ExoMonk

Maybe it's different for the upper management types, but for me I am easily 3x more productive at home in < 6 hours than I ever was at 8+ hours in the office.

There are soo many distractions in the office environment we had (cubicle farm). People chatting behind me, constant noise, people coming up to my desk throughout the day to ask me something and disrupt my entire workflow.

I work in my quiet home with headphones on listening to music. When people need something from me they ping me in Teams or send an email and I get to choose when to stop my work to respond. And when I really need to focus I can throw on Do Not Disturb mode. In the office "Do Not Disturb" was me booking a conference room for myself to work in silence.

Yeah the PS5 is pretty reasonably priced for what you get. I think the issue is two fold:

1. We already have really expensive machines that probably play games much better than the PS5 in frames and quality so buying another machine for a handful of games is just not in the cards.

2. Many of us much prefer keyboard/mouse and using controllers is really hard when you've not done it in many years.

I think we just wish Playstation was more friendly to PC players and not have these long exclusives (they've gotten a lot better recently though). Microsoft for example is a lot friendlier to PC players than Sony. Pretty much all MS first party games are on PC pretty much day one and many of them are on GamePass day one as well.

Read through the post, OP mentioned a few times that this isn't about a phone war. It's just one persons experience going from Android to iPhone; what worked well and what didn't.

I think a lot of folks have picked an ecosystem and never strayed from it; seeing a post like this helps fill the gaps of their curiosity. Being exposed to other people's experiences and experience a change yourself is a good thing.

At the end of the day phones are just tools to help you go about your day to day. We don't have to foam at the mouth over a discussion like this. iPhones are very good devices and have great synergy with other Apple devices and apps. Android is a very customizable experience which has many great phones at very good prices. You can't go wrong with either IMO.

There would have been no outrage if Reddit valued its users. If they came out and said they were going to start charging (a reasonable amount) for API access but were giving developers until the end of the year to prepare no one would have batted an eye.

Most would probably migrate to the Reddit app for free. Some would just start paying to use the app of their choice and we’d have moved on.

Reddit showed their true colors which was a big f you to the free labor and free content producers of their platform.

I would’ve paid $5-$10 a month to Apollo had this all been handled professionally. Instead I’ve deleted Reddit , fired up an rss feed app and I’m also here now. There’s a handful of communities I haven’t found a suitable replacement for but I’ll live.

I never realized until recently that a NUC is the perfect device for my aging mother-in-law. She has an old gaming desktop (sans-gpu) with a i5-4670 that is plugged up to a 1080p monitor next to her recliner chair. At some point that PC will die and these seem like a pretty meaty upgrade in a tiny box.

I'm glad someone "reputable" is taking the helm.

On Disturb's album 10,000 Fist is a song called Land of Confusion. First listened to the album way back in the mid 2000's.

Around 2006 or so I heard the same song being played on the speakers at the Ikea I worked at but it was a lot softer than I expected. Turns out it was originally done by a band called Genesis.

Both version slap but in different ways.

Things I like about working in an office:

• I liked my coworkers
• I liked going for random breaks to go walk somewhere or have lunch and get away from the desk

Things that sucked:

• Constant noise and distractions
• Small talk with people that I just don't want to spend the mental energy talking to
• 1.5 hours worth of commute time that just eats away at my day

I've been remote working since Covid first landed. I will happily trade all the things I liked about working in an office to never have to deal with the parts I don't like. If I can help it, I'll always choose remote work. I get so much done here at home in both work and home stuff. Oh I forgot to do laundry over the weekend, no biggie. Oh I need to marinate something, boom 10 minute break. Finished all my planned work for the day? Going to knock off early and go play a game or watch a show.

Remote work has transformed my life and I'll never go back to the office.

Wait, Joe Manchin is a democrat? /s

When I see articles like this and climate problems in general it just screams to me how fucked we are. My only hope is that I die before things get really bad because I don't believe that capitalism will let our government change the status quo. They'll push for new desalination techniques they can charge a pretty penny for and kick the can down the road further before allowing regulations and serious action to take place.

