I’ve had some issues with Invidious being unable to play specific videos once or twice, but the issues tend to go away after a couple of days.

I mean, we know Google and Youtube are both multi-billion-dollar corporations that are absolutely enraged by the idea that there could be any possible way for a commoner pleb like you to NOT have your online experience absolutely crammed with as many privacy violations and hyper-targeted ads as possible. Invidious having to constantly stay ahead of such powerful entities’ attempts to block them out means that some errors and periods of downtime are perfectly excusable- what’s important is continuing to support them in their fight.

Oh yeah, I wouldn’t say that Nintendo are paragons of virtue or anything. But they are far, FAR better at making games that offer a wide variety of experiences (edit: when compared to Sony/MS. Indies are king). Similarly, sure the Switch control scheme isn’t something nobody had ever conceived of before, but it’s very distinctly different from the Xbox/Playstation controllers.

They’ve got like… what, 7 or 8 IPs that they actively maintain, right? And about 10 more derelict but still iconic IPs. Plus some stuff made by other companies that’s exclusive to their hardware.

-Mario -Zelda -Pikmin -Splatoon (Hey look a gun game) -Fire Emblem -Donkey Kong Country -Super Smash Bros

Dedicated 3rd party: -Xenoblade -Pokemon

All these games have really different themes and gameplay styles and aesthetics, and that is the reason why I’m convinced that the Switch 2 is perfectly positioned to just completely take over the market the way the Wii did- Nintendo is large and competent enough to avoid the issues that plagued the PS5 launch and later life, and fresh enough to get people interested, unlike the Xbox.

Where Sony/MS have uhhh… Looks at the PS5 exclusive games… Looks at Halo/Call of Duty/Fortnite…

Pffff. The AAA industry is notorious for being about as stale as a three week old french baguette. If it isn’t a Gun Game made for chasing the most recent trends, then chances are they don’t even want to sniff at it. To say nothing of the absolutely egregious thirst for Profit that plagues a lot of titles. It’s one thing to be a $70 game, and another thing entirely to be a $70 game with a subscription, ingame puchases, and day 1 DLC.

Sony and Microsoft can have their pathetic little ‘arms race’ about processing power and framerates and 150GB+ games.

In the meantime, Nintendo is likely going to step right up with something that has a nice fresh, intuitive control scheme like the Wii or the Switch, with a solid release library that covers a variety of styles and appeals, and promptly curbstomp the living shit out of the competitors. The market is absolutely wide open for a smash hit console in the near future, coming off the backs of the PS5’s no-games failure and the fact I haven’t even heard about the Xbox in about 3 years.

Yeah, checks out. I’m just a UK guy, but when the Tories were all having a media circus about “Oh inflation is done now, we’ve stopped inflation, the cost of living crisis is done!”, I mean… no amount of lying to my face is going to stop me going to the shops and wanting to scream when I see the price of Everything has jumped up by 20% again.

I can’t imagine that’s any different at all in China. You just can’t really hide something as objective as the cost of a bar of chocolate.

Now that’s really interesting! I wonder where I can go to see this stuff…

Gonna say it, this REALLY feels like a case of the news cherry-picking what parts of a protest they show. Between the unreasonable viewpoint that’s directly adjacent to a very sensible and popular viewpoint and the fact we KNOW the media have a very vested interest in trying to push pro-genocide narratives (such as anti-Israel protests being pro-terrorist)…

Yeah, even someone as gullible as me? I’m not buying this.

TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK BOYS

I know it got quashed; I’m not saying there was a revolution. “Free Hong Kong, the revolution of our times” was the anti-oppression slogan said by the victor of a heartstone tournament (which there was no rule or stipulation against), which caused Blizzard to ban the player from all tournaments, and refuse to pay him the prize money he’d won in an attempt to suck up to the chinese government.

To clarify: I don’t expect a gaming company to stand up to a full blown authoritarian regime. But I certainly won’t support a company that willingly goes the extra mile to sell out to them.

Used to, but I’m a little past the age.

