I was considering purchase a Japanese switch 2 because my Japanese is decent enough for most gaming but then I saw it was region locked pretty hard so I can’t use any of my us e shop purchases. Plus fuck Nintendo, even without the tariffs the price on this thing is a bit much and their behavior is garbage

If I ever do get one it’ll be because someone broke theirs and I got it cheap as fuck and fixed it. That’s how I got my switch, had a busted battery management IC and a fucked usb C port. I think in total I paid like $90 for it with parts. It would also help if the console was exploited for piracy

And maybe you have to be a landowner too

The long term play is regulation but good luck with that

Why do you think the tech oligarchs are banding together to dismantle the government? They see the future you describe and recognize that we are at a key juncture to get there. Once the groundwork is laid they can go back to focusing on fighting each other for total dominance of the market

But what’s the net benefit if they overall lose a ton of market share? Sales of, absolute best scenario, 10 million dollars? That’s a lot of money but it’s also really unlikely they’d get that level of sales and is it worth having a shareholders meeting in 1 year where they have to address questions about market share continuing to slide noticeably? Apparently I guess

It seems like it would mainly be a good deal for oem pc manufacturers. If I was lenovo or whoever I’d be jazzed about it, let microsoft take all the negativity and sell more thinkpads

This makes sense, the tinfoil hat shit is one thing but it’s much easier to just explain it as tpm and secure boot will enable more data collection, which is probably a stronger revenue stream than keeping windows on 75% of pcs vs 72%

Of course some nerd will probably figure out ways to defeat it all eventually but microsoft is probably (correctly) banking on your grandma not knowing how to install extensions and whatever 3rd party shit that will require

The sad thing is at one point I would have said that’s a foolish way thing to bank on and eventually those computer illiterate folk will die out but it appears that that younger gen z and below have many people that are slightly more advanced than boomers in tech knowledge. They know how to use their phones but have no clue how to do anything interesting with them and have barely any idea how to use a pc.

I worked in a school for a bit a few years ago and the amount of kids that didn’t know about something as basic as Adblock was shocking, let alone how to navigate the file system. Modern phones as a primary computing device really fucked that generation

It’s crazy that microsoft, a company that once had 90+ market share of the OS market and is now down in the low 70% range and falling, would rather force this shit and potentially lose people to ipads than simply just make an upgrade path for older hardware (that isn’t even that old)

What could possibly motivate this? They have to see the folly in such a decision with all their market research and shit. Do they really have the hubris to think that people will just go out and buy new hardware en masse because they said to so they could check emails, go on social media, and do streaming shit? Tinfoil hat time: were they influenced by a three letter agency or something to include the need for secure boot and tpm? Is there an exploit or backdoor in these?

Chinese cctv systems with AI are dangerous because they let the government watch their citizens for control and repression

Not like domestic drones, traffic cameras used for surveillance, DHS CCTV networks, the sea of cameras that every citizen owns that can be subpoenaed, and the WAMI program with automation software for tracking that has been deployed since 2013. Those are tools of freedom to keep Americans safe

Has anyone actually opened said data yet?

Game pricing hasn’t changed much, sure. I paid $70 for n64 games in 1996. But volume sure has

FFVIII sold 6 million copies in its first year, a huge commercial success, and has sold 9.6 million lifetime Ever juggernaut games like Mario 64 - 12 million copies. FFVII - 12.6 million Pokemon red blue green combined - 30 million Madden 2007 - 7.7 million (interestingly EA does not release sales figures for modern madden games, probably because sports games seem to make far more money from micro transactions than sales. NBA 2k for example sells around 7m units a year but is one of the highest grossing franchises in gaming)

More recent games:

baldurs gate 3 sold 15 million copies Elden ring 20 million Pokémon sword and shield - 27 million Diablo 3 30 million The Witcher 3 50 million Skyrim 60 million Rdr2 70 million GTA 5 200 million

So when people cry “wahh, videogame prices need to rise because inflation” remember that they are stupid and overlook the very basic fact that 20-30 years ago gaming was a niche activity that got nowhere near the volume it gets today. Any single game selling 50 million copies in the 90s or early 2000s, let alone 200 fucking million, was an insane pipe dream

at no point did I deny apples practices are shitty and anti consumer

but the history of how we got here is that microsoft spent time lobbying hard to make sure that companies like apple could do exactly what they are doing

apple is far from the only one who does it as well? Basically every modern tech giant flexes their anti consumer muscle every day. the one defense of apple is that you can basically avoid their shit by not buying it, as opposed to a company like google who are actively vying to utilize their extreme dominance in browser market share to change the internet forever to make adblocking impossible (very similar to 90s microsoft behavior)

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, etc etc

Sorry you were challenged to read what was roughly 3/4 of a page. Maybe this is more digestible for you

Funny enough, apples behavior was enabled by microsoft setting really shitty precedents in the 90s. oh whoops!

Seriously though microsoft was a force in the 90s and early 2000s. If you weren’t around for it you simply don’t realize how insane it was for something like computing to have come around and quickly take over the world with microsoft being the thing. you only had a pc (or maybe laptop). That pc ran windows over 90% of the time, and you used internet explorer over 90% of the time. Like I’m not making this up, IE, the worst browser of all time, peaked at 95% market share in 2002.

