Lurker > adjl

Making daily topics to poll people about their various idiosyncrasies.

MICHALECOLE posted...

Well I assume the company would go out of business. Is there any company that is worth anything close to that?

That's the estimated cost of the tax cuts the current US government is trying to implement.

HornedLion posted...

Itll be the first Switch game Im getting since the launch of the first BotW. Think about that.

Now that's just silly. There are plenty of great games on the Switch, including three better Xenoblade games (though that's a heavily qualified opinion given that all four excel in different ways and X differs significantly from the other three in structure and style).

dragon504 posted...

I'm not getting it right away, but I will pick it up. I'm wondering if they'll make a Switch 2 version, or if the Switch version will have enhancements on the 2. April 2 is coming up fast, so we'll get more Switch 2 info.

I considered waiting, especially given that it's not even two weeks, but the algorithm likes feeding me Xenoblade content to enough of an extent that there's a fair chance I'll be spoiled on the new story stuff before then, plus I'm looking forward to the game enough that I'd rather play it sooner than hold out for what will likely be some pretty minor technical upgrades (unless it turns out that it actually barely runs on the Switch, but that's what early reviews are for).

Yep, day 1.

MagusXGP posted...

i want it but dont' see how it's better than the wii u version other than load times

From what I've picked up from skimming summaries of improvements (I haven't delved too extensively into it, so take it with a grain of salt and it's probably non-comprehensive):

• UI text that's actually legible on sub-80" TVs
• A few improvements to combat UI like positional indicators and on-screen summaries of the art sequences that yield bonuses during overdrive
• The option to toggle off the skell flying music so you can listen to area themes instead (also flying is now triggered by pressing jump again in the air, so no more resetting the BGM because you held the jump button for slightly too long), not sure if this extends to the OD theme overwriting battle music
• A party menu so you can swap out party members without tracking them down in NLA
• Absent party members gain experience as though they were in your party
• Affinity gain is considerably faster
• Field skills have been dropped in favour of a linear progression system, reflecting the fact that it's a terrible idea to do anything other than max out Mechanical asap
• At least four new party members, presumably with some extra side and/or story content around them
• The online content will work again (arguably that's not really a feature of DE so much as it's an artificial limitation on the WiiU version, but it's still a difference)
• Most significantly, there's an extra chunk of story that seems like it'll be picking up where the base game left off, which is expected to give the game an actual ending and/or work to tie it in to the numbered Xenoblades and possibly also Xenosaga. There may also be some other tweaks or retcons throughout the game to help it connect to the others (along the same lines as the DE for 1 changing Alvis' key to an aegis core crystal), but that's unconfirmed at the moment.

There are a few preview summaries floating around out there because the embargo was partially lifted a couple weeks ago (meaning people can talk about stuff like new QoL features, but not full-on story spoilers). Aside from the new story content (which you could just watch on youtube a few days after launch if you just care about figuring out where the story went), I wouldn't say it's a necessary upgrade, but there are quite a few tweaks and upgrades that I'm definitely looking forward to in addition to maybe actually having a complete story, since they're going to make for a better experience than playing the original.

fettster777 posted...

I can't even tell the difference between 30 and 60.

I can tell the difference, but generally only when I can make a direct comparison, like going between playing Mario Kart 8 on the WiiU with 1-2 players to 3-4 players (or vice versa). Give me something in a vacuum, and I generally don't notice the framerate unless it's really bad (and by "really bad," I mean like 10, not anything sub-60 like some people insist is unplayable).

OHJOY90 posted...

Yeah, there's a lot of scandals lately about UK water companies dumping raw sewerage into rivers, sea, etc. instead of processing it properly to maximize profits. One has even been found to have money which should have been going to improve/renovate the water system to handle the increased load and instead use them to pay for bonuses for management. Now with that money gone, and being told by the government they must improve the water systems, they want to jack up water rates to force consumers to pay for it. Luckily the rates have been capped to lower than the water companies were asking for.

