I mean at this point might as well go ahead and do it, “I was scared for my life, they were many and threatening” still works as an argument right? And what the fuck is the Klan gonna do about it? Retaliate by wearing white in other locations?

First ammendment doesn’t protect you from a baseball bat.

Linus Torvalds expressed frustration over the use of passive voice in merge commit messages, preferring active and imperative language instead.

Things To Care About, vol 147, 2nd edition

Idk if you were around when Google popped up, but it was at a time where the internet was feeling increasingly “loaded” with thousands of info per page. One where the popular engines tried to serve you twenty different things along with your search. Here’s an example:

https://www.definitions-seo.com/images/altavista-3.jpg

Or another:

https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/uploaded/timeline/yahoo/yahoo-2003.png

This isn’t a search engine. This is an all you can eat buffet, where the smallest plate is two main courses and three sides. And users just wanted a candy bar.

So you see, a lot of us started to use Google because it was simple. It was decluttered. It was a text input with a ‘submit’ button, and that’s all we wanted. THAT is, and was, google’s core functionality, and I think it’d do them well to remember that.

Now, if you wanna argue that’s changed, I can agree to that. But I don’t want morning news when I search for porn, that’s just gonna kill my boner. And I don’t want ads about coffee makers when I’ve just bought a coffee maker, that just means you’re incompetent. I want a search engine that searches things and provides results. That’s it. And just like Google caught momentum because they delivered this minimalistic facade that the users wanted, this is also how Google will die - at the hands of the next lightweight engine without corporate bullshit. Because the users will gobble it up.

You can use pyramid fragments and alien technology, I’m not touching playstation/sony products with a borrowed dick.

Does this really qualify as a diagram?

I even got them to secure me a refund against the Australian government after they refused to issue a refund after directing me to apply for a tourist visa with the wrong visa process.

I love this result. It’s really damn hard to protect yourself from government failure, especially in cases where you are owed money. It’s awesome that you not only got your money back, but also got to play the “fuck you, if you take my lunch money you can fight my big brother” card.

Oh yeah, I feel that. I got a nice beach towel with my company’s name on it some years ago, of course I couldn’t take it to the beach, I’d feel silly. But on the other hand - nobody sees it if I use it in the shower. Man, that company name has touched my dick&balls so many times I’m thinking I should marry it at this point.

I always try to make them put the branding in shitty places. For the umbrella I got them to print it on the classy wooden handle, instead of the fabric, exactly where you’d hold the thing. That way it’s still usable, you just need to hold your hand over the brand name. And on some other shit like wireless earbuds & smaller objects, the guys doing the printing can sometimes provide smaller velvety satchels to put the objects in, kind of like a gift bag, and I can usually print on those. Then you’re just left with the plain unbranded object when you inevitably throw away the satchel.

Aa someone who has misspent a budget before - you’re making it sound like a lot more people in the company care about the topic than what’s happening in real life.

I organize some events in our office every now and then. For example, one of them is a sort of competition/race/quiz/whatever - completely optional, but I get about 75% of the office to join, which in my experience - that’s huge, nobody joins any type of other events in such magnitude, usual rates are at 30-40%. The big bosses approve it because “morale” and “team building”. The people like it because it’s actually fun. So I get a budget to spend on this event, and we use it to buy “prizes” for literally everyone participating. Which means they’re shitty prizes, but hey, it’s not about winning first place, it’s about making some jokes at the bosses’ expense, on company time.

The way the process works is: all my bosses already know how this money is spent, and they approve. But because I need the money, it has to go through finance. And they involve marketing/PR guys. And these guys insist on having the fucking logo on everything. At the end of the day everyone is going home with several items (backpack, external battery, pen, umbrella, Swiss army knife etc) with the company logo on them, which is goddamn ridiculous. It’s actually one of the reasons I always refuse to receive items, even if the budget includes the organizers - because I really hate the branding aspect.