Nowadays edge is a minor contender but a distant third (chrome about 70%, safari about 17%, edge about 5, Firefox 2.5). Windows market share still dominates on PC but has fallen significantly from 90+% in the 1990s to 75ish% for windows 10 and falling. Plus nowadays people don’t use PCs nearly as much. I’m on a phone right now, which is the dominant computing device (and windows phone was a joke)

Anyway in true American capitalistic fashion when they had this undeniable monopoly apple was a joke at the time and Linux was for extreme hobbyists and servers and such. So what did microsoft do? Destroy competition, destroy any political machinations that could threaten their future with hefty lobbying, destroy open standards in favor of their own proprietary bullshit, etc. Europe attempted some antitrust stuff against them similar to what is happening to google now (to forcefully break off IE from windows) but it was unsuccessful

So when you’re frustrated about the fact that tech does not play nice together? Does not adhere to open standards, forces proprietary bullshit on you, open displays anti competitive and anti consumer behavior? Blame microsoft and politicians that were grossly ignorant to a rapidly changing world (although to be fair you don’t have to be a tech genius to understand that computers being forced to work with each other and have transparency in how they work is beneficial)

And the next time you see some dork praising bill gates for being the “cool billionaire” because he has a charity remember that his wealth is built on these destructive practices. He lead microsoft through this period and this doesn’t even touch on how he destroyed countless businesses that dared to compete by leveraging the size of his company (eg draining their resources with lawsuits) rather than competing fair and square.

He personally fucked the landscape of technological advancement for generations on top of that because he had the arrogance to think that microsoft knew how best to handle it. Now it’s blown up and he doesn’t care because he got his bag. His charity is the same problem: he holds his wealth and decides what causes are worthwhile, like a king. Fuck him, and fuck all the technocrats that have no sense of ethics aside from “make me more money and do whatever I want”.

He means “there are a ton of children with parents who cannot enforce boundaries and there are a ton of grown people who will make poor financial decisions”. Nintendo will exploit both

Hopefully someone will exploit Nintendo with a paper clip again

Congrats on quitting. Shit is super hard

To clarify things from my post: I didn’t even touch upon the environmental harm from vaping. If you use disposable vapes you’re kind of a shithead that is wasting a ton of lithium, that is mined by literal slaves, for your 2 day smoking device that you’ll probably not recycle properly. People recycle these batteries to power e bikes and literal homes. Vape shops with racks of these plastic boxes filled with single use 18650 (or similar high discharge) batteries are an environmental disaster

Nicotine pouches and gum lower the lung risk but are another space where long term risk is unknown.

They do irritate the gums and raise the risk of gum disease

Nicotine in general, gum or pouch, negatively impacts brain development and strains the cardiovascular system.

The acidity from the pouches still irritates the airway and oral mucosa and the constant increase of mucus production can lead to chronic bronchitis

The vasoconstriction effect of nicotine means that there is still potential lung involvement due to decreased blood flow even though it is not inhaled

Nicotine in low doses has some effects similar to adderall or methylphenidate but unlike those medications it tends to increase blood pressure and on long timelines create cardiovascular problems even in low doses. additionally it’s far more addictive (though tbf this is possibly/probably due to ease of access) and most users tend to use a fairly substantial amount, 20-40mg for a pack a day smoker, 35mg for someone who burns through a 5% juul pod in a day, etc

The gum is typically used short term and is actually marketed as a cessation device so that’s one thing but the pouches are huge now as you’ve said. It’s somewhat telling that for a minute they were big with the right wing grifter crowd

Vaping is less carcinogenic than smoking by a significant degree but it is carcinogenic

Acrolein, a carcinogen, forms in small amounts from the breakdown of glycerin during heating

If a “dry hit” occurs the effect is worsened, acrolein forms in higher amounts, and formaldehyde (another carcinogen) can occur from the breakdown of both glycerin and propylene glycol

Vaping still leads to inflammation and oxidative stress in the lungs and long term use will almost certainly lead to irreversible damage

Harm reduction is important. Vaping is likely better than smoking but it is not yet clear whether that is the case. It is likely the case based on short term anecdotal data from people who have switched but this does not mean that long term use won’t create more severe lung issues over a period of 20-30 years. We don’t know.

In the meantime for further harm reduction to reduce risk you can vape with low temperatures as this mitigates much of the carcinogen risk, you can use reusable devices and frequently change coils and ensure the coil is saturated, and you can use a liquid that is free of flavorings as these present much of the “unknown” variables.

Or you can work to quit. It is challenging. I smoked and vaped, I know it is tremendously hard. But frankly these companies don’t deserve your money. They’re all fucking scumbags

Even if it didn’t (it will) his administration is doing all kinds of nasty rollbacks on climate initiatives and regulations related to the environment sooooo

The crime was socializing the losses and privatizing the gains

Bailout should’ve included nationalizing the banks involved and stiff criminal penalties for those involved in running it. But Obama and democrats in general would never dream of prioritizing the average citizen over their donors.

As a result you and I had trillions stolen from us to make those rich people even more rich and save them from the consequences of their actions. thanks obama, glad you didn’t upset your Wall Street bros

What are you trying to find

I ended up picking up smoking in college in the early 2000s and I have to wonder if the constant exposure to second hand smoke in places I worked, in cars from family members, etc, was a factor

I was disgusted at the time but then I fell into it. I quit eventually, which was a nightmare, but I do think the exposure to second hand nicotine from the age of like 2 was maybe a factor

I remember working in restaurants in high school, coming home, showering, and the stench of cigarette smoke just releasing itself from my hair

Fun times

That’s correct, I misspoke, I clarified that with the rest of my post though