Iunnrais

In some contexts this is true. Other contexts reverse this. Ukraine is showing a context in which it is easier to defend than attack, for instance.

Others have answered the question regarding other languages being mistaken for each other by non-speakers (of course this happens). Just wanted to add that Google has had a problem discerning Japanese and Chinese for the longest time and it drives me nuts. This is something a computer should easily be able to distinguish— we’re not talking about human recognition, we’re using an entirely different block of Unicode!

The most infuriating was when Google Maps’s text-to-speech insisted on using the mandarin pronunciation for kanji when navigating IN JAPAN. I’m glad it no longer does that, but at the expense of still not using Japanese… if you have your phone set to English, now it’ll use only the English that appears in road signs, and pronounce the words according to English phonics rules. Not as bad, but still… why? Why not just allow Japanese pronunciation of place names while in Japan? Why must my desire to hear “turn right” also come with having Kinkakuji pronounced “kihnkeighkuhji”?

Because I wasn’t familiar with this project before, and it took a bit of digging on the website to find out, and OP seems to think everyone knows already… this is a project to remake the NES Earthbound game (Mother 1) to the SNES, by means of romhacking SNES Earthbound (Mother 2). It also comes with a bunch of bug fixes to that engine, and they provide a separate patch file you can use to fix the regular Earthbound game without turning it into the Mother 1 remake.

Technically, they have a very short distance to climb if they wanted to: just give the battery (or preferably multiple batteries) to an independent 3rd party to test to their hearts content. If they aren’t full of shit, that’d clear things up in an instant. If someone can show their claims are true, that’s all they need.

If they are completely full of shit, then there’s no no way out of the hole. I think this is unlikely given the carefully selected tests they’ve already released— they have… something. It likely isn’t an entirely non-existent product appearing only on paper.

If they are only partially full of shit, in that they have a battery that is decent or better than current batteries but not totally fulfilling their claims, then it’s a moderate hole to climb out of. Some egg on the face, but survivable.

If they are substantially full of shit, with batteries that are equivalent or worse than current batteries, then they’re gonna be laughed out of the market real fast. Probably mentioned in the same breath as Peter Molyneux, for similar reasons.