Sordid

They don’t, though. I don’t think I’ve ever had a USB port wear out from use on any peripheral with a removable cable, so if Apple is facing those kinds of issues, it’s not because of stupid users, it’s because Apple cheaped out on the build quality of the USB port.

As for Bentley versus Honda reliability, Honda’s warranty claim rate is apparently about 2%. I can’t find actual warranty claim statistics for Bentley specifically, only for VW as a whole, but according to this, 93% of Bentley owners have to take their car in for unscheduled repairs every year. Which is pretty insane. So yeah. Luxury brands are expensive because their primary purpose is to show off wealth, not because they’re any better than mass-produced consumer stuff. Often quite the opposite. Who knew.

If that were the case, every other computer peripheral manufacturer would use a similar design or face similar warranty claim issues. Which they don’t. So nah, that ain’t it, chief.

it’s considered common knowledge that you can’t

I’ve never heard that before. What I have heard several times is that text is not static, so if you read something, look away, and then read it again, it’ll say something different. That I can corroborate, along with the idea that this is how you realize you’re in a dream and induce lucid dreaming.

As does Steam and Epic and every other digital store ever created.

Replaying old games that I have fond memories of. We’re in an incredible renaissance of classic games getting source ports or updates that bring them up to modern standards, and I’m loving it. Daggerfall, Blade of Darkness, Jagged Alliance 2, Morrowind, Jedi Knight, Caesar 3… I’m sure I’m forgetting some many. They let me forget the present and pretend that I’m back in simpler, happier times, at least for a little while.

Eh, Starsector is a very different kind of game. And I don’t just mean the fact that it’s top-down 2D, it’s much more of a management game. Freelancer is very aptly named - you’re just one guy in one space fighter doing your thing. It’s a space shooter first and foremost. If you try to play Starsector that way, you’re going to hit an impenetrable wall very quickly. You need a fleet, and the larger your fleet, the less significant your own personal contributions in battle. But the game also limits your ability to command your fleet pretty severely, so the further you progress, the more your agency shrinks to just moving around on the map between combat encounters that mostly play themselves. I can’t recommend Starsector to… well, anyone, to be honest.

If the machine can perfectly predict my future choice, then that choice is an illusion. I have no free will, and the question is meaningless to begin with.

Both! Critically, the contents of box B depend on the machine’s prediction, not on whether it was correct or not (i.e. not on your subsequent choice). So it’s effectively a 50/50 coin toss and irrelevant to the decision-making process. Let’s break down the possibilities:

Machine predicts I take B only, box B contains $1B:

• I take B only - I get $1B.
• I take both - I get $1.001B

Machine predicts I take both, box B is empty:

• I take B only - I get nothing.
• I take both - I get $1M.

Regardless of what the machine predicts, taking both boxes produces a better result than taking only B. The question can be restated as “Do you take $1M plus a chance to win $1B or would you prefer $0 plus the same chance to win $1B?”, in which case the answer becomes intuitively obvious.