This is useful for countries where the Steam Deck is unavailable but other handhelds aren't. Here in Australia, Steam Decks are only available as grey imports, and that makes warranty issues a potential headache, but you can walk into most electronic retailers and buy a ROG Ally off the shelf.
That said, I personally wouldn't buy a handheld that didn't have touchpads, so I bought a grey import and have had no issues.
I think the major difference between the two is that in video games, the cost of the loot boxes is deliberately obfuscated through the use of whatever single-use currency the publisher has dreamed up, and made worse by the fact that the currency is only purchasable in select denominations, meaning you're always spending more than you're going to use.
You're not wrong that there are plenty of examples of physical "loot boxes" marketed at children, but at least with those you know exactly how much it costs straight up.
I wish our government would look into the actual predatory practices that these publishers are using in these games, but this is a good first step. At least the EU is looking into it.
That "worst case scenario" really doesn't seem that bad to me. Exactly what would happen to any busy that overextends themselves and runs out of money. What, exactly, makes Star so special that they feel they deserve relief from the government?
To be fair, half of the AAA gaming industry is all about trying to clone the latest successful game with a new coat of paint. Maybe using AI to make these clones will mean that the talented people behind the scenes are free to explore other ideas instead.
Of course in reality, it just means that the largest publishers will lay off a whole lot of people and keep churning out these uninspired games in the name of corporate profits, but it's nice to dream sometimes.
I'm not fundamentally opposed to nuclear. The country's power needs are only going to keep growing, and I could see an argument for having multiple options for sourcing that power. It's a very expensive argument though, and one that's hard to swallow when all the experts are saying renewable is the way to go, and I haven't seen any projections that show that we'd necessarily need anything other than renewables in the foreseeable future.
The thing I'm strongly opposed to with regards to nuclear is rerouting funding away from renewables to pay for it. It's an expensive technology that won't be ready for decades, so I just don't see the need to pivot to it. If we'd started the transition to nuclear three decades ago things would be different, but the LNP was strongly opposed to the technology back then, funnily enough.
And it's absolutely absurd to then announce a cap on renewables spending as part of their plan to get to net zero by 2050.
The whole thing is a farce, and the LNP hasn't given any good reasons why nuclear is the way forward over renewables. They haven't said much of anything other than shout about it being the better option, but then that's been the LNP's go-to political strategy for as long as I've been old enough to vote so no surprise there.
Is that a slur? It has a racial component, sure, but I hardly think it is actually a racist comment, and definitely not a slur. And to label it as "racially motivated harassment" is laughable.
If this is actually what Kerr said, it's pretty indicative of the systemic issues that have been popping up in the UK for awhile now. They've been travelling further and further down the fascist highway since Brexit.
At least with Metallica, we could laugh at the irony of a band regularly releasing songs about anarchy crying about piracy.
The first tweet is almost satirical, so if it had stopped there I might have bought it being "taken out of context".
I'm curious to know what possible context would make those tweets okay.
Maybe orcs have always been "soft", but it's taken a cultural shift to get to a point where they're allowed to be themselves.
Editor: The article is great! All we need now is a quote from social media and we can publish.
Journalist: We haven't been able to find anything suitable, everyone thinks this story is satire.
Editor: Then just post one yourself and then quote that! But don't reference your name, that'll be a dead giveaway.
I appreciate where the author of this article is coming from, but I think they're being a bit too one-sided.
For example, they make the point that zoos don't contribute enough to conservation, donating only around 5% of their spending, as if the millions of dollars given doesn't justify their existence. But if zoos didn't exist, that's a big chunk of money that wouldn't be going towards conservation at all.
They also talk about the education aspect, that visitors don't necessarily read the information about the animals and instead go for the spectacle. But a child isn't going to read those plaques regardless, but seeing animals up close might ignite an interest in conservation later in life.
And one thing that the article doesn't really go into is the fact that humans are still actively hunting animals in the wild, and destroying habitats for profit. And while I think zoos are a bit of a band-aid fix when it comes to endangered species, I'd much rather see an animal in captivity surrounded by zookeepers that care about it rather than extinction.
In an ideal world, zoos wouldn't exist. In a slightly less ideal world, only open-plain zoos would exist. But we are a very long way from that, and I personally believe that reputable zoos are a positive in the world we currently live in.
We've had an R18+ rating for video games since 2013, so not sure why Hotline Miami 2 wouldn't have been able to receive classification.
Funnily enough, I own the game on Steam, so at some point Valve also made the same mistake. But at least they won't pull the game from my library.