Ditto. I also try to file good, clean bug reports with detailed repro steps where I hit them. Not just "it's busted, fix it". I'd love to contribute actual code, because I'd like to think I'm a really good programmer (been coding professionally for decades), but actually fully getting a hosted Masto instance up to the point where you can edit the code and see it live is a freaking nightmare.

You don't even need a hardware change to make batteries last long, capping charging at 80% and slowing the fast-charging will do that, both of which can be done in OS software. They just need a "battery protection mode" option for people who keep their phones plugged in a lot.

You can still buy a Moto G for like $200 that is better than an old high-end phone in every way and runs Android like a champ. Only flaw is short support lifespan.

Honestly, realism justifications for encumbrance outside of survival-type games where basic biological needs are the core gameplay loop have always been silly to me.... but the latter one about wheels of cheese rings true.

To me the argument is "what does optimal play look like"? Without encumbrance, there's no reason not to pick up every wheel of cheese, so optimal play is to pick up every wheel of cheese, which is tedious and dumb. But with encumbrance, every wheel of cheese becomes a tedious decision, and completionist-optimal play is to burn endless time ferrying stuff to the shops or storage or whatever. But as you said, making every wheel of cheese not something you can pick up breaks immersion.

So what's the compromise that actually makes sense for the "wheel of cheese" problem? A realistic setting is cluttered with "slightly-useful" items. Don't put so many "slightly-useful" items outside of settings with NPCs that will have realistic reactions to you stealing their stuff? But coding those realistic reactions ("uh, you're The Savior, I guess you can steal all my food... a bit... okay that tears it call the guards!") would be some more dev-work in these already-bloated projects.

But the problem still exists in hostile locales. A lived-in enemy camp is going to have store-rooms of "slightly useful" stuff. If the hero stops to raid the larder while massacring nameless Stormtroopers, is that a problem? I can see the immersion argument that "well, if you can, you probably should since you might need it and that breaks immersion" and therefore that justifies the encumbrance idea, but I also see Steph Sterling's argument "this is just a game and I wanna!" And I have trouble defending realism in these games about butchering your way across the landscape without ever stopping to poop.

Uh, part of the point of the greenbelt is to stop building detached houses because they're actually environmentally quite bad. I mean maybe individuals could work together to put together a co-op but Housing Now TO says that municipal governments generally block any of those that would pencil out.

I always hate how we conflate developers and speculators when we talk about real-estate companies. Like, if somebody supports the automobile industry, you'd assume they mean factories and not dealerships.

Hearing Poilievre has support from builders would be good news in a housing crisis. Hearing Poilievre has support from investors and speculators who are gouging people and exploiting the housing crisis, not so much.

Yup. I bought a similar one specifically for comics and manga that I picked up from Humble Bundle, but it also runs all my boardgames well too. Lenovo's tablets are a bit anemic power-wise but you can't beat the price and they're perfect as a bed-side media machine.

Games are entertainment, and so I get my news coverage from people who I find entertaining. This means I'll take biased, opinionated ranting if it's funny-enough. So mostly Yahtzee.

I get my Serious News about municipal politics.

Can they get Samsung to stop using the goddamned watch speaker instead of the headset I have paired to the watch too? Because it's infuriating when I "Okay google, call my wife" and it expects me to talk to my wife through my watch like Dick freaking Tracy when I have a fancy-ass headset multipoint paired to both watch and phone.

Ah, right, I hadn't even thought about going that way around - that's way north of the parts of Ontario I know. But it makes sense - that's also part of the Trans Canada, and it's probably closer to as-the-crow-flies.

I miss my Zire

Oh, my bad. I don't know if "da" was finished first and I just missed it or "for scale" was finished first, but I thought I saw "banana for scale" first and assumed the "da" was added later by somebody else.