Yes this is a defeatist attitude because honestly I feel pretty defeated and I don't see a way things will get better in the current political climate.

Its a great indexer. This and nzbgeek and I need pretty much nothing else

I ended up setting up rss feeds and am reading more articles now. I come here for the comment socializing and occasionally I still use reddit in Google searches when I need more specific information.

Yeah while MS does also "own" the PC ecosystem via Windows, I'd bet MS probably makes more money off of an individual Xbox player than a PC player which should make them a bit less friendly to PC.

For starters:

• Steam takes a 30% cut of all sales

• Sales and prices are usually much better on Steam than consoles so a lot of people wait for that number to drop over time

• For most multiplayer games you need to pay for Xbox Gold which is upwards of $50-$60 a year (or gamepass which is even more, though you get more out of it).

• You have to buy the console (this really depends on if MS actually makes money on console sales though) to play the game too.

Microsoft doesn't have to put their games on PC if they don't want to and in the past they kind of didn't (no one liked GFWL). They could totally go the exclusive route again, but I think MS knows that Xbox die-hard will buy an Xbox console and obviously buy the games on the xbox store for whatever it cost. PC players will also buy it if it's a good game and a good price and, this is crucial, is on Steam.

PC players are an untapped resource of potential customers; That's why Sony finally decided to also cave and put their games on Steam. Money is money, but the difference is MS is betting big on GamePass and good-will right now since they are behind Sony in sales. I think because they're behind Sony and trying to earn that good-will back, MS becomes more friendly to PC by putting their games on PC day one and on GamePass day one whereas Sony is still going with the 1-year (or more) PS5 exclusivity thing.

The interesting thing will be if MS ever gets back on top again, who knows what that looks like, but it'll probably suck.

Yeah that's a weird choice. Todd Howard said that the game has performed upwards of 60fps in some places, but they made the choice to lock it down to 30fps on console for full graphical fidelity.

I get that not everyone has a TV that supports VRR, but they should be able to programmatically check what the xbox is currently supporting. If it is a Series-X and does support VRR they should be able to unlock FPS to up-to 60. I mean even 40fps on the steamdeck is surprisingly good, whereas 30 can be really jarring. Or give a choice to the user, 4k@30 or 1440p@60 with VRR.

Final Fantasy 7 when Aeries dies. I was a teen then and it was the first RPG I ever played and the first time I experienced a main character just die and is gone from the game.

I don't think I experienced anything like that again until maybe Destiny 2 when Cayde died. Little different with that though as they should his death in a live stream about the launch of that DLC. Had a different impact but had to be done since the entire premise of that DLC was getting revenge so couldn't hide it from the promo materials.

I played Mass Effect 3 all the way to just before the final mission using only level 1 weapons. When I was doing my final walk through of the ship I went down to the hangar and encountered a terminal I hadn’t seen that let me upgrade my weapons. I had like 700,000 credits and upgraded everything right then and there.

That's exactly why I finally pulled the trigger on the 6XX. It's already on sale but even if it wasn't it's still over $100 cheaper than the reg 650's.

Oof, I don't know if I want to recommend anything I'm interested in as it cost lots of money to really enjoy these hobbies.

I guess at the base of it, my biggest hobby is generally upgrading every aspect of my day to day life.

Building PC's

I've got 3 gaming PC's in the house (wife's, mine, and another for the tv with steam-big-picture) and also an Unraid server for media.

Desk Setups

I have 2 separate desk I put together. One for work and one for gaming. Both desk are wood countertops bolted onto sit-and-stand desk frames.

Work desk has a 34inch ultrawide. I also have a Herman Miller Logitech Embody which has helped my back immensely.

