What if he got ill, or has an upcoming holiday and has to make up his quota? I am not sure I want to take that chance.

I would easily say no to his face… but he has a guna nd is willing to use it.

PAIGE NO!

This analogy is so bad, it is not even close to what is happening.

I will try and adapt to cars for you(I dont know why), but this is just really really bad.

Say you have designed a car, you can produce them on a very small scale, but you have come to valve(they make cars now) to mass produce. They do so, for a 30% cut(that reduces the more they sell) for everything they sell from their direct sales at the price you have set. There is no material costs or labour costs, just that cut of the price you have set.

Now valve have a sales page and are selling, and you decide that actually I would like more people to see the car, and so you consider selling it at other dealers. Valve says, sure, you can even have the cars for free from us(no 30% cut) and you can have basically an unlimited supply of free fully built cars to sell else where. We only ask that you sell the car at the same price you have set with us if you are selling a car we made.

You want to go sell it new cheaper? You are more than welcome too, but you cant sell the car we produced.

Such a bad analogy, but that is closer to what is actually happening.

Just think about how this works.

Steam currently allows you to generate keys and sell them for free, only stipulating that they must be sold for the same price as on steam.

Let’s say they are told that stipulation can’t be enforced.

Valve, will probably go with 1 of 2 options.

1 - you can no longer generate keys. So all the great key sites(GMG, Fanatical and so on) no longer exist, because no steam keys.

2 - Valve charge an upfront fee for keys generated. Now smaller pmdevs and publishers can no longer supply keys to sites, because they can’t afford the upfront costs.

What incentive does valve have to continue offering this free service? If it can be exploited for the detriment of steam, they will stop providing it.

Phone tech is really boring. Almost everything looks the same, they are all x% faster than last year’s model which still does everything perfectly fine. In terms of hardware, the phone has kinda reached the optimal place.

I’m not the target audience for bleeding edge phones though. I take photos, listen to music(using Bluetooth and wired headphones), browse the web and message people. I don’t really play games or use it for work.

By far the most interesting thing to me is foldable phones. I really like the idea of a flip phone, but I don’t think it would be too happy sitting in my sweaty pocket while I cycle.

Trust me, you could absolutely follow the example of other drivers and use your phone while driving.

I don’t know if I would call it spicy, been a long time since I had just celery though. But I am really sensitive to the taste of it.

Even if you chop it up small and cook it into something, for me it ruins a meal and gives it this horrible aftertaste. Probably best described as puke, that kinda acidic taste

I really like Orion browser. Allows you to use Firefox extensions(and chrome), so you can use ublock origin and enjoy ad free browsing again.

SQL has always been Skull in my head. I think it is because I hated it when in college and associated it with dying inside.

Similar set up for me. But 21:9 is my desktop, so discord, web browser, anything that is lower quality. Then my 16:9 is my gaming and high quality content screen.

This is because my 21:9 monitor is a bit older now, and a 144hz VA panel, and I hate it for games. My new 16:9 is an OLED and 240hz and it is absolutely gorgeous. I also mostly play fighting games, so anything more than 16:9 is just black, well in the case of the VA panel grey and a bunch of light bleed.

Ohhh can I partake in this.

Fluoride contamination, consequences and removal techniques in water - https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2022/va/d1va00039j

See look at the scary headline, and the first sentence - “Fluoride contamination has created a drinking water crisis globally.”

Only downside to this paper… it kinda mentions how great it is for humans to consume low levels of flouride.

Yes, where it can be moved and stored or potentially used in other applications.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsengineeringau.3c00049

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_air_capture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/innovators-trying-bring-down-sky-high-cost-direct-air-capture-2023-10-24/

Wasnt a difficult search.

And yes, more money(realistically probably a lot more) is needed to refine and improve the technology. No it isnt going to end climate change, but it is a small part of what is needed.

Orion browser on iOS

It allows use of chrome and Firefox extensions, and ublock origin works.

They keep throwing around threats of leaving.

Do it… do it you absolute chickens.

I love Firefox, it is my desktop and android go to, but fuck apples bullshit.

Look into Orion browser, it allows you to use chrome and Firefox extensions on iOS, it does mean no easy bookmark or tab sharing, but small price to pay to be able to use the net again properly.

I wouldn’t pick 8, but I am a dog person. Oh,and I just don’t want to be insulted by cats all the time.

I feel the Linux - Linux fanboy is very wrong these days. It does not have a monitor at 22 degrees

So for fighting games, character passes are a good thing(overall).

If you bought SF4 at launch and continued to play the game throughout it’s life, you ended up buying the same game multiple times. This was essentially a few characters and a balance patch(had new mechanics as well). This the fragmented the player base a lot, so if you were playing the base game you couldn’t play with someone on the latest version.

Street Fighter 5 however, switched to character passes and even being able to unlock characters with in-game currency(difficult if you came to the game later but possible). This means everyone got the balance patches and major system updates, so the player base stayed as a single entity.

For a niche genre, this is significantly better than multiple purchases of the same game, and allows for a game to get more updates over a longer time.

However I do wish they kept in more unlockable content like costumes, colours and stages.

Specific to Street Fighter 6 though, they have a battlepass(which is not good, but isn’t terrible either) which the free version gave/gives out a bunch of character rental tokens, so you can play with DLC characters you haven’t purchased.