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Been that way for years. There was a brief respite when people were switching to ASIC bitcoin mining and away from GPU intensive mining and you could actually get a GPU for a fair price, retail, non-scalper price gouging.
Now it’s right back to basically unaffordable for a name brand GPU. Literally more than a mortgage payment.
How a corporation uses its money and how it earns its profits should be under scrutiny. Customers can have a “fair” relationship with a company where everyone gets what they want - a good product at a fair price and a fair profit.
However, if a company gets their profits via enshittification, suppressing wages and benefits, using their profits to politically undermine workers and engage in monopolistic behavior, etc. they are just another run of the mill evil corporation.
Yeah, billionaires suck. You don’t get to be a billionaire by not taking as much as you can vs improving the costs to customers or employee benefits.
No billionaire has clean hands. Think beyond just Steam. If an if an indy developer wants to independently release a game they’ll probably fail. Why? Because if you’re not on Steam or one of the other big services you won’t get noticed. They’re also big enough that no competing services are going to show up. They’re priced out. You’re automatically excluded from the market. Steam, Epic, et al by default are rent extractors first. You want to play as a dev? You’re forced to pay.
It’s likely more than half of adults in the US play video games. About 40% of those play some kind of shooter. There are 258 million adults in the US. That’s ~129 million gamers, and ~51 million “shooters”.
Out of 51 million, they think they can link one to a game and condemn the genre?
Whatever. Try again. The only people that think so are the pearl-clutchers and the press.
I always started out “Imma hide all these cables and make the insides perfect!”
By the time I’d run all the power, fan, IDE, front case, USB, etc. I was like fuckit, I just want to get this thing running. Half-assed jammed the cables out of the way or behind the case ITX backing. Looks like shit, put the case side back on, off I go.
Lots easier now with far fewer cables to be run, cases offer more space behind the mobo for hiding cables and not the 3/4” of space they used to offer.
Almost every major release ever f’s up the server demand. Whether it be downloading the content or players looking to join games.
They know the bitching will happen, buy everyone’s already handed over the cash, so too bad. They budget enough servers to just keep the complaints from lasting too long. Then everyone forgets and finds some other facet of the game to call “unplayable”.
IMO the vast majority of people that use community mods are pretty thankful and just enjoy them despite any issues the mod has so long as overall it works well. They just play and keep their mouths shut.
There are a few that offer real and constructive criticism.
And the rest are the vocal trolls that just hate on everything. Unfortunately if they aren’t “fucking your mother last night” on whatever game chat you might be on they’re busy trashing on the “unplayable” game they’ve spent 500 hours playing in the last several months or on the forums berating the modders’ efforts. They’re just hateful people and hating on women in general is par for the course, if one dares participating in gaming they’re just another target for their shitty incel behavior.
My kids got a hand-me-down PS4, and I found out that we had to pay a connection fee to play online on top of my existing ISP internet fee. I had a what-the-actual-fuck moment. You’re forced into the walled garden of the console maker’s store and forced to pay more to play with friends? I built them both PCs and they’ve never really looked back.
I’ve never been a console fan simply for the proprietary nature of the devices along with the walled garden concept (and fuck controllers lol, I’m too used to mouse and keyboard) , but it really cemented my further rejection of the systems when it became apparent that online play was extra $.
Most republicans prior to Reagan are more like today’s liberals. They did things like make national parks, codify civil rights, and invest in social programs. Today’s liberals are trying to do what those republicans did - save natural lands, implement social programs, and enhance rights for people.
That said, just because a liberal does some things a conservative might approve of doesn’t make them a Republican, nor would the inverse be true.
When a decent gpu is ~$1k alone, then someone wants you to pay more $ for a feature that offers no tangible benefit, why the hell would they want it? I haven’t bought a PC for over 25 years, I build my own and for family and friends. I’m building another next week for family, and AI isn’t even on the radar. If anything, this one is going to be anti-AI and get a Linux dual-boot as well as sticking with Win10, no way am I subjecting family to that Win11 adware.
Maybe controversial opinion:
I’m very much against aim assist in crossplay and online multiplayer explicitly because of Xim and Chronos. Devices like the Xim are pretty much cheats and they exploit aim assist in online play to the detriment of the game. I play a popular online fps game and have thousands of hours of gameplay. I can immediately tell who is using a device that abuses aim assist. It’s blatant and often egregious, it’s essentially an aimbot, but just shy of not quite. It truly ruins gameplay.
I understand the desire for a Xim’s legit capabilities, it offers some assistance to handicapped players, it allows direct use of a joystick in games that don’t allow them, etc… but I think those are the minority. The vast majority use it because “aimbot”. That counts for the console players that use them , but PC players seem to get the most benefit as they’re used to mouse/keyboard setups vs the consoles that may not be. There’s not much need for an actual aimbot/esp/etc. if you have a Xim. Yes, they’re that good.
IMO there should not be aim assist in online gameplay, and yeah, *uck these clowns using chronos/xims. They really screw everything up.
TBF but a parody of what? Sure it has a satirical look and exaggerates aspects of modern society, however we are trying to balance that against the book.
We could even say that the movie is taking shots at Heinlein’s own personal beliefs because arguably Heinlein’s personal politics paint him as a rabid anti-communist, pro-nuclear and -projection of force.
Personally I viewed the commercials and over the top stratified society based using a trope of a somewhat Roman or Spartan militaristic society, but it’s been a long, long time since I read the book to remember enough to actually compare Heinlein’s politics to the book and then the film to that book and modern society.
I don’t understand why people wouldn’t take it at face value without any further context offered to them beforehand. It’s a campy action film that’s a lot of fun but with just the faintest dusting of authoritarianism that could be easily disregarded as just part of the ambience of the filmmaker’s decisions. It ends on a hopeful scene implying better understanding of the Bugs in order to reach victory.
You’ve got to read the book to get it, but even then that doesn’t really shift the film out of being a Big Action Shooter that’s fun to watch.
“Choosing beggars” is someone who wants more or better than what they were offered. Criticizing the offering for flaws and problems is not.
IOW - I get a free chicken sandwich. I demand better toppings, a free drink and chips on the side. There’s a roast beef available, how come I didn’t get that? That’s a choosing beggar.
The chicken sandwich is undercooked, the bread is dry. That’s what’s happening here. Criticism.
If I remember this study it required a formulated liquid for “feeding” the good bacteria that kept away the bad bacteria. Not sure what came of it.
Edit: not the same. Getting my studies mixed up. This is the one I was thinking of, it’s a mouthwash to get rid of destructive bacteria.
Not really a gold star by the top player’s name for this, either. The comment alone leaves plenty of room to be interpreted as “girls should be easy to beat/poor gamers because they’re girls.”