I think we need to normalize periodically putting utility contracts out to tender. Like obviously we can't have multiple companies running the same utilities at the same time because that's just impractical, but if instead the actual infrastructure were state property and every 1 or 2 or 5 years companies were invited to bid on the job of maintaining it and supplying the utility, that would create incentives to be as efficient as possible, but not leave one company able to hold an entire city's water hostage if they don't get giant bonuses. That would, of course, run into some issues with expansions and infrastructure improvement efforts, since companies aren't going to want to invest in improving the service they provide if they don't have a guarantee that they'll be around long enough to reap the benefits of that investment, but I'm sure something can be worked out with subsidies or residuals or other such things to make it work.

OHJOY90 posted...

Imo the UK Government should never had privatized the water industry.

Yeah, privatizing utilities can be a problem. On one hand, the private sector has incentives to try to innovate and keep costs down that the government doesn't, since they actually need to turn a profit, but that need to turn a profit very often results in cutting corners and jacking up rates to increase that profit, while consumers simply don't have the option to take their business elsewhere if the service gets too bad because utilities so often have to be a monopoly (you can't have a dozen different sets of water pipes or power lines running to every house). The province I just moved away from has some of the highest rates in North America for power, but there are still frequent outages that the company insists they can't do anything about and they keep getting approved for rate increases, while the CEO keeps taking home multimillion dollar bonuses despite failing to do the job customers are paying him to do (provide reliable power) because his actual job is to maximize value for shareholders.

Quite a lot of aesthetic trends go in cycles. Beards are no exception.

Think of it less as paying for the water and more as paying for the infrastructure that treats it and delivers it to you.

HelIWithoutSin posted...

I think people just don't like the sudden shock of the time being off by an entire hour. So, I think on each of the 120 days leading up to the start and end of each cycle, we should adjust the clocks by 30 seconds accordingly so we don't have to do it all at once.

This would help a lot and be relatively easy to do with how many clocks these days are connected to a network, but any standalone clocks would need to be updated manually every 2+ days to keep up and I feel like there are still too many of those for the idea to be practical.

That said, six days of 10-minute adjustments or twelve of 5-minute adjustments might be doable. Just not spending 2/3 of the year having to remember to adjust every clock you own.

And I use a drawing tablet for Osu (or did, but I haven't played in several years). I've also got a dance mat that came with Mario DDR back on the GC. There are quite a few home rhythm game peripherals that go beyond just a keyboard, controller, and mouse (touch screen is also worth noting). They usually come with an additional cost, but it's generally significantly less than paying to use an arcade cabinet would cost.

Arcades are just where you end up finding larger, more robust, and/or more complex input systems, which don't necessarily lend themselves to home use. Even then, though, if a game is popular enough in arcades, it's not unheard of to see it adapted to home use, as happened with Beatmania and DDR once it was confirmed that there was enough of an audience that producing the peripherals wouldn't end up being a waste.

We're at a point with a lot of technology where there aren't many opportunities to sell us improvements anymore, so in order to keep the fantasy of infinite growth going, companies have to charge more for the same amount, provide less without reducing their prices, and/or create new problems to which they sell solutions.

Despite being right-handed, I usually use a mouse with my left hand. Growing up, my parents had the computer set up that way so they could write with their right hands while using the mouse, so that's what I got I used to and still use to this day (though I'm fine using my right hand). As it turns out, lefty mouse is actually ergonomically superior because it lets you centre the important part of the keyboard (everything left of the arrow keys) in front of the monitor while still having the mouse closer to the centre of your body (and therefore a more neutral position). With the mouse on the right, you either have to reach both hands to the left to use the keyboard if you keep the mouse nearby, or you have to reach quite a bit further for the mouse if you centre the keyboard (assuming you have a standard keyboard and not one that lacks a numpad, allows you to move it, or has it on the left-hand side). It also works well for doing accounting work, because I can click around while entering numbers with the numpad.

I do swap it over to the right for KB+M games, though, at least ones that are WASD-based. Occasionally I'll just use the arrow keys instead (it's how I played WoW for many years), but since playing more PC games I'm generally more comfortable with WASD even if it is a game where rebinding everything to support lefty mouse isn't totally impractical. Unfortunately, this means I'm limited to ambidextrous mice, and there are surprisingly few options for those that have a decent number of extra buttons and are also available in local stores so I can see how they feel before buying them.

captpackrat posted...

I play games with my right hand on the keyboard in the normal typing home row position: pinky on the A, ring finger on the S, middle finger on D, and index finger on F. In this position, moving your ring finger to W is rather awkward when using A or D to strafe, but moving your ring finger down to X to back up works just fine when strafing.

