Guessing they don't pray. Star Wars reference aside, learning about rampant Android piracy really made be rethink the pay devs receive for their effort. Per Business of Apps:

• Consumers spent $47 billion on Google Play apps and games in 2023
• Over 113 billion apps and games were downloaded on Google Play last year
• 2.61 billion apps and games are available to download on Google Play
• The top grossing app on Google Play in 2023 was Google One, a cloud storage service Instagram was the most downloaded app on Google Play last year, with 521 million downloads

The rest of the report is paywalled, so the number I was curious about -- MAUs (ideally DAUs, but that's a lot of time in Calc) for paid apps with at most 10,000 downloads -- is probably out there, but it's a Beehaw post. That report was the only result on DDG's first page relevant to the query "google play store apps by downloads."

All this to say, Apple's 30% and, well, walled garden that covers piracy to a sufficient extent is starting to look like the better choice for my next phone. And I have been an ardent avoider of Apple products since college.

I buil(t) my rigs, with every component suited to my needs (or budget; YMMV -- winning an i7-8086K gave me a lot of breathing room on the GPU side), but my life on a 24VDC electrical system has convinced me that a laptop need to replace my rig, and Apple seems to have my needed "lots of power with incredible battery life" nailed. But I now have to pick a final product that I didn't build and thus have no idea how to troubleshoot a hardware problem.

Except, I'm a light gamer, building factories and such. Being on ARM doesn't work.

I don't want to be in the iPhone-x86 crowd. Most things are doable, but hardly seamless. But giving up Factorio is a bridge too far.

I'm no longer seduced by Google's lie that app makers are rolling in the dough when it's actually slave wages supporting freeloaders. Sure, this is only one example, but as the issue is with Google policy, it's likely representative. That's why I wanted to see the figures.

Part of me thinks this rant could have also worked in Politics. 🤣

When faced with a future for children that is less than ideal, not having them makes a lot of sense. And yet it's viewed as somehow sacrosanct.

"Stop killing our children"? Why would you have them in the first place when they aren't likely to have an enjoyable life?

Having kids is not a need, and it certainly isn't some odd "that's what organisms do" thing even more insulting than suggesting that's what people do.

Bluntly: Kids you don't have can't die. The easiest way to ensure your kids don't have bad outcomes is not having them.

Don't have kids in a world that doesn't want them. That's true in Palestine, the U.S., and literally everywhere else.

Explaining the rave scene and the appeal thereof has always been an uphill battle.

I was assuming this was a retirement announcement from the editor.

Sadly, not the case. The site has ceased publication as of this story, though content and the forum will remain up for an indeterminate amount of time.

It launched in 1997, the same year I wrote my first HTML, having started college and suddenly having access to hosting.

It sucks to see a pub that has adhered to its goals for the most part (we all make mistakes) for 27 years get shut down by a corporate owner.

I wasn't expecting anything Earth-shattering coming out of this given that everyone at Fox News was salivating for fresh meat. Problem is, not having a straight answer for anything now becomes the narrative.

This was not a great look for either of them (as little time as Walz got).

If you haven't seen it, links below:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Interestingly, also the only thing consultants won't try.

Here's a great example of dystopian tech being rolled out without guardrails. Brought to you by Axos, which you may know as the company that rebranded after Taser became a liability as a name.

Surprising absolutely no one ...

Reporting on court proceedings is not politics. Please restrict comments to the news aspects of this story in this community; we're all aware he's primarily running to stay out of prison, but that is not this story. /soapbox