People who don’t want to use the epic store. That was me. I just don’t want another launcher, another account. I’ll get around to it at some point I’m sure but I didn’t buy AW2 and probably would have if it wasn’t an exclusive.

Dude, they flubbed this so damn hard by over reaching. A few years ago, when they mentioned there would be a button in word that you could use to make a slide deck of your word dock, I was so excited. The teams meeting part where it will summarize meetings is honestly fantastic in doing Roberts rules of order type stuff. My response was “I hate what this means in terms of privacy, but godamn that sounds useful”.

In turning into an everything all or nothing they massively screwed up. I have a self hosted instance of llama-gpt that I use to solve the “blank page” problem that AI was actually great at.

I have a lot of issues with AI on principle, like a lot of folks. But it blows my mind how hard they screwed up delivery (and I don’t just mean the startups, that’s to be expected). There’s plenty to be said about uber at a principle level, but it’s still bloody convenient. The entire roll out of a AI-ecosystem reeks of this meme: “but we made plans!”.

So, ditto. Something is different about the pre packaged “tajin”.

Or just… Don’t make a launcher?

Thank you for the tips! It turns out the files weren’t corrupted at all, it was a transcoding issue somewhere in the hardware acceleration stack. I’ve disabled it which will cause some bottlenecks, but there’s more than enough processing power in the rig for the limited amount of people that use it simultaneously.

Thank you for the reply and the links though! My original plan was NOT to fix the files, just to figure out which had an issue and re-download them. Like I said it turns out that was unnecessary.

Thanks all the same for pointing me to that thread. I do want to start screwing around with some imagine manipulation at some point, and this has already been really educational in learning the top level flow of this kind of thing. Again, I’m more used to passing data for sensors and motors.

Right, said Fred.

That and post-scarcity doesn’t mean “zero scarcity”. Like if someone wanted to create a picard funkpop the size of a planet, I don’t think they’d be allowed the resource budget.

It’s like how it doesn’t matter where you live, if you want to buy on the silk road, you need bitcoin. Presumably even the federation can’t just make latinum whenever they please, or we wouldn’t see them haggle with it. Although, it would be fun to see that they could and just take the responsibility of not crashing non-federation cultures entire economies very seriously, either out of respect or treaty.

Damnit, I want a LD episode where the crew is frustrated and desperately wants to just “buy” their problem away but can’t because an economist at command says it’ll mean they have to rescue all these non-federation colonies that are currently self sufficient. Come to think of it it’s right there with the “you break it you own it” concept of the prime directive.

Literally means “have you eaten”, except it doesn’t really require an answer.

Grandmothers in every culture

I think that’s exactly the point though. “We didn’t mark it up to mark it down, the price is just the price”. As a chronic patient gamer part of me hates that (I love finding older classics for like $10) but I don’t mind shelling out for a good game. The biggest expense is my time, and if a bunch of years later the price hasn’t moved it’s probably worth my time.

oh yeah, I didn’t want to be dismissive of the mtx stuff. It’s absolutely predatory and awful, but I don’t think it fully stands in the way of developing good games.

Which is related to what you’re saying about indies going under even after success. Game development takes time, and you need money to underwrite that time. I just think there’s going to be a split; right now AAA studios are shitifying their games, turning them more into CandyCrush skinner boxes. But the demand for good games hasn’t gone away, there’s just less financial upside than making CandyCrush. My point is, even though it’s less money, there’s still a good amount of money to be had there. Eventually the gaps going to be filled. Microsoft cant fill it because on the balance sheet, things like COD and anything from King are where they should be focused. And it sucks right now because they sucked up a stupid amount of talent and thanos snapped them, but thats not a sustainable practice.

But yes, it’s going to be painful. It’ll suck seeing really nifty indie stuff have to struggle so hard. Like I said I’m also going to miss the polish that comes with AA stuff. I’m going to miss the hell out of Arkane. Their games weren’t perfect, but they had so much soul. They didn’t deserve to have Redfall be their epitaph.

Oh I’m well aware lol. The game is a godamn miracle. But thats the thing, Bethesda has been on this trajectory for a good lonnnnnng while. Like the whole “obsidian good bethesda bad” thing isn’t quite right, but what is true is Bethesda has been incredibly strategic about shittifying their games: there’s always just enough there to keep you going “ok… one more”.

