As a long time e-cig user and enthusiast I agree. I thought we got away from that garbage a decade ago, but then it came back. I don’t get it, it’s expensive, it sucks, and it’s mind bogglingly awful for the environment.
I don’t even love the idea of pre built coils but I compromised for the convenience now that they are actually good. Feels a lot less bad to toss a little bit of steel and kanthal every few weeks.
I can’t really get behind banning flavors, but less attractive packaging and only allowing open refillable systems would be a huge step to slowing adolescent use, they pretty much all use disposables because they can be bought at gas stations and you have to go to a smoke shop to get the refillables. Not to mention dropping $60 on a mod+tank isn’t as easy to start as $10 for a disposable.
I think the flavors are a big part of why they can be effective as cessation aids you start to no longer associate tobacco with it which helps a lot. I no longer smell someone smoking and get cravings.
Alkaline batteries are great for remotes and stuff like that, where they potentially last years, in those applications it seems very reasonable, my TV remote still has the included AA batts and I bought it 3 years ago. But they end up getting used in higher drain devices and it gets a bit absurd. Still, at least people aren’t rocking around with their boombox with 6 D cells that last 8hours.
There is in most countries. Unless you mean shortfills you are meant to add nic to? In the US those still firmly fall under the laws restricting sale of vapes. Don’t know about the UK or Europe, I know those products exist there though.
Otherwise you can’t legally sell bulk nicotine to underage people, obviously the other ingredients are used for such a wide variety of things they can’t really be restricted like that.
Also are we just going to ignore the whole thing with GTAV where you had three characters with intertwined stories that you could switch between (mostly) at will? Multiple protagonists has been done, but not really like that, not in such a living breathing manner that they managed to pull off. Rockstar also manages to fill the world with many interesting characters for the story to play with, they manage to take really simple gameplay and make it engaging all the way through.
They also added the heists which were a pretty good way of adding more meaning to the old school mission structure they continue to use and while ultimately I don’t think it had they impact they wanted it did add some flavor and interest to the gameplay. I’m an absolute fiend for heist films and that was a lot of fun for me.
These games are characterized by superficial simplicity underlaid with surprising complexity to craft a smooth experience. LA Noire is a prime example of that kind of design where it becomes very obvious how much the game has to run like well oiled gearworks to function at all and have the cases work as narrative. (developed by Team Bondi, but with the help of a lot of the R* studios including North)
Also they manage to do all this without a second of it feeling like a cynical product, it’s clear the people doing this love the topic of pop culture crime, films, stories, legends and want to take the player along for a fun ride. I don’t know at this point, with everything that happened with GTAO, which mostly feels like a cynical product, if that’s the R* making GTAVI, I sure hope it is though.
Yeah consumer retail has implied contracts that override anything you write in a TOS or EULA. You can add certain things with those but there’s still a basic commercial transaction happening that is bound to the rule of law.
Why bother with NFTs? every storefront already has a licensing system, the only benefit I could see is being able to move it from storefront to storefront, but they will never go for that. Even then it could be done much more efficiently other ways.
Haha, that’s exactly the kind of game I want to make but with graphics and a little less dry. Didn’t even know about that one. Also I should probably actually figure out how to start that once I’m settled in here. It’s amazing how much planning and thought goes into getting one truck across the country. It’s like Oregon trail but you die of stupidity, yours or others, rather than dysentery.
Lol always a picture of Breezewood, wich is odd because it doesn’t really represent suburban development in any way whatsoever, it’s a turnpike town with 178 residents. It was literally built to support the interchange and highway.
I used to drive it in a semi regularly no idea what my company was paying, must have cost a small fortune over the years but really the only good way to get into southern Ohio from Harrisburg or Allentown.
It’s gotten rather absurd. If my interaction is with a kiosk short of being handed something, it’s an insulting extra step. I’m already paying the price for my employer’s pay scale … I can’t take on someone else’s stinginess....
A lot of taxi and rideshare drivers are saying they are getting the hell out of town for the event so they don’t have to deal with it, so you have to incentivize people to stay on and make some cash. My source is just secondhand anecdotes of what cabbies were talking about when friends and family were visiting recently but if it sticks out enough for these people to mention it a lot of people must have said it.
It sucks but for once I think Vegas isn’t just being full of shit here.
Whether it’s the perception alone of European guests or a real issue is kind of irrelevant because the cabbies don’t want to work the event either way.
Comment what you think about the physics of the beamng drive, and also the gameplay of the game in general, including the steering wheel, which I haven’t used yet....
Aero is simultaneously half missing and the most detailed aero of any game I’ve played. if you take all the weight out of a piccolina and put a mattress on the roof and push it down a hill it flys.
to put that into some interesting context that’s about what your cell phone uses if you go through the battery over 24hrs. With a battery or big capacitor to act as an accumulator you could in theory have a smart phone that never needs charging, or rarely when you use it a lot in one night.
I just hate how it’s the only retail space left that never bothers to organize things beyond men’s sections, women’s sections, and the dreaded kids’ section. I had to go shopping today to get long sleeve black shirts for my job (long story). All I needed were like 3 larges that were black. That’s it! But it took me...
