loobkoob

And to prove your point even further: my friends and I went go-karting for someone’s stag do a couple of weeks ago and it was £50 per person for two fifteen-minute sessions. And that’s even more entry level than autocross, I’d argue!

We had to get there early, too, and get registered, get changed into overalls and helmet, etc. We had to go through an idiot-proof safety briefing. We had to wait for the previous group to finish their session. We had a break between our two sessions for drinks and to cool down / recover, and another session ran during that time, so ~twenty minutes there. All in all, our half-hour of driving probably came with around an hour and a half of downtime, which I think lowers the value proposition even more.

(Plus I got heatstroke during it and got increasingly ill as the day went on - and was unable to really eat during our restaurant meal or drink at the bars later in the day - which lowered the value proposition even more for me, ha!)

£100/hour of actual go-karting, versus £1/hour for most AAA games these days. I don’t tend to like AAA games that much, for the most part, but even with all their bloat, recycled content, open-world downtime, etc, they still seem like better value per money per time than anything motorsports-related.

Yep. LLMs are great for bouncing ideas off, and for getting “soft answers”, but no-one should ever be looking for factual answers from them.

I don’t disagree, but gaming laptops are always overpriced. You’re paying a premium for the small form factor. (And I assume they also have the much less powerful RTX 4070 Mobile, which makes the value proposition even worse for laptops.)

Unfortunately for her, too. She might be successful, but she seems fucking miserable all the time.

I’m definitely a little confused about Tango - I’m hoping we’ll at least get more details come out about why Microsoft shuttered them. I mean, Ghostwire Tokyo was… whatever, and I could understand Microsoft not wanting to have them working on that kind of scale again any time soon. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it was fairly expensive and perhaps didn’t do as well as they hoped. But I’m surprised they didn’t want to just downsize the studio and aim for another HI-FI Rush-esque game (or sequel).

But Arkane Austin being closed definitely makes sense. Not only was Redfall a disaster, but by the time Redfall released, 70% of the people who’d worked on Prey had left the studio. (Largely because the studio’s president had left the studio just after Prey, I believe, rather than because of the Microsoft acquisition of Bethesda.) All that was really left was the name.

I installed uBlock for someone recently. They complained about all the empty space where the ads used to be. So I removed the empty space by blocking that element with uBlock, which increased the width of the main body of the website, and they then complained that the website was too wide…

Some people are beyond help.

Those and reducing the requirements for the early blinds definitely stand out to me, yeah. Reducing the early blinds is a very good change - I think most of my early losses aren’t necessarily because I’ve played badly, but rather because it’s too early in the run to have found something to build around or to put any combos together. This change makes you less beholden to RNG in the early game, and also allows you to think a little more about your endgame strategy rather than focusing on surviving right now.

I agree. As much as I agree with the idea of universal basic income - because I think supporting society while reducing the work necessary is something we should aim for, because it’s the best way to ensure everyone gets a fair lot in life and because I think it’s a necessity with the direction the labour market is heading - this isn’t really the kind of thing I want to see in this community, personally. Hell, UBI doesn’t really have much to do with the thought of “if X is Y% of Z then 1000X is Y% of 1000Z” - it’s just basic maths really (and OP seems to have got the maths wrong, too).

I don’t think the Steam Workshop is the issue here. I’m glad it exists, and direct downloads or snv links are still a reasonable alternative for mods that can’t be hosted on the Workshop for whatever reason.

It’s okay; I appreciate the apology! :)

I think it’s important to look for the nuance in situations and not treat everything as zero-sum. Both sides can have good points and be open to criticism at the same time (this isn’t an “enlightened centrist” take, I promise!). I think a lot of discussion online does tend to strip away nuance and take the position that if you show any empathy with one side then it means you must hate the other - I do my best to avoid that!

these people SHOULD be putting this negative pressure on them. It’s deserved

Was it not implied I agree with that when I said:

The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.

and;

• customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable
• people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable

I’m not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it’s obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I’ve not played it myself) and should be improved.

