This isn’t up to the stores. It’s up to the gaming developers who own the right to license the games. I have been making this argument for years, and explaining digital (and physical) content licensing to people on the internet for years and almost always get downvoted because they don’t like facts that interfere with their sense of righteousness.

I don’t disagree that is scummy practice to randomly end a license and take something someone paid for out of their library or otherwise deny them access to it. but I cannot stress enough that this is the fault of both parties or the licensing agreement (the license seller and the entity that agrees to allow the license seller to sell licenses to the content). People will always blame Sony or Amazon or Apple. But never Universal, or Disney, or Paramount or whoever. It’s both. They’re both assholes in this scenario. One of them is limited by the law. The other one can offer that content by other means to people who have already purchased it once but won’t because capitalism and greed.

If you want my sex tape that bad, all you gotta do is ask.

I suppose it depends on the Anime you watch or read vs the comics you watch or read. But comics generally have an over arcing plot and that plot goes somewhere. I’m that way the protagonists grow up or get better etc. The protagonist gets harder better/faster/stronger. Some long running comics do this eventually, but they run for so long often that these arcs just become rehashes of things that have already happened. Spiderman runs into most of the villains in his stories more than once (in one run of the comic, I know there are multiple). Batman and Joker, Superman, and just about every other person from his native planet. Hell, Superman and Lex Luther.

But perhaps it’s just harder to notice these kinds of themes repeating in a lot of anime. Or perhaps it’s just my experience or specific anime and manga. I will concede that they generally are more “audience of all ages” friendly in a specific way that American comics don’t.

I’d argue that I’m smack in the middle of the generation that grew up watching Dragonball and Sailor Moon etc. but I also grew up watching Superman, and Batman, and Spiderman etc.

The problem I have with American comics is a whole list.

1. The serial nature of American Comics and the likelihood that the comic will end its run before the story is finished (this happens quite a lot with smaller American Comics, making it difficult to find new material and the will to invest interest in it).

2. Anime Stories may not always grow with the fan base, but enough of them do that they maintain their audience over years as the story progresses. I think that’s pretty important.

3. The most popular American Comic stories are over saturated on their own material. They reboot repeatedly, and have a wrote way that the main character(s) face/handle problems and conflict. You almost never have a full story that’s not just a cyclical thing. A lot of Manga have a beginning, middle and end, even if the story continues afterwards (story arcs finish more often than not). Sometimes they rehash, the same thing arc to arc, but more often than not, because those characters are new and not 50 year old icons, the audience is more willing to invest in that kind of story.

4. There was definitely always this FOMO feeling about anime back in the day because it wasn’t such an outwardly accepted thing. It used to be only the “weird kids” who were into it, so there was a sense of it being scarce, even when it wasn’t necessarily. I think that helped it to be more sought after. It went from weird to cool.

5. Anime often doesn’t have a way to endear you to the characters in a cheap way that’s everywhere, enough for you to invest in buying the media. Some American comics started out in news papers and on things like cigarette packets. They gained some level of notariety and recognition from the public that way. So they didn’t have to give as much effort to a first issue as anime manga often does. This to me is a notable difference.

Superman though is also popular just as an icon, not necessarily (in this day and age) because he’s a comic book character. There are people who have never picked up a comic who knows his name and his general story. They may have never even actually seen a show or movie about him, but he’s now such an icon that this doesn’t matter. People still know him.

True. At this point people should probably not give the company any more free data.

I left during the protests when it became clear that they weren’t going to change their mind about shutting down third party apps. I still miss some of the communities there, and I’m a little bitter myself over the whole thing. But to me it’s better to continue to protest by not going back.

The problem is that they’re likely to get new users from their sale of data to Google. That’s constantly pushing new people to reddit. And if those people didn’t leave during the protest or because of the influx of bots, they’re not likely to leave en masse over this.

My guess is that reddits death will be very slow.

One way to check is to make a new alarm for ten minutes earlier or later than the old alarm, and see if that one sounds. I have DND turn off half an hour before my alarm goes off, but it also is supposed to ignore the alarm altogether (not interfere with alarm settings/sounds).

You may also want to see if the alarm is sounding on the old phone (if you haven’t already wiped it, sold it etc).

Nah. They tried to do the same to Apple. Somehow, Apple won.

Insider trading is illegal. Tax fraud is illegal. There’s lots of things in the business world that have been deemed illegal including the theft of ideas that are trademarked, copyrighted or patented and businessmen steal those all the time and spend a lot of time looking for loopholes. The bottom line is that I can’t say with 100% certainty that this is exactly what’s going on but I can point to articles with analysis of the entire thing and see some distinct possibilities, and you can’t say for certain that that’s not what’s going on, unless you happen to work in the field and have information that I don’t.

The other parts of the acquisition are covered by his own companies and the sale of his own stock. With the right insurance (the right contracts) he’d get a golden parachute that would make him whole without having to pay those back either. Golden parachutes are not only legal but also quite normal for CEOs. If Twitter were to end up bankrupt, he may not have to pay back the money he borrowed from Tesla or his other companies, and that leaves him having to pay back just the private parties. Depending on their agreement, that may be in stock options for all we know. Further allowing him to dump Tesla stock without selling it (which won’t effect Teslas valuation in a negative way).

