Windows 2000 was a good operating system by any measure. It was rock solid, capable, well-supported, could scale from desktop to large enterprise deployments and everything in between, reasonably secure compared to their previous operating systems, etc. I never did like Microsoft operating systems, but Windows 2000 was actually good. It was a breath of fresh air at the time. We had NT 4, which was stable and reliable, but was limited by a lack of DirectX and became cumbersome in large deployments. Then we had Windows 95/98/ME, which was the garbage that crashed all the time.

I think it’s probably more a situation where they are not a good fit for each other anymore. The D&D license has value and Hasbro rightly wants to capitalize on that. Larian is a hot commodity right now and they don’t need to borrow the credibility that comes with a big license like D&D. There’s also a timing issue. BG4 is unnecessary when BG3 will continue to sell for years to come. Larian will put out at least a couple more games before BG4 makes sense.

Larian is in a position where they can make whatever game they want and it will sell like hotcakes. Why the hell would they want to pay enormous royalties again when they can bring the writing in house? Sure, Hasbro could reduce their fee, but they can’t reduce it to the point where it’s worthwhile for both them and Larian.

If I’m running Larian, there’s no way I’m making another D&D game. The lore is great, but the rule set sucks. There are better systems in the tabletop space and there’s no reason to even be limited to that after you’ve already made the decision to not make D&D. Wizards isn’t exactly a paragon of reliability and stability either so there’s risk there. Not to mention, it was Larian who helped pull Hasbro’s asses out of the fire. They were facing massive backlash from their core customers until a kick ass movie and BG3 made everyone forget about it.

In short, Larian is riding high and Hasbro is not. There’s a lot more money for Larian doing something else and probably good money for Hasbro licensing to another developer.

Why? I think there’s a decent chance they don’t survive this - at least their commercial airplanes. I won’t fly on a Boeing any time soon, if ever. It will take years to get back to a safety culture and there are tons of shit planes manufactured in the past several years that will be in service for decades.

If I was a pilot, I wouldn’t want to fly one either. They just had another incident where a pilot says the gauges went blank and he lost control. If a pilot union starts pushing back, it’s game over.

Would you fly on one of their planes?

Pretty soon everyone will be clamoring to let the CCP keep it.

What is it with people like Bobby Kotick? He could do whatever he wants and all he wants is power. If I had that kind of career that I had generational wealth and was still somewhat young I would find something to do that’s so much better than just more work. Honestly, I think it would be pretty awesome spending a few years figuring out how to give away a couple billion. You would meet so many interesting people and learn so much about the world. Imagine being able to have a positive, life-changing impact on more people than you can count. And then imagine you buy a toxic, addictive app to make more money instead. What a loser.

100%. That has been exactly my experience. There’s no question it’s a good car, but they always manage to set higher expectations than what they are capable of delivering. You can’t help but feel disappointed even though you have a great EV. It’s really soured me on the whole brand. I would never buy another one.

Genuinely curious… Do they make any good games? When I think of Ubi, I think of crappy launchers, having to sign into some bullshit account and mediocre games. I tried that Viking assassin’s creed game and it was trash, but I admit I don’t like any of the assassin’s creed games. What’s their killer app for someone who would give the game a fair chance?

Then what’s it for? Looking pretty?

Framework if you want to repair it yourself and Lenovo if you don’t. Lenovo makes a good machine and has very reasonably priced on-site support options.

Fuck ransomware gangs. Also, fuck Epic. I guess if it’s gotta happen the silver lining is that it happened to an asshole company.

To be honest, Bethesda’s best work is probably behind them. They will sell a few more games based on brand recognition and because we are suckers, but I don’t expect much. I’m old enough to have seen many of my favorite developers go through this. It’s difficult to have overwhelming success and keep knocking it out of the park with every release. Expectations for something better than the last thing are so high, the pressure to do something new, the culture change that comes with huge growth, and they eventually lose that magic that captured us in the first place.

