I am kind of used to sometimes poking the bear on this one in particular. It's what I personally dislike though, I don't necessarily think they are badly designed. I totally get some people absolutely love that kind of thing in games, and I am glad they have games that scratch that itch. It's just an instant turn-off for me though.
That said, I have never quite understood the people vehemently opposed to having a difficulty slider though; just keep it on hard and it's literally no different.
I feel save points themselves are becoming an increasingly archaic design choice. Just let us save anywhere, especially in a single player game. I think most people are just suspending games without expressly saving most of the time.
Japan, you usually use "Taro Tanaka" as the goto placeholder name. Tanaka is a very common surname here and it's super easy to write as well (田中). Sato is actually the most common but also a lot harder to write (佐藤). Tanaka is also a very "working class" name, it litearlly means "in the rice field" and most likely comes from families with a background of rice farmers. Taro also a very common given name; there have been quite a few Taro Tanakas throughout history despite being the placeholder name on most forms and the like. Taro, incidentally means "Big/Strong Son".
I am not sure offhand of a female equilvalent, it's usually Taro as the placeholder.
I was there in for several months in graduate school doing research for my thesis, wasn't part of a tour. Based out of Kim Il Sung university at the time. I spent about a year in South Korea as well prior. Since I wasn't on a formal tour, I was left to my own devices a lot of the time unless I needed a guide to help me get access somewhere.
Technically yes, every rural farming village could have been secretly micced with hidden cameras on the off chance that a foreigner was going to stop by, but that seems unlikely. This was a little over ten years ago so cell phones (which would be a fairly common metric of government surviellence) were not as prevalent in the DPRK yet as they are now, so a lot of people weren't carrying one. I was a no-name graduate student, not a well-known diplomat, I don't think the government was particularly invested in spending large sums of money tracking me. So yes, technically they COULD have, but just as much as any other state could have.
Obviously anecdotal, but from the people I spoke to in the DPRK, generally very well liked. And no, I did not have government minders making sure they said "the right thing". Several programs were quite popular, particularly housing programs. There was a big push for community-based activities during my stay, even smaller towns had community centers where people could go after work to learn new skills or continuing education. The university I was based out of was pretty international as well, but even there people didn't spend that much time thinking about the US, nor did they have a particularly negative view of the average American citizen. More curious than hostile.
Their point is the double standard. Either apply it consistently or not at all. If athletes are representing their country in all aspects when competing internationally, all athletes should be held to that standard.
If an athlete refused to shake a USian athletes hand because of the war crimes of their country, including ones ongoing at this very moment, you would be on board with it then? There would be precious few handshakes that could be given out on international sporting stages, that is for sure.
I said this in the other comment, but vaping is the one thing that helped me successfully quit smoking.
Is it healthy? No, at the absolute best it would be neutral. You shouldn't be breathing anything other than clean air. However, I have little doubt that it is better than smoking. My lungs are in great shape now, and I feel just generally much better. If people want to continue to do research on longterm effects of vaping, great!
Are there issues about underage vaping? Sure, but that is a regulation/enforcement issue and shouldn't be used to punish adults with. I have friends that went back to smoking because of vaping being made illegal where they lived, and you cannot convince me that is better for their health.
A lot of the issues we have had about vaping are regulatory issues with stuff like the Vitamin E incident, not a problem with the underlying concept.
I have never really liked talking on the phone, even before the advent of cell phones. The fact that it seems to be fading more and more as a common communication tool is something I am honestly pretty happy about. Sure it means I have like 4 messaging apps on my phone, but I don't really mind. Even work is all text via Teams.
It has probably been at least a year since I have made/received an actual audio call on my phone.
I have only very recently come around on that. When voice commands first came out, they were absolute garbage. I am still conditioned to never expect them to work, and am always pleasantly surprised when they do.
To be fair, I largely only use them for things like setting my alarm, because I still have an engrained expectation that they won't work otherwise.
Since I work at one, I stay at hotels free (within my brand) so I can't say I have much experience with airbnb. I do feel they cater to very different markets though, I don't necessarily begrudge the existence of airbnb, even if they are kind of our competition.
OTAs on the other hand, can all get fucked.
They can't delete it as far as I am aware. They could delete all posts and perma-private it I think, but that would be extremely tedious and the admins could revert everything a lot easier.
When you're working within their frameworks, effective protests are limited. It's why I just left.
We never had blockbusters here, but our local equivalent is actually still doing quite well. I think streaming movies is more popular, but a lot of people go there to rent music CDs. Actually buying physical music albums is really expensive.
We still have Toys R Us too actually, I think it does pretty well here for the most part.
So I guess my answer defaults to Radioshack.