But all that aside - you see the aftermath of this event and you’ll draw the conclusion that we just spent the day in a corporate culture workshop, when in fact we were answering silly questions and getting imaginary points the entire day, but there’s ONE guy in ONE department who can’t let things slide. So… Idk man. Take it with a grain of salt next time. The agile dudes probably did it to get away from other things for a few hours, and they got the budget to also give something back to the coworkers. But not everyone really cares about agile, they’re just going through the motions.

The movie will only be played on Nokia phones and any attempt to look at the movie on another type of device will be swiftly prosecuted.

Sony has been moving exclusives to PC to essentially hook people on franchises to encourage them to buy PlayStation shit

There are ~120 million active Playstation gamers globally. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272639/number-of-registered-accounts-of-playstation-network/

“Of that amount, ¥479.3 billion ($3.2 billion) came from game and content sales. Revenue from console sales totaled ¥287.5 billion ($1.9 billion), and revenue from game services was ¥133.9 billion ($887 million).”

Source: https://hc.games/sony-gaming-division-revenue-6-billion-consoles-sold/

So - Sony makes most money selling games, not consoles. They made 2 billion from selling consoles, and 4 billion selling games. All this for 120 million players worldwide.

There are about 1.8 billion pc gamers worldwide. Literally 15 times as many as Playstation gamers. Sony is selling games on the PC to reach this market and hopefully turn that 4 billion from game sales to 40 billion from game sales. Hooking people on franchises might be an added bonus, but that’s not why they’re doing it. They’re doing it because if they manage to sell a 5 dollar game to every single pc gamer, that’s more than their entire business is worth today, consoles and franchises and everything.

What fucking dysfunctional system are you from that shouting is your go to?

1. Task the kid with something you never taught them how to do

2. Kid fails because they don’t know how to do the thing

3. Shout at them because you don’t know other parenting methods

4. Do it yourself

5. Lessons successfully taught to your child: it’s normal to not teach your children, it’s okay to shout, you can’t do anything as well as your parents, you can use your inability to do things to force others to do them

Hey, thank your parents next time you see them, I think they might’ve helped raise my ex girlfriend.

This reeks of small tits energy.

I work on crap like this, and it depends. Yeah, diagnostics are done in the car - the main ones, that is. But for example BMW collects data from all their cars - they’re able to do some big data analysis. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the diagnostic info this app provided is an inference - your car has software version 4.3.21, and all cars on that sw version have experienced a certain bug at 200k km, so it’s time to go to the dealership or get a remote update or something. It could be done.

Most likely though, they’re just taking the personal data from your car and showing it to you. You know - after also saving it for themselves.

I recently had a game I was waiting for released on steam and epic. The steam version (with some supporter pack stuff, because I like the dev) was $100, while the epic version was less than $50(with the same extras). I considered for a moment buying it on epic, but then I thought - “fuck, it’s epic games” and bought it on steam instead. I just couldn’t handle the thought of epic fucking games being in charge of my ability to play the game. I don’t trust them. Not even if all their shit is 50% off.

Idk much about business, but if you can’t be trusted to be reliable even when you’re offering massive discounts, maybe you don’t have a lasting business on your hands.

Not to disparage your reply, because it’s well thought out and written, but doesn’t it seem to you we’re hiding behind legalese?

I want to buy a turkey. I have money. I will visit a farm, pay for the turkey (if the price is agreeable to both parties) and I now own that turkey. I will then do whatever the fuck I want with that turkdy, from raising it as my child, to cooking it for thanksgiving, to cloning it if I have the technology. Sure, I might not be able to return it in some cases. But that’s a living fucking thing, and nobody can tell me how to use it.

Now - I want to buy a movie. I have money. I will go to the cinema, but it’s not playing anymore. I will look for it on TV, but it’s only on one channel, only while I’m at work. I will look for it on the internet and it’s available on one website, where I need to make an account and provide quite a lot of information about me. So I make the account and click through their shitty prompts, pay for the movie and now I can only do one thing: stream it?

