Yep, exactly that. There are laws that say if you work more than a certain number of hours per week, you're entitled to benefits like pension, paid holiday, etc. Zero hours contracts let companies get away with not providing those, as they'll keep each individual staff member below the required hours, because there's no guarantee of a minimum number of hours in their contract.

It's absolutely atrocious, but the government spins it to make it sound like a benefit by saying you have extra time, you can lead a flexible life. What it means in reality for most people is that they need multiple jobs and still get no benefits that a full time job would provide.

"it is normal to pause and wonder if people are what they say they are because of the push to normalize transgenderism in our society."

That's not normal, that's fucked up.

Software updates can take quite a bit of bandwidth though. Call of Duty updates are significant events on the network, at the scale of streaming major sporting events.

Here in the UK, when I was at school, we had a law called Section 28, which prohibited teachers saying that queer relationships were equal to straight ones. It used much worse language, calling straight relationships "natural" and queer ones "pretended". Absolutely awful stuff.

The result of it was that queer kids had to hide, there were no role models or adults that could allow them to relate to being normal, no place to feel safe, especially if their home life was not safe. It allowed bullying to be rampant, and gave queer kids no quarter to retreat to.

The effects of this are still felt to this day, even though the law was revoked in the early 2000s. Straight adults who were at school during this time didn't notice. The queer ones absolutely did and it caused deep hurt. Seeing the same things happening in the states but worse pains me greatly.

We have part-time jobs as well, but those usually come with a minimum number of hours. Zero hours contracts were brought in to bypass those rules. Since zero hours contracts came in, part-time contracts practically disappeared.

Played through the entire game, started on NG+. I really enjoyed it, the story was definitely a Final Fantasy story, much better than XV.

My one gripe is the lack of mini-games, which apparently was intentional on the part of the devs. All side content is still combat focused.

You can get through most of the game not truly mastering combat, but NG+ is a different story. Overall, a solid 8/10 game.

Al Gore made so many appearances because his daughter was on staff as a writer.

It was all about getting on a good web-ring. I had a few sites across Geocities, Tripod and the like, but getting on a good web-ring brought the best traffic. Don't forget to put a visitor counter on the page, and a cursor trail will impress everyone. This advice brought to you 25 years too late.

Peglin merges dungeon crawler rogue-lite with Peggle style gameplay.

Slay The Spire merges dungeon crawler rogue-lite with a deck builder card game.

Dicey Dungeon merges dungeon crawler rogue-lite with dice rolling.

I got stuck on a theme 😅

What's the source of this?

Having worked in a university web team back in the day, these user personal spaces got dropped for various reasons. Teaching staff would push back on increasing password security, so accounts got hacked continuously. People would upload malicious applications through cgi-bins and the like. Maintenance costs skyrocketed. The cost of keeping these going because of these reasons were just not justifiable anymore, and it was much easier to provide them an account on a WYSIWYG system that could be secured, patched and maintained by an external company.

With the rise of online learning portals that included these features as standard, it became less justifiable. Why pay for two products, when one would do.

They're still going to charge app developers releasing on 3rd party app stores, so Apple will still make money through this route. https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24051823/apple-third-party-app-stores-50-cent-fee

I made a Qobuz playlist of the albums if anyone is interested.

https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/18930685

Nier Automata for its complex merging of storytelling and game mechanics, kickass soundtrack, and fun gameplay. The camera leaves a little to be desired, but still a game that has stuck with me years after finishing it.