Gaming desk has a 38inch ultrawide which is awesome for gaming. And I have a Herman Miller non-logitech Embody. There are some subtle differences in how they feel and I need 2 chairs because I sit a little differently if I'm working or gaming.

Audio

I fell into the audio trap for my gaming and work desk partially thanks to r/headphones.

Headphones wise I have:

• Sennheiser 599SE - At my gaming desk
• AKG K713Pro - These were for my gaming desk, but I don't like them as much as the others. My ears touch the driver which doesn't feel good.
• Drop 6xx - At my work desk because I listen to the most music while working.

Amp/Dac/Mixer:

• JDS Atom Amp - work desk
• Schiit stack (Modi 3+ / Magni Heresy) - gaming desk; I just got these so I'm testing things out.
• Mackie 8 channel mixer - at gaming desk because I like using physical sliders to adjust gaming, music, discord instead of software.
• RE320 dynamic microphone

Everything above has been collected over the last 4-5 years or so.

Oh also OP if you made it this far down, check out twitch streams for a "board game" called Blood on the Clocktower. It's a social deduction game you can play in person, but the community built a pretty comprehensive web-based tool to play online. My wife and I watch the streams every week it's a lot of fun. She plays in some of the games too, I mostly just like to watch.

This is probably one of my favorite albums. Every time I hear it it brings out some latent memory of when I first got the album. I remember convincing my boss to let me take off for a bit to go buy the CD and then come back so I could listen to it at my desk while I worked the rest of the day.

I was new to living in Seattle so I listened to the almost exclusively while driving around. Hitting up jack in the box after playing arena soccer and eating a breakfast burrito in my car in the parking lot, heading to somewhere new in Ballard after work to meet up with friends for taco Tuesday. Flying down the freeway to my brother's house on Sunday to watch football. This album reminds me of freedom and adventure which is weird given the name but that's what it was for me.

Vol 3 was my favorite slipknot album before this one but it always reminded me how something happened to Corey's voice because his brutal growl was almost complete gone, despite that album being fantastic in its own right. All Hope is Gone was a return to form.

Anyway that's my story. I love this album still to this day. Thanks OP for the post.

The bathroom was pretty bad at our old building. We had 4 floors with a couple hundred people on each floor, but the men's room was just 2 urinals and 2 stalls for each floor. So if you needed that stall you often ended up having to go to multiple floors to find a bathroom stall that wasn't already occupied.

The lack of privacy in general too. We had short cubicles with your monitors facing outward so anyone could see what you were looking at at any given time. If I wanted to take a 10 minute break to look at some reddit (beehaw now) I'd often feel like I'm going to get caught and spoken to.

There's a name I've not heard in a while. Used to love listening to that one song from like a decade ago, fighting trousers? Good shit, think I'll go listen to that again.

I've been out of the loop on this game. I really liked the first one, it brought back a lot of team fortress 2 memories. How bad is the second one? The general sentiment is "bad".

I've not cracked it in any way that's helpful as it's super situational. I find that when other people say a persons name, I have a better chance of remembering it. Like at the dog daycare I take my dog to, I've slowly learned the staff's names from hearing other staff members talk about them or mention them in some way.

Was going to say this as well. As a long time destiny player it very much feels like checking boxes or doing chores each week.

I've finally managed to break away and play other games and am so excited for my current to do pile. Mass Effect 1,2,3 done, Andromeda is in progress and after that is Control, Cyberpunk and Fallout 4.

The small drop in users isn't super surprising. I'm more interested in the drop of mods and tools. If more garbage slips through on the regular than I can imagine users start to drop off from their favorite subs turning to shit. Either way I'm done with reddit

That's awesome and what a deal. I think my mother-in-law has at least another year or so before we need to think about swapping hardware, but these little guys make so much sense.

One of my greatest joys is going to a new restaurant and ordering an old fashion. The quality of that drink sets the whole mood for my dining experience.

