Lurker > Proto_Spark

ViewtifulGrave posted...

Recording is watching.

This is such a dumb argument.

Especially because this is a 20 second clip during what is likely the concert's "hey everyone pull your phones out, this is the time to take a picture or a video and do whatever" section - those happen all the time, especially with a big show like this one.

I got both when I got into my last little Fallout rut a few years ago, but I never ended up really getting around to playing them.

I'll probably get back to it when I get back into another Fallout hole.

Is this really going to solve anything?

Like, best case scenario, TikTok is gone, but the only thing that changes is there's incentive for Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, etc... to push their shitty short video products even harder because there's now this huge hole in the market.

How much extra effort is it really going to be for China or Russia or wherever to get all this data from Google or Meta, given that same data is literally what they sell?

That's weird, I don't have that. I have a lot of ads and a lot of clickbait listicles, but nothing like, political. I don't usually click on any of these, maybe its a "the algorithm thinks you only want this" kind of thing?

I'm also in Canada, and I've found things are generally a fair bit less predatory here. This might be why I seem to get a lot of hockey stuff, even though I don't really like hockey.

Tom Clancy's The Jackbox Party Pack 4

I'll play horror games on easy, because the horror aspect isn't really coming from the gameplay difficulty, and needing to repeat a section 100x because I keep dying really hurts the atmosphere the game is trying to build and takes away all the scares that section could have.

Trump wouldn't nuke Gaza - if it gets nuked nobody could use it.

Trump would arrange for the US military to bomb the ever-loving **** out of Gaza and wherever else any Palestinians are left (with like, regular bombs), and in exchange Israel would build a couple Trump Towers on the strip. Definitely no conflicts there no sir Trump is a very legitimate businessperson.

I used to be able to do ~10, but sort of stopped going to the gym during Covid and still haven't really picked the habit back up.

I tried last time and couldn't do 1. So 0.

IIRC they're really bass heavy, but like, basically what you'd expect from cheap earbuds. They're good if they're from a sponsor and you're getting them for free, but your money is better spent on other earbuds in the price range.

LightHawKnight posted...

You can find cheaper for the same quality. Rather pay 20 bucks for the jlab go air.

This is what I've gathered too.

Either one would be fine if you want a DS - both options are better than the original phat DS.

The DS Lite has the GBA slot if you want more access to games, which is a nice touch, but neither matters if you're only current goal is to play Pokemon Black.

If you want to transfer pokemon from your Gen 3 games (RSE/FRLG) to Gen 4 (DPPt/HGSS) you will need a DS with the GBA slot included however.

If you are more technologically inclined, you can do some wacky stuff with the software of a DSi that you can't with a DS Lite.

It almost feels wrong that everyone is just kind of watching J.K. Rowlings brain melt in real time, and can't really do anything but watch. Her whole life now just revolves around hating trans-people, and its just sad to see.

JK's twitter today has purely been selectively name-searching herself to explain how everyone who disagrees is horrible, and everyone who agrees is right, and its just sad to see.

That looked painfully generic.

I mean, it might be fine. In a "yeah fun pew pews but nobody is gonna care about this movie the second you're out of the theater" kind of way. Good on him I guess for actually making something.

divot1338 posted...

Note: There is a fine line between eye contact and call security.

Deeply seems like the perfect descriptor for what would be a step past that line.

Yeah it's weird. From just the OP, I thought it was more of a like "try to look at the person like you actually give a crap about what they're saying" and that's totally correct.

But even in the video its just "isn't that kind of creepy?" and then "yup".

I didn't grow up in a super religious household, so nobody seemed to care.

I think I heard people had big problems with it because of "evolution" but not until I was in like, high school and could go "but that's not even how real evolution works" and still be confused.

On one hand, this could probably be used to back up the prosecution's case, given if Trump was remotely close to as valuable as he claims he is, he should have been able to pay the bail.

On the other, Trump probably doesn't have the money to pay this either, which should be a pretty big blow to the MAGA-crowd, if any of them would be willing to listen to what's going on anyways.

It seems like all of his legal troubles are just going to conveniently last until the election, when Trump may suddenly become immune to all of these incriminations so they'll just have to throw up their arms in defeat and do nothing.

