Scan QR code. Order on your phone. Pay on your phone. Asks for a tip.

So uh, what exactly am I tipping you here for dawg?

One could argue that Tado should have had more certainty about their business model before they started selling promises they couldn’t keep, but that’s business I suppose.

Presumably Tado anticipated they could capture customers on a free tier and upsell later, but it turns out that when customers have a fully functional basic tier, they generally don’t want to pay money for extras they don’t care about.

And so now, Tado are left with an online service that costs them money to run, but no ongoing revenue. So of course they will try to monetise the subscription.

Of course, part of the problem is that customers have almost been conditioned to expect cloud stuff to be free. And so that’s the price Tado tried to aim for, and now that is causing problems.

Either way though, what they are doing now represents “changing the deal” Darth Vader style - the product previously was a one time purchase and then free after, and they are now trying to make it paid after selling it as free. And that is bad.

Did you genuinely interpret that as a child to mean “If you put something on the Internet will be safe forever”?

As I’m sure you are now aware as an adult, the intended meaning is very much “If you put something on the Internet which is embarrassing to you or damaging to your reputation, then it will be around forever”

It’s a warning that the things you don’t want to stick around could end up being precisely the things which do.

We have all got very accustomed to the notion that we can put content on a website and it will stay there forever, permanently available, as if that site somehow has an obligation to look after it. But they don’t.

It sucks, and there will be a lot of stuff lost, but it’s also good to have a reminder that if there’s data you really care about, you need to look after that data yourself.

It was to figure out if they /really did/ start charging for it, how many people would actually pay.

I hope Tado goes bust because they don’t deserve to survive, treating customers like that.

If it’s not broke…

Well yes, that’s the point.

That’s how we know exactly how this playbook goes, because we’ve seen it before.

The fact that all big companies are doing this doesn’t mean that we should think any less badly of HP for doing it too.

The problem, as far as HP will be concerned, is the strategy was leaked to the public. If there was no leak there would have been no news, and no ‘feedback’.

HP won’t take this as a signal to not do the shitty thing. They’ll take this as a signal to back off for now, and then try the shitty thing again later, but slowly and bit-by-bit, so there’s no big news.

Revert then.

This is exactly what Microsoft are counting on, that people will simply go “oh well” and just carry on with Windows 11, because any effort needed to move away is too much effort.

Prove them wrong. Stand up for yourself.

Yeah, the Neo Geo really is that console that was an outrageous luxury back in the day.

There is an arcade near me which is flat fee for entry and every machine is on free-play. It’s very satisfying to be able to keep pressing continue as much as you like.

Fair points. If we are quoting King then he also said in “On Writing” just a paragraph or so after your quote:

“But once your basic story is on paper you need to think about what it means. […] To do less is to rob your work (and eventually your readers) of the vision that makes each tale you write uniquely your own.”

I may not have been right in saying the story /comes/ from the theme, but I very much stand by the notion that solid themes are required, even if the theme does not come first.

King also said:

Not every book has to be loaded with symbolism […] but it seems to me that every book - at least every one worth reading - is about something. Your job during or just after the first draft is to decide what something or somethings yours is about."

As the story is written and progresses, conscious work is needed to refine the theme and draw it out, and good works always are about something that is bigger and richer than the basic story beats.

To the original argument on superhero movies then, the writer’s opinion that we need good themes is still something I very much agree with.

But then, good story and characters are extremely important as the prerequisite, because a strong theme without a strong foundation is nothing.

Of course. And that’s because “still” has two meanings. One being “the same now as always” and the other being “in a continuing state, uninterrupted”

Which one the reader will interpret is dependent on context.

“75% of children still fascinated by sticks” is very likely to mean different groups of children surveyed years apart - the ‘unchanged’ meaning.

“14% of adults over 50 still keep a pair of 80s flared jeans in their wardrobe” is very likely to mean it is the same adults who were wearing them back in the 80s - the ‘uninterrupted’ meaning.

The problem is that for this article, neither of those valid meanings make sense - at least not to me.

It is not ‘uninterrupted’ because we know that lots of people stopped playing old systems, while other people joined the hobby.

It is also not ‘unchanged’, because the levels of people playing 90s consoles will have dipped to a low somewhere in the middle and then bounced back thanks to renewed interest and modern hobbyist technologies that make these things more accessible now than they were just 10 years ago.

It’s altogether a different situation now than it was then, and that’s why I find “still” to be a poor choice of phrase regardless of the meaning intended.

All movies have a story. This happens, then that happens, then that happens. That’s a story.

But IMO, what often separates a good story from a dull one are the thematic elements.

The theme is the big narrative idea into which everything else slots. It drives the plot. It defines the character’s motivations and creates stakes. It creates tension and makes character’s actions feel like they have purpose.

We need a great story, but good story comes from solid themes.

“Still” is really not the way to phrase it.

A good chunk of the people playing on retro systems never even owned half the systems back in the day which they have collected now. Or they might be new people getting into the hobby who perhaps weren’t even born when those systems were current.

People can’t “still” be doing something that they were NOT doing before!

It’s such a strange way of looking at a hobby which is more popular now than it ever was.

‘matematician’

For what it’s worth, I’m with you.

I also work from home, and while I generally cook all my own meals and do meal prep at werkends, sometimes I have a bad/stressful week where I cave and get fast food like three lunches in a row.

I keep a grocery bag in the car and put the fast food in there to hide my shame.

Turned out that scratches can easily be avoided if you are careful, and - more importantly - a few scratches won’t prevent the disc being read, thanks to the error correction.

Back in the day I remember using one of those AOL internet sign-up junk discs as a drinks coaster, for several years. As you’d expect from grinding around on my desk it was filthy and scratched to total hell, never mind the thermal stress of hundreds of hot tea mugs being sat on it. I’d never seen a CD looking so bad.

One day out of curiosity I decided to wipe it off and put it in the PC to see what would happen. I was genuinely surprised when the AOL splash popped up (and also a little disgusted because I had no love for AOL and was hoping I’d killed it)

Right, and I’m not challenging you on that :)

As someone who games a lot it would be more cost-effective to do it on systems other than the switch (or switch 2) - I agree.

You said what the case is, I was hoping only to add some commentary on why.

The console hardware is cheaper to produce vs other consoles, so it’s not like they are losing on the hardware and aiming to make the money back later - they designed the hardware to meet a specific price point, and to capture a certain market.

Having captured that market though (kid owns a switch and now the kid wants games) they can pretty much set the price of games high and keep them high.

As a gamer buying for yourself, with every purchase you are weighing up the cost of the game against how much you personally want to play it. If the price is too much you will choose something else, or wait for a sale.

As a parent buying for a child, however, if the child says “I really want the new Zelda game for my birthday please!” then they get bought the new Zelda game, no matter how much it costs.

Nintendo are very much aware what their business model is on this one, and who they are targeting.

For a lot of consumers, especially those who are lower income, the single most important factor is how much money you need to spend at once.

This is especially true because a key market for the switch is children, who have no direct purchasing power themselves, and depend instead on adults to buy it for Christmas and birthdays. So initial cost of entry is critical.

Simply put, ‘parents’ who are buying a console for their kids and expect to buy new games only rarely, have quite different needs to ‘gamers’ who are buying for themselves, and want new games often.