Wrath of Khan

Another way to see that 15% drop is hinted at in the article:

EA FC generates around $2 billion annually, Reuters reports, with around $800 million of that made up by Ultimate Team.

Loot boxes made EA $800M last year. It’s easy to see why EA and other publishers demand MTX in games. Can we amend “Don’t preorder” with “and ignore micro transactions”?

At the same time, social networking is built into the most popular Chinese online shopping platforms, like Taobao, Tmall, and JD.com. They feature livestreamed videos of shopping influencers, and robust chat and photo-sharing functions, blurring the lines between social media and e-commerce.

The model has delivered: In 2023, TikTok’s Chinese sister app, Douyin, said its platform sales exceeded 2 trillion yuan ($2 billion). Xiaohongshu doesn’t disclose detailed figures, but the app’s aggressive expansion into social commerce in 2023 coincided with the first year it turned a net profit to the tune of $500 million.

So China has several profitable social media companies and a model that works regardless of the platform. It feels like Insta has tried this and doesn’t quite understand the mechanics but imitates showing influencer driven decisions. The difference is that western influencers sell their exposure while TikTok (et al) use influencers as their product and charge to alter the algorithm to expose the product to a targeted audience. It’s insidious because people will be shown something that they didn’t know they wanted and led to believe that they made the decision to get this thing. It’s Inception, but with our hobbies and interests.

The ramifications for niche porn are tremendous. Both weird categories of pornography and the idea that small groups will be fed a constant stream of their own unique interests. Imagine if you didn’t know this was happening and had an expensive hobby. Social media wants you to buy things and will give you the connection to spend instead of pursuing the hobby.

The hobby may soon not be about what we do but what we bought to show we are hobbyists. Consumption as participation. I guess we already do this with streaming entertainment, so why not?

Activision has prevented Game Pass from being seen as “not worth it” by many. It is helping Microsoft retain value.

deleted by creator

Zuck fully expects to take advantage of the H1B push President Musk is advocating for.

Starship Troopers exists so any video game movie adaptation will be compared to it. Unless Paul Verhoven is directing, it is a big uphill battle to win any comparisons.

And it’s Sony, so, good luck? They can’t seem to understand what makes a movie interesting to want to watch. They can’t cut a good trailer but their actual ability to produce and execute movie production is just bad. They can’t make a comic book movie that isn’t produced by others.

Yeah, but his way to relax and get away from stress was to code. Organizing game jams is a whole other world of stress. The different level of stress is like that Mitchell Hedburg joke, “You’re a great chef! Can you farm?”

This has been their schtick since Game and Watch.

Elon is doing the same with X. The rich always find a way to shout their propaganda.

The merger isn’t supposed to help consumers. It’s to help businesses that are incapable of keeping up and need support. The Japanese government has a history of merging companies together to ensure that they stay competitive. MITI did it in the 70s to Japanese technology companies like Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, etc. most of those are still around today and even leading the industry.

Again, this isn’t to help any consumers.

The woman had red hair and eyebrows, the hair elongated by artificial white extensions. The extensions could have been made of white fur or thin, white-powdered textile streaks. This hairstyle cannot be found in any literature. The skin of the lady was a very pale pink color.

Red hair and pale skin, sounds like she may have been Ainu.

Fucking Pinkertons? That’s a company who can use a visit from Luigi.

Just directing? Because True Romance is better than some of these.

Concord also happened this year. The message will be “we gotta be careful”.

I remember Dauntless before the Epic store. It was like Monster Hunter but stripped down to the same 3 moves you could chain together to attack a monster that had 3 different attacks. There was simply less of each aspect of Monster Hunter in Dauntless and no cooking. Now Dauntless has removed some more features, weapons, and damage types. I don’t rightly know what is left.

Fucking bullshit person hood. If it can’t be shot outside a hotel for crimes against humanity, it isn’t a person.

I understand folks don’t like AI but this “article” is like a reddit post with lots of links to subjects which are vague and need the link text to tell us what is important, instead of relying on the actual article.

Look into Sceptre. 4K with no OS, no ads, doesn’t ask for WiFi - just a TV.

“Based on” and what people associate with now are vastly different. Most people don’t even know if Saint Nick is based on a real person.