Exactly! What sort of logic are they even trying to apply there? Basically saying “We put a lot of time into our tech demo, and it came out better than expected, so we’re going to charge for it!”

That’s just crazy.

The whole principle is that the intro experience is supposed to be free. It exists to get people pumped about the cool new thing they just bought and excited to play with it.

I guess Nintendo decided that - since you already bought the console - they don’t especially care if you are pumped or not. They already got your money.

As the video suggests, it’s an impending problem in many places in the world, US and UK included.

And the bitter truth is that all of us could have avoided this, if not for the insatiable greed of the 1%

If the wealth earned from economic growth was spread fairly, we could all be working half the hours we do now, with all the time for socialising and family we could want.

And the real irony is that when people have more free time, they will spend their time and money on the culturally enriching things that the government is otherwise being forced to try and subsidise and give grants to keep afloat. Visit historical sites. See a play, pick up a creative hobby, eat out at independent small restaurants.

But instead we are working longer and longer hours for less, leaving us with no time for anything, and that sends all our surplus money into the exact industries that are exploiting us. 11PM depression impulse buys from online megacorps, and food delivery through gig economy apps where the delivery person gets next to nothing and the app reaps the rewards.

People are stretched to breaking point. It’s inevitable that at some point, this is all going to collapse.

Yes, which is a big part of why, despite allowing transfers, it still sucks.

Me neither. It’s basically a download game but with physical DRM in the form of a cartridge. The age of genuine physical game ownership is toast.

Nintendo’s site says the cartridge must always be inserted in order to play the game, and so it is the cartridge that controls the game license.

On that basis it seems likely you could sell/give the cartridge to someone else, after which they can play it and you no longer can - they’d just also have to download it first.

Same logic, the bra itself as a whole is a chest covering, so like a shirt it’s not a “pair”

Not that there always has to be logic in these things, etymology sometimes defies that.

A bra does have a “pair of cups”, though!

For some items like glasses it’s very clear why they are pairs; if you can have a reading glass (which is an antiquated way to refer to a handheld magnifying lens, for example) then you can certainly have a pair of reading glasses because it’s the two pieces of glass which are plural.

For trousers there are no certain answers, but I’d suggest it’s very much with with how we conceptualise their function. For 90% of their height trousers are split and cover the legs, of which we have two, only joining right at the top.

For shirts you might think it’s the same (two arms right?) but it’s a completely different story because the primary function of a shirt isn’t to cover the arms but to cover the torso. So it’s singular. And gloves of course are distinct, so it’s back to pairs.

It’s just not fun anymore.

It used to be kinda humorous in an irreverent way back in the 2000s when Google used April Fools to announce things like the Google Romance search engine, or a facility to archive all your Gmails on printed paper. It was tech making fun of itself.

But these days when the mask is fully off, and we recognise that big tech and social media has been one of the greatest problems the world has ever faced, we’re not laughing any longer.

“Temporarily closes” may have been a better headline.

I thought it meant they were shutting for good, which would be pretty ridiculous.

10 years isn’t the worst run, but it still proves the point that anything which needs an app or connected web service to function will inevitably become e-waste, and maybe sooner than you’d like.

Earlier today, I was looking at reviews of portable Bluetooth speakers. One had a bullet point “No equalizer app, with only basic EQ functions available on the speaker itself.”

The review intended that to be a negative, but I was like “Hell yeah that’s what I want!”

Functionality in pure hardware means it will keep on working as long as the hardware works. It means that I myself get to be the one who decides when I need an upgrade, not when the company forces my hand.

Every single tech purchasing decision I make these days, having freedom from apps, cloud, or any other ticking time bomb is top of my feature list.