I wake up at 4am every day for work. This means I have to go to bed by 8pm if I want a good chance at 7 to 8 hours of sleep. DST in spring is not fun.

I say we make this a bit more equal for everyone. Ahem, time change should take place on a Wednesday morning so everyone gets to feel the full effects on a work day. That's why I hate time change the most. That Sunday morning in the Spring where I get totally screwed on sleep while everyone else is tucked in, snug as a bug in bed.

Of course most of you don't even notice time change as you are literally a sleep the entire time.

This is precisely how I feel.

Really? That seems like an extraordinary claim that neither of us could likely verify but wow. While I do have games I've never actually played or played for 10 minutes then never picked up again, the majority of all my games over my lifetime have definitely been played more then once. Some in fact have an embarrassing amount of hours played.

That's really sad if you are right that the majority of people that play games don't play them more then once.

Or maybe I'm just weird, because I also reread books and rewatch movies and television shows as well. It's just fun to relive the experience, especially if it's been a decade or more between viewings.

All this makes me sort of glad my only console is xbox one and all the games I have installed all have a disc, so the only time I ever connect the xbox to the Internet is when I'm installing a new game and that's only if the game is newer. Of course, I don't think they put out new xbox one games anymore. I know Madden 25 was the last release for xbox one.

Either way, I've never been asked to connect to the Internet to play any of my games but I do use the disc every time. I'm imagining if I went online, it could do the license thing as described above.

I feel sorry for the two youngest generations. Watching a stream of someone play a video game makes sense as it's something we use to do at our friends' homes when we were young. Of course, we'd also play with them or take a turn, depending on the kind of games that were at hand. Now, it really seems like this "safe" digital space is all we've really given our adolescents and watching each others' streams is all they got.

I use to have a lot of fun with all my friends sitting on the couch playing video games and consuming junk food. Parents were cool with it because hey, they are literally in the livingroom, so I know where they are at. Of course, as near as the 1990s we use to just take off on our bicycles all day long and be back by supper. No parental contact for the majority of the day minus possibly a lunch break (but who knows who's house you'd be at). This idea would terrify many modern parents.

Since apparently this GTA 6 is a big deal or something (even South America tied it into an episode), this is probably a pretty good thing for Xbox and it's userbase. I'm not interested, but I'm not the target audience. I don't even connect my xbox to the Internet unless I'm installing a new game, though at this point I doubt I'll get any more games since my xbox is deprecated, but it still plays all my current games, so I'm good until the unit dies and can't be fixed.

Sounds like rich folk problems to me. That's who pretty much owns all the housing in the coastal areas.

And it better use open standards and interoperability.

Look, I agree with you but the normies, the 99.99% and this applies doubling to PHBs, really like the idea of a unified monolithic magic box that just works. With regards to software, they just don't understand downside to having all your eggs in one basket, aka one single vendor.

The foreign concept is now that folks have more control over their reproductive cycles, it turns out a lot of people really don't want to be parents. Obviously a big part of this is due to a lack of resources, aka, we're broke enough that we don't want to have to choose between children and hobbies when our parents and grandparents had both while working the same types of jobs we're working.

The government is only concerned because all our social programs require a growing base to support the pyramid and we are working towards the opposite of that. Definitely not a good time to be relying on the government for your essentials and I doubt it's going to get better.

I guess there is not going to be a lot of young people in the future and it's going to be rough on everyone until we reach equilibrium again. What interesting times we live in.

No way we'll ever afford your idea, so that means we'll be getting use to a shrinking population. Teacher shortages will get worse, as why join a shrinking industry that's typically underpaid and isn't always a guaranteed job in every school district from year to year. Schools will close in some areas as not enough students to run efficiently.

The world definitely feels quite over populated though. Anyone that lives in a sort of touristy area is over the tourist. Worse, hard to enjoy your own country when it's flooded with vacationers. Good luck getting a camping spot in the more population national parks and even the less popular ones are hard to book for. The world is only so big after all and we're only building a tiny bit of new land while likely losing more of the current land to rising oceans.

The future sexbots are really going to work out well. All the people that don't want to have children can get one and the people that want children will of course go have children. It should really sort folks out nicely.

If we wanted to encourage having children, it was most certainly have to come with a raft of benefits to really convince some. Really though, children are a huge commitment that, when done properly, requires you basically remake your life around what is best for a stable family unit for the next 20 years and really, once you have a kid, you'll always be a parent.

It's not for everyone, that's for sure. Hats off to you parents because I'm not interested. Our society is way to stressful to want to try and do all that.

This is key but that's not capitalism. Maybe we can develop "sustainable capitalism" where if what you are doing is not environmentally sustainable, then you cannot do it and no business license for you.

I don't see that developing in the United States any time soon. We'll just continue to let immigrants in as needed. They tend to be younger and have more children. Besides, after this Trump fiasco, it's hard to say if the Republicans will continue to lean into anti-immigration as hard as Trump did. They might keep saying those words on the campaign trail, but possibly stop there because they'll realize we need to more young people.

We clearly can't go backwards to women being property. Pandora's box has been opened.

Then again, if China takes over the world, who knows what will happen.

I'd say every house, condo and apartment building (regardless of who owns them) should be provided double pane windows and sliding glass doors. This should help with the noise factor quite a bit. If electricity is going to become a major issue, each home, condo, etc, needs to be provided enough solar and batteries to more or less cover their current needs.

If the water is getting contaminated, they should provide every residence a reverse osmosis system that works at the the entry to the home and not just for the kitchen.

Do all that, and the data center can come in. Otherwise, go find some other area to ruin.

The problem isn't that it is a bribe. The problem is that is an insulting amount to try and bribe them with. $150k minimum so you could do all the necessary home upgrades to minimize the negative affects of the data center and it's hunger for resources.

"One Big Beautiful Data Center"

There, fixed that for you.

$10k isn't even enough to go solar+batteries for your home to help insult yourself from the increased electricity prices. Depending on zoning, you should also get your own well and osmosis system in place as well. $100k might cover all that. If there is any kind of noise from this (idk, just saying IF), you'll want to better insulate your home, so all new double pane windows and possibly adding insulation into the walls as well. So really, gonna need at least another 50k, so 150k minimum.

Personally, I'd take that money and then immediately list my house and get out of dodge.

p.s. $100k would cover it if we weren't tariffing the top solar panel produces in the world anyway.