Assuming you mean left hand (using the right hand how you described would only work if you turned the keyboard upside down first), I have my ring, middle, and index fingers on A, W, and D, respectively, hitting S with my middle finger as needed and using my pinky for shift/ctrl. With the layout you described, I can indeed see why hitting W would be infeasibly awkward.

Physical arcade cabinets have a hard time competing with games you can play at home for no incremental cost, at least as far as I'm concerned. I can appreciate the novelty of games that require specialized arcade hardware, but between the practical considerations of having to leave my house to play them and the cost per attempt in a genre that demands many, many attempts, home games have a distinct advantage.

I wouldn't even F to pay respects Ingo.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

can't agree on what they actually want anyway.

This is the biggest issue. Enough people agree that it should end one way or the other that if that were the only deciding vote, it would have ended ages ago, but there are legitimate arguments for both ways in which it could be ended and the vote ends up being split more or less evenly, so nothing ever changes.

Grats dude.

I think everyone's at least a little horny for Luigi, whether they're willing to admit it or not.

I'm gonna call "citation needed" on that one.

KingDavid posted...

Because they treat you like a kid

Are you surprised that the military doesn't want soldiers making independent decisions?

I think I actually kind of prefer option 1, as much as option 2 would be more time off. It creates a clearer delineation between work time and off time, rather than having to flip back and forth every day. Under option 2, every work day would effectively be a Monday in the sense that I'd have to shift back into thinking about work, which in turn means it would be hard to ever stop thinking about work because another Monday would always be staring me in the face. Every day would also effectively be a Friday, but Friday has value now because we spend the work week anticipating it and the break it heralds, and a lot of that would be lost with a one-day "week."

4/3 gives continuity in working time that makes it easier to focus and be productive, while still giving enough off time to be enjoyable (a day for errands, a day to do fun things, and a day to rest) and allow work to be fully turned off.

Muscles posted...

but there are some people that can't be fixed

As decided by whom? Outside of cases where the person is a proven flight risk or otherwise has made it clear that nothing short of death is enough to keep society safe from them, of course. Even then, though, that's not "can't be fixed," it's "can't be fixed safely."

Newt Gingrich sounds more like a Harry Potter name than any actual Harry Potter names.

There are actually 674 continents, but only on alternating Tuesdays with prime number dates.

Kallainanna posted...

Fire never gives you the lighting you want, apparently.

Loosely related:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ice-age-artists-may-have-used-firelight-to-animate-carvings-180979943/

Probably haggis or blood pudding.

Sarcasthma posted...

Just checked. They actually are called that.

Perfect.

rjsilverthorn posted...

Now there is a sentence you don't see very often.

Mama mia!

Because portraying queer people as a "threat to the American way of life" has been a central part of the GOP's campaigning efforts for a while now. By giving their voter base somebody to fear and blame the country's woes on, that voter base is less likely to fear what the GOP is trying to do or blame them for creating problems. Queer and especially trans people have conveniently fallen into that role, as they're a minority that has made significant recent gains in rights issues that have left many conservative people confused because they're too out of touch to realize why that's a good thing (along with the obligatory religious objections).

As an aside, Hitler did pretty much exactly the same thing with Jewish people. But I'm sure that's just a coincidence. It's not like Trump's passed any other orders that required trans people to identify themselves to government offices under the pretense of needing to update their passports or anything.

Sarcasthma posted...

We call them sea leopards in Japanese due to their spotted pattern.

Are leopard seals "Leopard sea leopards"?

Her purg was for doing a horny for Luigi, so I imagine they were less than lenient about it, especially given that her mod history isn't exactly clean.

Blue_Thunder posted...

Not spooked per se, more like cautious or respectful of it.

Pretty much this. It can be extremely dangerous and needs to be respected accordingly, but I wouldn't call that "spooked" so much as it is recognizing a genuine hazard, and I'm familiar enough with it that I understand how to mitigate that risk (like leaning forward a bit while walking on it so more of my weight is on my leading foot, keeping it closer to perpendicular to the ice and therefore reducing the risk of slipping).

Revelation34 posted...

Yes.

Let's try this one, then:

In 1939, Germany was a haven for Nazis.

Was everyone in Germany in 1939 a Nazi?

