Well one small step would be to stop selling or dealing with subcontractors, will not fix it but does add an extra hurdle to things.
Technical issues? Go on-site to where the machine is supposed to be … have your own technicians look at the machines on site and report back.
But I guess those costs put pressure on the profits of the company.
There is also Finland, which has around 34 guns per 100 inhabitants, amongst the highest of the western world. It has a cun culture of defense (against its untrustworthy Russian neighbor), hunting and sports. But there is strict registration and regulation. Though they can buy just about any type of gun, there is no open carry “for funsies”. Carrying/transporting the guns requires an immediate purpose and must be held, unloaded, in a case or pouch. (I am not Finnish so correct me if I am wrong)
I have a bit of a feeling it’s in the US a thing of “He has a gun, so I want a gun” that reinforces itself, and after a while gets people careless since it’s a fairly common thing.
In the UK there was a study where forbidding handheld guns, mainly pistols, did see a sharp decline in gun related crime but they did not banish it completely.
I don’t know the numbers but in the US it seems pistols make it easier to act upon one’s mental state … have a tiff with your neighbor? Go to his door with a gun on your belt. A car just cut you off? Explode in rage, pull up next to him/her on a traffic light and swing your pistol around, try doing that with a non automatic hunting rifle.
“To prevent future misuse of these client-lawyer documents I order them all destroyed forthwith”
I will not be suprised if they rule him immune in that very specific case, under his excuse that he was “defending democracy with the information he had at that time”.
It blocks full immunity for everything and gives Trump a free pass, the SC will retain power, and the US saves a little bit of face, on paper, in legitimizing the jan 6 troubles.
Cancelation fees (and steep ones at that) on digital goods/“services” … shows how far things sunk towards the lower hells.
The thing is, Disney is every time the one that starts the flames, years in advance, probably as a vector for what they know will be a disastrous product…
Taking the Acolyte as an example: They had the Cast make derogatory remarks about the fans and Star Wars in general (“Star Wars does not have strong women” conveniently forgot about Leia?) full years before any part of the Acolyte was finished. … why??
They even had cast members who clearly did not know anything about Star Wars (“Anakin blew up the Death Star”) proclaim their “wisdom” as stated fact. (“Star Wars has no good and evil”)
Why are fans not allowed to be angry?
Fans don’t care about diverse lesbian witch covens, they shrug it off, SW is filled with all kinds of aliens, it’s Disney that keeps pointing it out, look! Look! Look upon our glorious lesbian witches, they are what Star Wars is now!
What we do care about is atrocious writing, writing so bad it looks like an 11 year old’s fanfic, writing stuff that does not fit in the SW universe… but we need to swallow the stinking mess and smile because it is written by a lgbtq person who claims to know better than George Lucas…
$180M worth of wasted potential that may not be criticized or you’ll be declared a toxic fan.
“The force is female”, strange, no one declared it to be male, it never had a gender, why suddenly this gendered labeling? Quite weird that protesting against such sexist remarks is considered toxic…
Another small example, one of the high republic books from a few years ago had, in all seriousness, a chunk of inanimate rock as a “jedi navigator/pilot”. And fans are not allowed to be angry about that?
Concluding, it’s not the fans who are toxic, the toxicity originated each time from within Disney’s Lucasfilm.
Hmm what am I missing here…
Spotify is raising prices because it wants to sell product “B” next to “A” that it already had. But now the management of Product A is claiming that the extra money from raised prices belongs to them because spotify was selling A first?
That is quite ballsy … granted I expected nothing less from the greedy music industry, but this is quite on a new level.
Yes, please, pretty please, with a cherry on top, lift my gag order so I can lay out “wishes” that should happen to the mean unfair people that got me convicted.
But then when something happens I get to loudly say “I don’t believe my people did this!”
Years ago I happily used some Razer mice and keyboards, even a headset, so in the not too far past I told people around me that Razer was fairly good, quality wise, but alas, I think each and every one I recommended Razer products to had them break and or die well within warranty, and they always had to start a stupid discussion to get the warranty/RMA accepted, a few times even replacements denied outright by Razer.
For me this stands in sharp contrast with Logitech whom has never denied me a warranty, even for products a few weeks beyond the date, and they generally just send out a new item. That is, for me it is rare for a Logitech product to actually require replacement to begin with, I have a few mice, keyboards and headsets far older than 5 years and they work fine plus are still supported in the drivers.
Speaking of drivers, Razer at one point also made the decision to have their drivers require an account login to function properly (multi-button mice would only have 2 functional buttons if not logged in etc). But after some flak from its users it slightly changed that to the login being optional, but profiles would still be hampered without a continuous online presence.
Coming back to Asus, for a few years now I hear of people having quality issues and grumpy asus service desks, but for me their videocards ways ran fine (even without coil whine, unlike some MSI cards). I am quite hesitant to buy an Asus monitor or motherboard though.
If this is true it will be devastating for Qualcomm … they hyped the new chips big time, and some huge manufacturers happily announced products with the new chip. So if this falls flat, a few influential players will not be happy at all…
Not to mention the rest of the tech media… they will happily sell the pitchforks and torches.
