I gave it about a three hours and got pretty bored, sadly. Just for me though, it was also a mood thing.

They were probably nude

Man I need to find the record I have that came with this comic.

Is he really using Epstein’s plane? That’s insane…

People went from paying for cable and addon channels, to having a consolidated service, to having that service split and paid for addon channels again.

Not to mention keeping track of when they pay, since they’re all different dates unless you do it on specific days all at once.

Then there’s self hosting and having everything in one spot. Phew, nothing like it.

Will Simpsons Did it have evolved into Marvel Did it?

I no longer wished to use Logitech products after using G-Hub. Most horrible software.

Maybe we can get ICP on board

Luckily steamless is piss easy to use because Steams “DRM” is only meant to be preventative. As in, you’re playing it on steam for the community, workshop, cloud saves, per game notes, control scheme setups, etc etc.

Peanut butter.

On the bum.

When we were young, my partner dared my friend to put peanut butter on bread and stick them under his underwear on his butt for the rest of the night.

He did and told me he wasn’t able to eat peanut butter for almost a decade lmao. Absolute trooper for going through with it.

No, only slate and graphite

I feel like this would vary by shop. There’s an automotive shop with a relatively small waiting room, because they are less than a block from a ~2 mile long road of shops. Very walkable, just ever so slightly uphill. You can usually walk and find a number of stores to window shop at before heading back.

There’s another automotive shop a bit aways from my house. It’s on a mostly solitary street, a few miles away from any shops, and is not an area you would want to be walking in. They have a fairly large waiting room.

But I think they all say you’re free to to do as you please because there’s not really anything for you to do for the next 2 to 48+ hours, depending on what you’re getting done.

It’s in my garage at the moment, but from memory (it’s been a year or two now) the USB-3.0 header straight up fell off. The PCB should be fine, which is why I have a feeling that I could likely just resolder it, so long as the pads themselves on the PCB were ok.

I’ll see if I can find some time this week to dig it out and share a photo, thank you for the offer!

Yeah EVGA were my go-to. I have a 1660, 2070s, and 3080 all from them.

In fact they have been my only GPU manufacturer. I don’t know what I’ll do for the future.

Lol, yeah. The ROG line of phone has an RGB backlight with the ROG logo.

Honestly, I liked it. Could be configured to per-app notifications, and could be synced to other phones that had it. Not that I ever got to use this feature, it was returned to me BROKEN! lol

I hate ASUS. Used to be way in on them – well not way but relatively. I had the ASUS ROG Phone. The screen unfortunately broke and needed to be sent into service. More unfortunate, it was just about 1 month out of warranty.

So I get it set up to send it. ASUS charges me $300 for the phone screen replacement. It took over 8 months for them to get it back to me. When the phone finally did arrive, the RGB lighting didn’t work, the NFC didn’t work, and the screen itself had an orange hue in the upper right corner. To boot, it would only connect to AES Wi-Fi networks, so I can’t even use it without a SIM card because who the fuck uses AES. They didn’t even fucking fix it properly. I never got responses, sending e-mails for months after it was finally returned to me.

Now, in this time I was really patient. I was using a temporary phone. Around month 5, I just needed a new phone and was looking into the newly released ROG Phone 2. I figured the ROG 1 would still get plenty of usage as a spare device. Well I had the ROG 2 until AT&T decided that the phone didn’t have the supported bands anymore, so my >1 year old phone is now as effective as an iPod 3g. Just 6 months later, screen itself just died, no fall, no nothing. I can use SCRCPY to use it, the screen just doesn’t work. I really, really tried to give them a shot and the benefit of the doubt.

Now, in between these ~2 years I’d accumulated a few accessories for the phones, keycaps and backpacks. Just little things – ngl, the bag and the keycaps are still really good quality. I also decided to upgrade my PC, and was looking at a nice new motherboard to rebuild my existing PC with.

So I get the ASUS B550 or something like that. Stupidly bought it from Newegg, first time. The motherboard arrives and upon building the computer I just cannot get it to POST. I reach out to the 2 likely culprits, the PSU and the MoBo. EVGA sends me an entirely new PSU, free of charge, and tells me not to bother shipping it back. ASUS on the other hand would not accept that the motherboard could have been the point of failure! And when I FINALLY was able to fully prove that every single component in the board works EXCEPT the MoBo, they told me to take it up with where I purchased it from, Newegg. So I would get to pay some ~20% restocking fee on a broken motherboard, instead of the manufacturr just replacing a defective board. Oh, the best part? The motherboards USB-3.0 header was broken, came right off when trying to plug it in. No wonder it wouldn’t POST.

