because they object to some aspect of the release or they are not buying it because the game does not appeal to them. It makes it sound like there is a large boycott of the game when it could just be GTA indifferents (like me) stuffing the ballot box.

If you are ever looking for a hippo alternate history book, try River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey. It is a heist thriller about LGBTQ hippo riding cowfolk.

I would play a warrior. I can make combat as interesting as I want. If I want, I can plan out grand tactics of pushing enemies into each other and into traps. If not, I can turn to the reliable “I stab the goblin with my sword” even if I am wielding a mace and fighting a dragon.

I cannot play mage because I am too loss averse and hate using mana/spell slots. I would never play rogue because the idea of playing a close range damage dealer that wears cloth armor is a good recipe to end up spending most of the combat on death saving throws.

From what I understand, the devs are not injecting their political views into the Lemmy code. That does not mean they have not had a pro-tankie influence on the Lemmy community. As the original developers, they also set up the first major instance, lemmy.ml and they moderate that instance to have a tankie lean. Since it was the first instance, many people created their first account for it and it was the de facto standard place to start communities. As far as I know, it is still one of the most active instances.

Some times. Officially, all games on Steam include DRM and are supposed to run except if launched from the Steam launcher. Some developers do not bother getting that DRM working correctly.

The headline is misleading. The article is even worse.

The girl was not killed for refusing to marry. The girl ran away from home over the marriage (the strategy had worked for her to get out of her first marriage, at age 13). She was caught by a neighbor who did something bad to her (she did not want to say what and her family did not want to hear it). When her family found her 3 days later, they killed her for hiding at the neighbor’s house (despite the fact that she was taken there unwillingly).

I assume that the article is supposed to support the point I was making? Most of it is talking about how big pharma invents new medicines and then sells that at a very large profit, which harms people in poor countries who are more likely to need treatments for diseases like HIV but have the hardest time paying for them.

There were the cures that worked in theory but did not work in actual cells. There were the cures that worked on mice but did not work on humans. There were the cures that cure cancer but have a higher fatality rate than the cancer. Those cases cover just about every cancer “cure” you read about in the news.

Then there are all the cures that work for some people some of the time. Big pharma has patented them and is selling them for enough money to cover all of the other cures that did not work (and give everyone a very nice bonus).

Seriously, if some phara company could cure cancer, why wouldn’t they? They can sell it for 100k per treatment, make enough money for each of the 10 biggest investors to buy a small country, and then close up shop.

Used Decks were priced very far above MSRP on Facebook Marketplace a couple weeks ago. I assume that means that the demand is there.