Starfield is the first one I just didn’t even bother with.

FO4 is why I waited and ultimately didn’t buy starfield. I LOVED elderscrolls, and FO:NV is like my alltime favorite. I didn’t hate FO4, there’s some fun to be had, but you can see pretty clearly from it where FO:76 came from. From what I’ve seen and read, I’m not missing anything with starfield.

NMS is tough. They did an amazing job trying to salvage it, but it will always be a game that was never meant to be that big. It’s not bad but at somepoint in the loop you just go “wtf am I doing?”. I give that team all the credit in the world, but that game never belonged where it is.

Eh, skill up had a great take on this. The thing is it’s wayyyyy easier to be a small indie developer than it ever was before. Making a game (or any art) still isn’t easy, it never was and never will be, but it’s viable without a giant publisher in a way it just hasn’t been before.

Its the AA titles that are on the most precarious footing, but I bet even those do ok. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy some AAA stuff time to time, I’ve got a stupid amount of hours in overwatch, but I’ve never once paid for a skin because… why would you?

The thing that’s going to suck is losing the studios like Arkane. Their games weren’t perfect but they were freaking cool, and they basically always got the raw end of the deal. Even Prey(2016), their masterpiece, is the product of corporate bullshitiery they had nothing to do with. So we’re probably going to miss studios like that for a while (as they get re-tasked to fortnite/cod support teams) but “indie” stuff has already been stepping up to fill that void, and is less indie all the time.

Look at Dave the Diver. That’s not exactly an indie studio. They had resources. There’s going to be a gap for a bit, but there’s still a demand for good games and art. Those AA breakthroughs are what people want. Again, I continue to spend dumb amounts of time on overwatch, but it’s not where I spend my money. Microsoft hovelled themselves by buying all these studios and not taking the leap with supporting them. Distribution just doesn’t have the value it once did. So if microsoft wants to become CandyCrush, feeding an addiction loop to grab the whales, sure, whatever, but there’s plenty of bread out there for studios doing other stuff.

I agree with the “no” assessment, but also need to drop the bit of trivia that sharks are really sensitive to electricity. There was a guy making a shark detterent belt that you hit a button and it gave a small zap. Guy would cover himself in food, have the shark barreling right at him, hit the button and it does a 180.

That being said, it probably was really low current but high voltage (like a static shock), I don’t know if sharks care about a low voltage battery stack.

(bonus fun fact: that sensitivity is why hammerhead are the way they are. With those sensors further apart you get more spatial resolution, like a radar array. It’s also why they wag there head over the floor; they’re sweeping for electrical signals of their prey)

OK, I’m going to save you time because I do some controls and totally get how “easy” demand management should be given how simple most devices are.

But WHAT?! Thats all built into the grid over there??? That’s AWESOME. Let me see if I have this right: there’s essentially a small transient frequency modulation in the 60hz(?) in the grid that allows devices to receive a “off” signal?

I could be wrong but I’m 90% sure we’ve got nothing like that in the states. MAYBE there’s something like that for communicating with the meter itself but certainly not past the meter.

… Consumer water heaters in Germany are built in as demand shaving??? That is so damn cool.

I’m a chronic “patient gamer” belive me I get it. The underworld awaits you my friend ;)

The only crash like I said was almost certainly due to a multi-monitor display and one monitor disconnecting and reconnecting. I didn’t even bother submitting a report.

And yeah there’s definitely going to be a few extras. Its wild, like I never play games at launch, specifically because they always ship broken, and here this thing is with the stones to call itself early access when it’s so polished narcissus would gaze at himself in if.

Thanks for pointing out! I see what you mean now but didn’t even notice.

I hear you, but I caved lol. You will NOT be disappointed. EA is such a weird choice for this one. It’s where I’d call it well past beta (a true beta, not the marketing betas that we usually see where there’s no time to fix anything). Like it truly is “early access” but we’re so used to that term meaning “somewhere in dev”.

If they’re targeting 2025 release this thing will be incredibly polished by then.