?

I don’t see why that would make my opinion stupid. Yes, the studio/publisher should be held to account for the crappy release. But a big part of holding them to account should be not giving them money for it in the first place; not just handing over money and then complaining afterwards. Complaining afterwards is reasonable for the people who did hand over money, but they should also hold themselves accountable for financially rewarding a company that puts out a crappy product - they’re part of the problem.

The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.

• it’s hard to feel sorry for people who pre-ordered because they got exactly what they paid for - a game of unknown quality and quantity of content
• it’s hard to feel sorry for people who bought post-release because they also got exactly what they paid for - a game where reviews detailed poor quality and quantity of content
• customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable
• people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable
• people abusing the devs is not reasonable

I’m not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it’s obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I’ve not played it myself) and should be improved. But I do think gamers could learn to be a little more responsible with their purchases and inform themselves before buying a game.

I’m pretty over the whole cycle of games coming out and not meeting expectations, people buying them anyway (through pre-orders or day-one purchases), people being unnecessarily rude/hostile/sending death threats to developers as if they were forced to buy the game as gunpoint. Yes, developers should try to do better, yes publishers should often give developers more time to polish up games rather than announcing the release date two years in advance and refusing to delay, but also consumers could really take some responsibility for what they decide to give money to.

The police didn’t actually arrest him, and I think the headline is a little misleading. Falter had been walking directly against the protest (and not attempting to cross the road like he claimed). The police stopped him and offered to escort him to his destination via a route that avoided the march. Falter refused and tried to push through the police officers and cross the protest march. The officers prevented him and told him he was free to go in the opposite direction, or that they would escort him past the protest, but that if he tried to go the way he was they would have to arrest him. It was clear they didn’t want to arrest him, and the officer offered probably a dozen times over the course of the ~15-minute interaction to escort him via a different route.

I think the officer did a good job of de-escalating, personally, and was incredibly patient in the face of Falter’s obnoxious, disingenuous antagonism. It’s a shame that there’s a single soundbite that, when stripped of context, portrays the officer poorly, but I think it’s clear to anyone watching the full video that the officer had no anti-semitic intent and handled the situation well.

The officer mentioned in the full video that Falter had been walking directly against the protest and wasn’t just trying to cross the road like he claimed. Which, “openly Jewish” or not, is a good reason to stop him, I think - for his own safety and the safety of the people in the march. And coupled with the fact that he very visibly is Jewish, it makes his actions seem a lot like a counter-protest - something the police generally try to limit or contain regardless of the protest subject.

The police officer had the patience of a saint, honestly. He offered to escort Falter to the place he wanted to go via a different route - so as to avoid the protest - probably around a dozen times. It’s very clear Falter didn’t really have any intention of getting to his claimed destination.

It also left Game Pass somewhat recently, which could maybe contribute.

If a car can receive OTA updates from the manufacturer, then it can receive harmful OTA updates from an attacker who has compromised the car’s update mechanism or the manufacturer.

There’s potential for a very dystopian future where we see people assassinated, not via car bomb but via the their cars being hacked to remove braking functionality (or something similar). And then a constant game of security whack-a-mole like we see with anti-virus software. And then some brilliant entrepreneur will start selling firewalls for cars. And then it’ll be passed into law that it’s illegal to use a vehicle that doesn’t have an active firewall/anti-virus subscription.

It almost feels like the obvious path things will go down. Yay, capitalism…

I’m not totally opposed to software being used in cars (as long as it’s tested and can be trusted to the degree mechanical components are) but yeah, OTA updates just seem like a terrible idea just for a little convenience. I’d rather see updates delivered via plugging the car in (and not via the charging port - it would need to be a specific data transfer port for security reasons). Alert people when there’s an update, and even allow the car to “refuse to boot” if it detects it’s not on the latest version. But updates should absolutely be done manually and securely.

It’s the length of the combined total working lives of an entire football stadium full of people.

