People are homeless not because the government lacks funding, but because the government doesn’t give a damn. Those billions being given to Ukraine were never going to be spent addressing poverty had the war not happened, and if Congress suddenly had a change of heart, they’d have zero problems finding and allocating as much money as they want to anti homeless programs Ukraine war or not
Unreal Engine royalties only start after you make $1 million from a project. Even then, it’s 5%, and waived for sales done on the Epic Store (whose 13% cut is almost a third of what Steam takes). If you are a small indie dev, you won’t be paying Epic a dime unless you start rolling in some serious dough, and even when you do, 5% of your revenue for using one of the most powerful 3D game engines is pretty fair
The 3 Gorges Dam in China slowed the Earth’s rotation by .06 microseconds per day due to the amount of water moved altering the Earth’s moment of inertia
Reddit’s decision about 3rd party apps and API changes actually made business sense. Not only was their content being pilfered on Reddit’s expense, but a decent portion of their user base were using 3rd party apps that didn’t collect as much data nor serve Reddit ads like the official app. At the expense of losing a decent portion of their community, moderators, and any goodwill their userbase had towards them, Reddit now has all their mobile users on a single, add ridden app that they own and can collect as much data as they want going forward as well as ensures that they get paid for AI API usage
Developers are on the hook for potentially infinite losses without gaining revenue in a per install fee system. Expenses are entirely unpredictable for developers and bad actors can run basic install scripts to cost the company a lot, so if Unity stays their current course for a few more weeks, many of the larger developers using Unity will begin switching engines even if it means delays. It’s absolutely worth it for a developer to port their game over no matter the cost, because they are easily looking at no limits to their costs if they don’t
I pirate ebooks, especially textbooks, when I can’t get something through my library. I don’t watch enough television to bother pirating shows and movies. With video games, the circumstances that would make pirating a game worth it rarely come up for me; pirating games means losing out on updates and bug fixes, multiplayer, Steam cloud saves, and more. For new games, not getting bug fixes and updates makes my experience worse, and older games usually go on sale for cheap enough that I might as well buy it
Another interesting approach to trash management is what Taiwan does. Taiwan charges per bag of trash, and residents have to manually bring out their bags on trash day to garbage trucks that sing like ice cream trucks. This makes each person care about how much they are throwing away, as unlike in places that charge a flat fee per bin per week, you could spend or save a lot of money and effort on trash days based on how much waste you make. However, in most municipalities, recycling and composting are free, encouraging residents to choose items with the least amount of recyclable/compostable waste to save money. While such a system would not go over well with the people if it were implemented in a place like the US, the program is successful in Taiwan and has done wonders for reducing their waste and keeping their cities clean
Countries have the right to expel foreign diplomats and embassies as long as they don’t arrest them or go through their stuff when they leave. The newly couped Niger junta requested the French ambassador leave and revoked his visa, but the French are still refusing to leave, claiming that because they don’t recognize the legitimacy of the new junta, they don’t have to follow the junta’s orders to leave. Regardless of your opinion of the new junta, in how does a former colonial power be in the right when they are blatantly ignoring the legal rights and sovereignty of their independent former colony’s government that is doing things by the book? They stopped sending the ambassador food and are confining him to his embassy until he leaves, especially given the current junta that is extremely gentle treatment
The best reply to “God made you a man, be a man, he doesn’t make mistakes” is “God made you nearsighted, take off those glasses, he doesn’t make mistakes”
Unironically this is the one area where Epic Games is absolutely in the right. They have a 12% royalty on games sold on their platform and a 5% royalty on sales over $1 million for games made with Unreal Engine, with the UE royalty being waived entirely if it’s sold on the Epic Games store. They get a reasonable cut for maintaining one of the most powerful game engines and charge nearly a third of what Valve does for their storefront. If the Epic Store wasn’t so dog shit, they’d be an actual competitor to Valve
What’s even more mind boggling is that despite Starlink being so critical to Ukrainian communications, neither the Ukrainian government nor the US entered into a contract with a clause obligating Starlink to maintain service. Musk can just legally turn off Starlink for them with no legal repercussions because they never negotiated something against that into a contract with him. Even if they had to pay a premium rate for Starlink, for a service that critical to the Ukrainian Armed Forces it’s worth it
