I don’t think it’s a token gesture. Microsoft is a software company; they want to sell software, not hardware. They don’t really care about xbox other than as a means to sell more software and gamepass subscriptions. Selling their games on as many platforms as possible is a logical move for them.

Well, there is this guy

I do think that using the phase changes of water as the sole point of comparison is a bad argument.

Why? Water is extremely important to life and very abundant. The phases changes of water are something that you are confronted with in every day life, all the time.

For most people, the interaction with temperature is through the weather, and I don’t think Celsius is inherently better for that.

I do, because the temperature being above or below freezing is a very important boundary. Freezing temperatures means slippery roads, frost on windows, car locks freezing shut, etc. A lot of our interaction with the world outside is affected by the temperature being below or above 0ºC. By comparison, 0ºF is completely arbitrary, nothing changes when you cross that boundary.

I like that in Fahrenheit 0 is a cold winter’s day, and 100 is a hot summer’s day.

10ºF is also a cold day, so is 20ºF and 30ºF. Just like 90ºF is also a hot summers day.

I find that more relevant in day-to-day life than the phase changes of water.

None of those seem relevant to me. I don’t need a round number to know that 37ºC is a hot day. There is no significance to 100ºF. 99ºF is also a hot day and so is 101ºF. Nothing interesting happens when you cross the 100ºF threshold.

When you cross the 0ºC or 100ºC, potentially dangerous things start to happen of which you need to be aware.

It’s dark early because it’s winter. DST sucks in summer, we should move the clock an hour backwards in summer, not forwards.

A bar in my city has an actual walk in fridge: https://devluchte.nl/over/

Same goes for carbon steel. Unless you’re frying sticks of dynamite they are practically indestructible.

Summertime is terrible, especially in summer. You have one less usable hour in the evening.

During the summer you cannot really go outside until the sun goes down. It’s simply too hot in direct sunlight. Summer evenings are nice, after the sun goes down and the world starts to cool down a little. By moving the clock forwards we have an hour less of usable outdoor-time. It also means you have less time for things to cool down before going to sleep.

DST makes it so you have to go bed too early, being unable to enjoy the evening, and when you go to bed it’s too hot to sleep, but you have to because you have to get up at a ridiculous time the next morning.

Instead of DST we should introduce MST (Moonlight Saving TIme) and move the clock an hour backwards in summer. Then we can actually enjoy our summer evenings and go to bed once things have cooled down a little more. The earlier sunrise doesn’t matter since there is such a thing as blackout curtains.

I wish TLoU 1 gave you the option to sacrifice Ellie. Have an alternate ending where they find a vaccine and everyone lives happily ever after (except Ellie).

Or just install a door on your bathroom and hang the toilet roll over.

I’ve never been to a grocery store where the self checkout doesn’t weigh everything. That’s why people keep getting the “unexpected item in bagging area” error that requires an employee to come over to check and clear the error each time.

Sounds like a stupid system.

What stores in what country are you referring to?

Pretty much every supermarket in the Netherlands.

Here is a video of it in action

The anti-theft equipment for a system like this that would prevent someone stealing by simply not scanning something is probably a lot more expensive than the usual self checkouts.

There is no anti theft system other than randomized bag checks where they check up to 10 items from your bag to see if you scanned them. Takes about 1 minute and with daily supermarket visits this happens maybe once a month or so. (I think there is some kind of reputation system linked to your store loyalty card).

Do you exit the store through a specific gate that scans stuff or what?

You scan your receipt af the exit gate (you can also scan a barcode from the store’s app or choose a tiny receipt that only contains the exit barcode). You have to go through one or these gates regardless of wether you go through self checkout or not.

If the store is busy I never try to self checkout since there are lines at all of them

There are almost never lines at self checkout. There are 16 self checkout stations vs only one regular cashier. Self checkout is super fast and even if they are all occupied one usually frees up in less than a minute.

Your entire comment seems premised on the mistaken assumption that every self checkout system is implemented in the exact same way.

It basically is implemented the exact same way in every supermarket in my country.

The Netherlands.

Here is a video of the hand terminal in action (in Dutch, but you’ll get the gist of it)

Clothing and tech in a supermarket?

I’ve never seen anti-theft devices on items in a supermarket.

Self checkout works fine for large amounts of items. You grab a portable scanner at the entrance and scan items as you put them in your cart. When you arrive at checkout you already scanned all your items and all you have to do is pay.

Self checkout customers cannot verify their own age for age-restricted items.

Age verification happens asynchronously and causes zero delay for anyone who doesn’t look like a teenager. The employee overseeing the self-checkout gets an alert on their tablet-thingie, they take one look at me and press approve. You can just keep scanning items while this happens. Usually the ‘your age may be checked’ alert disappears within seconds.

Self checkout customers cannot scan something and report the number of duplicates (e.g., scan a can and punch in that you’re buying 8 of them).

They can where I live.

In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.

I’ve never seen that, and I’m not aware of any supermarket chain in my country that does this.

The ergonomics and flow of self checkout doesn’t allow for a conveyor belt style rapid scanning, because a self checkout station is a tighter space and tends to require bagging as you scan, instead of scanning and bagging separately and independently.

The conveyor belt slows things down. You take an item out of your basket, scan it and put it in your bag in one go instead of it being two separate actions. You’re only handling each item once instead of twice. Besides, if you’re planning to get a lot of items you scan while shopping, not at checkout. You get a portable scanner, put it slot on your cart and just scan each item as you put it in your cart.

As a result, self checkout tends to be slower for customers who have more than 20 items.

If you scan while you add items to your cart it takes less than 10 seconds to check out, regardless of how many items you have

That might be offset if there’s a longer line for regular cashier, but if there’s no line the employee cashier is much faster.

My local supermarket has a grand total of 1 regular cashier, versus 16 self checkouts. If you go during a busy time you have to stand in line. Since the regular cashier is basically only used by people who don’t want to or can’t use self-checkout for some reason (that is: usually elderly people) this line doesn’t move very fast.

When it’s a quiet time of day there often isn’t a regular cashier at all and you have to ask the person overseeing the self-checkout who then has to call someone to help you out as they cannot leave the self-checkout isle unattended so you end up waiting for a cashier to arrive.

Self checkout is always faster, by an order of magnitude.

Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items

In what alternate reality does self-checkout take more time and effort?

• If you go to a cashier then you have to wait in line. At my local supermarket there is one cashier vs. 16 self-checkout machines. Even if you go at an extremely busy time there is almost always a self-checkout machine available.
• With self-checkout you simply scan the items from your basket and put them in your bag. With the cashier you have put all your items on the conveyor belt, wait for them to be scanned, then put them in your bag.
• If you have more than a few items you simply grab a hand-scanner or just use the app on your phone and scan the items as you put them in your cart. Then you just go to a self-checkout machine and pay. No unloading the cart at checkout, you just pay and take your cart to your car.

the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway (“Unexpected item in bag”, etc)

What do you mean unexpected item in bag? The self checkout machine can’t look into my bag.

The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.

Never seen that happen. You get random bag checks before you pay (so at that point it’s technically not theft). If you missed something, they simply re-scan all the items and you pay the correct amount, that’s all.

Showing it’s unsustainable is kind of the point of the original game Monopoly is based on: The landlord’s game.

There are disappointingly few epic space battles in fantasy though.

Can’t believe no one has suggested this yet: Melodies of Life from Final Fantasy IX