Only flagship samsung and google phones offer 7 years of OS updates support.

Swish is very popular in Sweden and has no fees(for individuals)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swish_(payment)

Noone uses cash in Sweden, except for maybe drug dealers and super old people(and the occasional tourist). Most businesses dont even accept cash anymore.

It isnt just the convenience of not having to carry cash, it is also much safer. Much lower risk of getting robbed, for both individuals and businesses.

Either is fine but i strongly recommend going for amd, especially an x3d one, like 7800x3d(if you care about gaming).

What a bromance.

Whisky no, doesnt expire but its cork might have dried, fall apart, alcohol escaped, etc.

You dont need to sell your stocks to access that wealth. You can use that as collateral to take loans or exchange stocks.

Just because Israel is using this for propaganda, doesnt mean that it isnt true(or important). The USSR used american racism against black people for propaganda but that doesnt mean that there was no racism in the US or that racism wasnt important(or relevant to the discussion between 2 global powers).

When someone tells you “gay people should be killed”, i think it is relevant to the discussion you have about that person.

Pretty much all houses in Greece have this and no, it is only good for the summer or sunny days. But still it is a no brainer, unlimited free hot water during the summer and limited free hot water during most days.

The tricky part is calculating whether it was sunny enough(during the winter) to produce enough hot water for your shower or if you need to turn on the electric water heater.

Some greeks pre-emptively turn on the electric heater for 15-30 mins, other more financially stressed greeks prefer to gamble.

I.d.k. why i thought that Euclid, and perhaps also others, were around Plato

There was an Euclid that was a pupil of Socrates. He was a friend(and classmate i guess) of Plato.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_of_Megara

And dont worry, it wasnt just you who was confused

"Editors and translators in the Middle Ages often confused him with Euclid of Alexandria when discussing the latter’s Elements. "

I mean anything is possible if one side is basically ignored. The UN Plan offered was just terrible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annan_Plan

The only reason it even got to where it got was because Turkey wanted to join the EU and Greece wanted to normalize relations with Turkey. But ultimately, Cyprus(greekcypriot state) is an independent and democratic state, so it decided against it(and Greece follows whatever Cyprus decides).

If Turkey was a normal country, you could say that all the disadvantages of the plan wouldnt be relevant in the long term. But Turkey is a mini-Russia and as Russia has shown us, appeasing nations with imperial ambitions doesnt work in the long run.

Imagine any european leader saying to their neighbours “We could come one night”. Or “our neighbours are scared because our missiles can reach their capital”. Both statements were said by Erdogan. Only in the last year, he has chilled, mostly because of the invasion in Ukraine. For once, the West did something good, instead of writing “stern letters” so Erdogan is afraid that the West might actually military support Greece in case of a turkish invasion.

Also because Greece is getting f-35 jets and Turkey needs american engines for their homegrown ghetto “f-35” equivalent(so the US told him to shut up and be nice or else no engines for their “f-35” or upgraded f-16).

I think the Galaxy Store occasionally has some offers, like 50% discount on purchases and stuff. If you play gacha games, you can “save” a lot of money.

Do you think private individuals should also be able to own tanks, ground to air missiles, fighter jets, aircraft carriers and nukes? Why stop at rifles? What do you think rifles will do against a fighter jet?

If you think the people should be able to violently overthrow the government, then the people need to have appropriate armament for something like that. Yet i dont see many people advocating for the right to have tanks.

If more guns means more democracy, why all the places that have tons of guns are so undemocratic? The only exception to this is Switzerland but there people dont actually have guns. Technically they have guns but they have no ammo and their guns are locked and arent allowed to openly carry rifles around.

Everything has a price. And the price for your unrealistic “the government should be afraid of the people because the people have guns” position is the dead children. It’s the every time someone gets angry over something, they have a weapon that can easily end the life of someone else. Do you honestly trust the general public with that power?

Modern gacha games are more exploitative and effective. But there is a reason why almost all conventional games have “rpg elements” nowadays. I am an old gamer and i remember when this happened.

Game devs realized that if they have “number goes up” mechanics in their games, those games will be more popular and they will sell more. Thats how all games, including multiplayer competitive games, started adding temporary progression(session based, ie buying items between rounds in counterstrike) and then permanent progression(unlocking attachments and prestiging in call of duty).

