The IAU did come up with a boundary: having enough mass to clear (most of) its orbit. That’s because simply mass and roundness are pretty arbitrary numbers that could be set to anything, while clearing the orbit is decently well-defined, at least mostly. It’s a good post to set as the lower limit for the mass of planets. That’s why Ceres is no longer considered a planet as well, there’s millions of asteroids in the Asteroid belt and it’s not massive enough to get rid of them. Similar reasoning goes for Pluto, Eris, Makemake, and their friends in the Kuiper belt. They’re not massive enough to clear their orbits of all those asteroids and other small objects.

Well orbits and neighbours and such I would argue is very important in astronomy. If you were all alone in the void of space and there is nothing else that exist, there wouldn’t be anything to compare against. The idea of relative size, mass, rotation, position, and even time wouldn’t really exist. The whole idea of moons is that it orbits planets, no matter its size, composition, or mass as long as it was naturally formed (hence why the ISS is not considered a moon, it’s an artificial satellite). Planets, by definition, are objects that orbit stars. Moons don’t orbit stars and hence cannot be planets.

I’m not very good with analogies, but here me out. Imagine the hands of a clock, all alone with no clock for the hands to tick. They may as well be pointy bits of metal, they are not hands without the clock. Just as moons are but rocks when without a planet, or how planets are not so without a star.

someone said that triangle used to mean FOV (switching between first person and third person, for example))

One of the main criteria for a planet is that it orbits a star. Moons don’t orbit stars and hence not planets. If Earth was orbiting Jupiter, it would be a moon but not a planet. Moons could harbour life too! Titan (which orbits Saturn) has an atmosphere, and Europa could have subsurface oceans under all that ice.

fair enough. Someone should make a controller with no labels at all and they could just be different colours. I agree with the latter point, I always associate A with the right button, X with the top button.

shame that the big companies don’t use HE…

Oh, interesting. So Sega basically chopped off two buttons from the six button layout to create the Xbox layout, and after Sega stopped making consoles, Xbox used the same layout.

But how round is round enough? What about the millions of asteroids floating in the asteroid belt, many of those are spherical. Should they be considered planets? No, of course not. We can’t just call everything that looks like a sphere a planet. That’s ridiculous.

It was decided that planets 1. should have a stable orbit around a star 2. have enough mass to become spherical (that’s your point) 3. massive enough to clear its orbit, which in our Solar System means there are 8 planets. Pluto is surrounded by millions of Pluto-like objects in the Kuiper belt. Pluto, as well as its buddies Eris, Makemake, etc. are classified as dwarf planets because they are not massive enough to have cleared their orbits.

Dwarf planets are cool too, they might even have life in subsurface oceans under all that ice :0

Moons are not planets because they don’t orbit a star. Stars are pretty well-defined, objects where there is enough mass for nuclear fusion to occur. Planets are definitely not stars, so moons are not planets.

Ah, ok. So that’s why the button switches in the marketing look kind like those low profile keyboard switches. So there is really a fifth one :0

interesting, there’s a fifth one! Replaceable button caps means you can probably change the layout of it, unless they have some stupid notch or something to stop you from doing that (hopefully not though)

Yep that makes more sense. The Supernova is a really good controller as long as you like membrane buttons, while the Cyclone 2 is similar but with TMR sticks and mechanical buttons. 8BitDo’s lineup is confusing (the separation between “Wireless” and “Bluetooth” where the former can still do BT but not with the Switch) but the controllers themselves are great.

Moons are defined as naturally-formed objects that orbit a planet. Natural satellites, basically. What’s wrong with that definition? The Moon is a moon, but Pluto is not. Moons don’t have to be a fixed size, Earth’s moon is relatively big compared to the planet it orbits, Ganymede is larger than Mercury, and some moons are teeny tiny. If you tried to classify them based on size, you’d have a million different categories.

And to add,Jupiter and Mercury belong in the same category as in they both orbit a star (the Sun in this case), both have enough mass to be spherical, and both have clear most of their orbits.

But the category of planets has sub-categories. Mercury is a rocky terrestrial planet while Jupiter is a gas giant as the former is smaller and rocky while the latter is large and made of mostly hydrogen and helium gas. Gas giants can also be called “Jovian planet”, but Jove is just an alternate name for Jupiter (the god) so you’re basically calling Jupiter a “Jupiter planet” which I think is a bit ridiculous but whatever it’s fine. Both are still, of course, planets. It’s like a large tree and a sunflower. Both are still considered plants, but certainly in different subclasses of the category of plant.

Dwarf planets, although not proper planets, are still very interesting objects that could even harbour life in oceans below their icy surfaces. Also, Pluto is not alone in the dwarf planets classification. There’s also Eris, Ceres, Makemake, and probably thousands more we haven’t discovered yet!

I’m pretty sure Pluto doesn’t orbit a planet, so it’s not a moon. And the Moon, not only is it named a moon, but also orbits a planet, so therefore is a moon. One is a moon and the other is not a moon. Moon, not moon.

I think it’s good that there’s at least a few good controllers that offer physically swappable buttons. The GameSir Supernova looks pretty good for the price, while the Tarantula Pro and 8BitDo Pro 3 look like decent symmetrical stick options.

wait, linked in what article? I don’t think I linked an article.

Yeah, 8BitDo, GameSir, etc. have a bunch of good controllers for a very good price, they have feature-rich sub $60 and $70 models like the Cyclone 2, Ultimate 2, and Supernova, as well as a few really good sub $30 models like the Ultimate 2C and Nova 2 Lite. HE /TMR sticks, HE triggers, trigger locks, signal extender charging docks, a bunch of extra remappable buttons, fun colours (esp. the 8BitDo models) while being cheaper than the first party options. You can’t beat the PS haptics though, they are really nice.

I remember that some guy did a USB-C mod on a ds4. For me though, I just have a micro-USB cable always attached to the controller so it feels more like a wired controller with USB on the end.

That’s fair. Although it is a bit confusing when playing an Xbox game, since I grew ip with the Nintendo layout as a kid, I instinctively think that “A” is to the right and “B” is at the bottom.

Well many prefer the Nintendo layout and are used to it, esp. for Nintendo games.

Interestingly, after a bit of searching, it looks like the Nintendo layout came first, but due to a patent or something, SEGA and later Xbox would swap the ABXY buttons. Not saying that either layout should be the “standard” though. Both should ideally coexist (and that includes the PS layout. You can’t really complain about the PS layout changing all the time, it’s basically the same since the original PS)

Also, what do you mean by A being the “default button”? Do you mean that A is for doing most of the interacting (e.g. dialogue, next, OK) or something like that? Because A does that in both Xbox layout (where you interact with the bottom button) and Nintendo layout (where you instead do that with the right button, at least on “standard” controllers. The GameCube controller kind of did its own thing)

Interestingly, it seems that some PS games interact with X and others interact with O. Apparently this is because in Japan, “O” means correct and “X” means wrong, while this significance of “O” doesn’t exist in the US and Europe, so “X” is accept because that’s where the thumb usually rests. Cool!

I mean, fair enough. The ds4 controller is a good reliable controller and has worked for many years and probably will work for many years to come. Only downside is micro-usb though…

There’s certainly a market for physically swappable buttons, otherwise why would the 8BitDo Pro 3 release with that feature (and advertise it), or the Supernova and the Tarantula Pro. It is definitely a desired feature for some, and I think it’s a bit odd that very few controllers have it, especially given some controllers have very niche (but still useful to some) features (see the numerous controllers with screens, Turtle Beach Stealth Pivot that lets you swap to d-pad centric layout, etc.).