Windows has basically become malware. It does a fuck ton of tracking, and all of its features are about appeasing shareholders over users.

If we want to get technical: I loathe it because even in the year 2024, it’s the only operating system I’ve witnessed that will absolutely grind to a halt when a third party application stops responding or crashes. There is no valid fucking reason why the parent system should be halted by an application that crashes.

Also, ads in the start panel. Absolutely not, Microsoft. No way in hell am I allowing that to live on a computer I own. Yes, I’m aware third party apps will address that but it shouldn’t be a thing to begin with.

Oh yeah, and it decided to automatically update itself to the latest version on my ASUS ROG laptop while the thing was closed and not in use. So upon booting it up and seeing ads in the UI, I wiped the system clean and installed Nobara. Bye bye. 👋

Yeah, I never consider it a waste if you got some personal enrichment from it as an outlet. My goal was to never spend any actual money on the online portion and eventually people just got way too overpowered. It was a glaring example of pay-to-play and how it can ruin a game. It shut out any chance of growth and fun.

My favorite feature of GTA Online was when I’d get destroyed by someone with every weapon, only to respawn walking distance from them over and over and over. They’d kill me repeatedly before I even had a chance to do anything. The only way I could escape was to hope I found a car quick, or hope they got bored of spawn killing me.

This game is a fucking joke. Rockstar has been a shell of its former self for years.

These are pretty standard UI patterns.

I’m gonna check your video out. I attempted the furnace golem once, but it was mostly to observe its moves. That thing destroyed me lmao.

The DLC is batshit difficult, but all that does is make me try harder, learn movesets, and watch videos from pros. That’s part of the fun and achievement for me personally… but I also grew up in the 80s and 90s era of gaming where we had ZERO handholding.

I’d sacrifice all VR tech if it meant not giving the military yet another way to kill kids in foreign countries.

It’s true. I still routinely go back to the first Dark Souls and remember the amount of time I dumped into it trying to keep progressing. The amount of times I’d die and then test out a new strategy on something as simple as dispatching 5 enemies in a series of hallways, or going down the rabbit hole on boss fight strategies. I have the hardcover guide for the first DS game and it’s amazing. It’s weird how the brutality of those games can also be something you get peace from. Souls games are still among the few that I can truly disconnect with and be completely pulled in. Just talking about it makes me want to start a new character.

Holy cow, you put in work!

I have 306 hours in Elden Ring and I think 250+ of that was me wandering and killing minor bosses.

+1 for this comment. I got Stremio setup yesterday based on your post and the recommended add-ons, and it was insanely simple. I was able to get it all setup on my Samsung TV in like ~15 minutes.

I really had to embrace summoning and I was fortunate enough to have some nice people. I’m so used to people being dicks on video games, but the soulslike players have been pretty awesome.

There’s old guys like me too that don’t have the reflexes the younger gens do lmao. I had to get help from other players on a few occasions.

The game is amazing. It was easily GOTY for me when I got it and I dumped around 300 hours into it. That said, there are a lot of players out there that really deserve to enjoy it, but it’s insanely tough and not ideal for some people, especially if you’re someone that plays mostly for the story. So I appreciate that the ER devs are thinking about this to some degree.

There have been a few times in my life where I pirated a game or album, and ended up liking them so much I legitimately purchased them.

Their TVs are a pain in the ass too. The UI can be annoying and sluggish, sometimes requiring a hard reboot to get it to sort itself out.

Looks at the list of partners 762 partners total 🤯

The “bad” ones just float to the top when a government is around long enough. It’s human nature. The ones seeking power and money see others seeking the same, and they look at them as a rung on a ladder. They help each other because it benefits them. They actively work to shut out the “good” ones because they know they’ll lose their spot to them if they aren’t careful. Suddenly the “good” ones are lost in the noise. The incorruptible become powerless.

It’s similar to the police force in the US, for example. People go in with good intentions, but the force has been around long enough that the mad dogs have already permeated all of the top ranks. So the “good” ones either wash out, or they assimilate. One of my relatives washed out, while the one that had been there much longer turned into a massive racist. Which one do you think climbed the ranks quicker?

Power structures automatically attract selfish, self-serving people that just become worse offenders the more wealthy and powerful they become. Power is a vacuum after all, and there are plenty of bad people standing in line to fill it. This is why I don’t trust a single politician. Whether they want to admit it or not, under that facade of wanting to change their city or “do good,” there is some underlying desire for power and attention. That doesn’t mean none of them do anything good in their time though; it just means we should be cautious.

As soon as I smell authoritarianism, it’s a no from me. Even as someone that reads communist and socialist theory. I think people take too much of the past and try to apply it as-is to the world of today. But it doesn’t work. Modern times require modernized ideas, and I sometimes wish people had more imagination.