The reason for this is that git rebase is kind of like executing a separate merge for every commit that is being reapplied. A proper merge on the other hand looks at the tips of the two branches and thus considers all the commits/changes “at once.”

You can improve the situation with git rerere

Yeah I agree I hate this kind of obstructive customer service

I work as a software engineer on automated customer service systems like these, and boy let me tell you, obstruction is the name of the game. For example: don’t make the phone number too easy to find on the website because it will lead to too many calls. We nudge people toward the FAQ and such first so they can hopefully find their answer there. Then, we have chatbots like this which contain exactly the same information as the FAQ again. And only then might we offer you contact with a human.

The essential problem is that support is a cost center, so cost savings is the name of the game. We optimize for metrics like:

• “deflection” (number of calls averted because we pushed the user into automated tools instead)
• “first call resolution” (percentage of issues resolved in one contact. How do we know if your issue is resolved? Simple, if you don’t contact us again we assume the issue is fixed)
• “Average contact time” (pretty obvious, get the customer off the phone ASAP)

If you manage to get on text chat with a human, typically they are handling two other conversations at the same time, that’s why they seem so absent all the time (and why companies love chat. Much cheaper than calling).

I’m not saying we’re all diabolical here. There is a general agreement among everyone in the industry that we should help the customer as well as we possibly can. Indeed every CS manager will tell you how important we are to our brand image and NPS, how we strive to be the most customer-friendly company etc. etc.

But the numbers don’t lie. If you look at the metrics that everyone actually optimizes for, it’s cost cost cost.

The numbers are different because the site doesn’t naively count every line but merges some as a single package. For example, at the very top of the Debian list we have 0ad, 0ad-data, 0ad-data-common. These are all counted as one single “package.”

One might argue that doing the comparison in that way is more useful to an average user asking “which distribution has more software available.”

They say that because https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/total says so. Debian unstable has 38k packages according to that page.

It really is as simple as blending rolled oats and water in a 1:4-ish ratio for 30 seconds or so, and straining the result twice. Adding sugar is optional. It stores pretty well in the fridge, maybe up to 5 days. Trust your nose!

Personally I don’t make it very often, as my main use for milk is in cappuccino, and plain oat milk doesn’t steam very well. The barista editions you can buy have some added extras (fat, sugar, proteins, stabilisers) to improve the characteristics for steaming.

I totally understand the convenience factor of store-bought too. If you don’t have a blender on standby it’s a bit of a hassle. And the store bought stuff is shelf-stable for weeks when sealed.

There’s a couple reasons behind this:

• Economies of scale. Oatmilk is not nearly as big of a market and therefore tends to be more expensive per gallon
• Dairy subsidies. Dairy farmers can be pretty heavily subsidized, depending on the country, making the milk artificially cheap
• Marketing. Oatmilk is mostly consumed by upper middle class (sub)urban folks who have enough disposable income to worry about things like animal welfare and the environment, and thus are willing to pay a premium for eco-friendly products. Companies know this so a lot of oatmilk is positioned and priced as a premium product.

In a way it’s sort of disgusting that capitalism is exploiting your desire to save the planet for extra profits, however that’s how it is generally designed to operate: nothing happens unless there is a profit to be made from it.

They know perfectly well, what’s going on, they just have different priotities. It so happens the state of Israel is important to advance US geopolitical interests in the region. And so that’s that.

Written on 1 April 1998. definitely a joke, though it does work.

The result is that you buy either Honey or Syrup, you know what you get, and you get what you pay for.

You would think so, but the EU did an investigation back in 2022 and found that almost half of all honey imported into the EU is (illegally) blended with sugar syrup. If you’re buying honey labeled as a blend of EU and non-EU honey (which is almost all honey available on supermarket shelves) there’s a large chance you’re buying a sugar blend.

Current officially sanctioned honey tests are not capable of detecting fake honey. New testing methodology has been agreed upon as a result, but it will take a few years until those are internationally recognised.

If you want to be certain that what you’re buying is real honey, the only real option is to buy directly from a local producer.

Ctrl-a and Ctrl-e are much faster to type than home/end and do the same thing (assuming a standard readline-enabled command line).

All the keys in the cluster above the arrow keys are really too hard to reach to be of real practical use, IMO. Actually that includes arrow keys as well. Just too far from home row.

The number varies a little bit (I’ve seen estimates 600-1200 kWh) but this is well within an order of magnitude of being correct. It’s the nature of the competitive mining network and the proof of work system: if you can spend more computing power (i.e. energy) than everyone else there are lucrative mining rewards to be had. At the same time adding more computing power to the network doesn’t add more transaction processing power, because mining difficulty is constantly adjusted to keep the speed more or less constant.