Bernie could have won in 2020 against Trump if Bernie had spent the time since his 2016 campaign building momentum, making the right alliances, etc... in order to actually have momentum when the 2020 campaign came. But he didn't, so when the 2020 campaign came along Bernie had very little to show for his previous 4 years. Why would you want to vote for him for president?

This isn't even a "DNC screwed Bernie" thing, its a "Bernie wasn't a good candidate" thing.

And Bernie did his job anyways. Biden is like, the most progressive president we've had in decades. Bernie wouldn't have been able to do half the stuff Biden has accomplished in his 4 years.

If Arkham Asylum had the more fluid controls the later games had, it would be that one for sure. The whole thing just works so much better constrained to a confined area than a big open world.

Arkham Origins did a really good job of expanding that same vibe to the whole city which didn't really work in Arkham City. As someone said above, the whole "one night in hell" vibe.

But in terms of the whole thing, City is probably the best one. It feels out of place taking up the whole city (why is there a prison taking up all of downtown?) but is the best as like, a general Batman story. It is the best whole package, even though there are things in the other games I think are done better than City does.

I'm getting ready to defend my MSc soon. I can't understand why anyone wants to do academia full time, and I had a pretty good grad school experience.

She'll get her Twitter-exclusive show soon.

Hejiru posted...

How are they alleging a monopoly? Did Android just cease to exist or something?

"blocking hardware and software features on competitors" is probably the big thing here. Its a blatant abuse of their power over the market when if you want a new phone, but have an Apple Watch, you have no choice in what product to buy, it has to be a new iPhone. That's a blatant anti-consumer move and directly a result of Apple's marketshare over the smartphone market.

At this point, Samsung and Google smartwatches do the same, but its the exact same anti-competitive behaviour, so they'll have to stop when the big dog is brought down.

Monopoly power doesn't necessarily mean you have to completely dominate the market, you just need to have enough control over the market that will negatively harm consumers.

el_cheato posted...

The disconnectedness is one of the worst things about the game to me. It's so obvious that every questline was made by a different person and none of them talked to eachother. The main story especially has no relation to anything. Nobody in the settled systems cares about Constellation or what they're doing. Nobody cares about the artifacts because nobody has any goals, interests, or ideologies worth furthering and fighting over. Nobody wants anything in Starfield, everything about it is so depressingly apathetic towards everything else.

I don't really agree with the nobody wants anything, but I completely agree with the first part.

The individual faction quests themselves are pretty well done, and everyone's goals and whatnot are clearly defined - the UC Navy Terrormorph quest is flat out one of the best large-scale quest lines Bethesda has done. The problem is nothing relates to anything else, so the second you finish the quest line, everything kind of stops mattering beyond like, a random comment from a background character that doesn't matter.

Its trying to be like 8 different games at once, and because they don't integrate with each other, it ends up not really being able to do any of them well.

FurryPhilosifer posted...

I enjoyed starfield but the writing was just... super bad. The setting is completely underdeveloped and loads of stuff just isn't really touched upon at all. The character dialogue is nearly all embarrassing to listen to. Any so many quests feel like it would have been less work to make them interesting.

But the ships are great. I love discovering different planets. I wish the outpost stuff worked because before I realised there was no real solution to getting it all to work I was having great fun with them. The UC Vanguard questline was one of the best questlines Bethesda has ever done. And I enjoy the levelling system.

I might go play it actually. But it is definitely lacking in writing. At least Skyrim and Fallout have interesting settings and world building for each game. Starfields setting feels unfinished.

Think the biggest issue is Starfield isn't really integrating the different things very well with each other, so it feels like trying to be 9 different games poorly rather than one game well.

Think the outposts are a good example here. In Fallout 4, the settlements were a mandatory part of the whole story. It was a bit annoying if you didn't enjoy the settlement mechanic, but if you wanted to ignroe it you didn't have to do that much. And if you did like it, you had a legitimate impact on the game and could see the changes you were doing. In Starfield the outposts are totally pointless, because it has no relation on the rest of the game, and even in the game itself, its frankly more efficient to just go to a store and buy all the random materials you would need.

If the travel wasn't unlimited, the outposts could be interesting as a way you need to grind for fuel for all of your jumps, but then that would make the explore 1000 planets thing terrible because you'd need 1000 outposts, and if you don't like the outposts, the game is unplayable, not a little annoying. If you only had like 4-5 planets to explore, this would be fine, because you'd only need 1-2 outposts, and they could be as automated as you wanted them to be.

