You’re correct on the two thoughts you listed. Wishlisting also makes the game more visible before release. For example, highly wishlisted games appear in the “Popular Upcoming” section, along with some other spots. This increased visibility before launch then feeds into the two points you made. I believe games that are highly wishlisted before launch are also more likely to appear on the frontpage right after launch.

I haven’t used it often, but the few times I have asked it very specific programming questions, it has usually been pretty good. For example, I am not very good with regex, but I can usually ask Copilot to create regex that does something like verifying a string matches a certain pattern, and it performs pretty well. I don’t use regex enough to spend a lot of time learning it, and I could easily find a few examples online that can be combined to make my answer, but Copilot is much quicker and easier for me. That said, I don’t think I would trust it past answering questions about how to implement a small code snippet.

Eh, their business practices regarding selling games are fairly consumer friendly, but overall they have quite a few issues themselves that aren’t great. I wouldn’t hold them up as a great company but rather a better company than the competition, which is a fairly low bar.

I watched a video a while back about this, but the details are fuzzy. I think it was the one I linked below if you want to look more into it. In essence, there aren’t a ton of cases where kids are actually being forced to work. However, there are strong incentives for kids to work on Roblox projects that the developers themselves push. The devs want a constant stream of content and money coming in, but they don’t want to pay adult workers at adult wages, so they offer Robux to players who make games. It is difficult for people to convert Robux to actual cash, and the money they receive is often significantly less than they would if they put the effort into any other form of work, so many of these kids are essentially making content for the developers for free or significantly less than they should earn. If there was no payout for content creators and the kids were doing that development just because they had passion for the game, it might be a different situation, but there are quite a few kids that believe they can make serious money doing this and don’t understand that the developers are exploiting them and paying very little. Adults can probably do more research and better understand the situation they are getting into, but kids often don’t have the same critical thinking skills as adults and will accept the lie being pushed by the developers and community that they can get rich by contributing to the game they love.

Video: https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ

Follow-up: https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY

I’m sure most people knew it was Russia from the start, but I saw a comment earlier today that apparently Russia was saying that it was a Ukrainian defense missile that fell out of the air. They are likely just confirming that it was indeed Russia.

I’m not sure why these comments are so negative so far. If I’m understanding the article correctly, it is an optional setting to automatically open the app as soon as it is done installing. The Play Store isn’t just installing and opening apps on its own.

Maybe I’m not doing the best at explaining myself, but my intent was for my comment to say much the same as yours (which I totally agree with). I was just trying to say that I didn’t hear many people who thought Ukraine could actually win a war against Russia through fighting. There was definitely hope that Russia would have a regime change due to the pressure and that would put an end to the war, but that outcome seems more like Russia just ending fighting rather than Ukraine winning. I suppose my comment was moreso just arguing semantics on the word “win” in terms of this conflict, which is ultimately a bit pointless.

Maybe I’m wrong here, but I think most people never thought Ukraine would win the war outright. Personally, I’ve never heard anyone say that they thought Ukraine would push Russia out entirely and the war would end. Even if Ukraine did secure all of its land, Russia would almost certainly continue fighting along the border to prevent it from joining any alliance like NATO. It seemed the best anyone hoped for is that there would be enough pressure applied to Russia that something changed within where they gave up on the war.

The ‘completely out of service’ part is a quote from a relevant person (not the author), and it seems publications frequently try to use quotes in their titles, which could explain the phrasing. Based on the article, it could also be an intentional choice. It sounds like the hospital is still functioning in regards to some staff and patients are inside the hospital (and possibly can’t leave), but it is completely out of service in the sense that the staff can’t actually take care of the patients or accept new ones.

When I worked IT, I went to a local fire station and said I was there to update their computers. The person I talked to didn’t seem to know that this was scheduled, but they led me to their office with the computers and showed me how to log on. I’m pretty sure they just assumed I was telling the truth because I spoke confidently and was wearing a polo, but I could have literally been anyone.