The thing is though it is not only now that the US was perceived as weak, it started during Trump’s time in power. The way Trump plainly kissed Putins feet in deep adoration, and utterly discredited his own forces any way he could, set the tone for the 12 years to follow… Trump being the loser he is only knows to blame others and the way he puts Biden in the spotlight as inept is not doing the US’ reputation any good.
Back then the international “politicians” could see that not only Trump’s 4 years were weak, but Bidens term and the next 4 years after that will be of the same mess with either the republicans destroying Democracy or throwing tantrums and blocking all legislation, regardless who wins the US finds itself in a gridlock of indecisiveness and infighting. (And it’s quite clear it’s all orchestrated by Putin himself … time and time again there’s evidence of strong Russian influence in the US politics and the republicans brush it aside and block investigations with a sheepish smile)
That makes it 12(!!) full years of the US rapidly losing status and power on the world stage.
All in all, Putin knew the US was so predictably incompetent that he could calculate to have 6 years at minimum to wreack as much havoc in Ukraine as he wishes… and we’re only in year 2 of his meat grinder.
“This is a very unusual situation. The stock’s value is pretty much divorced from truth”
Had to fix the sentence to what he likely meant to say.
They’ll unseal them but all envelopes contain only an “I Owe You” from Trump, and under his signature he wrote in small font “I declassified them after I took them home”
“all men are evil and/or incompetent” “Star Wars must get strong female characters” “all existing original characters must be diminished in favor of new ones”
Add to that plain stupidity and illogical actions are always introduced due to very lousy writing … For example the Armorer from The Mandalorian, all hyped up that she had to go to the legendary forge, only to moments before seeing that forge she “must” go back to the ship in space… It made no sense. Horseback riding and blowing up things on a Star Destroyer’s outer deck while it was in space/outer atmosphere… “Somehow uncle Palpy came back”, and apparently had a cosy family and grandchildren whom he hoped to bounce on his lap one day…
Andor is almost an exception to the rule, as was Rogue One, I find it refreshing and surprising it knew to evade most outside influence. I would never call either of them less Star Wars, they embody more the spirit that is Star Wars than what was done to Boba Fett, or Obi Wan, both core characters to Star Wars.
But even Andor was pushing towards incompetent and evil men. And Cassian Andor was changed from what he was portrayed as in Rogue One, a ruthless Rebel assassin/sniper: Show had him almost just wander around and stumble into situations.
As for Ahsoka, it mostly felt like Star Wars and I liked it for what it was, just rushed… And stupid concepts were introducted later on (like that “jump” that could just have been so much better with just a bit of thought behind it.)
In closing, I refuse to believe the blame lies just on incompetent writers hired on all those different projects, the decision makers clearly have a hand in releasing the finished products.
I watch YouTube content on my tv, and get ads, next to using it on my PC where I block them. Generally I did not mind the ads, since it is part of the business model.
But frankly the experience on the tv is degrading quickly in the last 12 months:
From 2 skippable ads at the start (and end) of a video, I now get 2 longer unskippable ones, but regularly it doubles to 4 and a 5th that is either short or skippable. And if it’s still 2 at the start then usually 1-2 mins in I see 2 more long ads … If I have the gall to rewind or forward the video I get 2 more long ads, usually followed by 2 short ones a minute or two later… Some of that is probably ad-space tagged by the creators, but clearly YT overrules that and places its own ad markers.
Slowly I feel it’s leaning towards punishment to watch content on YT, at least on the tv.
On top of that there is the annoying interface that blocks a full 30% of the screen, often blocking the one thing I wanted to look at. Then the ads that always break subtitles of the video, or somehow enforcing subtitles in a language that I can not read.
And don’t get me started on the topic-bubble the algorithm captures the user in.
YT should have left it as it was a few years ago, but it is forcing more and more ads, making things unfriendlier for both the viewer and creator, all to squeeze the viewers for more and more revenue.
It’s a shame it’s all so detrimental to the wealth of knowledge on there.
So if a good and proper alternative is able to stand on its feet I will gladly follow the creators and watch the new stuff on there.
I realise there might be confusion, I meant Episode 7 the movie (The Force Awakens), ever since that management has been molding star wars into what it is not. Even if succesful a show gets twisted into stupidity later on.
I liked Ahsoka for the attempt it was, though it was badly rushed from the start, and the ending was rushed as well. I feel the show needed at least 2 more episodes to flesh out the path to the ending. Baylan’s story could have used more time, as did Ezra and Sabine meeting, even Thrawn could have used some more spice.
“Universe shaking” is what fits more to the whole disastrous influence and hamfisted policy Kennedy and crew had since episode 7. It just got worse and worse after that, creativity and quality was bled out because certain concepts had to be forcibly injected in the product. And it is clear they can’t leave things alone as they are, everything has to change from the success it was.
Both the IP and the fanbase were shaken violently by a rabid dog like a small bunny it preyed on.
Yes this sounds like a very convoluted way to go about things, but I am not sure if it was the actual verdict that is so badly constructed that it demands this or that Google gives itself and everyone else a lot of unnecessary pain.
Samsung also does auto updates etc and co-exists with the play store on samsung phones (granted, it lives within their android skin), even updates some Google play store (installed) apps, so I am not sure what or where the issue is/lies.
But now Google wants app stores within app stores within app stores as a solution?