The reason it’s overwhelmingly called “climate change” instead of global warming now is because of language change pushed by billionaire foundations.

I do think “global warming” struggles to convince some more simple people anyway, unfortunately. Because while the average temperature of the globe is increasing and causing the changes in climate that we’re seeing, I’ve come across far too many comments from people saying things like “global warming must be a myth because it snows more than it used to” and things themselves smarter than all climate scientists combined for that observation.

Of course, those same people probably think global warming is good because they like their summer holidays so perhaps their opinions shouldn’t matter much either way!

The idea that non-game software doesn’t involve creativity or spit balling or iteration is ridiculous. But from what I’ve seen it does involve a lot more waiting for consensus and thinking too far down the road, which are political activities aimed at being right (as measured by vice presidents) rather than productive activities aimed at getting something done or making something cool (as measured by your own name in credits of a completed work offered to the public).

I think the key difference is what the goal is. With non-game software, there’s usually a goal of we want something that achieves X - let’s create, spit-ball and iterate until we achieve that. X is a measurable outcome - it requires some creativity, spitballing and iteration, but it’s easy to see if/when you’ve succeeded.

With games, things are a lot more subjective. The goal is create, spitball and iterate until you have something that people find enjoyable. You just keep going until you recognise that you’ve got something worthwhile. It’s a “you’ll know it when you see it” situation, rather than something you can track your progress towards. Sometimes you can follow a formula/template and iterate on another games’ mechanics/systems and people will like it; sometimes you can do that and people will call it a soulless copycat instead. Sometimes games are technically good but just don’t feel enjoyable; sometimes they’re enjoyable despite any technical issues they might have.

Amazon and Google’s issues stemmed from treating game development like any other software development.

“It’s absurd that we live in a society where people feel the urge to tell me to greet them with ‘sallam alleykum’”.

There’s already a huge difference between what happened and your example here. Your example is “people saying you must do X” . What happens when it comes to gender is people asking, “please do not do X”.

They’re not saying you must refer to them as, for instance, she/her, but rather asking that you do not refer to them as he/him/they/them/whatever. You’re free to just not use pronouns to refer to them at all if that suits you better - you can refer to them by name instead. You’re left with plenty of options and only a handful of restrictions.

Your example, on the other hand, is completely restrictive; you must take this single course of action, and there are no alternatives.

For what it’s worth, I do think we’re in a fairly transitional stage (ha) of how we as society deal with transgenderism. I think people being made to change their pronouns in order to feel comfortable is silly. Not because those people are silly - they’re just doing what they can to feel comfortable with the restrictions society has placed on them - but because society and language are silly.

Why do we refer to people by gender at times when it’s completely irrelevant? Someone having a penis, or male hormones, or whatever other “masculine qualities”, is irrelevant 99% of the time when I refer to them as he/him. If I say, “Donald Trump? Yeah, he’s a corrupt idiot,” then why does him having a penis have any bearing on the language I use there?

And why do we have such gendered roles in society? Why can’t men just wear dresses and make-up and link the colour pink and still identify as men? Why can’t women cut their hair short and wear baggy clothes and like engineering projects and lifting weights at the gym and still identify as women? I guarantee that if we could remove all those kinds of gender associations, you’d see a lot less trans people.

People transition because who they are and what they like, and what society says they have to be (based on their gender) are at odds with each other, and it’s literally easier for them to change gender in order to be allowed to be themselves than to change society. Being trans isn’t some kind of personal failing; it’s a failure of society to accommodate people who deviate even slightly from its rigid roles and expectations.

The ideal future, such as I see it, is for there to be no trans people because no-one feels a need to transition - they can just feel comfortable and accepted as they are. But until then, you need to recognise that there’s a societal issue and stop being a part of it. It takes such a small amount of effort on your part to use the pronouns someone requests, or to avoid using pronouns at all, and it makes such a huge difference to them to be gendered properly. So just be a decent, respectful person and accommodate their wishes and stop making their life worse.