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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 21st, 2023

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  • 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.


  • 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.




  • 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.



  • Where is the evidence of nepotism? The person I replied to mentioned the Stanford degree and immediately jumped to the conclusion that it all comes down to nepotism. Frankly, it sounds like jealousy and taking cheap shots at someone who is doing well. I don’t understand it. Why knock someone else down? She’s successful so good for her. My own success will only come from me. What someone else did or did not achieve or how they did it is irrelevant to what I achieve.




  • 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.






  • Edit: If you like black coffee, go for a medium roast premium or specialty grade coffee from Costa Rica that goes through a honey process. Very smooth, low acid and a hint of natural sweetness from the coffee fruit.

    Yeah, they over roast their coffee. It’s deliberate. I assume it’s for consistency and because it’s a low effort way to cut through all that milk and sugar in expensive lattes. Americans have also been conditioned to associate dark, bitter coffee with “strong”.

    The irony is dark roast has less caffeine than lighter roast and it’s usually done to mask defects in the bean. Whether to roast light, medium or dark typically isn’t an arbitrary decision or based on any preference. There’s a whole grading process where the ideal roast is determined based on the quality of the beans.

    The highest quality beans will often be roasted medium and you start going darker as you get into the lower quality stuff. Basically, you’re cooking off bad flavors that may be the result of sour beans, mold, insect damage, chemicals or worse. There are all kinds of farming practices you don’t want to know about where they get away with it by roasting dark and/or blending with a little bit of a higher quality coffee.

    The thing with Starbucks is they actually start with good beans so they don’t have to do this. They also have a wide variety of suppliers and bean types. They could easily put together a great flavor profile that would work for lattes as well as black coffee. But things do change a little bit from one harvest to the next. Starbucks is all about consistency. You can order the same drink at any location in the world and it tastes exactly the same every time.

    A small black coffee is $2 because people will pay that much. The cost is less than 25 cents for the coffee. The cup and lid might cost more than what you’re drinking if it’s a commercial grade bean. Coffee is a high margin business.



  • They’re not losing. They are kicking the absolute shit out of the Palestinians. This is not even a remotely fair fight. The problem is most of these people didn’t have anything to do with 10/7, which means Israel is destroying any respect or goodwill anyone had for them when this started.

    Nobody would have batted an eye if they just wanted to get in there and kill some terrorists. It was 100% justified for Israel to respond. But you expect a tough, appropriate response and not some maniac shit. They have wrecked half of Gaza and have everyone crammed in the other half. This shit is nuts. It’s as bad as Russia with Ukraine and Russia is the absolute sleaze of the planet. Israel really went low here.



  • I played it for several hours when it first came out. It’s ok. The little bit of story I saw was engaging. I’m interested in the world - more so than Elder Scrolls. The gameplay is what I would expect from a Bethesda RPG. But it’s definitely lacking polish.

    The thing is there are other games out there worth playing so there’s no reason to jump into unfinished Starfield right now. BG3 is sucking up a lot of gamers’ time. I’m still working on P5R that’s been in my backlog for awhile. The Cyberpunk expansion came out and that’s solid. There’s a bunch of stuff out there to play.

    I will eventually play Starfield because what I saw has potential, but I’m going to do it after it’s had some improvements. I don’t think there’s too much reason for concern. This is about par for the course with Bethesda. It’s not like they were ever knocking it out of the park with great releases on day one. There are always elements of their games that draw you in, but it’s always been a little bit of a mixed bag. Considering the staying power of their previous games, I think this one will eventually get as good as the others in time.