Excuse you? Who the fuck are you to tell me how I can enjoy my media? What if I want to make a vynil record and listen to it? What if I want to watch it on my old-timey projector? What if I want to burn a frame of the movie onto my morning toast every day for 2000 years? What if I want to put it in a small baggy tied to my balls while I’m fucking the mom of some movie exec, am I supposed to put the entire laptop in the baggy? How the fuck dare you make that distinction for me? Oh, because your site isn’t granting me the right to buy a movie, but to buy a license to watch that movie in whichever conditions you decide? Great - here’s the thing: I have my own license, which says whenever I pay for something, I use it however the fuck I want, and if you attempt to exert any control over my property or how it is used I will literally stab you and bury you in the woods, because I don’t take kindly to corporate fucks who attempt to instruct me how to use the things I’ve bought. Fuck you, you should’ve read my license when you took my money.

There is no “license” here, my dude. I don’t pay for licenses, regardless of what the website wants to charge for. I pay for a product, or a a service. Let’s not hide behind legalese and let’s just acknowledge that these are scummy practices to ensure the wealth of corporations at the expense of the rights of consumers. And until these types of shady “licenses” to temporarily view THEIR PROPERTY are smacked into the fucking ground by consumer-friendly laws, piracy is the only way to have justice in a system stacked against you.

Add counters to progression:
20/180 quests completed
1805/9456 dialogue choices explored
567/568 npcs killed
95/102 areas explored
And whatever else you define as progress

Add this info into your save data. When quitting the game, open the most recent save, read the counters, compare to current values, display a nondescript “you’ve had a little/a lot of/no progress since you last saved, are you sure you want to quit without saving?” Shouldn’t take so long that it triggers a lag spike, I don’t think.

For my city, that would be the mayor - he’s in charge of local police. He’s being investigated for illegally giving away some land to some friends, who then kicked back some $$. These investigations usually end by reaching the statute of limitations, at which point everyone is outraged at how bad the justice system works for the rest of the day. And then they move on.

Under him would be the chief of police. He is being investigated for covering up sexual harassment in the police force, and for announcing the head of the local council that a search warrant will be executed at one of his illegal businesses.

The two adjuncts to the chief of police ride through the city in an Audi and a Porsche. They also have several houses each. They make 20000 Euro a year. Their wives are a teacher (small salary) and a doctor in a state hospital (so low pay as well). For reference, since you don’t have the context of real estate prices - I make more than the adjuncts or their wives (on paper) and I’m not even close to being able to get enough money for a first apartment, let alone my 4th house. I must be a hater or something, cause for sure there’s no corruption involved.

Sorry if it seems I have a vigilante justice boner. I’d be the first to enjoy a regular justice boner, if I had the luxury to be able to get one in these parts.

That’s a great solution if it works. I was explaining this in another comment, but in my side of the world the police very rarely issue tickets for this type of stuff. And mostly when you call them they’ll arrive in 30 min - 1 hour because it’s “not a priority”. Don’t get me started on having something stolen (it never gets solved and they call you in a few months or years to retract your complaint because they can’t solve it and it looks bad for them), or people being noisy at night or domestic violence complaints, where sometimes they’ll ticket you for calling because you’re “wasting their time” and “when they arrived there was no noise/sound of fighting/beating someone up”. Like, of course dumbass. It happened 30 minutes ago. You think the lady spent 30 minutes arguing after the first punch? Of course they’re quiet now.

And I’d understand their delay if they were actually busy with hard crime. But this is a small European country. We don’t have guns. Out here a “gangster” will at most pull a knife on you, and then if they don’t have another 3-4 guys with them they’ll run with their tail between their legs if you pull a knife right back. This isn’t a country of hardened criminals who grew up with the fear of bullets piercing the walls from gangs fighting on the block. Being police here is just being on a semi-vacation until 45, when you retire. They’re doing fuck all, so when you ask them to actually do their job and not even prevent, but stop an ongoing crime - they would rather stop you from complaining instead.

Sorry, I went on a tangent there. TL;DR: my experience with police is that they’re not helpful in these cases. I’ve learnt that the way you keep peace is by having superior firepower. Immediate physical violence or cost of fixing your vandalized asset are always better deterrents to being a prick than the potential outcome of maybe paying a few bucks, if some lazy assholes do their job, but probably walking away scot-free.

That’s okay I usually hold the door open for people. Now get out.