The most annoying part of these PCs is usually the keyboard - so terribly small! I have one tucked away which I see no reason to throw away, yet I have troubles finding a use for it. I'm thinking of building some sort of enclosure to hide the body, and use it as some sort of electronic journal with a properly sized keyboard. Hmm.

I understand your point and while it might not follow the definition of a scam, it surely threads dangerously closes to it when the biggest and most used company by TCG players has been recently known for buying cards from customers only to re-grade them up and sell it themselves on the market, creating a vortex of conflict of interest.

And I do understand the activity of rating, but I still fail to see how truly meaningful it is if all the companies have such wide margins of error that they'll give wildly different ratings to the same card if sent back again. It would make more sense if the company would limit itself to a) certifying that the card is not fake, and b) to note its main defects on the tag.

Grading from 1 to 10 is obviously a tactic to continuosly play with the market, creating scarcity when it is most convenient, and to enable the gambling addiction of customers who think that this time it'll surely get a grade 10; and so the customer has to pay for: shipping, fees (which are crazy expensive, and they get higher if your card is more expensive for some reason), the card holder made for shipping sold by the company, and a box also usually sold by the company.

People can do what they want with their money, if this is how one wants to collect, shall they do so. But when the whole market and felt value revolves around grading from a handful of companies, something is fishy. There are countless kids in the world convinced that the rare card they just got from their Pokémon booster is worthless if they don't spend a hundred bucks grading it.

The "synthetic leather is just shit that frails in two months" is also such an overused and misinformed point for leather enthusiasts. Because a) synthetic materials WILDLY change in quality depending on material and type of production, and b) research is always evolving and bringing up new materials (https://oleatex.com/ for example, which only uses roughly 10% of non-biocontent).

I hope it's okay to mention brands here just for the sake of argument: I personally tried vegan "pleather" shoes by Ahinsa and Feelgrounds, for example, and after a year or so they still have to show any frailing whatsoever.

Lastly, one can always make the argument that many other natural fibers will also provide a similar durability when treated well. Thinking we 'have' to use animal leather because it is the only durable product feels so misinformed.

Celebrities' managers always want their clients to shine as The Pioneer in whatever they do nowadays, so the sensationalistic head title is not surprising. Plus, big events like these can't really be 100% green by definition, since so many will still use a car to reach it.

Unrelated to the topic, but

led by a strictly limited physical collector’s release created with game preservation at its heart

This sentence is so funny. How is a limited edition made for people who want to pay extra and have shiny object on their shelves working towards game preservation in any form? It's so funny when they try to play "here, have more disposable plastic and pay 50 extra bucks for it! I swear you're ALSO doing it for a good cause!"

While I agree that @Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world's data isn't exactly correct in covering the percentage of games that can be played, their sentiment is not so random.

For example:

• Both the PS4 and the PS5 in the database you linked show that roughly 25-28% of games will require a patch to be played without "bugs that are either too severe or too many to provide a mostly flawless experience". That is almost one game out of three that, without internet connection/dead servers, will live in an odd limbo in which you own a disc with unpatched/crude software. One out of ten will be useless plastic. In comparison, a GOG installer can be re-downloaded as soon as a game is patched, and you can store it away locally once again.
• Often, buying games at launch means you don't have a complete package for the title, which nowadays comes in the form of DLCs and season passes. Those are not registered in any way onto the disc (naturally), and are only tied to your account. If Sony closes down services that check that you own such content, you don't have access to it anymore.

One could argue that Sony's going at great lengths to keep services alive; for example, the PS3 still lets you download and update content. One also can, however, easily imagine that there will be a day when such service is not considered profitable enough, since you soon won't be able to buy games for it anymore. What then? Can we realistically expect Sony to keep servers and checks alive for a console that does not generate any new profit whatsoever? I honestly doubt so.

It's a fantasy world! We've seen much worse, haven't we?

They were already floating against bad publicity because of famous "anti-woke" streamers constantly giving them shit, this move sadly doesn't help: I understand they wanted to shift away the focus from COE33 - after all, it got enough publicity as it stands.

But they could've taken so many different approaches; like, for example, instituting a different prize and move Clair Obscur to their own category (I don't know, call it "shine of the year" or something), but CLEARLY state you are doing this in honor of Indie Awards core concept, which is to highlight less known games.

Calling out a very minimal and almost accidental usage of AI that has been patched out for months just to ban it out... meh.

if there's one things all of my pets never wanted anything to do with after taking a sniff, it's gummy bears - even my old dog, which was basically a pig in disguise. Says a lot about candies, huh? (not that we would've fed them these deadly treats to them anyway, we're just curious about their reaction post-sniff).

audible gasp

who would've thought?

I'm actually surprised 19% of homelabbers chose windows, lol.

I ended up trying barefoot winter boots from wildling.shoes, and my gosh! I can't recommend them enough so far.