Japan has 3 writing systems and this comic seems to be conflating Katakana and Kanji together as “stabby”, leaving Hiragana as “adorable”. All of them are (long ago) derived from chinese, but only the Kanji still look similar.

I would have introduced Chinese first, and then in the Japanese panel present the stabby and adorable ones both being attacked by flying contraptions. (And a few floating around the korean one, too)

Honestly, “country of origin” will have straight lines drawn on a map that are so far removed from where the people who lived there originally considered their borders even that’s probably not pinning it down well enough.

Yes, this helps, thanks.

I already understood the need to avoid private money agents like Paypal, visa, etc. In the UK we have the BACS and FPS systems that allow for direct free money transfer. Though they should be more usable for day to day transactions, they work well enough if you need to send a significant amount of money between bank accounts.

Your explanation of the anonymity seems like the real value add of these digital currencies. The fact this only applies to the buyer and not the seller is a good choice, and definitely wins over blockchain crypto. Looking at it more closely, the fact they use signed tokens rather than proof-of-x is also a very good choice.

I will need to read up on Taler’s docs more closely. But looking at the summary of features on their site something hits me as an immediate problem - you need to “load up” a wallet. If Jane Doe wants to buy a coffee, it’s far easier to just use a bank card (which may interface through a private money agent like visa, or a middleman like google/apple). Loading up private wallets isn’t a difficult concept (it’s how gift cards work), but it does add extra steps of friction that I think will need to be removed before this can really be taken up by the general public.

It may harm the anonymity aspect, but I think that to get people using it a system that could operate like a tap-once-and-done bank card payment, loading up a wallet for immediate spend seems like the best solution. It would also help alleviate any fears that typically are associated with blockchain based digital currency - primarily of losing the signed digital money as it sits in a wallet out with the bank account’s protections. And once the system is normalised and people are used to it, then all the architecture is there for anyone that really needs the anonymity.

There’s something I’m really struggling to understand when talking about things like Taler, and the “Digital euro” idea which has come up recently as well: What is it actually doing that’s new?

Money is distributed digitally already. When you get a paycheck, no-one is actually moving physical paper and metal cash from a business account bank vault to a customer account bank vault, it’s just numbers in a spreadsheet. So what’s actually new when we’re talking about digital currency like this post?

There must be something I’m missing here.

A true “Thanks Obama” for modern times

• No job, grind away the entire waking day with a low paying zero hours contract while filing job applications, No videogames, no relaxation, more stress, costs healthcare providers more

• No job, spend some of the day working while filing job applications, Yes Videogames, relaxation, lower stress, costs healthcare providers less

Yet another case where if the politician seriously thought about the issue for just half a minute they’d realise their attitude makes no sense.

https://jisho.org/word/可愛い

those kanji in that order are read as “kawaii”

OK, but all the ticks can go die in a fire

Absolutely all foreigners - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly67j35y99o

ahem, that’s PROFESSOR Hanks, thank you very much

This clever pricing system is only available on Itch.io, […] It is also on sale on Steam until March 7, but that price doesn’t fluctuate.

I thought steam had some sort of t&c agreement where you had to price all copies of a game the same no matter the store they were on. surely this would violate those rules. or am I misremembering that?

“Key franchises”? And they don’t think WW is a key franchise? Out of all their films from the past few years, the WW ones have been some of the best. If they don’t want to do anything with it, they don’t deserve the IP.

The biggest challenge with an “owned wealth” tax is how do you actually measure it? It’s easy if it’s held in cash in a bank, but most billionaire’s wealth is is land, property, and how do you measure the value of a Picasso stored in a vault if they can slip the valuator a grand to say it’s worthless?

Closing offshore money transfer loopholes, heightened tax on luxury spending (100% VAT on private jets and yachts?), making fines income-based, and treating capital gains the same way as income, are all more achievable.

I’m totally on board with the sentiment though.

There’s no need to be concerned because they’re never going to build 100,000 new homes, never mind the 1.5M target. Building enough homes to house people would cause supply to meet demand and make the housing market “crash”. And Labour will never upset those who’ve been tricked into thinking that home property is an investment.

I’m not sure if this counts as gameplay mechanics or rather narrative structure, but games like Outer Wilds, Fez, Tunic, where the exploration and discovery of the game is the end goal of playing the game, not just getting to the game’s end state.

I’m not sure if there’s an accepted term for these games, but I’ve always thought of them as “archaeology” games. There’s a bunch of stuff, both plot and gameplay, that is hidden (sometimes in plain sight), until you discover it and find out what meaning it carries.

It’s honestly not amazing. It’s a third person shooter across multiple different levels of built up environments, offices, corridors. The enemy AI is pretty terrible, and although there are different tactics you can use to “hack” and take over enemies or melee, it’s usually just easier to shoot.

But the parkour style navigation stood out. You can do wall jumping, which I was not expecting, and there are hidden pickups you can explore and find. And the open environments are nice (the corridors can feel a bit samey after a few levels).

It feels like one of those tie-ins that, had the dev team had more time to explore, balance, and really make it into its own game, might have been really good.

I’ve downloaded some old PS2 era games. Some of the gameplay is quite dated, but I really enjoy the retro feel of the environments and graphics. Perfect photorealism isn’t always necessary to enjoy a game. I’ve been playing Burnout and Ghost in the Shell SAC.

Just use PCGW for that https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Avowed#Game_data

Pretty sure this is how you get a ‘the troubles’

Maybe if he wans to be able to make games for longer, he needs to dial it back and get a manager that can plan to reduce the amount o crunch needed, ideally to zero. The attitude that crunch should be normal in creative projects is atrocious and needs to go.