Add to that none of the stories really relate to each other. The Crimson Fleet shouldn't want a high ranking Navy Scab as a leader (or vice versa), and neither the UC or Freestar Collective should be okay with you both being a Ranger and you being a high-ranking member of the navy when they were very recently at war with each other. Heck, you can be a high ranking member of the UC Navy, then explicitly betray the UC SysDef to lead the Crimson Raiders, and it's just like... fine. That is not something that should just be ignored. And none of these relate to the overall story, when they so easily could have. Think the game would be so much better with a Fallout 4-esque "You need to choose one faction eventually" to the story, and then you could get a bunch of Freestar Rangers, or the UC Navy, or a bunch of Pirates to help you in the final level when you go confront The Emissary or the Hunter. It also would have made the New Game + lead up with the Starborn stuff a lot more interesting, because there's a lot more that could vary from one playthrough to another.

ironman2009 posted...

I had fun with it. Not great, not terrible.

This. It's like a 7/10 game. Had fun with it when I played it, but if you weren't on the hype train, you can wait until it and all the DLC are 20$ in like 2 years.

Plenty of good stuff in there, but didn't really work together properly. A Starfield 2 could be the defining-game Bethesda tried to push the first one as, but the first one isn't there.

Remember when Kyle said he wants everyone to leave him alone so he can move on and like, go to college?

If he's gonna just go on a grifting tour, he could at least get some media training. You need some media training for a long-term grifting career.

The fact that the Apple Watch blocks signals with Android phones should be proof enough of Apple abusing monopoly power. If you have an Apple Watch because smartwatches seem cool, and then want a new phone, you're required to buy an iPhone, lest your expensive watch become a paperweight.

One of the biggest issues with Apple is that because they get away with whatever anti-consumer moves they want, every other smartphone company can as well. Apple can get away with ditching the headphone jack, or not including a charger in the box, or not including a charger in the box and changing the cable to a USB-C to lightning cable so you are required to just go out and buy your own brick, probably the one from Apple for $30. Or their smartwatch blocking android phones.

And because Apple got away with all of those, the Samsung or Google competitors were able to do literally the same thing with no flack for it. And this isn't really something that officially abuses Apple's monopoly power or anything, its just a widespread decrease in quality for the consumer.

I don't think Apple is really going to face much consequence here, even though they certainly should be.

Honestly, the remakes sort of made the level curve worse.

At least in the post game. There's nowhere to grind, but the levels of top trainers keep going up, with better move pools and harder hitters, making it more necessary for you to grind than in the original games. HGSS means you need to have at least somewhat close levels when fighting Red. in GS you could get away with being 20 levels below because the team was worse and had no synergy with anything.

The single exception is bumping up Pryce's levels in HGSS. That was needed.

fun fact: if you want to complete the Pokdex in Gen 3, the only game that is 100% mandatory is Leafgreen. You can technically get every other pokemon in at least 2 games, but Leafgreen is the only game in Gen 3 where you can catch a Slowpoke.

But Leafgreen is kind of hands down winner regardless, this is way more one-sided than RB was.

Yeah it's a shame the game didn't receive well, because it clearly a love letter to the classic Crash games. The problem is it goes way too far in that direction, hiding things in frustrating parts and every level being like 4 times as long as any of the PS1 ones. Not to mention the levels themselves just being more difficult.

The levels being so long makes doing stuff like making it through the level without dying or never missing a box so much more annoying, when in the PS1 games those were fun targets to go after because they were generally harder, but not much harder than just playing through the level, which made going after the extra rewards more encouraging (the exception to this are the 2nd/3rd time trial rewards, but the first time trials weren't too hard).

Its just being too over-indulgent into what people love about Crash, that it sort of goes too deep and ends up missing the mark.

Also a shame, because it means we'll also probably never get a similar game with Spyro.

If you want to go more obscure (or soon to be taken down) there are also plenty of movies on YouTube without the ads - just uploaded as a regular YouTube video.

Check out r/fullmoviesonyoutube for what is honestly They Live 40 times, but still. There's some god stuff there.

I like calling Aaron Taylor-Johnson an "MCU" star when he was a supporting character in one movie and died in it.