This naturally leads to exorbitant power consumption per transaction. Note that most of this power is not being purchased at EU exchange prices (mining naturally moves to where electricity can be had for cheap to maximize profits).

Mac users, and actually most laptop users, don’t give a shit about the things you mention. They buy it, use it for some 2-5 years, then sell it and get a new model. Upgrading hardware is way too complicated for most people. They don’t know or care what a BIOS is. It comes with the OS installed and that’s the only thing they would ever want. Turn it on, use Safari, outlook, and office 365, maybe some tool like Photoshop/Ableton/etc, that’s it.

I mean iPhones are the same right? They lock down everything so it’s idiot proof and they control the environment exactly so they can maximise the smoothness of the experience.

It’s not that deep. Here’s the two main critiques leveled towards the game in the article.

• you don’t always know the consequences of your actions, and they’re not always predictable: a seemingly sensible choice sometimes ends badly, and a seemingly dumb choice could get you a reward
• you can load a save and redo your things whenever you want, i.e. save-scum

These are both somewhat obvious just from the structure of the game. Ultimately the conclusion the author is shooting for is that this makes Baldur’s Gate 3 a bad game but a good piece of interactive fiction.

The author uses the mechanics of chess often as sort of an example of the pinnacle of game design which to me is telling. Video Games are much broader than that. Insisting that people should not call the thing you don’t like a game but instead “interactive fiction” is pedantry at best, and gatekeeping at worst.

Sure, if you view the game through the lens of chess you will come away with these flaws. But for example, if you always knew the consequences of every choice the narrative tension would be destroyed. Of course chess has no such concern, so if we’re looking at games through that lens then narrative tension is of no value. Ultimately I think this is just a very narrow viewpoint of what games should be.

I think there’s a group of people who are just going to avoid quality completely and have entire factories running at normal quality only. Kinda similar to how some people don’t really do nuclear.

If you don’t like the concept of going into space though maybe this expansion is not for you. I think the base game will get the bot upgrades for free anyways.

Sony and Microsoft do this yeah, but I’m pretty sure Nintendo consoles are sold at a profit.

I’m not sure that’s the right wind farm. According to this guardian article, it’s actually the Keyenberg wind farm that’s being dismantled, a retired site from 2001.

Apparently the site is retired because the operator’s permit ends in 2023. Making way eventually for the mine expansion was part of the original deal allowing the land to be used for wind turbines, and so it’s not indicative of any change in climate policy from the German government. Additionally the turbines are somewhat outdated, having only a sixth of the power output of a modern one. They would have to tear down and modernise the turbines anyway even if not for the mine.

However from a publicity standpoint it’s not an ideal move. Could have given up on the lignite and put new wind turbines in instead, perhaps.

How could you learn anything about what people think of microtransactions from the success of a game that doesn’t have them? If a beloved franchise added a sequel with microtransactions in it and that sequel tanked, then maybe you’d have a case. From the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 the most you could conclude is “people will still buy a game that doesn’t have microtransactions,” which is not particularly revelatory.

A bunch of AAA games that heavily feature microtransactions are smash hits and made millions of dollars. Sure, people complain about it, but they also purchase tons of them (may not be the same people, mind you). I’m pretty sure we can conclude that not all people hate microtransactions. Hell, publishers will look at Baldur’s Gate 3 and probably go “man, this game is good but if they put some paid cosmetics in there they could have made even more money.”

And it’s probably true.

If a great game like Elden ring would’ve had cosmetic sets you could buy, would it have undermined the “greatness” of the game? I really don’t see it happening.

I agree with you that people mainly care about the game being good. However a game’s budget is more or less fixed. If From had made a bunch of cosmetic sets it would be taking away resources from making the “main” game, and it may not have been as great and polished as it is.

Also, once you have microtransactions in a game, there’s going to be a temptation to maximize the revenue gained from them, which can lead to the aggressive strategies you mention.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to do mtx without ruining the game, but it’s difficult. Without mtx, the only thing you have to maximize your revenue is to make the game as good as possible, and so everyone involved in the game’s development is aligned towards that goal.

Once you add mtx, there will be people involved whose main goal is to maximize revenue from the mtx (and I’m not saying those people are evil or want the game to be bad; they’re just doing their job). And so a sort of tug of war starts to happen between devoting resources and design decisions to make the game better, or getting people to buy your cosmetics. Finding the right balance through that mess is difficult.