Khrux

Microsoft has absolutely been preparing for the end of traditional consoles more or less since the flop of the Xbox One. Their entire push a few years back to make “Everything Xbox” was a bit mistimed and disloyal to their console war cultists but they’re right that it’s the natural end point.

I think we’ll probably see streaming games from their servers reoccur in popularity pretty soon, as much as I’m not a fan of it, because it’s the total end point for non tech savvy consumers, they just pay a subscription, get a controller which can connect to the TV or phone and download an app, no hardware required. Meanwhile every consumer who is resisting the death of tech literacy (everyone else), is going in this direction. The physical console will reduce in popularity year by year as it fills a niche that nobody needs anymore.

That being said, the popularity of the switch and steam deck interests me, because it’s a third direction away from traditional consoles that I’d not have predicted.

Late reply but I am really good with spice in the first stage, eating it. Then if it’s really spicy, I’ll have a few days of bad stomach ache and shits that actually feel like they’re burning.

That’s the real thing I wasn’t ready to admit until you said it. I don’t want a screwdriver because it’s less impressive to see. People will look at me and make the mistake of thinking they couldn’t do it, but when it felt like LEGO, people were more likely to be interested.

I’d have preferred a click lock of sorts, because in the cases I’m wanting to swap my battery, I’m probably on the move with no access to power / charging, such as hiking, coach rides, camping etc.

Currently I’m pretty happy with a portable charger but I’d much rather have one or two fully charged batteries, both for the speed of getting back to full charge and reducing the speed of battery degradation.

I’m already a big fan of having a minimalist daily carry, I have my phones with my bank cards on it, my house keys and maybe my camera or water bottle, and that’s all. If be happy to shove a few spare batteries in a little case when I know I’ll be out the house for some time, but a screwdriver is something I’d prefer to not have to carry every day.

I’m actually quite fond of a large screen, but it’s not enough of a selling point for me to not go for this as my next phone. I have large enough hands that I don’t struggle with reach on a large phone, so the main drawback is the additional battery power. But the fairphone has a swappable battery anyway, so that issue is more or less nullified.

My pet peeve is the front camera, I cannot wrap my head around the lunacy of having a large dead spot on the front of the phone, to the point I’d rather have a phone with no front facing camera than a big dead spot. People throw out screens for less.

Fairphone is almost the ideal phone for me, except this, and although I can probably remove the camera module, I can’t swap the screen for one without the dead patch.

Maybe it’s luck but I’ve shamelessly torrented in the UK my whole life, I wouldn’t be surprised if in the past fifteen years, I’ve downloaded a petabyte on pirated content.

I’ve never used a VPN and the one time I got a letter from my ISP, I suspect it was a scam anyway. I have used at least 4 ISPs in this period and two mobile networks, I’ve even used public and work WiFis with not issue.

I’m not sure if this a UK thing or if I’m just wildly lucky.

Tragically when I first switched to Lemmy, my friends convinced me to get Instagram to stay in better contact with them.

The difference in how much I engage with Instagram reels Vs YouTube shorts is huge. YouTube shorts suck and I get cripplingly bored or annoyed with them after 2 minutes, where as Instagram reels suck and I lose multiple hours to that fucking app. Fortunately I run a version of the app without ads etc so I’m only rotting myself and not contributing as directly to the end times.

I never tried tiktok and I’m too low willpower to stop using Instagram until they make it too shit to put the effort in, but I do feel that YouTube shorts sre the worst interation of this shitty format.

One thing I did notice a while back, was seeing the 2022ish interface for YouTube and Google search and feeling how dated it was, still absolutely usable mind you, just clearly with a design ethos from an older era.

Most the time, I feel that changes Google make are absolutely arbitrary, rounding a button and then squaring it again, but I need to give them credit that there is something more, something about staying at the forefront of GUIs. It’s still all bullshit of course, the old one looks older but is identically useful.

I wouldn’t be surprised if basically every person with over 1k hours in a game isn’t seeking some sort of escapism, not counting the anomalies like people leaving servers running etc.

I suppose every minute in a game is escapism of some sort, but escapism from dysphoria or something else significant, I think would be common.

Or anyone can tell anon is alone in one glance.

This is what the US have encouraged Taiwan to do. Taiwan wanted to purchase a few incredibly expensive fighters and ship from the USA, but basically all war simulations just had China target these and secure a fast win. The USA instead encourage Taiwan to take the “porcupine” technique, spreading many small weapons, particularly handheld anti-aircraft type weaponry across the country. The plan is to make invasion too inconvenient. The flip side is that without a reliable way to show a display of strength, anywhere the larger aggressor does pick on (USA to UK China to Taiwan) can focus on one part of the country and reliably cause massive damage there.

The chances of a future where the UK and USA go to war where those military bases aren’t long since gone is nearly impossible.

I’m on a GTX 980ti and my plan is to pick up a 4000 series, maybe a 4080 super, when the 6000 series is announced.

To be fair, my 980ti has been amazing at punching unreasonably far above where it should.

Honestly I think their higher upvote / post ratio is a better formula. Most of Lemmy has too little engagement on it’s posts for my tastes.

I think he’s holding it deceptively far from his body to make it look bigger, and it’s having the same effect on his hands.

I’ve been told by literal Brewdog barstaff that if they know he’s coming, they need to encourage their female staff to either dress moderately or not come in, to minimise his sexual harassment.

I don’t know how true that is, but the city I’m based in, which is pretty happy to boycott assholes is filled with people who boycott Brewdog.

I do think a huge world with an engaging and dense design can still be made worse with size. In some games like Skyrim, Breath of the Wild or GTA 5, you could probably drop me anywhere and I’d know where I was, half due to good and differing region design and half because the map isn’t that big.

Back in 2015 I’d dream of a GTA 5 expansion that adds San Francisco and Las Vegas to the map, turning the north and east of the map in to a 500 yard straight of water, but in reality, two more large cities and their surroundings suburbs and wilderness would have never kept it’s memorability like the first region.

Honestly I think these games need more points of interest that are not marked on the map whatsoever, and don’t matter towards 100% completion.

I eventually went through the Witcher 3 post game and got every single marker but it was basically background work while I listened to audiobooks, I didn’t come across anything interesting for hours. However I do acknowledge that those markers aren’t necessary meant to be sought out, but stumbled upon.

The execs probably get away fine from it as well, even if the company sinks, they’ll end up high up somewhere else.

Online service games are just peak venture capitalism, grinding a small studio to dust and causing massive misery followed by unemployment for a 1/50 shot at making a money printer.

Funnily enough The Witcher 3 is one of the games I always think of for the trope of not following the plot. Often I think of the ludonarrative dissonance specifically between Gestalt’s paternal drive to find and protect Ciri Vs Gwent.

For large scale, AAA open world games, I mostly think of Breath of the Wild, which transparently sets itself up as being about taking as long as you need to get strong enough to save the world and Red Dead Redemption 2, which doesn’t care about the stakes of the world.

I sometimes can’t wrap my head around the fact that Witcher 3, BotW and RDR2 were each two years apart. I don’t feel any open world game has occupied the cultural space those games did since.