The value of their investments is lower because they’ve been pulling out of Russia. The article you sent says they’ve slashed the value down by 90%, and they’re still going. Liquidating hundreds of millions in stocks while getting a decent value out of them takes time, and so far they’ve done a pretty good job selling off 90% of their Russian holdings with just a few more millions to go
They’ve beefed with a few other instances they tried federating with too such as Lemmy.ee and lemmy.blahaj.zone. Their user base tends to be a bit more abrasive than most Lemmy instances, making federation controversial even among similarly minded instances such as lemmy.blahaj.zone
If there’s one place I’d expect to have trouble hiring, it’s the Pentagon’s IT team. They regularly deal with the most sensitive information about the US military, and need to have clearance to see all of it. That gives them an incredibly slim hiring pool, so it’s no surprise their IT team sucks
HFCS is a better alternative to sugar for the US. Not necessarily health wise (they both are about as equally terrible for you in the amounts Americans consume them), but in a logistical way. The other sources of sugar are sugarcane, which are only farmed in parts of 3 US states, and sugar beets, which are only farmed in 11 US states. Corn is farmed pretty much everywhere in the US, and we produce a lot more of it. This ensures that we have a much more stable supply of corn, which is important for a widespread staple ingredient in most US foods. This also means the US is not reliant on foreign imports for HFCS since it’s produced domestically, ensuring US food security if a major exporter of sugar has to halt exports. This also gives the US an excuse to farm even more corn, increasing the supply of corn and making our supply more stable in the process. Outside of HFCS, corn is used in everything from animal feed to gasoline and batteries, which means running low on corn one year due to an unstable supply would devastate the US; HFCS helps prevent that. Federal corn subsidies also help make HFCS a much cheaper option than conventional sugars, keeping food prices lower which helps people afford to eat. The main argument against HFCS is the serious health effects that it causes when eaten in high amounts, but regular sugar which would replace HFCS in most foods causes the same problems in the amounts they are consumed while being significantly more problematic logistically for the US
We have quite a lot of employee protections (not as much as Europe but a lot more than people realize), it’s the enforcement that is the issue. While you can be fired without notice for any legal reason, if you are fired for an illegal reason or an illegal reason played a role in their decision to fire you, you can get quite a nice settlement from that. However, if you are fired without a good reason, the employer has to pay for your unemployment, so the majority of employers will only fire an employee if it falls under a reason that makes you ineligible for unemployment like poor performance or attendance (and labor attorneys can often sniff out when an employer is lying about it to screw you out of unemployment). Contrary to several other countries, employees can just quit without notice or even informing their employer, as at will employment goes both ways
Every time you blink, your eyeballs roll up into the back of your eye socket and roll back to the original spot quickly
You start out as a medieval bum, and you are as good at life as a medieval bum would be. Even if you are a god at the combat system, you ain’t winning fights against tough opponents until your character gets skilled. You start out illiterate as well, and have to learn to read, just like a medieval bum
You ever drive through Disney World property? They have hundreds of thousands of people on the property every single day, yet there’s hardly ever any traffic on the property itself. They achieve this through free and robust public transportation that takes people between all of the hotels and the parks while penalizing drivers who don’t want to take it with large parking fees. Especially with buses taking people between the airport and Disney property, there’s hardly a reason for most people to rent a car. As a result, despite heavy traffic in the area surrounding Disney World, they’ve effectively beat traffic on the property itself, but clearly traffic is unbeatable with public transportation because the billionaire who owns a car company says it doesn’t work
Without any crime to suspect you of, they might detain you and question you. It’s not uncommon for people to turn themselves in for crimes, and there are legitimate reasons to do so especially with a lawyer, namely to get out on bail easier, avoid having the police raid your home or place of work, and perhaps used to sway the prosecution for a more favorable sentencing, but if the police have no clue what to even charge you for and they can’t figure one out, they’ll just be confused and frustrated, which is a dangerous combination for police