Yes but have you also attempted to buy a camping chair at Dick’s. It’s really wild how badly laid out the camping section is. I buy like half my clothing at Tractor Supply Co when I’m picking up other stuff, I look like a hipster cowboy but it works.
The one original I don’t miss is the CD mix of Rushs Vapor Trails, as that was practically unlistenable and I have no idea who approved it, it clipped like crazy to the point where I was afraid it would damage speakers. Finally remixed in 2013 to a loud (which is fair that’s the vibe of it) but listenable mix. I’m glad rush managed to make that happen, one little victory is a great track that was murdered by the mixing.
Sugar Ray is also highly brick walled but I can’t tell if that’s agressive mixing or just an aesthetic choice to have that kind of distortion and dirtyness in there.
Most listeners won’t touch it apart from boosting bass, you also want to make it play well with the typical compressor and EQ profiles of FM radio still. Listeners expect music to start at a certain profile and want to go from their on their own as well.
Yeah, I hope so, but they also cannot just lie about the direction they think they are headed like that as a public company. With the kind of progress translation has made it just seems inevitable that the switch will happen for lower power consumer devices at least. (Lower power being relative to a high end workstation) interesting to see if maybe this means a pivot to commercial only products.
My wife and I have always wanted to have a dog and out of an interesting turn of events, we have the opportunity to adopt a 2 year old dog that a family friend cannot take care of anymore (they developed an illness that radically saps their energy)....
Israel definitely is well within their rights to retaliate against Hamas, it would be foolish to claim otherwise. It’s the exact way they are doing it that is the issue, they are behaving nearly as poorly as their enemy. You can’t just tell the world “look at the barbarity of Hamas slaughtering innocent civilians just out there kibbutzing” and then turn around and bomb civilian hospitals, completely disregard rules of engagement around medical aid killing humanitarian volunteers you were aware of, shutting off all power, water and closing food supply to the Gaza strip, and then act like it’s somehow better than that.
Hamas absolutely sucks and Israel has every right to defend themselves from terrorism, but the Palestinian children buried under rubble didn’t deserve any of this. (Neither did the Israeli citizens who were slaughtered and kidnapped for that matter.)
Israel has the technology, the troops, and the tactics to be far more precise and surgical in their retaliation, but their response has been punitive and brutal, and seems to almost maximize collateral damage. Of course that’s what Netanyahu and his thugs will all but directly say they want given the opportunity to speak. I do not believe that properly represents the citizens of Israel who are generally much more sympathetic to the people of Palestine.
Both the citizens of Israel and Palestine have been failed by their leadership. Agree or disagree, at this point, I just had to write that down somewhere. I know people from both Palestine and Israel, wonderful people, all this is heartbreaking.
War is hell, even if you play by the rules, why make it even worse?
There’s a new iMessage for Android app — and it actually works (www.theverge.com)
French parliament backs proposal to ban vapes (www.theguardian.com)
Rockstar's Game Design is Outdated (www.youtube.com)
EU court rules people can resell digital games (www.gamingbible.com)
Finally some good news! I’ve been waiting for quite a while for such a ruling....
What game company from your childhood do you remember with fondness?
I was thinking about how I remember Maxis fondly, and I got to wondering what other people’s experiences were like!...
The Internet is Worse Than Ever – Now What? (yewtu.be)
Children, left behind by suburbia, need better community design (www.cnu.org)
Bethesda responding to negative Starfield reviews on Steam (www.eurogamer.net)
Americans are confused, frustrated by new tipping culture, study finds (www.washingtonpost.com)
It’s gotten rather absurd. If my interaction is with a kiosk short of being handed something, it’s an insulting extra step. I’m already paying the price for my employer’s pay scale … I can’t take on someone else’s stinginess....
The fantastic physics of the beamng drive (www.youtube.com)
Comment what you think about the physics of the beamng drive, and also the gameplay of the game in general, including the steering wheel, which I haven’t used yet....
So, turns out that nuclear-powered pacemakers were a thing (www.ans.org)
In today’s episode of “weird shit I stumbled onto on the internet”, I bring you: nuclear-powered pacemakers....
Drugmakers Are Set to Pay 23andMe Millions to Access Consumer DNA (www.bloomberg.com)
I hate clothes shopping so much (semi-rant)
I just hate how it’s the only retail space left that never bothers to organize things beyond men’s sections, women’s sections, and the dreaded kids’ section. I had to go shopping today to get long sleeve black shirts for my job (long story). All I needed were like 3 larges that were black. That’s it! But it took me...
what does "remastered" even mean?
listening to lots of music lately and almost every second song is “remastered”; original is often not even available anymore....
Intel doesn’t think that Arm CPUs will make a dent in the laptop market (arstechnica.com)
What did archeologists find at a pig farm?
Ancient grease.
Why America Is Out of Ammunition (www.thebignewsletter.com)
Adopting a 2 year old dog tomorrow. Any tips?
My wife and I have always wanted to have a dog and out of an interesting turn of events, we have the opportunity to adopt a 2 year old dog that a family friend cannot take care of anymore (they developed an illness that radically saps their energy)....
Israel orders unprecedented evacuation of 1 million in Gaza as possible ground offensive looms (apnews.com)