Sure. I wouldn't be working as part of the Retro eXo team if it wasn't possible to preserve games digitally. But physical discs do something beyond not being possible to delist - they provide a snapshot of what the game was when it was pressed, which cannot be altered. Say a company is licensed to include music in a game for x number of years. After that time runs out, they may strip the content from the game. Another example is how companies like GOG strip out drivers and setup files from the retro games they put online. They rip content out of games as bad as dialup era websites like Home of the Underdogs did. A game might only be left with a single EGA video mode and Sound Blaster audio. Forget stuff like MT-32 - GOG always removes the files necessary for it to work. In the end, we can't really trust the companies to keep anything online.

This ignores the underlying issue this post was about. Games being sold on physical media will likely last longer than games sold as digital downloads.

If you store a professionally pressed optical disc in an environment with good temperature control and low humidity, it may last 50 - 100 years. Only about 10% of pressed optical discs fail in under 25 years. Meanwhile, companies like Sony will take down their storefronts with little to no thought.

Yes, for backups, you're better off storing bin/cue files than trusting a cheap burned disc that will only last 1-5 years. But games getting sold with physical disc gives people the ability to rip them.

That's pretty incredible. But now that someone's accomplished this feat, I wonder if anyone could do the opposite - blackout drunk every single day for 9 months straight. If you die from doing it, you lose. If you go any calendar day without completely blacking out from being drunk, you also lose. But if you win, it'll be life changing in ways none of us could even begin to comprehend. I'm not going to say whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it is something. Anyone want to try it?

American here. The blue option is indeed puppies for everyone. But you're getting the rest wrong because you live in a country with an actual functioning government. Nothing in the picture said the puppies were free. The puppies are shipped in large Priority Mail flat rate boxes for $34. To receive a puppy, you must first submit Form HUD-9473126-K9B with an attached $200 money order. Processing time is 6-9 weeks upon receipt, and delivery is 2-3 weeks. The government is not responsible for the condition of how the puppy arrives. If your puppy gets damaged, additional forms and fees apply to request a replacement.

But I guess it's at least not diarrhea forever.

It's a different situation in different areas. In parts of Alaska, it's not a slur, but in parts of Canada, it is a slur. Ultimately you need to know which situation you're dealing with for the area you're in.

The US is failing, though. The entire world has always been fucked up. Every place has its problems. There was a point of divergence between the US and countries that have things better off where the US stopped improving, though. This moment happened after FDR died in 1945. With his death, the movement to universal healthcare died. Then, just two years later, the Taft–Hartley Act passed and gutted the power of unions. That same year, McCarthyism became a thing. And after that, it just took a while for the momentum to die and for everything gained to be lost. If we want to look at the moment of failure for the US, it happened long before Trump, Bush, Reagan, and Nixon. Henry Wallace was the vice president of FDR from 1941-1945. Then, the party decided to replace him with a conservative, Harry Truman. This decision is ultimately what screwed the US. Had FDR refused to replace Henry Wallace, history would have taken a very different path.

Kreuz still at least has pretty good jalapeno sausage, and at a cheaper price than some of the other places. It's still worth going to for that.

Eh, only a few people I've known have ever been able to match an on point barbecue place like Terry Black's in Lockhart or Franklin's in Austin. Most of the people that know what they're doing end up matching a middle of the line place like Chisholm Trail in Lockhart. But if someone really doesn't know what they're doing, it'll come out as bad as something from Rudy's or worse. Unfortunately barbecue restaurants charge out the ass now. $35 per pound is highway robbery. But making it at home requires the right equipment and enough friends to take shifts babying it at 2 in the morning. On the other hand, a lot of restaurants end up getting bad as the years go on as well. Places like The Salt Lick, Smitty's Market, Kreuz Market, Cooper's, and City Market all turned to crap ages ago.

Honestly, you're getting a bad bias from the kinds of Americans that currently are immigrating there. The important thing to understand is you don't want the Americans with money, you want the Americans without any money that are willing to work and help other people out. Lol. See, what you've got right now are all of the rich assholes that don't care about the culture or people of where they're moving to - they just want to live like kings in a cheap city that they can turn into an asshole bubble that prices all of the normal people out. Rich people are leeches. Ultimately, the world would be a better place with open borders everywhere, but no rich assholes. Think about why borders even exist. In what world does it matter? The only reason is ultimately just rich assholes not wanting to dilute their wealth. The best thing we can do at this point is to convince them to go to Mars and leave them there.

It won't be a huge number, though. Capitalism still works to consolidate wealth. While there never has been any private individual with that much wealth before in human history, that kind of wealth is not unprecedented. The main reason is that people with that kind of wealth have historically been emperors. And make no mistake, anyone with that kind of wealth carries with them the threat of becoming an emperor. After someone becomes an emperor or a dictator, they gain absolute control over the GDP of whatever they control. But even now, Musk's wealth is not even 1% of the world's GDP. Someone like Augustus Caesar would have had several times more wealth, and direct control over something like 25% of the world's GDP. Musk having this much wealth is disgusting - nobody should even be a billionaire. But, at the same time, in the grand scheme of things, he will be nothing more than a footnote in history. He has never done anything actually memorable. People only know him now because he's a cunt with a lot of power. But power fades, and the world has had countless cunts. In the end, he's not anyone special. In 100 years, the average person will likely have no clue who he was. Nor will they care.

Of course, but someone should keep it going anyway by making an actual fork of arch called arch btw.

I do think there's a lot of eyes opening now.

There's definitely a rise of the far right happening all over that's very alarming. One of the things that makes it scary is how low key all of it can be. It's easy for people not to notice until all of the cards are in place, and then everyone is completely caught off guard. Like consider France - despite how frequent, powerful, and progressive all of the protests have always been in France, Le Pen got scary close to getting into actual power. All of the oligarchs have their tentacles spread throughout the planet. Albania is protesting stuff involving Jared Kushner. It's really got me thinking that there's some very specific things that need to happen in countries all over the world while there's still time, otherwise they'll inevitably turn into authoritarian hellholes. But right now, the cards aren't in place for a lot of countries. What just happened in Hungary inspires hope.

But billionaires need to get taxed out of existence, large companies need to be broken up or nationalized, money needs to be kept out of politics in every way possible, and the world needs to move completely off of US based technology as well as fossil fuels. I know a lot of people are trying in Europe, and I hope that even if my country turns into a hellish nightmare, that it opens enough people's eyes that they can at least save their own. Climate change is coming, and it's going to cause civil unrest like we cannot even comprehend. Nobody anywhere is going to escape it unscarred. Hopefully some of us can at least make it. But that will require societies working as societies and leaving nobody behind, and everywhere is very far from that point.