Ghost_MH

He just turned 5 in December. He's been a skinny twig since the surgery and can't gain weight, but he's healthy and fine in every other sense. I guess that's what happens when you have to cut a chunk out of a newborn's gastrointestinal track. It'll catch up to him. He can finally eat like a small monster, but he'll never catch up to his sisters. He'll likely forever have his growth stunted. My wife and I are really short, so he was already working with poor stock. Like, my 3yo is in the 100th percentile for weight and 90th for height and is a chunk of pure muscle. She's already outgrowing 6yo clothes, so my son is doomed. It's a little scary since she's autistic, but she's super sweet so fingers crossed. I hope nobody tries to bully her when she gets older because she won't know not to stomp on fools. My wife and I make fairly good money for anywhere else in the US, and above average for Massachusetts. We're doing...fine. Our credit took a nasty hit thanks to all that medical debt, that we finally almost dug out of until COVID hit. Nothing like losing half your income for a year. Can't complain too much. Working for a government contractor does have its perks. The Army doesn't cut back on expenses when the rest of the government is trying to hold the economy together.

I'm first gen Puerto Rican. I know SO many brown conservatives. They all think Republicans like them because they're socially conservative and not immigrants. It's hilarious because Republicans barely even acknowledge the island as part of the US.

I've never not had health insurance as an adult. It's really cool that I still got saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt after my child. First there was a miscarriage that the insurance didn't really cover because just waiting to naturally abort at home on a toilet is cheaper and then she nearly died after being in labor for a week. That was all pretty cool. I'm not even getting into the life saving surgery my son needed at less than a month old that left us even more in debt. Best part? Since he was so young they put us up in the children cancer ward which was a very nice wing of the hospital...and also apparently charges way more. That was all really cool. At least he was born in late December so he counted as a tax break for the entire year

It's ok. Trump has his new social media site that's just a fake Twitter blog and all his acolytes are just going to share all his posts from there to Twitter and Facebook. Donald Trump’s ‘social media platform’ has launched and it’s just a blog WWW.THEVERGE.COM Does the like button work yet? Twitter has already said they'll allow it, so I doubt Facebook is going to deny Trump.

100% bullshit. This guy is basically Q for alt right Star Wars nerds. Someone tell me why I'm wrong.

Supposedly the business owner. In other words, nobody. It'll never happen. This is one of those cases where if the guy can't pay, the state should foot the bill and then garnish his wages to recoup the costs from now until the day he dies.

Facebook and Instagram notices in iOS apps tell users tracking helps keep them ‘free of charge’ WWW.THEVERGE.COM Facebook has been a vocal critic of iOS 14 privacy rules

Yes and no. Yeah, physics makes it hard, but we don't know how hard. I mean optics in phones are also equally constrained by and those have seen some wild improvements because people care. Even then, if most people don't care about the speakers in their phones, even fewer care about the quality of the microphones. That makes most videos recorded on phones sound like shit

How about some actual slavery for a change of pace? Black Man Enslaved by White Boss for 5 Years Entitled to $546,000 in Restitution Payment, Court Rules PEOPLE.COM A Black man who was enslaved by his white boss from 2009 to 2014 has been awarded $546,000 in restitution for unpaid wages Monster in human skin took advantage of a mentally disabled man and forced him to work for free while beating him whenever the guy didn't work fast enough. Now we know what the punishment for slavery is in the US today, 10 years in prison and $500k in back wages. That... doesn't seem like nearly enough.

That's the same thing I was thinking. I know people like to shit on Epic, but those numbers seem fine, great actually. That comes out to, what? $16.59 per paying customer? Is my math right? Someone correct me. Either way, that just tells me that more gaming stores should be giving away older games all the time...except maybe Steam. I can't imagine they have much room for growth that's within their control.

Am I the only one that doesn't think those are terrible user acquisition numbers? $2.37 power user isn't terrible. Yeah, most folks aren't buying anything, but that's not a terribly high number to try to make up for. Seems free weekly games isn't much of a loss leader for them, so all their actual losses must be going into securing exclusives.

In Fortnite's case, I don't know how long Sony could get away with eating the bad press. That is especially true with new consoles on the horizon. We probably would have seen more Epic "mistakes" like enabling crossplay here and there; especially toward the ramp up of PS5 pre-orders. That's why Sony is stupid for not getting something out of allowing crossplay. Sony thought they were negotiating from a stronger position than they actually were and that always comes back to bite you. I doubt Epic wins their lawsuit against Apple in the US. If be amazed if it does. I'm the EU? That's a completely different question. The EU has always been more hostile toward perceived monopolies than the US has been in decades.

