"Arithmancy" is their name for math classes and is mentioned several times throughout the books. It is one of Hermione's favorite subjects.

At one point, the real world evil witch that is JK Rowling suggested that Arithmancy is like dviniation, but with math, saying they use numbers to predict the future. I take this to mean that the wizarding community discovered calculus independently from the rest of the world and mistook it for a new form of magic.

I'll take the ceiling mounted UFO instead.

an interactive medium offers unique avenues for storytelling not available to something more static like a film or a novel.

think things like environmental storytelling or branching narratives.

blu-rays are often as cheap or cheaper than "digital copies", and ripping them to my NAS is pretty trivial these days thanks to makemkv.

the best part is, uncle jeff cannot legally break into your house and take back the disc just because of some petty rights issue.

CarPlay (and Android Auto) are basically driving-oriented UIs that your phone pushes to the head unit in your car. This means you get a full touch screen UI with your maps and music apps of choice, plus other apps that support it.

It beats mounting your phone over an AC vent because the screen is bigger and the UI is actually designed to be safe to use while driving (fewer, bigger buttons, more use of screen edges and corners so critical functions can be activated without looking).

Car makers don't like this, because it means users are less likely to pay subscription fees for their shittier built-in internet services.

Tesla also refuses to support CarPlay and Android Auto, because they believe their software is better. And why shouldn't we trust them? Tesla has a stellar record for fixing their buggy software even after your car is no longer in warranty. /s

• No ice in their water or soda
• No refills on fountain drinks

These are the things that stood out to me whenever I have visited.

I spent a good while in Berlin once and one of my favorite restaurants was this Australian themed place by the IMAX theater just because I could get a nice big Diet Coke with ice in it. Their kangaroo sandwich also wasn’t half bad.

I don't think the quality of content here has been as high as I would have liked. Over on lemmy.world/c/games, the moderation and post/comment quality are well below below what I would have expected from /r/Games in its glory days. For example, all the highest voted comments on the Starfield impressions thread are karma-whoring single sentence meme responses about pre-orders, "patient gamers", or piracy, all completely off-topic for an impressions thread.

It already played great on the Deck (Denuvo hasn't been a problem for Wine/Proton for several years), but the removal of DRM is always a win in my book.

I'd like to see this trend of publishers stripping it out of their games after a couple years continue.

Knowing how to do the work is most of the value here. Yes, it's easy for those of us with the knowhow, but most people do not have that.

Think of an artist who can whip up a cool drawing in about 10 minutes. It was "easy" in the moment, but only because they spent years learning and practicing the skills to make it so. You aren't entitled to that artists labor for free just because it only took them a few minutes.

Sit your average gamer down with a copy of Starfield and nvngx_dlss.dll and they won't be able to do anything useful with it.

It's great that most modders and some artists like to share their work for free with the rest of the world, but the rest of us aren't entitled to any of it.

The author wasn't selling DLSS, they were selling a shim to make it work with Starfield. That does require original work.

Mike Ybarra confirmed on the bird site that these games will launch directly through Steam, no bundled launcher nonsense.