“Mr President, there are aliens…”

“Yes, I know, that’s why we’re building the fence. It’s going to be fhe best, tallest fence anyone’s seen in the history of fences. And Mexico is going to pay for it!”

“… sigh…”

Same thing with the recent “””carmageddon””” game, that basically has fuck all to do with actual Carmageddon.

I guess it’s easier to get/use the naming rights to a beloved franchise and just hope for customers that way, instead of making an ACTUALLY GOOD GAME.

You cut them in half and count the rings.

Same thing here in the Netherlands: cheap, poorly made Chinese fatbikes that were incredibly easy to unlock flooded the market. The result: teens are riding around at 40kph and stunting on a bike that has no brakes. Because those wear down rapidly if you overclock the motor, and nobody does maintenance on those shitty bikes.

So now they’re trying to regulate it, much too late. When honestly, they should just ban the fucking things for anyone under 25 without a disability…

Assume all contacts are hostile and practice good OPSEC.

Which distro would you recommend for gaming? I usually hear people like Mint for that.

God yes. Back in 1995, the web felt like a little village. You knew everyone in your particular digital neighbourhood so to speak. Lots of great forums, lots of little niche websites… nothing was really commercialised yet:

And frankly, I liked that it was a nerdy thing as well. Everyone shared at least some level of knowledge and understanding of what the web was. And we were all some level of nerd, whether it was Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, trains, flightsim, Sci-Fi or whatever niche interest you had.

We lost all that when we made the web too accessible to the general public. We should’ve kept it to ourselves.

Not exactly surprising, and certainly a broader trend than the UK. Lots of parents aren’t really parenting. There’s parents who just let kids do whatever and ‘they will tell you when they are ready’. That soft approach just doesn’t work for things like this.

There’s also plenty of parents who see school as glorified childcare, and that teaching them even basic life skills should be the school’s job, not the parents.

It’s certainly disconcerting. One would hope that parents who CHOOSE to have a child would actually want them to grow up well and properly prepared for life’s challenges. Instead, kids are more like Instagram fodder, something to be shown off but otherwise nog given much attention.

Very scary indeed.

Yeah… no. None of that sounds appealing.

‘Curbing toxicity with AI’ means a bot is going to ban you because it doesn’t recognise sarcasm.

And ‘new tech to verify your identity’ sounds like a privacy violation at best.

‘Verifying that you own a product before they let you post in its community’ is a complete lack of understanding of how people use places like this.

Digg can fuck right off.

The main thing holding me back is the fact that it doesn’t have an OLED display. With the price hike between the original and 2, in my opinion it should’ve launched with an OLED as standard. When even cheap phones come with it, Nintendo has no excuse not to include one.

And the game prices also aren’t helping, I imagine. Not when the games themselves are lacklustre as well. The new Mario Kart should’ve been a system seller. But the people I know who own it, have reverted back to playing the previous version. That’s a baaaad look.

I’ll likely buy the Switch 2 when they launch an OLED and release a new Animal Crossing.

I was one of the very, very, VERY earliest people to ever buy Minecraft. This was late 2009 during the early alpha development.

I bought it because it looked fun and relaxing. I introduced a fair few people to the game, but frankly… I expected it to remain a niche thing due to how it looked and the fact that it didn’t really have set gameplay goals. You basically had to make your own fun.

It was wild to see it become a cultural icon. It was even wilder to go to the cinema and watch a billion dollar movie starring Jack Black based on a dumb game about blocks that I bought from some random Swedish dude’s site 16 years before.

Shit, that’s definitely the kind of people you don’t want to know your name.

I imagine you probably gave a card to someone who handed it off to another guy who donated his jacket to Goodwill or something like that.

What in the ever loving FUCK is GOING ON THERE in the US. This is the kind of silly shit you expect from a third world dictatorship. He really just… renamed the fucking thing and put his own name first. That’s just utterly disrespectful, not to mention distasteful in general.

It used to be you had to at least die in order to get your name put on things….

5 years ago I would’ve called you insane, but with everything happening right now… it’s a distinct possibility.

RAM’s unaffordable, GPU’s will likely be harder to come by and more expensive. Microsoft is actively driving people away from Windows, Steam is launching their Steam Machine…

Here’s hoping many gamers will jump to Linux and grow that platform instead. But even then, too expensive hardware will be an issue.

We’re living in interesting times.

That doesn’t feel too surprising. There’s nothing really new to buy in terms of hardware; likely everyone who wanted a specific console now has one. And others like myself are waiting: I want a Switch 2 OLED, but that’s not available yet.

And there’s also the fact that many game releases now suck, with no real must-have titles for console to boost sales right now. And new physical titles are expensive.

It’s just a dip caused by a combination of factors. If GTA VI releases next november, the chart is going to look like a rocket taking off.

Well ‘buy local’ tends to be the solution most people offer when this particular discussions arises. But I agree that only solves some issues. Especially since local shops also get that stuff from the same sources.

I’m more of a ‘there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism’ kinda guy.

But frankly, I’ve got too much going on to worry about the ethics of where I’m sourcing pens and notepads. I’d rather focus on the big things.

It’s also a question of availability. Looking at my last ten purchases, simply none of those were available locally here. We don’t HAVE a camera store here to buy things like lens caps. The stationary store where I went didn’t HAVE large elastic bands, only small ones. Nor did they have the specific Pentel gel pen that I use for work. The shoes I bought (US size 17) are not available, since stores don’t stock past size 13.

I did buy a laptop stand, so technically I could’ve bought say, a plastic box or some books locally to do the same thing. But the stand is nicer.

For me, it’s not about the price. I’d rather spend 10 for something great than 1 for something that sort of works. I am by no means cheap. But I do have specific needs and tastes that my local stores don’t cater to.

And hey, if they won’t sell me what I need, I’m not going to feel bad about buying it somewhere that will 🤷‍♂️

Well, that’d mean missing out on some really cool stuff.

Games like Vampire Survivors and Stardew Valley were made by a solo developer. A couple thousand bucks is a LOT of money for some people. I’d hate to have missed out on either of those.

We certainly do need some quality control, but I don’t think the financial route is the way to go.

This shit frustrates me to no end. These days I just look on Aliexpress first, just so I’m aware what the usual drop shipping item actually goes for.

It’s very annoying that platforms like Amazon tolerate this. Because it’s actively driving me away from them. I want to see good quality items, not the same Aliexpress shit priced ten times higher. But I can’t FIND the good stuff because the platform is literally full of garbage.