It’s funny because originally I didn’t understand how it was different and when it was explained to me in a factual way I did understand and changed my view and people really don’t like that.

Humans offloading the decisions to a bot that’s trained on bad decisions?

Is the hilarious thing to follow suit and announce the end of them offering physical disks?

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/xbox-is-reportedly-considering-dropping-disc-drives-as-it-tests-new-feature-that-lets-players-digitize-physical-games

Counterargument:

The problems with Destiny 2 had to do with decisions made for shock factor/profitability that completely ignored what players actually enjoyed about the game.

AI does not have the ability to understand or make decisions about what players actually like. It is reliant on the parameters input by humans and those humans already have made a bunch of bad decisions that killed the game.

In 2018, the European Commission slapped Google with the record-breaking penalty on the grounds that it abused Android’s mobile dominance to give unfair advantage to its own apps via pre-installation deals with smartphone makers.

GOOD. But still basically chump change if it’s spread out over years.

And the lack of a requirement for a subscription service which means the actual cost of the PlayStation 6 over a 7 year life span is something like $1800. That’s assuming the cost of a monthly PlayStation plus membership doesn’t go up and they continue to subsidize the hardware by selling it at cost. And it doesn’t include buying games.

Ok. So let’s say for the sake of argument, you have Netflix. You pay for Netflix specifically for… I dunno, Top Gear. Suddenly without warning Netflix is forced to pull Top Gear from its streaming platform because the license to provide it to stream has lapsed or been otherwise ended. That’s basically what happened here except that they allowed you to pay per show or movie.

In this case what these customers paid for is the license to stream these digital items. Which (shitty though I agree it is) they agreed to when they made their purchases. But the fact is, Sony didn’t reach into people’s Harddrives and remove anything. What they did was remove these shows and movies from the digital streaming library of people who purchased it and the only reason they did is because otherwise they’d be sued if they didn’t.

So while I appreciate your outrage, I think it’s pretty important to note that the license holder (the entity that actually owns the ability to sell distribution rights for digital licenses to consumers) is the one who sets the terms, not the platform of distribution, and this happens so often that literally no digital media is safe except when you can download it DRM free (Google play music, band camp, GOG etc).

I don’t disagree that Sony is at fault for agreeing to that distribution agreement. That’s not anything like what I said. What I said was that they did it because they are required to by law.

In this particular case what they were selling wasn’t a licensed copy of a movie or show. They were selling a license to stream. When the contract ran out they had to pull it from the streaming platform.

Sony said that affected customers will lose the ability to stream titles including Outrage: Way of the Yakuza, Paddington, Paddington 2, Pan’s Labyrinth, Rambo 3, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas “due to our content licensing agreements.” As of September, Sony will remove any affected titles that UK users bought from their PlayStation library, per the notice.

I think I didn’t make it clear but as of 2025 they sold 7 million units. There’s conflicting information about whether they sold 7 million pairs in 2025 and more in 2023/2024 which could equal 10 million pairs though. But I haven’t found anything yet that says they’ve sold 10 million pairs in plain language.

https://thenextweb.com/news/meta-smart-glasses-privacy-crisis-apple-google-snap

Yeah I haven’t been able to verify this claim. Closest I’ve come is about 7 million units sold and that was a year or more ago.

https://www.theverge.com/tech/878184/meta-sold-7-million-smart-glasses-in-2025-thats-triple-2023-and-2024-combined

It sounds like a fever nightmare.

The removal of digital media is also out of their hands. They agreed to a distribution contract. The entity that owns that media offered a conditional license in that distribution agreement. Now they are either choosing not to renew or choosing to cancel the agreement and legally Sony don’t have a choice except to be sued if they continue to allow people to access that digital content.

I agree it’s shitty. I agree that it’s a crazy thing to have happen when you’re dropping the news about doing away with physical media. But it’s still not really in their control.

Likely to still be used in a maintenance or emergency situation where the electronics are dead. If the vehicle has to be moved and a winch isn’t available a brake is pretty much a necessity. Anyone who’s had to push a car out of a lane of travel knows this.

The brake lever is a parking brake. It’s usually (in older cars that don’t have an electronic park brake) a cable actuation of the brake meant to keep your car from rolling away if the parking pawl fails. It’s not the same as the hydraulic braking you’d do with a pedal (and what you’d want in the event of an emergency braking situation). Getting rid of it is beyond foolish.

This is not the first time and it will not be the last time. You have to hold Sony accountable (as consumers), and you have to hold the license holders accountable because they are just as liable. This will keep happening on pretty much every platform that doesn’t allow a DRM free downloadable copy of the media. It will happen again.

As an adult I finish more games. I have more patience and there’s a lot of things that are better today than when I was a kid (level scaling/difficulty scaling is definitely one, and so is the art).

But I miss storytelling. I miss game mechanics that worked really well but we’re based on the limitations of the hardware and software available at the time. I miss having to explore because there were no walkthroughs or guides or anything.

So I think perhaps gaming has gotten better, but my experience with gaming isn’t as good now as it was when I was a kid because I have something to compare it to and it can’t beat my nostalgia.

I’ll do you one better. Our laws about lobbying need a significant overhaul, so that’s at least part of the problem. But also it can be more than one thing at a time.

I feel like the strictly enforced cell phone laws are also strictly enforced in America. I think it really is just down to how big vehicles are here and how bad the sight distance is in those larger vehicles, combined with municipalities not investing in infrastructure that prevents or mitigates crashes and pedestrian fatalities. There was recently an article about a town that did do this and hasn’t had a pedestrian fatality in like a decade here in the US and I think that’s proof of what I’m saying.

They are wrong but there is a grain of truth to this. NTSA regulations about fuel efficiency and emissions are part of the reason that car manufacturers made vehicles bigger and more expensive. It is significantly harder to meet emissions standards and fuel efficiency standards in the US in a sedan or small compact car and on top of that car manufacturers know that people aren’t generally buying compact cars for $80-150K so it’s a win win for them. It’s greed, and them gaming the system in order to use the fact that larger vehicles aren’t beholden to the same emissions standards or fuel efficiency standards. So car companies convinced consumers they don’t want small cars, that instead they want SUVs and trucks and perhaps crossovers. And they lobbied to game the system and to continue pocketing money doing it.

https://www.distilled.earth/p/the-loophole-that-made-cars-in-america

Not every government employee is a Trump stooge.