It’s over bro, the developers who made the game you love are long, long gone. That isn’t your company, it’s a corporation wearing that company’s bloody torn-off face as a mask

Source: Former Blizzard fan (Free Hong Kong, the revolution of our times)

Adblock my beloved

Yeah, seems reasonable. The front lines have proven to be extremely difficult to move once they get set in place, and Russia is provably completely fine with a couple hundred thousand of their Expendables dying every year.

Ending this war quickly definitely requires knocking out other aspects of the russian war machine, anyone should be able to see that. I’m not enough of a military man to tell you WHICH aspects have to be knocked out, but I’d believe those elements are inside Russia in a heartbeat.

Let’s just not go and talk about hitting any major population centers though. Collateral damage is not justice, even if the russian brass have absolutely gleefully been hitting population centres as much as possible. Justice for that is seeing them hanged, not hitting some people that had no real say in all this.

Holy sunk cost fallacy, batman. How fucking much does it cost to operate an ENTIRE GODDAMN NUCLEAR REACTOR just to fuel a tech project that nobody wants???

I wonder if a birth rate that stays low for a while might be what it takes to avoid future wars? Just in general, across all nations? Funny that the very things that have damaged society’s faith in the future might end up mitigating conflicts in the future.

When manpower can no longer be replenished, then wasting it trying to pull off landgrabs can only be sustained for so long. Not just physically, but politically.

OH FUCK I MISSED THAT IT WAS ONE OF THOSE SHITTY MULTI-YEAR CONTRACTS

Editing the original, those contracts are pure shit and a hot new favourite trick for employers to try and twist the narrative in their favour. That isn’t a 25% raise, that’s a 6.25% raise as well as an agreement that your future raises can’t be better.

NINETY SIX PERCENT???

Bro how the hell did Boeing piss these guys off so much??? The closest my workplace ever got to a strike was when we literally didn’t get a raise one year during Covid, and that was 62% to strike. We were all pissed at the company over that one for obvious reasons, but this…

To me this result off the back of a 25% raise says one thing: This isn’t about pay. This was never about pay. EDIT: Nevermind! This is not a fucking 25% raise! This is a 6.25% raise every year for the next four years! This is NOT a 25% raise because of how it works in relation to inflation, and should NOT be treated as a 25% raise by anyone writing about it! It is presented as a 25% raise by Boeing solely to misinform and misdirect people! This is Boeing trying to wheedle their way out of paying their workers at rates above inflation ON TOP OF ALL THEIR EXISTING PROBLEMS!

Combining that with what we know about the company’s culture of shutting down anyone with safety or wellbeing concerns in the name of faster cheaper production of aircraft…

Oh, wow. I can’t imagine having knife skills that precise. I’ve looked into this; what you actually need to do to prepare the fish isn’t actually difficult- there are only two organs that need to be removed without puncturing them.

But you still need a steady hand and incredible precision to remove those parts 100% consistently, frankly slicing the fish into ‘paper thin’ sheets would be 10x more difficult- just, if you fuck up a paper thin cut then it’s still fine and edible. Managing to pull off that sort of presentation technique is a really good indicator that this girl is the real deal- if she can make those paper thin slices, she can remove the poisons in her sleep.

I would love to try real sushi one day, but alas. I live in the UK. Best I can do is homemade with stuff from the supermarket.

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

Armchair general opinion here, but basically: It pretty much doesn’t matter how much armour you pile onto something- it adds weight, fuel costs, and reduces speed, and all the armour in the world will still only last a limited amount of time against powerful explosives specifically designed to destroy armour. The most basic thing about armoured vehicles is doing something in the time that that armour buys you. And to do stuff, you need speed, firepower, and a good optics system.

The Bradley has those three things in spades. Even if it’s not the most heavily armoured vehicle ever seen, it’s really fucking cost effective, WAY easier to maintain with Ukraine’s more limited resources than the US army, and versatile as hell. It uses the time that it has before the armour inevitably fails exceedingly well.

“You call talking to a fox a survival skill?”

“Eh, whatever works.”