A house of cards is a house of cards. Things being illegal have never stopped this man before.

Can’t rule out vestibular migraines. I didn’t even know I was having them until I got a really bad headache with the other symptoms. Doctor was able to confirm it as that but it took quite awhile.

https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/154769/musk-bought-twitter-with-13b-loans-why-is-twitter-liable-for-this-debt-rath

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/02/1140260051/planet-moneys-the-indicator-how-musk-bought-twitter-with-other-peoples-money

Twitter is responsible for that debt. Not Musk. That’s because of the way the agreement for the loan was structured. That’s why he would lose control of the company if they file for bankruptcy.

No. It didn’t. That’s why he was upset. Mozilla even admit this. Did you read the article or what?

“Mozilla later admitted in an email that they had made a mistake regarding the extension, but Hill has ultimately decided to cease development of the uBlock Origin Lite add-on for Firefox.”

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197#issuecomment-2383629057&xcust=2-3-2474353-1-0-0&sref=https://www.pcworld.com/article/2474353/popular-ad-blocker-removed-from-firefox-extension-store.html

If he files for bankruptcy. Did you read the articles?

Okay, this is a lot in a very small window, but we know a couple of things. The first is that Musk’s wealth is mostly tied to Tesla stock which is tied directly to the vastly over-inflated valuation of Tesla at 800Bn.

We also know that to get access to liquidity of funds he had to borrow money or sell Tesla stock. We know that when he sells Tesla stock, he ends up causing that stock price to fall significantly and that it’s only a matter of time before investors actually pull the plug on that because it costs them money/devalues their stake.

We also know that most of his outside lenders for the buy-up of twitter are from countries that want to deliberately stop the flow of new ideas and information. There’s no reason to assume that degrading Twitter the way he has been doesn’t give them what they want. Therefore I based my assumption simply on the idea that if they are receiving something quid pro for their help, they may not call in the debt, nor care about the overall health of the platform on a business or user level. In fact, that’s one of the only ways that the deal even makes sense given what we have seen.

Musk does care though because he took on the company’s debt when he bought the company. Meaning if it crashes and burns and is considered insolvent he won’t be responsible for the debt he took on when he bought it (not debt owed to outside lenders, but the debt he was required to take on through banks/finace brokers).

"The exodus of advertisers, partially due to Elon Musk’s controversial behavior, has left X with a growing revenue gap.

The main reason Twitter has a revenue gap is that Musk saddled it with $13bn of debt with his leveraged buyout. The business isn’t just failing because of Musk’s management since then, it’s failing because that was the purpose derived from the purchase."

The thing is as the company and CEO continue to make bad decisions that cost revenue, it will be better to not have to pay back lenders where he can. And you’ll note that while he’s been dodging payments to almost everyone else, he’s been paying back that 13Bn like clockwork. The thing is, if the business shutters he no longer has to pay back that 13Bn, nor will he likely have to pay back a fair amount of the other debts. (This is similar to the plot of The Producers here. Make a product so bad that it doesn’t make any money and the investors don’t get the dividends because no money was made).

When you consider how little of the money is borrowed from outside interests (7Bn approximately) verses from his own other companies you realize that this is literally a house of cards he’s built. One of the few ways to get out from under a house of cards kind of scenario is to file for bankruptcy.

One of the few downfalls of filing for bankruptcy is that he’d lose control of Twitter, and that it would be a very public dent in the armor of his supposed high profile businessman persona.

But if he wanted to devalue it to make it not worth what he paid for it, it’s a double win of making it useless in the event that it’s no longer in his control, and not having to pay back a lot of the debts.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/how-will-elon-musk-pay-twitter-2022-10-07/

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-if-twitter-files-for-bankruptcy-elon-musk-2022-12

We got attacked and then in fear gave away our freedoms for the promise of more protections. There were people blowing the whistle each time but we ignored them. Patriot Act. Lobbying to not consider social platforms news aggregates. Lobbying to not pay news outlets, Lobbying to weaken anti-trust laws. Lobbying to kill legislation protecting children online. Lobbying against legislation to protect user privacy. Lobbying for the use of tech like facial recognition.

This kind of thing has been happening for ages.

Actually, they flagged UBO Lite and the dev removed it himself in a fit of pique.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2474353/popular-ad-blocker-removed-from-firefox-extension-store.html

I think this may be algorithmic. Like steam gives suggestions based on what you have already purchased, and what other people who purchased the same games also like. Additionally it’ll tell you what your friends are playing if you friend them on steam. This sort of gives everyone a different picture of steam suggestions that is tailored to them. It might be a good idea to find older non-live service games you like, add them to a new profile or wishlist, and then see what new information pops up for you.

Send it and report back. I am interested in subscribing to their newsletter. You’ll let them know, right?