But an awesome tech demo.

it can be predictable at times

I mean considering we know it ends with Rouge One and generally sits within a larger established universe, that seems somewhat unavoidable.

I think the Saw parts fit in decently. It adds another flavor of resistance to the mix.

We get the rebellion, which is an organized military like effort, we get luthen who as a spy master pulls strings in the shadows, Mon mothma straddling the line between being in a privileged public position and helping the rebellion, on ghorman we get a more amateurish resistance, Cassian is more of an individualist who finds his own path between the different factions, and with Saw we get a guerrilla like extremist faction

I’d say it is the best mature star wars piece of media ever made. Because I (today still, but especially my younger self) do love me some good lightsaber fights or large scale space battles, which we didn’t get here. Andor not including those is for the better, but I wouldn’t want to completely go without them either.

In a similar fashion I enjoy listening to podcasts while running. I find music to in a way get filtered out by my brain after a while whereas podcasts keep me engaged. Inversely I can’t really focus on podcasts in the gym where I am switching up exercises.

Over time I’ve also optimized my listening experience by getting a pair of bone conducting headphones and a watch that can store and playback podcasts, so I don’t have to carry around my phone on runs.

And ideally also something that doesn’t require too much preparation. If it takes a long time to prepare for or get back after you are usually less likely to do it.

is inconsistent with our security

Seems pretty in line with the Trump administration’s security. It’s not good security, but it is consistent.

I think there should be more variety in how shows are released and it should be based on what the creators feel like suits them best.

Something like Severance definitely benefits from the weekly release to give everyone time to speculate and keep up the suspense for longer.

With others it’s nice to just get the full season at once. I wouldn’t even say “bad” shows, but shows that are skewe more towards pure entertainment, action and mindless distraction (which do have their purpose). Something like say Reacher would fit that category imo

Andor struck an interesting middle ground imo by releasing 3 episode blocks at a time. For me that worked great. It gave us a similar amount of content like a long movie per week, which considering the quality was basically film level was the right balance between giving enough to feel like it was a full load of content, but not so much that you cant keep up and appreciate it.

I wasn’t blown away by it either, but the episodes were so short that it was similar to one episode of other series.

I probably won’t continue watching it for a bit, since one 25min episode per week is too slow for me, but might give it another shot once the season is done (assuming people like it at that point).

Another issue I have is that at least the first two episodes are less than half an hour long, and after this we will only get one per week. For me that’s too little content per week, so I might just wait until more is released until I continue.

As a comparison Andor imo had an amazing release schedule with its 3 episode blocks with each episode being between 45-55min long.

Doesn’t fitgirl just repack stuff (compressing the game for smaller download sizes) rather than doing the actual cracking?

Surprisingly looking forward to Murderbot. I think Skarsgard is miscast, but the previews have looked great so maybe it will be good after all.

You and me both. It’s been a while since i’ve read the books, but as i remember it’s never stated what appearance or gender Murderbot has and this wiki seems to support my recollection.

In my imagination Murderbot was female similar to GLaDOS in Valve’s Portal game series, just more anxious.

Agreed. Max wasn’t a good naming choice, but taking out the HBO part to protect the brand value of it standing for prestige television was the right call. And honestly Max wasn’t great, but imo not as bad as i first thought when they introduced it, just really bland. I guess going with something that includes the Warner brand in the name wasn’t on the table after the merger?

These articles always talk only about the layoffs, never hirings or total employee numbers over time. But then it usually isn’t much of a story anymore.

A quick search lead me to this site that provides some numbers. These layoffs would put them back to 22/23 levels, so somewhat of a plateau after they roughly doubled their headcount in the decade before.

Dabei hat man in München mit dem Olympiadorf finde ich eigentlich ein gelungenes Beispiel wie es geht. Dicht besiedelt, aber trotzdem eine hohe Lebensqualität und die Autos sind im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes untergeordnet (Straßen verlaufen ausschließlich unterirdisch in der Tiefgarage).

From what little I’ve read more like Francis, which isn’t surprising considering he appointed the majority of those who just voted.

Apparently he’s a bit more moderate. Similar focus on the poor and immigrants, which apparently Leo 13 was as well (name choice is also a statement, so reading up on whoever has the name before might be worthwhile). But slightly more conservative in regard to lgbtq and women.

There’s currently a Kickstarter going on for a watch that aims to be modular and repairable. It’s called UNA Watch.

Look interesting, but imo with these things it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem, where the upgradeability/repairability only has value, if it is actually provided in the future (and economically viable). Something that can only be proven in time, but requires people to trust it before.

I’m not in the market for a new watch right now, since I just repaired the screen on my Garmin, but am keeping an eye on it, since sadly Garmin seems to have entered the early stages of enshittification.

As others have already answered he lost because he didn’t get the required votes, despite his coalition having a majority. Which is why this was expected to be a formailty and no one in a similar situation had ever lost this vote.

However i would add that unlike some other votes of parliament this one was a secret one, so we will never know who voted which way. Since everyone was present we can deduce that people of his coalition broke rank in the first round and voted against him. But we likely will never know who and why, since i doubt anyone would reveal it (which would be political suicide).

Since they changed their votes for the second round that immediately followed, i assume they wanted to voice their disapproval of Merz, which they succeded in. But (again as already mentioned) Merz is not really well liked.

He left politics for a while during most of Merkels reign and only crawled back out of his hole after she left. And even then he wasn’t the first choice (he failed to become the CDU candidate in 2021). So there might be quite a few people that just dislike him enough in general to do this.

Other more recent reasons might be his 180° turn on the debt brake (ran his campaign on not changing it, just to immediately do so after the election) or his attempt for harsher migration rules just before the recent election, where he won a vote in pariament with the help of the far right AfD (ofc he distanced himself from them, but you only bring stuff to a vote if you plan to win, and the only way to win that one was with the far right).

Agreed. The prequels have flawed execution, but imo a good base. It’s the reverse with the sequels that are mostly style over substance, chasing some pretty shots regardless whether it makes for a good movie. And I take the former over the latter any day. Especially if we remember that Lucas asked other directors to make them.

I’d say the most recent major influences were the IPO and the emergence of LLMs.

Reddit becoming a publicly traded company and the preparation to do so certainly initiated a major shift in its priorities.

Ai and large language models make it easier than ever to create shiny, but low quality content.

And the rest is just reddit becoming more mainstream leading to an overall shift towards banal rather than niche topics.