Quake and unreal didnt have any progression, yet they were very popular multiplayer games. Many people blamed the lack of “parallel progression” systems in starcraft 2, for its failure(sc2 eventually added more parallel progression). Mechabellum, an autobattler(the modern equivalent of an rts), has like 3 different numbers that go up, on top of unlocking unit abilities and skins.

The mobile game market is very competitive and game development is extremely fast and iterative. So they leapfrogged ahead of conventional gaming when it comes to all kinds of user metric manipulation(addictiveness, engagement, etc). Dont hate the player, hate the game.

Funnily enough, the most popular mobile games atm are by Hoyoverse and they arent even that exploitative. They are AAA games, with decent story, graphics, gameplay and the gacha is just there for the more vulnerable/rich people. IMO playing them as f2p is not only viable but actually more enjoyable(ie challenging instead of rolfstomping everything).

If only there were more conventional games as a service that could pump the amount and quality of content that Hoyoverse creates for their games. But Hoyoverse is a private company, probably funded by the chinese government, so they can afford to reinvest all those billions back into the game development, unlike other games. And it shows.

So ultimately, gacha is kinda like real life gambling. I am kinda ok with it, as long as it isnt promoted and its profits go to a good place(funding education or creating decent games).

World of Warcraft and Diablo are gacha. Every time you play, you are “pulling” and hoping for a good drop(item). What modern gacha games did, is take that gameplay/psychological feature and directly monetize it(instead of indirectly monetizing it through a subscription/1 time payment).

But both are gambling. I am ok with having age restrictions but we need to be honest with ourselves. And what is “fun” is whatever makes neurons activate. Gambling(ie rpg elements) has always been a core mechanic for many games.

There was also a version of Zeus dedicated to “hospitality”(philoxenia, friend of foreigner).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeus#Roles_and_epithets

Zeus Xenios (Ξένιος), Philoxenon, or Hospites: Zeus as the patron of hospitality (xenia) and guests, avenger of wrongs done to strangers

It is down for the over the Mediterranean Sea routes and up for the from Turkey into Greece routes. And through the Canary Islands.

How long the downward trend will hold remains to be seen, however. Smugglers are always quick to adapt and find new routes around border controls. In the Eastern Mediterranean, the second-most-used route, smuggling networks are now using speedboats in increasingly aggressive ways to avoid controls and targeting islands farther away from the Turkish coast in the central Aegean, according to Greek authorities.

The number of migrants arriving in Greece by sea and overland during the first eight months of the year rose by 57%, U.N. data shows.

Doesnt this imply that, for Putin, Crimea and Donbas are not part of Russia? Those have been repeatedly hit by long range western missiles.

Maybe someone should inform the Russians living in those areas that their leader thinks less of them than other Russians.

ISIS-K is behind the terrorist attacks in Russia. ISIS-K also wants to overthrow the Taliban and take over Aghanistan(and parts of Iran, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. Kyrgystan and Pakistan).

Literally all the countries in the world are fighting or oppose ISIS. The US has probably worked with the Taliban and has hit ISIS-K inside Afghanistan. And it might not be official but if you want to hit terrorists, you need to cooperate with the Taliban because the US has basically no presence in Afghanistan atm.

Obviously for Russia it is even more important to cooperate with the Taliban, considering that ISIS-K hit Russia.

What keeps them engaged with Destiny 2 despite its apparent lack of a clear path forward?

There is no alternative. The First Descendant is p2w. Once Human has different structure and resets your progress every season. Warframe is pretty different and similar to First Descendant. Overwatch basically cancelled its pve. Darktide is clunky.

And none of these games have the polish and shooting satisfaction that Destiny has. If people want a pve game, with long term progression that has enjoyable shooting, Destiny is all there is. What keeps them playing? Copium.

Slowly but steadily Destiny will die. And thats when Marathon will come out. But Marathon is very different, so i am not even so sure that most Destiny players will migrate to that.

I am not even playing Destiny. Destiny is the game that i want to love so much but always shits on me, so i gave up. It seems to me that the easiest thing in the world, is to keep Destiny going and address its minor issues. But somehow Bungie doesnt think so.