FWIW, my kids were shit talking that game and saying it was going to be so bad. They started playing the demo and actually like it. They say it needs some polish but it’s fun to play. They are big Sea of Thieves fans.

People with private jets often charter them out when they’re not using them. The best place for an airplane is in the air. Only bad things happen when you let it sit around on the ground all the time. It’s not much different than commercial planes that spend most of their time in the air.

Sure, a private jet will have more emissions than an Airbus, but it’s a marginal increase. It’s not like rich people with their planes are producing a million times more pollution that wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have a private jet. They’re still going to fly, at least for longer trips.

It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole with this line of reasoning. Who else is using less efficient aircraft or taking unnecessary flights? Are all those police helicopter flights necessary? What about people flying to go party on an island somewhere versus some more noble purpose? Or airlines with a half empty flight? Meanwhile, it’s the oil companies producing the vast majority of carbon emissions while we squabble over travel itineraries and choice of aircraft.

The electric company. AI’s reading articles written by other AI’s. Everyone trying to figure out how to squeeze more revenue out of it. But everyone’s paying the electric bill for all these servers and the electric company doesn’t have to give a shit about any of it.

So help him out instead of trying to steal the project out from under him. I see there are other contributors in the kbin repository. This fork comes off as really sleazy.

Ernest put in the work and established a community. Now somebody comes along and tries to move that community over to a fork. That’s some bullshit. Zero creativity with the name too. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this group tries to monetize this thing if they manage to replace kbin. Community-focused my ass. If it was community-focused, you wouldn’t be on here trying to split the community.

Dude, just build a better product and let it speak for itself. Or maybe try contributing to kbin. It’s not cool to always be harping on the guy for his development pace and trying to pull people over to your fork. Like, we’re supposed to hop over there because you’ve made more commits this week? How do we know your project would be any better off if it ever blows up the way kbin did?

That kbin dude got tens of thousands of subscribers overnight and then put on blast with bug reports and feature requests. He’s done a good job running the site too. He’s got a pretty good track record as far as I’m concerned. He hasn’t asked for shit in return except a little space to maintain his sanity.

The headline makes it sound like a bad thing, but that’s more than plenty for launch if they are distinct apps that represent a variety of use cases. Frankly, it’s a lot more than I would expect for a new product like this. Sure, there’s VR and AR available now, but Apple has a track record of rolling together existing tech in a package that’s more accessible and often more useful. You can throw a few things out there to showcase what’s possible, but you also have to wait and see how consumers actually want to use it. They will find use cases the creators didn’t think of or were unsure about. Then the floodgates can really open up in terms of apps. I really wouldn’t be surprised to see people wearing these things out in public.

Nobody is buying this and I don’t think they are trying very hard to sell it either. Notice that this pricing is only in the U.S. This seems like a ploy to bolster their case for damages and/or royalties in a settlement. Or maybe just part of their patent defense strategy. This company is primarily in medical tech. Even if they aren’t so interested in the consumer market, they have to protect their patent or someone in a market they do care about will get away with it too. I would assume it strengthens their case if they can demonstrate material damages in a market they participate in. So quickly unveil a prototype, price it so there’s little to no demand, don’t bother manufacturing a product nobody wants, win the case, cancel the product.

If this runs on Linux, it’s an instant buy for me. This looks awesome.

He gets invited to these Illuminati meetings and says that? Anyone not living under a rock knows the whole world needs an energy breakthrough. Half them believe we need it to save the planet and the other half want it so they can build bigger things. When have we ever not needed an energy breakthrough?

Is the story that bad? I played a few hours and I was into it. Does it get worse later? I set the game aside because it was buggy and didn’t exactly run well. I’m planning to pick it up again after it gets some updates.

In the 6 or so hours I played, it was the inventory and menus that drove me crazy more than anything else. They are so poorly designed and implemented that I wonder if anyone actually played the game during testing. I can’t see myself continuing the game until they are improved.