Yeah, logging in pulled across everything, as far as I can tell. Subscriptions included!

Grayjay on Android has been working damn near flawlessly for me. No clue if the parent company is to be trusted at this point or not- but I cannot argue with the results.

Sure, but we’re talking about a handheld. Yes, performance is improving generation over generation, but in the handheld space power usage and heat dissipation are equally important. If you’ve been keeping up with recent innovations, you’ll see that generally we are making more powerful parts, but they’re getting much more power hungry for every little percent of improvement they bring in raw horsepower. So far it doesn’t look like you could even get Xbox series S performance in a handheld yet. At least not at a reasonably portable size, cost, or battery life. You could get a little better than PS4 pro performance in a handheld at present, based on what I’ve seen. Which is not a full generational leap over what’s out there.

If they released one NOW they’d probably be shooting themselves in the foot. At best they’d get mid-generational performance improvements whereas likely in the next year or two Valve is probably going to drop a true SteamDeck 2 with significant improvements. All speculation at this point, but if you’re a bean counter at Microsoft, speculation is like 90% of your job. Unless they abandon the standard console release cycle and shoot for faster iteration, they’ll want to come out absolutely swinging to compete.

Cheaper than Spotify for the number of users it gives you (at least where I live) and the app itself has functioned significantly better than Spotify’s has in my experience so far while not depriving me of any of the artists and albums I listen to regularly. Early on in its life it was big time selling snake oil, but at this point it’s just a solid alternative to Spotify and YouTube music which have both, frankly, gotten “too big to fail” and have begun enshittification because of it. Man we need more competition…

To be more clear I was more focused on the not wanting a car that needs software updates part of the argument, less so the means of delivery. Obviously, having an always on connection absolutely sucks and I’d personally be super down with just pushing an update via a USB drive or whatever like you can a BIOS update. But a lot of manufacturers have it set up so that you have to either pay a dealership to plug in the USB for some arbitrary reason, or demand the always on connection to do it. In a utopia of software development where there are no critical bugs, we would all prefer a car that doesn’t need updates. I didn’t mean to imply that I was arguing in favor of remote connection by manufacturers, and it’s absolutely my bad in not wording it properly.

On the flip side: if a car stereo has a known firmware issue causing problems with say Bluetooth connection, I DO want the manufacturer to actually provide an easy means of fixing/updating the borked software. Better that the system was properly tested and feature complete to begin with- but I’m not delusional enough to believe we can truly have nice things.

Anyone who ritualistically buys Dell. I believe Intel is on the record as having called Dell “the best friend money can buy.”

A gallon glass carboy is $20-25 and that’s going to be your biggest up front expense. That’s reusable, however so once you’ve got that you’re not going to need another for simple small batches. Champagne yeast is like $10-20 for 10-20 packs (figure a dollar per pack) and each pack can easily make 2 gallons if you’re smart enough to split it in half. 3lbs of raw honey from Costco will run $12-15 and a gallon of boiled water rounds out your list. Yeast nutrient is probably a good idea since it almost guarantees good results (1lb is like $10-15 and you only use 1/4 tsp or so per gallon batch). One-way air locks for brewing with stoppers are $2-10 depending on how many you buy (also reusable). So your first batch is your most expensive at $85 absolute worst case with today’s prices. From there on out subsequent batches cost only the honey, water, and any fruit or spices you want to try adding. As far as hobbies go, that’s not bad considering how much variety there is in it. I can’t comment on beer, but mead is dead simple as long as you keep everything sanitized before and after brewing.

As someone who makes meads/wines in a closet and has done so while renting, I don’t particularly see the relevance as long as your batches are small and contained… Typically, the tools and ingredients aren’t wildly expensive either if you’re keeping things simple (in the US, anyways). Honestly, I don’t see how more demographics don’t get into the basics of homebrewing. It’s dead simple to make something “passable” and with time and effort you can even make something good/great!