Come to FFXIV! We have decent stories, a voluntary PvP arena with multiple modes, and cat girls!
PaintedSnail
The metrics are the only important part! How else are we supposed to know how good the line is unless we constantly stress test the line by collecting data? Your ability to use the line is not a useful metric, so we don't worry about that.
We know when you lie. We can see uptime stats.
Basically, yes, though I think they have special hydraulic pullers, too. I forget the exact name. They have to take special measures if the day is too cold.
According to Practical Engineering, tracks are no longer given a gap. The gap causes premature wear and excess noise. Instead, they lay the track under tension, and weld the joins between sections.
There is still a limit on how much heat they can handle before buckling, of course. I just thought that was a neat innovation.
And it took a lot of hard work by a lot of people to adopt new date standards to avoid that problem. Now it's time to adopt new IP standards, and it's going to take a lot of hard work by a lot of people.
I'm not saying planned obsolescence isn't a thing (because it is), but that's not the only reason. Making phones smaller, lighter, faster, and more feature-dense all mean that the phone has to be built with tighter manufacturing and operating tolerances. Faster chips are more prone to heat and vibration damage. Higher power requirements means the battery has a larger charge/discharge cycle. And unfortunately, tighter operating tolerances mean that they can fall out of those tolerances much more easily.
They get dropped, shaken, exposed to large environmental temperature swings, charged in wonky ways, exposed to hand oils and other kinds of dirt, and a slew of other evils. Older phones that didn't have such tight tolerances could handle all that better. Old Nokia phones weren't built to be indestructible, they are just such simple phones that there isn't much to break; but there's a reason people don't use them much anymore. You can still get simple feature phones, but the fact remains that they don't sell well, so not many are made, and the ones that are made don't have a lot of time and money invested in them.
Now Voyager is an extremely simple computer, made with technology that has huge tolerances, in an environment that is mostly consistent and known ahead of time so the design can deliberately account for it, had lots of testing, didn't have to take mass production into its design consideration, didn't have to make cost trade-offs, and has a dedicated engineering team to keep it going. It is still impressive that it has lasted this long, but that is more a testament to the incredible work that was and is being put into it than to the technology behind it.
Nope, you can do that with GPay, which is not the same as Google Pay, which is not the same as Google Wallet, but they all connect to the same account. Yay Google naming 😑.
"Google Pay" app is going away, but the "GPay" app is not, and you can use that for person to person transactions. Yay Google naming conventions.
Because Google is Google and can't keep their own shit straight, there is a bit of confusion. "Google Pay" is going away, but "GPay" is not. You can still use the GPay app for person to person transactions. Google Wallet is used for things like tap-to-pay. Both apps link to the same underlying account.
Time management is different for everyone, and when you're on a deadline, or just dealing with a one-off situation, the extra research has no value.
Sometimes you don't need to know how the clock works, you just need to know what time it is.
Yeah, the side quests are rather unimaginative in their tasks. For the most part they're not worth doing unless you want a bit more of a dive into the world lore. (A few give unique rewards, though.) Even some story quests are "player does menial chores for good karma with the locals because the devs need to pad things out a bit."
Shadowbringers is worth it, though. It's my personal favorite story arc. Endwalker, the one after, is my second favorite.