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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)VA
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  • Nintendo raised the price of the Switch 1 and most of their accessory products in the US and Canada in May for Canada and August for the US.

    This was following price increases for Nintendo Switch Online in Latin American countries which started in January. Nintendo has not raised prices of the subscription globally, but in their press releases about increased costs of hardware, they state that "price adjustments may be necessary in the future" for NSO, presumably after evaluating trends when the free trial period of GameChat ends for Switch 2 early adopters in March 2026.

    And I know you said you don't care about Sony, but just to share sources, Sony has already increased the price of their hardware in Japan in August 2024; Europe, Australia, and New Zealand in March; and the US in August of this year.

    This was following earlier price increases in 2022 for Canada, Japan, Europe, Australia, and Mexico.

    Sony also increased the cost of PS+ in North America, Europe, and Japan back in 2023, more recently for Southeast Asia back in April, and there are rumors of another upcoming price increase to be announced at some point now that we've entered FY2026.

    So all of this is just to illustrate that what Microsoft is doing isn't really anything new—it's just the latest development in a continuing industry-wide trend.

  • Raising the price of hardware twice since May and now raising the price of game pass by 50% is not something a company does if they're interested in competing against Sony or Nintendo.

    But when Sony and Nintendo are doing the same thing...?

  • I liked him in Super with Rainn Wilson. It wasn't a perfect movie but I thought his performance was fine and it was a fitting movie to anticipate the Marvel saturation in the coming years (which director James Gunn would eventually actively participate in).

    I also thought he was fine in Inception. Not the standout performance of the movie but I didn't walk out thinking "ugh, Elliot Page really gunked that up" or anything, and he apparently worked well enough with Christopher Nolan to get brought back in for The Odyssey.

  • If you're referring to having customizable icon silhouettes, Android has been doing that for a while with Material Design, which has gotten old at this point.

    I don't believe any desktop environment behaves similarly because they don't have a dominant app store and OS-level app standards encouraging design compliance like Android/iOS do.

  • That's how I read the intent of the author, at least. Getting scientists out of their isolated bubbles and allowing them to actually experience the world drives innovation.

    That, or the one physicist who figured it out was so traumatized by merely being outside that she figured it out as quickly as possible to make it all stop, haha.

  • I almost kinda dislike the messaging on this one because it implies authoritarianism is the key to discovery. Scientists are implied to be passive and unindustrious when left alone, so the government (FBI-type characters) declare a truth they want proven, force development of it through the threat of violence, and it eventually yields an answer they're happy with.

    I'm reminded of the film The Death of Stalin and it's depiction of the USSR's treatment of bourgeois intellectuals like doctors.

  • It was $15/mo before it's first price hike, too.

    And before that, a lot of people were taking advantage of the Xbox Live Gold conversion deal, where folks were getting access to GamePass Ultimate for $60/year.

    I once spent $180 for 3 years of GamePass, and now that same amount only gets you 6 months.

  • I barely even buy 5 games a year, and often not at full price. And usually the games I want aren't even on GamePass anyways.

    $360/year is crazy. Only a good deal if you're buying more than 6 full price games a year and plan to 100% beat them and never play again before they disappear from the catalog.

  • I've definitely been there. I think it's like what English teachers say when they see their students reading whatever latest YA drivel has been published (e.g. Twilight):

    At least they want to read something.

    Encourage their passions, even if you really hate what they're currently doing with it, and trust that eventually they'll get a better sense of taste when they learn more about what else is out there.

    Take the "lead a horse to water" idiom but add the corollary that the horse definitely will not drink if no one leads it to water in the first place.