90% of the games I play are now made by indie or medium sized studios/publishers. I’ve bought several AAA games in that time frame, but almost universally they’ve failed to hold my interest and I typically regret my purchase. I can’t remember the last AAA I bought that I would consider a ‘favorite’.

Also I’m growing more and more detached from what modern, AAA games even feel like. Opening up a game like fortnite or COD where they’ve shoved dozens of different game modes into an all in one program is confusing and overwhelming. It’s off putting to me and I feel like having a ‘get off my lawn’ moment.

See this game documentary for more details: Cricket through the ages

Fair, but given the degradation of gaming these days I think a lot of people who aren’t paying attention have an outdated and understated view of just how bad things are. A parent might be thinking: wow had a subscription, so this game with micro transactions isn’t all that bad, not recognizing just how tuned modern predatory gaming has become at extracting money and addicting its users.

WoW mostly addicted people to playing (consuming their time), you can go hours and hours of gameplay without inputting more money. But mobile games maximize extracting maximal profit for minimal gameplay. There’s no functional difference between a gacha pull and a slot machine pull. It’s an endless, mindless set of pretty lights where you just hit the buy button over and over and over. If you sat people down and made them watch (with a running cost total) most people would immediately see the resemblance to a casino.

I think it’s helpful to break things down into more granular levels of predation, just to help clarify how bad it’s getting, even if all of it is problematic.

I don’t allow myself to play any mobile games anymore. Spent like $300 on one of those idle games. Not worth it. I refuse to play any free to play titles at all, no matter the platform these days.

Haven’t played WoW in awhile, but do they now have ‘you can spend unlimited money’ mechanics? Previously it was just stuff like mounts and character transfers and stuff. I know you can also sell tokens for gold, but I thought gold kind of becomes irrelevant at some point. The best gear is bind on drop right? Theoretically I guess you can pay gold for boost runs, which probably counts as an endless money sink.

I kind of have a mental separation in my head between games with unlimited money sinks (like games with energy mechanics) where you can spend and spend and spend and it never stops, vs games that have a finite of things to buy.

It can still be way over priced, but there’s a maximum amount of money you can throw at the game. Even Diablo 4, with a relatively huge and highly priced number of cosmetic items has effectively a maximum price (though every new cosmetic increases that price). Vs Diablo Immortal allowing you to spend 10s of thousands of dollars and still need to keep spending. I think unlimited money mechanics should be outlawed or at least fully classified as gambling and regulated accordingly.

Both sides are twisting words. Pirating truly isn’t stealing, but rather closer to unauthorized use. The word ‘steal’ is used because they want to imply that it’s the same thing as taking a physical thing that can be lost. It engenders a certain feeling that they’re wanting to invoke. Stealing sounds worse than unauthorized use. Doesn’t mean it’s not wrong to do, but it isn’t the sort of wrong that they’re implying.

Not familiar with the implementation, so maybe this is incorrect, but does Wendy’s tell you when you’re paying more or less? If not, my primary issue would be transparency. I know to show up for happy hour or lunch and I know what the prices will be.

I don’t want to have to memorize the prices because they quietly bump up everything on the menu by $0.50 at peak meal times everyday for an hour and don’t indicate that anywhere.

I don’t actively use it, but I don’t see the point in deleting my account? My HOA is only on a Facebook group, so it’s the only place I can go to check for updates on some stuff (typically trash day getting moved, neighborhood pool stuff, etc). That’s the only use. My understanding is that Facebook tracks me even without an account so doesn’t really seem like I’m gaining anything other than good feelings by deleting my account.

It’s not like I’ve gone out of my way to delete my old Myspace or xanga accounts either, I just stop using them.

Same. I originally got it for YT music. I don’t listen to as much music as I used to without a commute anymore, but my wife and I watch a ton of YouTube. And it’s mildly more difficult to block ads on the Roku too. I know pi holes exist, but my wife plays those freemium games that give you currency for watching ads and blocking all ads will break shit for her and then I have to fix it. Someone will tell me there’s an easy solve I’m sure, but honestly the subscription is just way easier and I really don’t mind paying. $16/mo for a family plan is 100% worth it to just not deal with all of that.

I’ve honestly been really surprised that this was the only ‘real’ assassination attempt in recent memory. I was surprised that no one went after Obama, nor Trump after him and Biden after him. The rage was so high, yet it’s only now that anyone from either side makes a real attempt.

Presumably Sauron could’ve destroyed the ghosts, he was just a little distracted at that time frame, or not yet able or willing to face them directly. Like the Eagles, they can’t really tackle the Sauron problem, so aren’t as much of a solve as they appear.

Also the reason they only fight in the final battle I think is because that is the only battle they’re bound to fight in, I’m not even sure you could use them to fight any other battle than against Sauron’s armies.

To be fair the entire army itself was just a distraction so that frodo could destroy the ring. The ghosts weren’t what caused them to win, they just prevented the death of the bait.

Because the lefties are essentially a loose coalition of every marginally sane political view that remains, containing the actual fiscal conservatives, the center, the progressives and the far left all in a single party.

I think it’d be pretty tricky to get a fire going at that size and get the photo taken before the thin plastic of the tent melted or burst into flames. The tent in the picture is fine, which I honestly think would be impossible with that setup, even if you tried to be quick

It’ll only be weak for the presidents they don’t like

I’ve always kinda wondered about this. I’m not an audio guy and really can’t tell the difference between most of the standards. That said, I definitely remember tons and tons ‘experts’ telling me that no one can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p TV at typical distance to your couch. And I absolutely could and many of the people I know could. I can also tell the difference between 1080 and 4k, at the same distances.

So I’m curious if there’s just a natural variance in an individual’s ability to hear and audiophiles just have a better than average range that does exceed CD quality?

Similar to this, I can tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps, but not 60 to 120, yet some people swear they can. Which I believe, I just know that I can’t. Seems like these guidelines are probably more averages, rather than hard biological limits.

I mostly agree, with the caveat that 99% of AI usage today just stupid gimmicks and very few people or companies are actually using what LLMs offer effectively.

It kind of feels like when schools got sold those Smart Whiteboards that were supposed to revolutionize teaching in the classroom, only to realize the issue wasn’t the tech, but the fact that the teachers all refused to learn and adapt and let the things gather dust.

I think modern LLMs should be used almost exclusively as an assistive tool to help empower a human worker further, but everyone seems to want an AI that you can just tell ‘do the thing’ and have it spit out a finalized output. We are very far from that stage in my opinion, and as you stated LLM tech is unlikely to get us there without some sort of major paradigm shift.

For like 99% of people arguing that ‘voting is useless’ they are also not working towards any other method of improving society. Either by working towards unions, or effective means of protest or even violent revolution. They’re just opting out and doing nothing of value while feeling smug about being ‘above’ such petty squabbles.

If you are the 1% actually doing something of value that isn’t voting. Congrats, I guess? But I think I’m far more likely to convince someone to vote, which is at least somewhat helpful than I am to convince them to join a revolution.

It’s the eyelashes and sort of eyeliner look that isn’t as common on men. Gives him a slightly feminine feel. Also you might be bi or gay.

This. Also in real life, people with specific talents know they’re rare and charge accordingly. Pornhub is full of average stuff and if that does it for you great (though I’d argue anyone considering themselves a ‘porn addict’ is unlikely to be satisfied with basic porn)