William

That’s awesome. I can’t wait now.

Oh, I’m not trying to make it happen. I just think it’s inevitable that someone will. And probably pretty soon.

That’s an interesting idea. I’ll have to see if I can do something of the sort and see if it matters. I have a feeling it’ll still pop the stupid messages about connecting to the internet, but maybe I’ll get lucky and it won’t.

Thanks!

To add to this, my LG C2 kept popping up a message that I could use Alexa with it if I connected it to Wifi.

To kill that message, I did. Now it pops up advertisements in that same way from time to time.

If I take it offline again, I get messages about connecting it again.

It’s effectively impossible to kill ads on it.

A couple years ago I signed up for an email provider so I could use my own domain and avoid Google being able to kill my email account. They’ve got a spam filter, but it’s ridiculously bad. I’ve been looking for better ways, but still haven’t found them.

Ironically, I’m hoping a free locally-run LLM will soon be able to filter emails appropriately. I haven’t seen anyone trying yet, but I’m sure they’re out there.

Nobody should ever be banned without knowing exactly what they were banned for. Either he’s lying (I doubt it) or they didn’t bother telling him, just gave him a perma ban without notice.

That’s pretty shitty. They deserve the shit storm this will kick up.

I think, even without a source, that’s it’s pretty much a given that each generation of cards is going to be about the same price as the last, possibly adding in some more for inflation.

Also, the xx80s and xx90s were always for gamers with insane expectations. The xx60s and xx70s are much more reasonable and are still amazing. Anyone complaining about the prices of the top end cards should just re-evaluate what they need instead of grumbling about prices.

“we had an argument in a bar and I got up and left, then she sent the text,”

If you abandon your girl in a bar, you should absolutely expect to lose her, birthday or not. She is under no obligation at that point to consider his feelings about his special day.

Oh man. There’s only one of those dungeons that I actually like, and I got almost 2/3 through it solo, and decided that I just didn’t care enough. I’m sure I could have done it with enough tries… But ugh. So time consuming.

I totally respect people that do it even once, and people that do it for every dungeon are basically gods.

When I was a kid, Tomb Raider was a pretty easy game, except this one part that required absolutely perfect timing for a some running and jumping between platforms for a bonus item.

At the start, I could make it to the next platform. After a while, I could do 2. Eventually, I got 3. After a long, long time, I finally managed to string all of them together… And screwed up the very last one.

Here’s the thing, though. I got it on the very next attempt. I had learned that sequence so well that it actually wasn’t hard any more, even though it was nearly impossible for me at the start.

Afterwards, my parents (who watched the whole thing) told me they had never seen me focus on something so intently for so long and they couldn’t believe I managed it.

That’s what souls games are, from start to finish. Every single encounter is basically impossible at first, until you die and learn enough to get through it. But you start from the beginning of the game every freaking time.

They’ve been quietly preventing Firefox from becoming a threat for a long time. There are constant little things that just mysteriously don’t work as well on Firefox, for no reason. People have changed the user agent and found that it works just like on Chrome with Chrome’s agent. Youtube was doing it for a while, and reviews on the search are another instance. I was at the Dentist’s and they were asking for a Google review, but I couldn’t find the spot to leave it. I switched to Chrome and it was magically right where it was supposed to be.

So they already think Firefox could be a threat, and preventing ad-block is going to make it a bigger threat.

Because this is likely to drive a lot of people to try switching. And they’re the type of people who try to convince other people to switch, too. Techies, etc.

When forced with trying to keep family safe from abusive and/or manipulative ads, this is a pretty hot topic. Plenty of people tell their family what browser to use and even set it up for them with ad blockers, etc.

I’ve recently had some experiences that tell me my parents are at a vulnerable age and can’t fully protect themselves, so it’s pretty important to have control of this.

There’s a few things going on. At first blush, I agree with you. The vast majority of that stuff doesn’t need to be captured.

But if you don’t capture everything, how do you know you got the stuff that will be important or wanted in the future?

Also, historians are going to find that data to be an absolute gold mine. Unfortunately, a lot of it is in the form of video now and takes a ton of storage space.

I think, in the end, most people are not willing to pay the price to archive everything. But some are, and they’re doing it.

Any time I see the word “exclusive” I know it’s a crap article. Yes, your own writers only write for you. That’s not what “exclusive” was supposed to mean for journalism.

Being unable to come to an agreement isn’t “exclusive” news. No shit. It’s not even article-worthy.

Honestly, free-2-play economics are so baffling that nothing they do surprises me.

There’s a Genshin Impact McDonalds collab where you have to buy a very specific happy meal to get some in game wings (which I very much want) and some other garbage. I actually considered just buying the meal and giving the food to someone else (homeless?) because I can’t eat that crap on my diet. But instead, I settled for telling everyone around me that I want the code if they get one, and I’ll just hope.

How does that help Genshin Impact? I imagine it helps in the same way as this nonsense physical copy. People get excited about physical copies, even in normal boxes, and they get excited about exclusive items that can’t be obtained any other way. That pulls in a little money directly from the sales of the plastic, but it also creates a ton of buzz around the game like this whole thread.

I think. As I said, it’s pretty baffling. I have to file it under “there’s no such thing as bad PR” most of the time.

I don’t think they meant “you” you. They meant “you” in the general sense. They’re saying that people either love it or hate it, with not very many centrists.

I’m not sure that’s true, though. I think, like you, most people are either centrist, or have no opinion at all. The vocal people go all one way or the other, though… Except you for some reason. :D

The disc is 100% trash. People that buy this want the cards, keychains, and (especially) the exclusive in-game items.

I am surprised that it doesn’t also come with some in-game premium currency, though.

As for $40 in-game… That alone is going to net you some trash. You’ll pull a lot more on the free gems you get just for exploring and playing. Sure, you could get a great character, but the odds are back-loaded so that you generally won’t pull a 5-star in the first 70 pulls. $40 is like 40 pulls, maybe?

Nice! Congrats!

To add to that last point, I worked for a company (at retail) that claimed to know that keeping customers was cheaper than getting new ones, and corporate even implemented a policy where the clerks on the floor had up to $100 to keep a customer happy. I never once saw that $100 used, and the one time I tried to keep a customer (who had just spent $3000) happy, management refused to let him return a crap $100 printer because he didn’t have the manual in the box. He had left it at home, and was glad to bring it in next time he was in. Nope. And that incident was within a week of implementing that system.

So even when a company understands that point, it’s still really hard to make good on it at the levels that it can matter.

Well, I’ll give it a shot.

Part of it is that they can’t know the point that someone is willing to stay vs leave, and they’re always optimizing for that point. Saving money is always the goal for expenses in a company.

Part of it is that they have a budget that they can’t exceed. Sometimes a person is overqualified for the job, and the job simply can’t afford them. Sometimes that person will stay far longer than they should, when they could get paid much better elsewhere, and sometimes they choose to move when they’re only slightly underpaid for their skills.

Part of it is that there is more to a job than money. Being comfortable, un-stressed, and generally happy is more important at some point than more money. The company tries to balance these things, as it’s often cheaper to relieve or prevent stress than pay someone to put up with it.

In the end, it’s super complicated, but all about money, on both sides.