NIB

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.

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).