I miss the 1996 internet, when it was just us nerds arguing about Star Trek versus Star Wars. We never should’ve invited the rest into our space. That was the beginning of the end.

I’m old enough that we had a home shopping catalog lingerie section to work with and a single Playboy. Kids these days don’t know how good they have it :D

That’s just living in Europe in general though. Everyone makes fun of everyone. Dutch and Belgians and Germans have jokes about each other since we share borders. There’s also stereotypes about the Spanish and Greeks being lazy, the French being rude, that sort of thing.

They’ll make it back in HOURS, especially if it launches on PC same day. I went to the V night launch way back when. There were 500+ people in line at the store I went to. I didn’t sleep for three days after getting it. The hype train is only getting started and will ramp up to supersonic once we get a firm date. I’ll be buying a copy for every platform that I own. It’s going to be sheer fucking pandemonium.

That guy has NO CLUE whatsoever in terms of GTA hype and popularity.

Companies need to grow a spine. Good games sell regardless of what’s out. If your confidence in your own game is so low that you’d push it to a slow release date, it’s probably not worth playing anyway.

People book vacations like that well in advance. So there’s a time delay between the bookings and drop. Yesterday I read an article about Dutch travel agencies seeing far less bookings for US holidays. In january they saw a 20 percent drop, but they didn’t have February figures yet.

So by the end of this year, the tourism decrease will likely be much higher.

And the absolute insane part about it is: most actual religions are not opposed to vaccination!

The pope doesn’t mind vaccination, and indeed encourages it:

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/10/1071785531/on-covid-vaccinations-pope-says-health-care-is-a-moral-obligation#%3A~%3Atext=Francis%2C+85%2C+has+generally+shied%2Cget+inoculated+was+"suicidal."

Mormons encourage vaccination. Hindus and Buddhists have no issues with it. Most of Islam and Judaism are OK with it as well…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_and_religion

So if most of your mainstream religions agree that vaccination is a good thing - one of the few things they agree on, I’d imagine -it doesn’t make sense to oppose it on religious grounds.

Some people just want to difficult. And kids are dying because of it.

Sounds great; anything that hinders Russia is cause for celebration.

Heck, I’ll take any president who lived during my lifetime over Trump.

Dubya definitely got rehabilitated the past decade in many people’s eyes. Of course, he’s still… probably… a war criminal over the whole Iraq / war on terror situation. But I certainly understand the average American wanting him over Trump. I miss when the worst thing a president did was misspeak like his ‘fool me once’.

Reddit has turned into a complete shithole the past two years. The sooner it gets taken out back and bludgeoned to death, the better.

Personally, I don’t trust anyone who hasn’t been banned at least once from that place.

These violent delights had shitty endings :-(

I absolutely loved season 1 and 2. The show had so much squandered potential and really took a nosedive after that.

I’m hoping somewhere down the line, we get more of park-based Westworld. There’s definitely stories to tell, that we didn’t get to see.

I miss the good old ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists’ US.

If someone breaks into your house, kicks your dog and rapes your wife, you don’t negotiate to let them keep your TV. You shoot that fucker between the eyes. That’s what we need to be doing.

Well sure, but you also used to :D

No doubt there’s still sites which have it, but it feels like it used to be more common to run into that sort of material, even on places like YouTube.

I’ve only seen one - journalist Daniel Pearl. It was shown when I studied journalism back in 2002. Part of a cautionary discussion about the dangers of reporting on war and conflics.

Harassment ‘of’ 10-17 year olds ‘by’ the game? My brother in Christ, 10-17 year olds ARE the harassment. As a 40+ gamer, I’m confident that we can drop harassment levels by 90 percent if those kids weren’t on it. Little sweaty shitheads are why I stopped playing multiplayer games.

Yeah, their search is basically the main thing keeping me away from their store.

If I type in EXACTLY what I want, down to the exact type number, it’ll first show me things that vaguely have the same text, followed by things in the same category, followed by something totally random like a waffle iron, and MAYBE on page 2, there’s the thing I need. Show me that FIRST, not the slew of crappy clone/fake/off-brand shit or things not even in the same category.

I usually have better luck just going to Google and searching it that way. Usually that gets me to the item straight away. Like it should be.

God that’s fucking annoying. The other week I was listening to a podcast that also has episodes on YouTube. They were talking about farming and had to bleep the word ‘rapeseed’. The fuck are we doing guys.

You used to be able to watch beheadings online, now a farmer can’t even talk about his crops online without the censorship police getting involved…

Good grief, modern education has really failed that person if they don’t recognise the name Leon Trotsky. He’s basically responsible for at least three chapters in any history textbook worth reading. Your post was CLEARLY a joke to anyone with half a brain.

But hey, I’m not surprised at what happened. Because the quality of moderation really took a nosedive since the API fiasco. Lots of not-shitty mods jumped ship or got banned, leaving only folks like that in charge: petty, dumb little dictators.

Well, we’re glad to have you here :D

Reddit going full mask-off 1984 huh? Next thing it’ll be illegal to downvote things Reddit likes to push… Or why even bother with the votes anyway, Reddit will just show you only the things that it deems good for you, like the benevolent Big Brother.

Fuck that place.

Also: welcome to all our new members! “We’re Not Perfect, But At Least We’re Not Reddit!” ™

Correct, as the article points out. Sites aren’t made with smaller screens in mind, and 62-68 percent of web traffic is made with phones.

Phones are not JUST a status thing, but having a better one is certainly more appealing to consumers, rather than a device that they and others know is purposefully gimped.

Consumers just aren’t that interested in a product that’s visibly cheaper and worse than what everyone else is carrying. And that is what a smaller phone signals.

Phones are a status purchase; they all do basically the same things, but most people gravitate towards higher end phones because they offer all the fancy features. Flagship phones are all large, so that’s what you see in the marketing. Just like you’ll never see a car company put its cheapest base model on a car catalog cover.

A smaller phone tends to cut corners; it’s not just smaller, but also functionally worse. While the price might be appealing, the potential customer also knows that using said phone will mean a worse experience, and might even get them ridiculed because they got ‘the cheap one’.

So we can absolutely go back to small phones - we just don’t want to. Smaller, cheaper, worse products just don’t appeal to a status-conscious buyer. If phone manufacturers offered the same specs at different sizes, that might change. But any savvy tech buyer knows a smaller phone is worse than the bigger one.

Back in the pre-smartphone days, size was a thing companies could compete on since customers wanted small, light, distinctive designs in premium materials. Like the Motorola Razr V3. These days, that just doesn’t work.