Not too surprised. What I’ve seen from friends and family in the industry is a mix of union busting and natural shrinking after the 2020 boom. AI is kinda frowned upon for those AAA companies (at least at middle management and below) so it wasn’t so much job replacement although that option might still galvanize union busting.

Granted the companies in question are Japanese and Korean developers, so the US side is mostly licensing and marking and such. And if I’m being honest, some of those marketers really should lose their jobs, or at least stop getting paid twice that of actual talented people… sigh.

Every morning, instead of pouring ourselves a bowl of cereal, we get a bowl of war crimes.

It’s mostly awful for the first two badges, but playing with fast forward I beat my first badge in White 2 with in game time around 65 hours (so probably around 15 hours). It’s insanely tedious, but I enjoy it late game.

Beg to differ on the Pokemon example, but then again I am a completionist so that type of challenge gives me lots of self satisfaction (plus now I have achievements through RetroAchevements so a little bragging rights). Frankly, things like that should have internal motivation, so literally no reward is fine by me. I’m literally doing a professor oak challenge right now, which is significantly worse, lol.

Where I draw the line is mostly challenges that I just don’t see myself being able to accomplish in a given lifetime. Like the Balatro golden chip on every joker is way too RNG and time consuming for me. I also generally prefer not to have to do a speed run, but that’s mostly because I have kids now and setting something down without worrying about time is ideal.

The immigration part isn’t new, but her economic stance… she has said Margret Thatcher is an inspiration. It’s just that bad. Her views on gender are also quite backwards, which is ironic given she’s the first female Japanese PM.

Let’s say hypothetically, a person like myself went full dictator in the US and seized hundreds of oil tankers across the world these in the name of fighting global warming. What would happen?

There’s lower hanging fruit like kidnapping billionaires and whatnot, but it’s a fun thought experiment if the left actually had someone the way the right pretends they do.

Well, no, they also condemn good guys. They’re just right in this case, lol

That’s what I figured and I appreciate the confirmation. Since I work in education it’s probably a “better safe than sorry” approach since the laws on student privacy are actually enforced, unlike in corporate. (Obviously it’s security theater, though, as web apps and Windows integration make emails and files easy to steal anyway).

Yeah, I think if it’s web apps it’s fine, just aren’t ideal. I was mostly frustrated I couldn’t use a third party email app or OneDrive integration app. It’s more a grievance with the university I work for, though.

I’ll be trying to contribute to that!

Already hit a difficulty since my workplace uses Microsoft for everything and the admins lock out third party stuff. I guess I can access files on outlook and OneDrive via browser based options but God they’re awful.

I guess we just need more global pandemics. It’s a great boom to the video game industry, literally everyone was playing games when AC:NH released.

Him 20-30 years ago probably would have. This is a man who, when I was a kid, made a custom UI for msdos so my brother and I could play games easier. He wouldn’t just tinker, he’d probably be contributing.

Old age and alcoholism has kind of robbed him of that, though. At this point he’ll probably just ask me to fix it if it goes wrong, lol

It’s unfortunate that years as a tech guy at his job has made him less software curious, so probably bazzite then. Rather, I guess when it’s your job to fix things, tinkering isn’t fun anymore.

I ended up with CachyOS over Bazzite but I’m looking into the latter for my dad since I’m guessing it’s more stable and easier.

I just… Idk, I like Arch over Fedora. I blame the little pacman eating my progress whenever I install stuff in konsole. Desktop mode to desktop mode it’s the same KDE Plasma I’d be using, though. Are there any other striking differences between Cachy and Bazzite?

Edit: it was good to bring it up here, y’all are very knowledgeable on these things. It sounds to me that I need to get bazzite for my dad mostly because he won’t want to fuss or work on it and that I made the right call for myself since Cachy (and Arch in general) gives more flexibility. Frankly I might not even give him desktop mode default, he strictly wants something to play from bed in full on retirement mode.

The irony if I stopped using Reddit because there wasn’t new content, at least not in popular. Once I saw the same stupid, fake story on wholesome for the seventh time in a week from yet another repost bot, I left. Lemmy revisits shit from like 10 years ago but at least if there’s a bullshit wholesome repost, it’d promptly get shit on. Lol

There’s isn’t anything particularly wrong about preordering something you’re most certainly going to get day-one, although those are few and far between these days. After all, even fan favorites often come with bugs and glitches day one and you can still encourage producers (and raise kpis) by wishlisting a game instead so they know demand exists. Same for downloading a pre-release demo - they track that.

Early access is usually indie with a few exceptions, so supporting them is good too except when you’re a big fan and would rather see the finished work without spoilers. None the less, support can still exist in other forms.

I personally do neither, but this is more because of financial reasons and my already stupidly huge backlog. The only game I might have preordered this year would have been Silksong and only didn’t because they didn’t permit it. I knew it wouldn’t be released with… ahem, bugs… and that I would certainly play and enjoy it.

Every other 2025 gem was a surprise after release, though.

I think we’re all kinda beat down by life, so I don’t really judge people on it. I just am not one of them, haha. (But I don’t even watch TV or movies much so I’m admittedly a weirdo).

My dad entered in codes for me when I was really little, but that’s kind of another thing entirely. I don’t think little kids have an achievement oriented sorta version of play, so anything goes with them. Once you’re older, that dopamine rush just hits differently, though.

In education you could also consider it a form of scaffolding. Enabling someone to do something they normally can’t do is a form of development, like giving handicaps in games and stuff can foster the skills to not need them eventually.

I actually thought about that after my comment and summoning a tank from nowhere was fun. At least for a little bit… but maybe mostly for the novelty of it all. Also I was like, 12.

I suppose. When I’m referring to cheats, it’s more in regards to invulnerability, infinite resources, etc., which seem to sap the point of having a game in the first place. Like making the fun parts into a grind, rather than the other way around.

That said, I’ll also say sometimes part of the challenge is the grind, so it depends. You have to pick your own poison, right?

Like, take Silksong for example. You lose out on the full experience if you mod out the annoying run from bench to boss, it’s like a 40 second annoyance built in punishment. But I get why you’d do that-- it’s technically there for a reason but I get it. Hell, even the difficulty adjustment mods I can understand.

But making the bosses die in one hit or making yourself invulnerable? Now you’ve lost me, that’s like a core element of the game; you might as well just watch someone else play it because what’s the point.