Man Origins boss fights were great. I remember being in awe when fighting Deadshot. That fight was the definition of a slobberknocker. I don't remember much else from that game but that fight stuck with me.

Thanks for the recommendation!

The funny thing (or sad thing depending on how you look at it) is that at the age of 37 I'm not that young, but there's a lot of music out there I have little to no exposure to. Music hasn't been a huge part of my upbringing despite all of my brothers being musicians; I was always a movie/tv/game kid. These days I trend towards heavy metal and some rap (depending on the artist).

You're right though, that video is the most 80's thing I've ever seen. I can see a montage of 80's music flowing through my head when I was listening to it.

30TB unraid or bust!

Just started Mass Effect Andromeda after finishing 2 runs of the original trilogy (loved them). Sadly my internet is out and EA won’t let me play which is a massive bummer.

I have 2 ultrawide setups

1. Work - 34 inch ultrawide with macbook sitting in front. I use the keyboard and trackpad of the laptop instead of a separate keyboard/mouse. I love the ultrawide for web development.
2. Gaming desk - 38inch ultrawide with a 27 in on the side. I rocked a single monitor for a while, but I got really tired of alt tabbing out of a game to see a message, or look at a guide. Second monitor is really nice to have. I did have the 27in vertical for a while, but this particular monitor has really shitty color shift so it's horizontal now until I get the motivation to swap it out for a different monitor I have

(all the copy and paste rule of 3 quests to find three MacGuffins then SAM will figure out how to find a location for another fight).

This has been my biggest complaint as I've been going through ME:A for the first time. I have limited time/energy to play so jumping into ME:A for 2ish hours and basically accomplish nothing really hurts my motivation for the next play session.

When I first started playing it, I was really enjoying the game. It was about the 3rd planet where I had to go to 3 places to unlock a vault to do a thing that the progression loop really started to weigh me down.

The original trilogy was brilliant for me. Get in, do a couple of missions (each one progressing the story a little more) maybe get sucked into a couple more missions and go to bed excited for the next session. But ME:A is just a slog. I'm doing various loyalty missions which is a little better, but still seems to require a lot of go here, here, and here and shoot some guys and then go into here to finish up.

Surely they'll just use your google account id as the identifier.

Edit: I just realized the game may not eve have that data for unity to be able to grab. Nevermind.

I mostly downloaded an app, Feedly and then Inoreader (I like this one better). Then I just used their interface to subscribe to all the sites I was interested in. It was as easy as subscribing to subs on reddit. I get a lot of repeat articles as I have a lot of crossover, but overall it's been pretty good.

Destiny 2. It gets a lot of hate (a lot of it deserved) but every week me and two friends run dungeons and it's always fun.

Firefox for everything except porn or sites that just have a ton of annoying in your face ads. For that I use Firefox focus. Also using 1Blocker as my Adblock.

Ars is actually super impressive coming out with all these articles on the situation that leans more on the users side considering Ars and Reddit have the same parent company. Well technically Ars' parent company is CondeNast but CondeNast's parent company is the same as Reddit's (Advanced Publications).

I just hope it plays 60+ on PC, who knows it could be pretty rough. I haven’t watched the digital foundry video on it yet, I assume it’s just Xbox version.

This happened to me when I was streaming. My favorite hobby became like a job. I only played while streaming and the time I was putting in outside of work was kind of killing me. Working a full day, coming home to do dinner and time with my wife and then start streaming by 8pm a couple days a week. It exhausted me. At some point I started to skip days and then I just never went back. Now I play games as a form of entertainment like watching Netflix/Hulu. I do it for leisure.

Sometimes I miss it though and think maybe I should try and get back into it but so far I've just not.

Stargate SG-1 when O'Neill and Teal'c are stuck in a groundhogs day loop. Seriously fun episode.

Also throwing a shout out to Stargate Atlantis, the episode where McKay is stranded at the bottom of an ocean in a puddle jumper and starts hallucinating. Some of the best acting I've seen in a while in that one.