Fuck you, ASUS. Fuck your shitty warranty, your awful customer support, your horrible treatment of customers who put their trust into you. I will never support ASUS again and I will always vehemently suggest anyone else. It’s really, really simple to be a good OEM, all it takes is replacing things that break. ASUS treats every single customer like a scammer who is trying to get free stuff out of them, which IMO just goes to show that’s exactly the mindset ASUS has as well.

I still have the motherboard btw. If anyone knows how to repair a USB-3.0 header I’ll either be glad to be guided through a repair or I’ll just send it to you for cost of shipping. It’s just going to sit in my garage otherwise.

They’ve pretty much saturated the U.S. market; there’s not much room left to grow here

That… doesn’t make sense to me. So because there’s no room to grow, they pull out of the U.S. and lose the likely ~$1 bil spent on digital stickers for live streamers?

I have a feeling their comment was tongue in cheek. I absolutely agree too, for while I do think there is some merit in artificial difficulty and creativity within set restrictions, I also enjoy games much more when I emulate them and have save states.

I think a great example that bridges the gap between more modern-style hardware and daily living, and old difficult repeatable gameplay is the era of the Gameboy Color. So many of the games for these style of consoles were meant to be played in bursts (arcades, anyone?) due to the on-the-go nature, and since that fit so in line with the already existing mechanisms gaming had – artificial difficulties by design – there is a very streamlined progression from 1980’s games and early 2000’s games.

So, what changed? Well let me tell you, it wasn’t the Blackberry.

Honestly, the iPhone. As mobile game consoles like the Nintendo DS got better, games got more fully fledged like the home console games were. Developers were recreating game experiences like Spyro, putting in huge games in tiny mobile consoles (Toon Link, anyone?). Yes, the Nintendo DS still had its shovelware but the iPhone was the new bridge that gapped the old arcade style pay-to-play. Games with artificial difficulty now had micro-transactions allowing you to bypass the designed limitations. As mobile consoles got better games, mobile gaming got far, far worse, leading us to “”““random””“” RNG -gacha and lootboxes and all the great gambling starters.

That’s only further developed for offshoots of software. Just look at all the junk between the: FOSS stores, Apple Store, Play Store, Samsung Store, Meta-Quest Store, going even further some devices have their own separate store entirely. And now these stores ship updates, so you don’t even have to finish your game before selling it!

Ironically, Nintendo paved the way for a really great opportunity, then capitalists saw the opportunity to exploit the free market and now there is literal garbage everywhere.

I somewhat disagree about being “unable to go back”, but I will say it’s sheerly the style of game itself.

Take a game like A Link to the Past. Now look at a game like Retro City Rampage. Despite some 30+ years difference, they are visually nearly identical. Or any of the 2D Sonic games, them being 30 years apart is effectively meaningless.

But yeah, trying to play old Tomb Raider? If you’re expecting even PS3 graphics, boy are you in for a surprise.

However I think there is also an annoying amount of push for “better graphics or bust”. That was the main debate for the console wars, the Wii sucked because its graphics weren’t good and it’s a baby console, Gears of War and Lost Planet for the XBox are the pinnacle of gaming!1! What! No the God of Wa- sorry I got caught in a flashback.

But there are plenty of games you can emulate that can be upscaled and remove the archaic visuals, then it’s just the game design and control scheme. Red Dead Revolver looks and plays great, there’s no reason for anyone to stop playing outside of it just being a little less “AAA”. Similarly, pretty much any of the PS2 exploration games - Jak and Daxter, Spyro, Sly, Ty, Crash - hold up wonderfully today. They’re a bit slower, but they are the foundation that modern games of that genre use.

I don’t think them being slower, clunkier, less “AAA” makes them bad games. I think it makes them older games, and that is not inherently bad. In fact, I would argue that it’s gamers being bad at them, and that games today in many ways are easier to keep people engaged. The D&D arcade game is great, difficult, and would be absolutely dunked on by gamers today for all of its awkward gameplay.

This reminds me of an article I read about “Blade Runner, and old movies in general, are harder to watch because contemporary audiences have gotten used to movies that are faster, which makes them better.” The whole article was effectively trying to state that because new movies have shaped audiences, old movies are becoming unwatchable. In some respects, I’m sure there’s merit to that. In many other respects, I completely disagree. Just because something is in a different language does not remove its value. I see that as a reflection of the viewer, not a reflection of the art.

With that in mind, old video games are a different language. We have to play them with the mindset that things will not be familiar. That does not make them bad, it makes them something to learn, and it’s going to force you to learn things that are uncomfortable because it’s unfamiliar to what you would rather be doing. Old movies are a different language.

Just because you may not understand it does not mean it is worse. Likewise, just because you are familiar with modern games doesn’t make them better either. And finally, better is subjective for the most part anyway. (None of this is directed at you btw, lol not at all trying to say that you don’t understand things!)