Live service games, MMOs, gatcha games, and many hardcore multiplayer games are the worst for this. They love to waste player’s time on some repetitive grind because they want players to keep playing their game. They usually have either microtransactions (often for cosmetics) or a subscription.

Personally, I love MMOs, but I try to avoid playing any grindy content (or at least as long as I don’t think I’ll genuinely enjoy it). So I’ll usually play a game for a few months (they’re really big games) and then quit for years, if not permanently (I have a bunch of MMOs I intend to someday return to, but have not yet).

Single player games are generally much better at being genuinely fun. Especially story driven games. I also love open world games because you largely get to make them your own. It’s perfectly valid to beeline the story missions if that’s all you care about. Or you could do just the side quests. Or you could additionally explore like crazy. e.g., with Tears of the Kingdom, you really can ignore most of the shrines and largely focus on the story quests. None of the side quests are necessary, either. You don’t have to explore the depths except for a tiny few places for the story. The vast majority of sky islands can be ignored. But I personally had a lot of fun exploring, so I explored nearly everything and loved it (except most of the depths – they were way too big, empty, and repetitive).

Some people don’t like long games, though. And that’s fine! There’s tons of short or more streamlined games out there that you can have fun with. e.g., The Last of Us is a fantastic one. The sequel is about 24 hours long for the story and it felt like it flew by in the blink of an eye for me cause I was having so much fun.

I also can’t stand the fact that smokers can take unlimited ‘breaks’ whenever they please just to come back stinking up an entire room with their smoke.

That feels like a workplace problem. Why would a workplace give them unlimited breaks? And why would nonsmokers not be allowed comparable breaks? This feels odd to me. My recent jobs have been ones where nobody is micromanaging my time, so anyone can take whatever breaks they want. As long as productivity doesn’t obviously suffer, nobody cares. My past jobs in retail didn’t allow smokers to take extra breaks. They’d get the same breaks as everyone else (for an 8 hour shift, that meant a 30 min lunch and 2 x 15 min coffee breaks).

That is the best part and honest one of the best parts of gaming in general.

Kinda reminds me of burning the weed fields in Far Cry 3.

That’s the part that keeps me from doing it. While portability is nice, I have a really great desktop with an ultra wide. That ultra wide in particular is what makes PC gaming really great for me. I think I’d only use it on longer trips, which isn’t that often.

No, Who’s on first.

It’s really hard to get them started though. Especially when I want a discussion on the topic now. I actually did try and start my local city sub and it was me shouting into the void as the only poster. It’s not very fun posting stuff without ever getting replies.

Naw, I still use Google. With an ad blocker, I find it to provide the best results by far (though the ad blocker is important, because they get misleading ads sometimes). It’s superior when searching for descriptions (e.g., you can’t remember a movie title and have to describe it) and local results. Plus I use Maps heavily (it’s superior to its competitors) and that integrates into Google.

I just frankly don’t care that much about tracking my searches or the likes. I see it as the cost of getting a quality product for free. The only reason I even have the ad blocker is frankly because their ads are terrible. They don’t do enough to curate their ads, so scams sometimes slip in. I also think it’s very scummy that you can search, e.g., “pizza hut” and get an ad for Dominos above the Pizza Hut result.

Would an external battery pack be able to keep it going? I have a battery pack that claims it can put out up to 18W. It’s really meant for phones, but wonder if it can keep a Steam Deck going, too?

I don’t follow what you’re saying. I love the shit out of many of my smaller communities. Reading TV subs after a new episode dropped was my favourite (and required a lot of active people). I wanted to discuss the Horizon DLC when I beat it the other day, but the Horizon sub here is super tiny. I tried to post on a generic gaming sub instead and did not get the discussion I wanted.

Similarly, Pokemon Go subs on Reddit were super detailed places to discuss the game, including with detailed analysis of any change, data mining for upcoming stuff, etc. Here, there’s two subs that have just the sub creator trying to populate the sub. No actual discussion.

It sucks and I miss those kinda communities.

Same. I actually love Linux and don’t like to do software dev on anything else. The only reason windows is my main personal computer is for gaming and streaming services. And some of that is inertia, cause I’m aware that Linux gaming has improved a ton in recent years.

I currently have a 7T. It’s not bad. Felt pretty impressive at the time that I got it. These days I feel like the camera is a bit lacklustre and every now and then something freezes. I’m gonna upgrade to something else soon. Probably something much higher end as I’m more comfortable spending money on a high end phone these days. But it’s been a pretty solid phone, especially for its price and age.

I’m with you on the tablet thing. I even did buy a tablet many years ago, but barely used it. I think mostly because I didn’t want to deal with carrying around another device.

Same. I make good money and can easily enough deal with the expense. But the durability is something they need to improve to get me on board.

I think it’d be pretty neat for the extra screen real estate, improve “front facing” camera, and for watching videos. It’s mostly small things, but they are cool!

Yeah, DeSantis is evil, not stupid. He has degrees from both Yale and Harvard. He knows full well what he’s doing and how things work. It’s all calculated evil.

The whole CSAM issue is why I’d never personally run an instance, nor any other kind of server that allows users to upload content. It’s an issue I have no desire to have to deal with moderating nor the legal risks of the content even existing on a server I control.

While I’d like to hope that law enforcement would be reasonable and understand “oh, you’re just some small time host, just delete that stuff and you’re good”, my opinion on law enforcement is in the gutter. I wouldn’t trust law enforcement not to throw the book at me if someone did upload illegal content (or if I didn’t handle it correctly). Safest to let someone else deal with that risk.

And even if you can win some case in court, just having to go to court can be ludicrously expensive and risk high impact negative press.

Ah, if only all dictators would be benevolent dictators for life like Guido.

Exact estimates vary, but are generally in the ballpark of about 1% of people being trans and non binary (though this is skewed towards younger people).

At any given time, the US federal government has 535 elected seats. The point of this comment is to highlight the disproportionately low rate of trans people getting into politics and being elected. Things are stacked against trans people, whether it’s the barrier from how poor social acceptance growing up can limit opportunities or heightened fear of getting into politics because of how toxic they are.

And we’re talking about a job where their coworkers are sometimes actively campaigning to outlaw trans treatment, acceptance, and protections. Something that in many work places would get you instantly fired, but is permitted in US politics.

Republicans are not championing free speech. Entirely the opposite with how they’re treating LGBT folks currently.

And on that note, the Republicans are so beyond bad that yes, a one party state is actually better. To be clear, a one party state is utterly awful. That’s how terrible the Republican party is. They cannot be even remotely viable when their entire platform is hating other people.

Cyberpunk is soooo much fun. I can’t wait for the DLC. It got a bad rap when it launched, but at least when I played it (on PC about 6 months after launch), it was really great and didn’t experience any major issues.

Though it should be noted for those unaware that it is a very dark and mature game. An NPC is violently raped off camera. That makes the game not for everyone’s taste. Personally, I enjoy when games don’t feel like they’re avoiding subjects like that (which can feel jarring, since it’s a real life concern) and it does add an extra level of emotion to the game. Plus of course, getting to have revenge.

When you do get around to it, you’ll enjoy it! I played it fairly recently. It isn’t quite as hard hitting as the first game, but it still made me cry. More of a “prey on insecurities” kinda hard hitting. The power (because they never want to go back to rewind, do they?) is pretty neat. Second best after the original.