digging through a shoebox of game carts. For someone who wasn’t alive for that era of gaming (not even close, honestly), it’s a neat little glimpse of what it was like.
As someone who was alive for gaming in the 80s and 90s, it was nothing like that at all. Unless you were very rich, most people would have less than 10 games for the one console they had. It would be a small stack by the side of the console, next to the controllers. Games were usually around $70 depending on the game, which is like $160 in today's money.
NES games were cheaper, especially once the SNES was released. So people did wind up collecting NES games (2nd hand) once the SNES released. The NES moved to the oldest kid bedroom, with the SNES taking the place of the one console in the living room. They might have a shoebox of older games at some point.
We did play a lot of games tho, often we would borrow games from other kids in the neighbourhood. Although everyone had the same 5 super popular games, the other games people had varied. Downside was, the easiest ones to borrow were often the ones that weren't any good. We all know that one kid that had the Star Wars SNES game and hated it, but you'd only very sparingly get a new game, so you were stuck with it.
Another thing we did was rent a lot of games, you would go to the rental place and they would have so many games, it would blow your mind. They'd have posters up, often large set pieces for some games and movies. It was like kid heaven. Then you'd have about 10 mins to figure out which game to rent, otherwise your dad would get annoyed and tell you to get a move on.
People even rented the SNES when it was just released for a weekend, so they would know if it was any good before buying it for the family. It was a big purchase, so you'd better make it worth it.
Looked up the invoice for you (rounded the numbers for simplicity):
Panels (8x) including micro inverters, all of the mounting hardware, cables etc. - $2500
Hardware for upgrading the electrical panel - $400
Labour, various items, delivery costs - $600
IIRC it was 3 dudes for about half a day. Two dudes for the panels and an electrician that checked what the panel dudes did on the roof and upgraded my electrical panel.
I felt like it was a pretty good deal. Panels could have been cheaper, but I wanted the full black ones. And a single inverter would have been cheaper than micro inverters, but the panels are partly shaded a lot of the time due to a tree. Calculations I did showed the extra price of the micro inverters would be worth it to get the most out of the panels.
Sure that's just the one dude tho. And what does 3 million streams mean? Is that a lot? What platforms? Are those full listens? How many repeat listens? Are those actual humans listening, or just more bots consuming bot content?
I meant how successful are AI music creators in comparison to other average music creators? Like the population of people creating music the traditional way in comparison to people creating music using AI.
I feel the amount of people using AI that have any traction whatsoever is vanishingly small, so a comparison isn't even possible. And I've also known people that are insanely talented making music, who still have to have a job and pay for a lot of their own stuff, never making a dime. Success in the music industry has always only loosely been related to actual talent.
I had a 3KW system installed in 2022, total costs were around $3.5K (including some changes to my electrical setup to fit it in). Looking up current pricing around here, the same setup would be cheaper still.
6KW is obviously bigger and your situation may be more complex, but anything above $10K seems like a ripoff for me.
I highly doubt space elevators for Earth are decades away, more like centuries if they are even possible at all. Even if technically possible (which is a big if), they also need to be environmentally, politically, culturally and economically possible.
It's a cool concept, but it ain't going to happen on Earth. Maybe on the Moon or some other place perhaps.
As someone who was alive for gaming in the 80s and 90s, it was nothing like that at all. Unless you were very rich, most people would have less than 10 games for the one console they had. It would be a small stack by the side of the console, next to the controllers. Games were usually around $70 depending on the game, which is like $160 in today's money. NES games were cheaper, especially once the SNES was released. So people did wind up collecting NES games (2nd hand) once the SNES released. The NES moved to the oldest kid bedroom, with the SNES taking the place of the one console in the living room. They might have a shoebox of older games at some point.
We did play a lot of games tho, often we would borrow games from other kids in the neighbourhood. Although everyone had the same 5 super popular games, the other games people had varied. Downside was, the easiest ones to borrow were often the ones that weren't any good. We all know that one kid that had the Star Wars SNES game and hated it, but you'd only very sparingly get a new game, so you were stuck with it.
Another thing we did was rent a lot of games, you would go to the rental place and they would have so many games, it would blow your mind. They'd have posters up, often large set pieces for some games and movies. It was like kid heaven. Then you'd have about 10 mins to figure out which game to rent, otherwise your dad would get annoyed and tell you to get a move on. People even rented the SNES when it was just released for a weekend, so they would know if it was any good before buying it for the family. It was a big purchase, so you'd better make it worth it.