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Overpopulation will continue to be a problem for decades to come

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Everybody is now talking about overpopulation and how big of a problem it has become. Well, I’m not one to argue with this and I actually have some unfortunate news related to the matter I’m afraid. The latest studies suggest that we’re very unlikely to see a population decline anytime soon. In fact, it would appear that the problem is only going to get worse in the coming decades. According to Discovery News, a new report presented by the United Nations on Monday indicates that overpopulation will continue to be an issue all over the world at least until the end of the century.

The UN reports paints a pretty bleak picture of humanity’s future, with the most optimistic of predictions placing the human population at 11 billion by 2100. At most, researchers expect that no less that 13.3 billion people will walk the Earth at the turn of the century. Talk about overpopulation!. By comparison, there are currently ‘only’ about 7.3 billion souls roaming the planet and I think most of us would agree that we have at least a couple of billion too many as it is. At 13.3 billion Earth would have almost double the number of humans that it does today and possibly double the number of problems as well.

Having said that, there’s also a bit of good news, albeit it does not apply to every part of the world. The report indicates that the population will continue to grow at a relatively slow rate in the US and should reach about 450 million by the end of the century. It seems a lot when looking at the approximately 325 million we see today, however, this growth seems almost insignificant compared to some of the other countries out there.

The Sub-Saharan regions of Africa, in particular, will likely face massive overpopulation problems in the next decades due to “persistent high levels of fertility and the recent slowdown in the rate of fertility decline.” All in all, the human population here is expected to grow from the current 1.2 billion all the way up to a very worrying 5.6 billion. Still, the most overpopulated continent will continue to be Asia where the population will continue to grow steadily until at least 2050 before slightly declining towards the second half of the century.

“These results have important policy implications for national governments. Rapid population growth in high-fertility countries can exacerbate a range of existing problems: environmental (resource scarcity and pollution), health (maternal and child mortality), economic (unemployment, low wages and poverty), governmental (lagging investments in health, education and infrastructure) and social (political unrest and crime),” says the report.

Geek Culture

The Demo Festival for The Game Awards is being held by PS Store

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As part of The Game Awards, The PS Store is hosting a Demo Festival that appears to bring a number of pre-release testers to PS5 users. At the time of this writing, the tab on the PS Store only has two demos. The Mountain King and You Suck at Parking are for Bramble. The list should, however, expand given that a Forspoken demo is currently all but guaranteed.

Although neither listing currently mentions an expiration date, given that the promotion is connected to The Game Awards, it’s possible that they will do so sooner rather than later. The deals in a new PS Store sale that coincides with Geoff Keighley’s program are available through December 12th, 2022.

If any other demos are released, we’ll update this post. What game do you hope to start first?

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Anyone willing to pay can now access the Tesla FSD driver assistance beta

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Elon Musk announced in a tweet that Tesla is opening up its so-called full self-driving (FSD) beta to anyone who has paid for it after gradually opening it up over the past few years. In North America, he added, “Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta is now available to anyone who requests it from the car screen, assuming you have purchased this option.”

With automated features like automated city steering, automatic parking, smart vehicle summoning, and traffic light/stop sign recognition, FSD builds on Tesla’s “Autopilot” driver-assist feature. The feature is a paid upgrade that costs $15,000 after a $3,000 price increase in September.

Tesla initially stated that it would introduce fully autonomous driving features in 2018, but they didn’t actually do so until July 2021, to a select group of “careful and expert drivers.” The version 9.0 beta saw a wider release, but testers could only participate in an early access program. Tesla removed the requirements for at least 100 Autopilot miles and an 80 safety score on the most recent FSD release, so now anyone can get it.

However, Tesla is widely implementing FSD at a time when regulators are closely monitoring it. In a recent expansion of its investigation into a string of Tesla crashes involving first responders, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is now looking at most models. It is also looking into more than 30 incidents involving Autopilot in a separate investigation.

Musk has long promised fully autonomous vehicles without a human driver. Most recently, he said he believed it might come this year, but in Tesla’s most recent earnings report, he backtracked on those statements. Following Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, the price of Tesla’s stock has been falling precipitously recently.

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Microsoft Acknowledges Sony Has Better Games

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The unreasonably high proposal by Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard has led to a drawn-out and difficult period of discussions. Without going into too much detail, the short version of this is that Sony is attempting to block the purchase, while Xbox, of course, is urging regulators to approve it. The most recent assertions have been made public, and according to Microsoft, Sony’s first-party work is superior than its own.

The business argues that because Sony has more exclusive titles, it doesn’t have require games like Call of Duty to be successful. Microsoft claims that many of Sony’s first-party games are higher quality than its own creations, despite this. To put it another way, the company has admitted in writing that its own games fall short of those produced by Sony.

Apparently “equal in size to Activision and roughly double the size of Microsoft’s game publishing company,” the article continues by referring to Sony as “the dominating console provider” and a “strong games publisher.”

It is merely one of numerous refutations to Sony’s own account regarding the entire song and dance (which, by the way, makes allusions to the inevitable PS6). To try and secure this deal, Microsoft is at pains to show out that Sony will be OK without Call of Duty, framing itself as the underdog while making the aforementioned arguments. All of this is very taxing, don’t you think?

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