I think Microsoft can be thanked for that. They buckled down and lent their support to make sure Starfield didn't have constant crashes and backwards flying spaceships and whatnot.

Thanks for the recommendations! I'll look into these, and already have dipped my feet into stuff like Everspace 2 and Outer Wilds. Some of these are on Xbox Game Pass as well, which is cool.

It'll prevent indie artists from having their work plagiarized over and over without payment from indie "devs" who honestly shouldn't have the right to exist as "developers" if they can't afford to actually hire artists and such.

It'd be one thing if they made an agreement to get assets from artists for cheap or for free as a favor, but just plain putting them all out of business permanently by letting a machine steal their work forever is another thing entirely.

Wait until the population declines further and the CCP tightens its grip even more over Hong Kong. I doubt this'll last. It's just how authoritarian communist regimes work. Look at Putin and co. for examples.

Not shocking. I just hope people learn from this and react by not getting into the gaming industry until the shortage of workers forces it to change. Same thing with the entertainment industry outside of gaming at large.

The way the movie / tv industry treats most of its employees who aren't at the very top is just horrible, and if people didn't have such stars in their eyes for Hollywood and such, working conditions would be so much better all around, along with pay and mandatory breaks.

I've been in the entertainment industry, and so has my sister. It's amazingly how terrible people are treated, including crew and lower end actors, and all for a product that's not really necessary or all that important for the survival of the world. People don't think about it, but we've been around for MILLIONS of years without TV and Movies. Sure there were plays and such, but it doesn't take much for humanity to amuse itself. Simple conversations, board games, some sticks and balls... if the writer / actor strikes kept going on, and new content stopped coming out, it'd suck at first, but we'd get used to it.

Aren't human beings also just primates too? I think this'd apply to us as well.

To be fair, in the Anime / Manga itself, the really old man / woman that looks like a child is more played for laughs. It's the community that sexualizes the character, not the actual show / comic.

Usually. Then there's fantasy settings with halflings and dwarves and such, but they look more like adult humans with smaller bodies. Finn Deimne from Danmachi coming to mind, as he's an actual halfling hero and basically the leader of his troop. Has a full sized human woman after him, but I feel like it's not weird, as they're both adults. Just adults of different sizes / races.

Spy X Family, if you haven't seen it yet. Anyone even moderately into anime has, though. It's one of the few Anime that's (mostly) family friendly and entertaining for almost anyone of any age and gender.

That would strengthen America and make it a better, more competitive country that would have to worry a lot less about the new cold war, and also make even our military stronger in the long run... but oh no, it's "socialism" so half the voting population's too brainwashed to see how it'll help everyone, including the rich, who would have higher quality workers.

Because it's not about making life better, it's about control + sadism.

From the grapevine, it's less that it sucks, more like it's meh. 7/10 and all that. Exactly what you'd expect from Skyrim / Fallout 4 in space, but somehow more bland in terms of characterization and storyline.

Same Bethesda shallowness and jank. People who just like exploring a big universe and doing repetitive stuff mindlessly will enjoy it, people who want more choice and character interaction with a compelling story probably will not.

It's kind of like the old Bethesda / Bioware split, except that Bioware's basically dead now, and Larian's doing what they used to do, but possibly better in some ways. Then there's Obsidian who used to be like Bioware / Bethesda but better in the past, but nowadays they seem content to just try to copy Bethesda while adding some "quirkiness" and hoping it'll work.

Thanks for sharing that, even despite the uncontrollable facepalm that resulted. What's terrible is that despite the fact that this artist is so crazy and racist, his art is actually pretty good.

Maybe for now, but as soon as more people switch to Windows 11 or Microsoft apps that constantly show you ads and are basically spam / adware themselves, Linux will get more appealing.

Microsoft is unfortunately learning from social media companies. Not only do you PAY for the product, you are also the product, and get your personal info stolen and get served ads even while you pay.

It's getting to the point where I'm seriously eyeballing Mint again, or Kubuntu. And I'm the kind of person that's generally too lazy to even dual boot anymore.

That would explain the Saudi money, and why every hostile nation states seems to have a bot army of blue checkmarks trolling any political entity that's against Dictators or fascist, authoritarian states.

You're right, and I upvoted you, but one issue is that unless people buy AMD cards anyway, they'll never have the research funds to ever match, much less beat Nvidia in the future. All things being equal (and they usually are for my needs) I tend to buy AMD over Nvidia to keep them in the race, so that GPU's don't turn into a monopoly. As it is, the duopoly we have now (excluding Intel, which I'm not sure will continue making consumer GPU's in the long run) isn't great for consumers right now.

The only reason AMD GPU's are even as good as they are now is due to the research money they got from Ryzen taking the fight to Intel.

Only thing shocking about this is that it took this long. Any drone capable of carrying a weapon was going to get one. I mean, look at Ukraine right now. Consumer drones with soda bottle improvised explosives and cardboard drones. I can see a future where most warfare is drone vs drone, to see who can hit the other's supply lines / storage first.

The way Russia's turtling with illegal mines, drones are basically one of the only ways to attack without taking massive losses while also moving slowly and being sitting ducks for artillery.

Sad, because I was a fan of them and bought all their games from Saint's Row 1 all the way to Gat out of Hell (although not in chronological order) and got Agents of Mayhem for free somewhere, but think they've made some bad moves lately.

I think it all started going downhill from Agents of Mayhem, and them screwing up with the reboot of Saint's Row was probably the nail in the coffin. I wish they'd just made Saint's Row 5 instead, with wacky time travel shenanigans and a more polished set of superpowers.

At the point where they decided to "reboot" to something old school and grittier (TOO old school, imo) they really didn't get what their fanbase wanted, and what new players who'd only heard of and experienced Saint's Row 4 would get excited about.

They could've probably taken Saint's Row up to 6 entries if they'd just iterated on the formula from 4 and possibly Gat out of Hell (I wouldn't know, I got distracted and didn't play it after I bought it, ironically). Similar to how United Front Games (the developer of Sleeping Dogs) could've probably stayed in business if they'd just made Sleeping Dogs 2 instead of that horrible "free to play" multiplayer asset flip of some of the least interesting elements of Sleeping Dogs 1.

Sad that the US can't get this yet, but in the meantime, Nokia's partnered up with Ifixit to make stuff like the G310 available. There's also the G22 and G42 in Europe. Apparently the G310 and the G42 have the same battery, according to iFixit's website. I'll probably get the G310 myself, if the reviews aren't terrible.

If it's too hard, then just stop charging them. Then they have to list NOTHING. So simple. At the very least, it'll just whittle down the fees they have to list to government mandated ones, which'll be a lot simpler.

Not shocking, it's Chicago after all. And it was 3 guys, and if it was reporters without security, they probably had valuable equipment to steal.

Yeah, in the 1920's to boot. If B-movie (or nowadays just any movie studio) were on here, they'd take what you just wrote, add time travel to it and make it into a movie without giving you credit. And they'd probably find some way to use AI in it too.