I don't think it's possible to put a healthy amount of time into PSO.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Also, one kangaroo is holding a gavel (or better yet, it's sticking out of its pouch).

Better still, there's a joey in the pouch, also wearing a powdered wig, and it's the one wielding the gavel.

Just a few months ago, actually. My girlfriend and I went to a Christmas market at one of the Polish churches in the area and they were selling a dinner of sausages, sauekraut, and pierogi, with donuts available for dessert (a choice between plum and rose jam fillings). Looking it up now, it appears those donuts were in fact paczki.

Spoilers: Most of your current experiences are already stories with no point.

captpackrat posted...

Am I the only person with a Radeon card?

Looks like the R9 200 series was part of the Radeon line. I can never remember when they have/haven't used that name.

OHJOY90 posted...

That's good at least, hopefully it didn't just go in the bin but I suspect it may have as they'd have no way of knowing if it had potentially been contaminated or not.

It 100% would have been thrown out. Between the risk of contamination and the fact that it would have spent at least a couple of hours at room temp after being prepared, it's just not worth the risk to save <$10 worth of ingredients.

I have noticed that people tend to call female US presidential candidates by their first names instead of their last. That's a very small sample size, and there's a practical reason not to just call Hillary "Clinton," but it sticks out when "Kamala" and not "Harris" is running in a race that includes Trump, Vance, and Walz. Even in Hillary's case, people routinely just called Dubya "Bush" or "Bush Jr" despite there being another, recent President Bush, but where both Bushes had the same first name and Hillary isn't Clinton Jr that's not necessarily a great comparison.

R9 280X, which I got in 2015. It's definitely showing its age a bit, but there also aren't many games that I want to play that really need anything more modern.

I think I found Tri harder than 3U or GU, but I'm not sure how much of that was the actual game and how much of it was me just plain getting better over the course of three games and nearly 10 years.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But there are also games that do a better job of spreading out options and methodology, so if you have a game where you can sneak through a base, fight the boss, then charm your way into getting a much greater reward after, you're incentivized to boost combat, stealth, and social interaction relatively equally, because if you focus on one to the exclusion of the others first, you'll miss a ton of opportunities in the early game before you start leveling the other trees.

Yeah, I guess that's the key to making a game that rewards generalism: You need a variety of systems at which you can succeed and be rewarded without needing to specialize into them, such that aggressive specialization means you miss out.

supergamer19 posted...

If videogames have taught me anything, it's that a team of specialists is much better than a team of jack-of-all-trades.

This also often comes up in any party-based RPG. Even if the enemies you fight are mixed between weakness to magic and weakness to physical damage, you generally do much better having a mix of magic-focused and physical-focused party members than having a full team that can do a mediocre job of both. Even when you do get a generalist in there, they're usually best off having some focus instead of being a balanced mix (like they do slightly less damage than the dedicated damage-dealers, but can throw out the occasional small heal to supplement what the dedicated healers are doing).

It wouldn't surprise me if you can't install it anymore, but if it's already installed and you get the message that's all like "this extension is no longer supported because we're greedy poopoo heads, so we've disabled it. Do you want to remove it?", you can decline removing it, go to your extensions menu, and enable it directly against Google's "advice."

https://imgur.com/8Uy8ZBQ

Unfortunately it's a little small to embed.

Arguably, any game where you can eventually fill out the whole skill tree, but even then it's still generally much stronger to complete each specialization option in sequence instead of spreading your points out evenly, and that's therefore more a case of "specialize in everything" and not true generalization.

You can re-enable ublock in Chrome even though they insist that it's not supported. Presumably it won't be able to receive updates, though, so that's only a temporary solution.

Revelation34 posted...

There's a major difference between demoting something from a planet to an asteroid and demoting something from a planet to dwarf planet.

And that difference is about 150 years of refining our understanding of astronomy. At the time that Ceres was considered a planet (~1801-1851), we didn't even have a concrete definition for "planet" and the term "asteroid" had only just been invented to describe the class of objects that people kept finding in Ceres' neighbourhood (now known to be the asteroid belt). A lot changed between the 1850's and 2006.

I've seen exactly that happen more times than I can count, and eastern/Atlantic Canada is about as far from "tropical" as you can get without actually being in Antarctica.