Is CoD and GTA bigger than Fortnite on Playstation? I know CoD is HUGELY popular on PC and sometimes gives Fortnite a run for its money when you include PC gamers. I'm also pretty sure Fortnite is bigger than GTA no matter the platform. Fortnite is a $9b franchise and nearly half of that money comes from Playstation players. That's likely why Epic was willing to push so much Playstation branding. That's also likely why Sony was both willing to cave on crossplay and then invested in Epic, themselves. Sony is taking their 30% cut, so that's a lot of money no matter what. I mean, @ThreePi is right. All business negotiations are slimy. I don't think Epic was threatening to cut they're UE license. Were they threatening to increase costs/cut Sony's discount? Absolutely. In the end Sony got nothing but bad press and some shares of Epic stock. That's all on Sony. They should have gotten something out of that deal. Instead ask we got was a limp wristed press release that they were changing their stance with Fortnite as the beta.

Epic was right here. The vast majority of gamers minus some weird Sony fanboys were clamoring for crossplay. There was no scenario that Epic wouldn't get crossplay working on Playstation because Sony could only cover their ears and ignore they're customers for so long. Epic was offering to tightly integrate Sony's tools into UE, brand they're own E3 presentation was a PlayStation event, and make sure to have everyone know Sony was the hero here. Instead, Sony came out looking like they were dragged into allowing crossplay and then followed that up by invested hundreds of millions in Epic. Sony is really bad at negotiations it seems.

Because audio encoding still kind of sucks because most people just don't care. Just think about how great phone screens have gotten while phone speakers are still pretty shitty.

I'm down...

It's probably safe to assume Ethereum's growth is currently tied to the explosive meme growth of NFTs.

Not really his son. More like his great great great great great grandson.

There is 0% chance Apple doesn't know how much they made for their commission from the App Store or how much it costs to run/support. If they don't have that information readily available then it's because they've purposefully decided obfuscating the data is in their best interests.

Someone correct me if my brain done broke here, but... He's a demon in search of revenge against Bi Han and the rest of the Lin Kuei who murdered everyone in Scorpion's own clan, similar to what happened in the movies. In the games, if I remember my Mortal Kombat well, Scorpion basically sells his soul to a demon necromancer in order to get his revenge on Subzero. In exchange for life as a demon asking revenge, he'll help conquer Earthrealm. In this movie we get Bi Han killing off the Shirai Ryu and Scorpion as a resurrected demon, but we never delve into the stuff with Quan Chi. I would assume a sequel would be about Scorpion working for Quan Chi to conquer Earthrealm now that he's gotten his revenge.

A source for Steam's most favored nation clause? Lawsuit claims Valve is abusing its market dominance to keep prices high | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM The lawsuit also names developers including Ubisoft, CD Projekt, and Devolver Digital. Steam's rules only apply once the game is up on Steam. If a dev is taking pre-orders on their own sites prior to its launch on Steam then that wouldn't run counter to Steam contracts. Humble's lawsuit against Steam is a little more nuanced. They're arguing that even Steam keys should be allowed to be sold at a lower price than on Steam, itself. That is, Steam allows devs to sell they're own Steam keys without Valve's 30% cut on there own site. However, they aren't allowed to cut they're prices by, say, 20% to entice gamers to their own storefront even if their game doesn't use Steam for anything more than distribution. That leaves 90% of gamers going directly to Steam since it's already they're platform of choice rather than go to a dev's own site or service to pick up games. Like I said, it's more nuanced than the suit from earlier this year. Humble Bundle creator brings antitrust lawsuit against Valve over Steam ARSTECHNICA.COM "At bottom, Valve’s scheme imposes a massive tax on the PC Desktop Gaming industry."

Everyone should do this, at least with voice chat between people that aren't members of each other's friends list.

Damn the subway scene was brutal. That was a great, tight eight episodes. I'm curious to see how they go for the next two seasons and where/how they diverge from the comics. This was a good interview... Invincible: Robert Kirkman Dives Into Season 1's Emotional Roller Coaster and Finale WWW.CBR.COM Invincible creator Robert Kirkman talks the series' changes to the comic book series, the story's real stakes and the scene that brought him to tears.

What? He died a few weeks back? How did I miss this? I love his work.

Free for us, but 30% for developers. They weren't doing it for the goodness of their hearts, but yes, it was a major offer back when they first started. I mean, I've had my Steam account since 2005. I remember what the 80s and 90s were like for PC gaming. It sucked, but those days are behind us. Bandwidth and cloud storage is a commodity and Valve is doing nobody but themselves any favors by blocking games from being discounted on other storefronts, even if it has nothing to do with Steam or any Steam keys. Either way, I'm trying to argue why complaining about Sony and Microsoft's 30% against Valve's is silly because the console manufacturers offer more to consumers and developers alike. They sell hardware at a loss to create a market for selling games in an environment where not everyone is interested in PC gaming. Epic has their own PC and Android storefronts and even for them, the VAST majority of they're money comes from sales on Playstation and Xbox. I've never owned an Xbox and the last time I gave Sony money was for Horizon Zero Dawn on EGS, but before that it was for the PS2. I have no horse in this race, but the difference in what they offer to consumers is plain as day and makes the argument for their 30% cut FAR easier than Valve.