Google+ forced itself on people. I didn't want it so I stopped using my Gmail entirely. I imagine word of mouth caused people to avoid it.

I think the one that did it for me was Xbox game pass. I've never been much of a fan of digital games, but Xbox game pass made me see what the future of games will be.

You will pay an ever increasing amount per month to play whatever Microsoft or whoever decides you can be allowed to play. You will own nothing you play and if you cancel your subscription, your console is worthless. Meanwhile the service will be crammed with ads, the games themselves crammed with ads, and your data harvested and sold for "personalized" ads.

I only buy physical games now.

I would like to, but the fact is lemmy is 99% shitposts and memes. Don't get me wrong, I like that stuff but I also need to know wtf is going on in the world. Since losing rif and refusing to use the official app, I am now basically getting news when my wife sees it on Facebook, which means it's old news by then.

Collecting physical media is very valuable if you are a passionate gamer. Time has proven that the older a game gets, the harder it will be to legally obtain it. Yes, emulation is a thing but doesn't quite beat the experience on the original hardware IMO. And of course emulation is under constant legal scrutiny to the point where it's only a matter of time before enough money passes hands and emulation itself could be outlawed or heavily restricted.

Unless you have extraordinarily rare games, likely you will not see any financial benefit. If you do not want to play any of your games ever again, and you will never have kids or anyone you want to pass history onto, then likely the collection holds no value.

I clicked the link and was assaulted by dozens of ads and no video. Wtf is that cancer site

This is only a viable strategy as long as the electoral college exists.

Transparency and layers is hardly a power user feature. Any common person wanting to make a meme worth half a chuckle will need both of those features. MS paint always starts up super fast compared to PS or GIMP so I'm looking forward to these features for fast meme creation.

All of these options are unreasonable when you are talking a whole household and catering to a family that is not tech savvy. I have a pihole and it does not block ads from the YouTube TV app.

I have a plex going with content enough for the adults, but the kids consume so much media there is no reasonable way to get enough and fast enough and to meet their current interests. Youtube is the only streaming subscription we have left in the house because nothing even comes close for kids. Even Disney+ completely fumbles when it comes to appealing to what used to be its target market.

I'm a dev and I hate Win11. I could list dozens of reasons why, but one that pisses me off daily is that they removed keyboard shortcuts from task manager for no goddamn reason. Alt+E is the shortcut to end process on every other Windows OS except Win11 because it was made with malicious incompetence.

The most unbelievable thing about the entire episode is that the lawyers believed the 100 page term and conditions would hold up in court.

The only thing LinkedIn gives me is spam from trashy recruiters. The ones trying to fill a quota and do not actually read your profile. They are given a job requirement "Java" and fire a bunch of bullshit messages at anyone who tagged the skill.

The first line of my "About Me" is a test, and 100% of recruiters who message me have failed to even read that very first line. And when I call them out on it, they always want to "schedule a call" to "sync up about future opportunities". I'd rather they all get replaced by AI that will actually know how to read what's on the damn website.

Sounds like ADHD except 12, 13, 14. Those sound like something else.

I don't know what's considered a "hidden gem" so I'm just going to shout out all the indie games that I think are at least 8/10 and recommend:

Rimworld

Dead Cells

Dredge

Inscryption

7 Days to Die

Mount and Blade: Warband

Factorio

Mordhau

FTL: Faster than Light

Raft

Gunfire Reborn

Into the Breach

Hollow Knight

Dome Keeper

DUSK

Golden Light

Vampire Survivors

Void Bastards

Calling DA2 serviceable is probably some of the highest praise it's received. The game is steaming dookie. It took out every single thing that made Origins a masterpiece and gave us a dialogue wheel and an entire game made of 5 copy+pasted rooms. Also a nonsensical main plot with no real player agency and the most forgettable ending of all.

DAI is mid af but it looks like a God damn masterpiece next to DA2.

Furry mode for extra cringe.

Yup totally agree! Personally I preferred the first Surge but I did love the second and would like to see more games for sure.

I think you are confused with the Battlefield games, which have been horribly broken at launch every single time since 1942. The CoD games are creatively bankrupt and plagued with micro transactions, but they are usually functional.

We had an air fryer, loved the food but it was SO difficult to clean. The sides would shred our sponges. Eventually we stopped using It because timed save from cooking was lost twice over from cleaning it. And then it was recalled anyways

I own 2 sinden Light guns with recoil. They are excellent EXCEPT I cannot figure out how to get any game emulator to work with both guns at once. On a retropie anyways.

Not headphones but the Samsung earbuds are pretty good and I picked them up for ~60$ on Amazon. I hadn't used earbuds for years and had no idea how good the tech has gotten. Super comfortable, pretty good noise muffling, fancy wireless charging. Makes doing yard work go so fast.

I genuinely enjoyed the Callisto Protocol and I haven't been spoiled on the DLC yet, so I'm looking forward to discovering just how bad it is myself.