I think there’s something in the text that says you have to be powerful enough to utilize it which is why it is somewhat tempting for characters like Gandalf. Even though it would also corrupt him.

I wanted to play this at some point but the prices never really came down on Steam enough.

Wow, looks like exactly what I need! I’ll give it a try, thanks!

Upgrade tool says my hardware isn’t supported, seems like I can enable TPM on my motherboard but it doesn’t work right for some reason I think I managed to install Windows 10 without secure boot or something, not sure if those two are even related. I was thinking maybe I’d have to reinstall windows 10 with those modules enabled in order to upgrade to windows 11… Has anyone else encountered something similar?

I agree. I’d like to see some separation between the car manufacturer and the software. Any computers in the car should support whatever operating system you want to put on it. Things like controlling the car’s functions would just be device drivers. If the car company also wants to get into the SaaS business, fine, but you shouldn’t be required to pay for that software to operate the vehicle.

I’m on board with it if people want to change the terminology around these things, but it seems like the core of what the author is discussing is the valuation of these companies and potential bubbles.

I think it makes sense that Disney and Amazon and Netflix who are able to make money through more of a SaaS-like model would have a higher valuation than a car company that has to produce a new car for every unit sold. Maybe there’s a recent example of an over-valued car company we can think of?

Consider that an auto mechanic and a software engineer can have a similar problem-solving skill set, and could both be very intelligent. Why then does an auto mechanic make so much less money? It’s partly because of the economies of scale involved with software. The owner of the software company can sell the software to thousands of clients without having to pay the software engineer to build the software thousands of times. The owner of the auto shop still has to pay the mechanic to perform every job every time and get paid for it.

So while I agree that Disney and Netflix maybe aren’t “Tech” companies, it seems to me the real problem the author is grappling with is whether they should be valued similar to tech companies. So I guess the question becomes, are “tech” companies highly valued because they are expected to make some huge technological leap that shakes up industries, or is it because of the economies of scale inherent in the SaaS-like business model?

This doesn’t change the fact that SaaS is lucrative because unlike producing hardware, you can add users/subscribers without paying to produce additional units.

Getting strong RE4 vibes

Even Bank of America doesn’t support MFA apps.

MA had a ballot initiative that would have gradually brought the minimum tipped wage in line with the state’s minimum wage over the next 5 years or something.

Restaurants posted signs at their door to vote NO and that 90 percent of tipped workers opposed the bill.

A bartender I know told me that I should vote no because if it passed then restaurants would have to reduce headcount and servers who were bad at their jobs would get paid just as well as servers that offer good service.

So it seems like the restaurants just threatened people with losing their jobs and so they voted NO and convinced others to do the same.

The measure didn’t pass.

Maybe Amazon will develop a system where Ring/Alexa will let the drivers into your house to use your bathroom, in exchange for showing fewer ads on Prime Video.

That’s not even true, they interrupted episode 2 of Rings of Power for me.

I paid for the ad free add-on while Rings of Power is on but after that I’ll just cancel Prime completely until there’s another show I want to watch, so they’re overall losing money from me with this decision.

I’ll never look at my phone the same way again

Yeah, the “chilling effect” is a big problem. I’m sure the creators of TemTem and other alternatives are getting nervous.

I guess we’ll never know whether Palworld could have avoided this with a different art style or varying the catching mechanics more.

And we would be talking about it, if Palworld was NOT such a blatant ripoff of Pokemon.

It’s like using the OJ Simpson trial as an example of how messed up the LAPD is. Is the LAPD fucked up? Yes. Is OJ Simpson someone that we should be sympathetic to? Not so much.

If they start going after games that are NOT blatant ripoffs of their IP, then yes, I’m much more concerned about the abuses of the patent system. Patent trolling IS a real problem, I’m just not sure if Palworld is the right catalyst for people to be sympathetic about patent trolling.

Yeah, they could. However, I think if they DID sue Digimon, TemTem, Monster Hunters, etc using the same patent trolling tactics, they’d probably have a harder time winning, because those games haven’t (as blatantly) copied Nintendo. I suspect that’s why they haven’t done so.

Yes… technically. But clearly with those broad parents the could also technically go after other monster catching games that have been around forever. I think the point is that Palworld poked the bear a little too much, particularly with the character designs which look to me like they fed all 1000+ Pokemon into generative AI and slapped the results into their game. Are they getting sued for character design? No. Do I think that is a big part of WHY they are being sued? Absolutely.

Does that include running Windows containers? It seems like the alternatives don’t support those.

I don’t think you even need Docker licenses to run Linux containers, but unfortunately I need to deal with this because I have some legacy software running in windows containers.