Vendor lock-in on those batteries might not be quite as "lock-y" as other examples of vendor lock-in.
One can buy or print[1] cheap adaptors to use cross-brand batteries.
I wonder if it would be plausible to manufacture/sell a line of generic batteries with easily swappable adaptors for major brands, similar to how some AC/DC adaptors have a replaceable wall socket connection for different countries. Perhaps someone on HN knowledgeable on such things knows if there would be some technical or legal issue with that?
Visual Pinball X [1] is a free modern pinball simulator. It also supports VR, and comes pretty close to feeling like the real thing (sans realistic bumping).
There are hundreds of VPX format tables available online including original works, replicas of physical tables and replicas of existing digital tables. I've played dozens of hours of Stern's Tron Legacy both on a physical table and in Visual Pinball X, and I prefer VPX over the real thing.
There's also a high quality remake of 3D Space Cadet [2] available. Playing that one in VR feels like stepping into a PC in the 90s.
Also if it were intended as "meeting all of the criteria disqualifies you", then part A is completely redundant, isn't it? If B and C are true then A is also true.
As an Australian I agree with you. I would definitely expect several to be more than a few. Most of the time "a few" would mean 3 or 4, to me. "Several" is anywhere from 4 to ~7.
I agree with you on this, at least. The length of time doesn't matter.
I would argue that the only sensible reason for a feeling of guilt is actus reus. I didn't participate in colonisation, I don't feel guilty that my ancestors did, and I'm yet to hear a clear argument for why I should.
It does seem logical to feel guilty if you benefit from the displacement of existing societies to their disadvantage, are aware of that benefit, and don't work to correct it.
I'd also suspect that the violence and inhumanity inflicted during colonisation are, as far as the "how guilty should descendents of colonisers feel" calculation goes, irrelevant. The thing that many of us are personally responsible for and should feel guilty about is shutting our eyes, and not doing enough to correct the inequity that still exists today.
That's exactly it though: it's often (perhaps even usually) not beneficial for Amazon to do what's best for the customer.
What's the point of "Customer Obsession" if it's secondary to "Amazon Obsession"? Doing what's best for the customer unless it isn't also what's best for Amazon is just doing what's best for Amazon.
I know some folks who really genuinely believe that Amazon is a force for good, the criticism is exaggerated, will talk about how lucky they are to work for the World's Best Employer, and will get a bit sulky if you say anything negative about the company.
Generally though, I think it's understood that "most customer centric company" doesn't mean "we will put the customer before ourselves because we are such good people", but instead "strategically keeping the customer happy is better for the shareholders in the long run".
It's the same with most of the LPs. They're packaged in a way that makes Amazon sound like this amazing company that really cares, but they boil down to "16 ways YOU can enrich Amazon's shareholders (you won't believe number 15!)".
Definitely interesting. I dislike thinking about such things though. I've been stuck on this one for a while:
Descartes posited, "I think, therefore I am" as a reassurance of our existence in a given moment. While this anchors our immediate awareness in some semblance of reality, it doesn't necessarily offer solace regarding the past or the future.
Imagine, if you will, an expansive universe characterized by its sheer randomness and chaos, existing for eons. If, in such a universe, a consciousness can spontaneously emerge and dissolve—much like a fleeting set of physics—how can we be certain of its duration? Does it persist for a lifetime, or does it flicker for just a moment?
Our memories might suggest a continuous existence, but what if they are merely ripples in this vast sea of randomness? It's an unsettling thought: could it be that we exist only in the fleeting now, borne from the precise alignment of countless variables just to perceive this very instant? And that perhaps, a moment ago or a moment hence, we simply weren't and won't be?
While such thoughts might be disconcerting, their implications are, in a way, irrelevant. Even if I could unequivocally prove this transient nature of existence, our ephemeral consciousness would barely have time to grasp it. Our understanding would be obliterated, only to be replaced by another random state.
And yet, if this fleeting moment is all we have, I'm honoured that you spent it reading this randomly generated comment. Not that you had much choice in the matter.
I think it was Shakespeare who said: it was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.
Easy: it's a decision made by the S team who can get away with not justifying themselves to ICs. They usually would show their working even though they don't have to, but in this case that would reveal their true reasoning (stealth layoffs, pressure from local governments who gave tax incentives to build now empty offices). So, they make up some stuff about RTO increasing innovation.
I can hear his voice! ... presenting to the emergency room with hyperspace vision. Hyper, meaning high, space, meaning the geometric fractal we call home, and vision, meaning vision.
I like the way Terry Pratchett put this in Men At Arms:
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
I have ~25 hours and I'm bored to tears. I've unlocked the first couple of powers, finished a few corp quest chains, but nothing about the game has grabbed me, and I have similar complaints as the GP: it's dull, the universe feels huge but flat, empty, and pointless.
I'm full of regret both that this is the most expensive game I've ever bought, plus that I upgraded my GPU just to play it.
I really want to love Starfield, and based on comments like yours I keep feeling like somehow I'm missing something. Should I keep playing? Does it get better, or do we just have vastly different tastes?
> No one can explain the qualia of the sensation and the only way to claim this thing can be experienced by non-biological objects is by a blind faith.
Sure, but the exact same argument could be made about everyone who isn't you, couldn't it? You only have two pieces of evidence to support the idea that other people feel anything:
- you feel things, other people are made of the same meat stuff as you so maybe it's a safe assumption that other people feel things in the same way you do (aside: this does pose a bit of a problem for those of us who eat animal products)
- other people tell you they feel things
Could I not say that you're relying on blind faith in assuming that I feel things just because you do?
Also, how do you know you feel things? How do you know you have free will? How do you know you're conscious? The only answer anyone can honestly give to any of those questions is "because I feel like I do".
We could say "well, it'll be magic then", but that's not particularly satisfying. To be fair you did say it's magic "for lack of a better word", however there is a better word: unknown.
Is it possible you've taken more from that single word than was intended?
GP said "insane to me". I understood this as a colloquial expression of disbelief or surprise rather than an actual accusation of insanity.
E.g. I might say it's insane to me that anyone likes Brussels sprouts. The state of mind of someone who could hold such a position is so alien to me as to be comparable to insanity.