But this could be interesting. An interesting choice that might be able to fill the role for a pretty long time, and I don't have any doubts he couldn't do a great job. An Idris Elba bond would be cool, but its fine if that never actually happens.

Trelve posted...

Back when Brosnan was Bond, we used to get a Bond film every 2-3 years. Now we're talking 5+ years per film.

If they got Elba now and it took 3 years to make his first film, that would put him at 54. At the current rate of Bond films, he'd be around 60 for his second. Eon want a Bond actor that'll last for multiple films.

All of the Craig movies were about 2-3 years apart (Skyfall took 4), with only No Time to Die taking 6 because Craig supposedly didn't want to come back. If there's a younger actor who is more willing to be in these movies, I could see them going back to that.

They just wanted to stop doing the award and figured this would be the easiest way.

I enjoyed it enough. Weird choice to make Ultron like, crack jokes and stuff to really undermine the whole evil stuff, but I thought it was fine. As a teenager who was all aboard the MCU hype train at the time, it did everything I wanted from it.

Honestly, would the MAGA crowd even care if Trump ended up being very directly implicated in the Epstein stuff? Heck have him directly participate in human trafficking and I don't really thing any of his supporters would even accept it.

We've been at the point where conservatives basically don't need to face consequences if they don't want to (for years now), I don't think Trump being incriminated would even really hurt him.

I don't think so.

TFA hit a lot of the same beats as A New Hope, but also made it abundantly clear that it was going off in a different direction. Rey's character is not at all Luke's, and her flaws aren't the same as Luke's. Kylo Ren is absolutely not Darth Vader, and all of these things will be going in a different direction. Because for whatever reason, we needed to have Han Solo back, and Luke Skywalker back and Leia back, it kind of makes sense to take all of these characters, and have them carry similar beats as during their movies, while leading into new things for our new characters.

Though, given Disney chickened out and ended the series with a bad rehash and throwing away all of the interesting things TFA and TLJ tried to set up, I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking Force Awakens is just a cheap nostalgia grab.

Man, if only there was something to learn if the governor of South Dakota needs to fly across the country for dental work...

One of the biggest issues in failing your G2 can be summed up as not checking your mirrors/blind spots/etc... obviously enough, and therefore losing points for it. It only takes like 5 points off to fail, so it's an easy way people lose out.

Go to your next test with a baseball cap, or if you have long enough hair, tied up in like a ponytail.

Otherwise, it's not really something to get that worried over. Practice your parallel parking and your three point turns, make sure to turn the wheels "uphill" and put the parking brake on when you stop, etc...

Naysaspace posted...

According to this CBC article, It's a 70% pass rate

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/ontario-drive-test-pass-rates-1.6928311

It varies from place to place - I imagine in a place like Toronto where there would be a lot more people to deal with could be more stressful. Heck, tests wildly varying site to site is what this articles is about.

Persian is low-key actually a really good pokemon in Gen I. It has the high speed stat and a move like slash that means it gets to a like 255/256 crit rate based on the weird way crits are determined in those games.

But In terms of cool, Scyther is easily the best one on either list.

Ehh, the bad stuff religion brings would still be around, we'd just have a slightly different excuse.

Is the Vice site and Vice like, programming the same thing? Or is it like Fox vs. Fox News?

If the former, that's a shame, I really liked Vice docs and stuff.

If its the latter, ehh, the website was never that good on its own.

I said 7, but I think 8 is also perfectly acceptable.

It's 100% a completely unrelated movie that got a "DC" skin slapped onto it, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

There are a couple great moments, but really Joaquin Phoenix is absolutely carrying the whole movie, and you can tell the movie isn't that great around him.

Edge had his whole miraculous comeback, so his run in AEW is just kind of... more Edge. Like its fine, but I'm not going out of my way to go watch AEW for him. I don't really want to see Edge as a top star in 2024. I wanted to see Edge as a top star in 2004 and now I want new guys at the top. Not that AEW doesn't have quite a few of those, but I'm not super interested in going out of my way to see Edge anymore.

AEW is long past the point where bringing in a new name will really change things, so Edge and Christian being there just isn't really as big a deal as if they were the only big names hanging around there.

A shame, because every time I bother checking out AEW, everyone is doing great stuff, I just don't really care enough to go as out of my way as I have to to watch AEW without cable. It just isn't keeping me engaged, so I kind of just stop trying to keep up.