God yes. Back in 1995, the web felt like a little village. You knew everyone in your particular digital neighbourhood so to speak. Lots of great forums, lots of little niche websites… nothing was really commercialised yet:
And frankly, I liked that it was a nerdy thing as well. Everyone shared at least some level of knowledge and understanding of what the web was. And we were all some level of nerd, whether it was Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, trains, flightsim, Sci-Fi or whatever niche interest you had.
We lost all that when we made the web too accessible to the general public. We should’ve kept it to ourselves.
Not exactly surprising, and certainly a broader trend than the UK. Lots of parents aren’t really parenting. There’s parents who just let kids do whatever and ‘they will tell you when they are ready’. That soft approach just doesn’t work for things like this.
There’s also plenty of parents who see school as glorified childcare, and that teaching them even basic life skills should be the school’s job, not the parents.
It’s certainly disconcerting. One would hope that parents who CHOOSE to have a child would actually want them to grow up well and properly prepared for life’s challenges. Instead, kids are more like Instagram fodder, something to be shown off but otherwise nog given much attention.
The main thing holding me back is the fact that it doesn’t have an OLED display. With the price hike between the original and 2, in my opinion it should’ve launched with an OLED as standard. When even cheap phones come with it, Nintendo has no excuse not to include one.
And the game prices also aren’t helping, I imagine. Not when the games themselves are lacklustre as well. The new Mario Kart should’ve been a system seller. But the people I know who own it, have reverted back to playing the previous version. That’s a baaaad look.
I’ll likely buy the Switch 2 when they launch an OLED and release a new Animal Crossing.
One time our boss took us to a fancy restaurant that had a Michelin-starred chef owner. We did some ad work and publicity for him, so this was sort of a thank you, and a way for him to go all out and make a surprise menu to try things. Basically, we were dining for free there.
They go all out. Nine course meal. And as you’d expect, that means giant plates with tiny portions.
Now, thing is… our company is more of a steakhouse crowd.
Halfway through, they serve a perfect steak. Cooked to heavenly perfection. Best steak I’ve ever had in my entire life. And garnished with gourmet fries. They serve those in this tiny ramekin, intended to share. Basically, everyone gets a handful of fries.
One colleague sees the steak, grabs three ramekins and proceeds to load up his plate. He promptly flags the waitress and asks ‘hey, can you get some more fries?’.
Waitress comes back with some more. Colleague again: ‘hey uh, you wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of curry sauce?’ The look on her face was priceless. That was not a question this restaurant had ever had. ‘I’ll go ask… the chef’
Luckily the chef had a good sense of humor about him: out comes this wild, tattooed, giant bearded mountain of a man carrying the biggest kitchen knife I’ve ever seen. ‘WHO’S THE FUCKER WHO JUST ORDERED CURRY SAUCE IN MY RESTAURANT??’ Colleague meekly raises his hand. Chef hands him the bottle of curry sauce he was holding behind his back 😂
Well, it’s just pain compared to some other options :D
I love sausage on pizza though! Meatballs, minced meat as well. And I recently discovered ‘nduja, ever had that? Tastes great on pizza. It’s a spicy, spreadable pork sausage.
You know what my favorite food is? A plain pepperoni pizza. Absolutely love it.
You can take me out to dinner to the fanciest restaurant: five Michelin stars, the best trained chefs, the most expensive ingredients, the perfect ambience… and it would be utterly wasted on me. Because nothing beats a plain pepperoni pizza.
Some people are like that with movies. Even movies which are objectively some of the best ever produced in the history of cinema, will have people who don’t like them. And that’s perfectly fine.
I was one of the very, very, VERY earliest people to ever buy Minecraft. This was late 2009 during the early alpha development.
I bought it because it looked fun and relaxing. I introduced a fair few people to the game, but frankly… I expected it to remain a niche thing due to how it looked and the fact that it didn’t really have set gameplay goals. You basically had to make your own fun.
It was wild to see it become a cultural icon. It was even wilder to go to the cinema and watch a billion dollar movie starring Jack Black based on a dumb game about blocks that I bought from some random Swedish dude’s site 16 years before.
What in the ever loving FUCK is GOING ON THERE in the US. This is the kind of silly shit you expect from a third world dictatorship. He really just… renamed the fucking thing and put his own name first. That’s just utterly disrespectful, not to mention distasteful in general.
It used to be you had to at least die in order to get your name put on things….
Yep. I’m an 80’s kid. First PC I ever touched was a C64 in grade school, this was in 1991. At the next school, we had a single DOS PC and my high school only had a few DOS PC’s. This was in 1995. A year later our family bought our very first home desktop with Windows ‘95.
I absolutely would’ve loved it if my schools had good computers and actually taught tech at that time. But back in those days, computers were seen as something nerdy and generally useless.
I basically had to discover and learn about tech on my own. Which I did enthusiastically. I carried a Palm Pilot through college and even wrote software for it.
5 years ago I would’ve called you insane, but with everything happening right now… it’s a distinct possibility.
RAM’s unaffordable, GPU’s will likely be harder to come by and more expensive. Microsoft is actively driving people away from Windows, Steam is launching their Steam Machine…
Here’s hoping many gamers will jump to Linux and grow that platform instead. But even then, too expensive hardware will be an issue.
That doesn’t feel too surprising. There’s nothing really new to buy in terms of hardware; likely everyone who wanted a specific console now has one. And others like myself are waiting: I want a Switch 2 OLED, but that’s not available yet.
And there’s also the fact that many game releases now suck, with no real must-have titles for console to boost sales right now. And new physical titles are expensive.
It’s just a dip caused by a combination of factors. If GTA VI releases next november, the chart is going to look like a rocket taking off.
Well ‘buy local’ tends to be the solution most people offer when this particular discussions arises. But I agree that only solves some issues. Especially since local shops also get that stuff from the same sources.
I’m more of a ‘there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism’ kinda guy.
But frankly, I’ve got too much going on to worry about the ethics of where I’m sourcing pens and notepads. I’d rather focus on the big things.
It’s also a question of availability. Looking at my last ten purchases, simply none of those were available locally here. We don’t HAVE a camera store here to buy things like lens caps. The stationary store where I went didn’t HAVE large elastic bands, only small ones. Nor did they have the specific Pentel gel pen that I use for work. The shoes I bought (US size 17) are not available, since stores don’t stock past size 13.
I did buy a laptop stand, so technically I could’ve bought say, a plastic box or some books locally to do the same thing. But the stand is nicer.
For me, it’s not about the price. I’d rather spend 10 for something great than 1 for something that sort of works. I am by no means cheap. But I do have specific needs and tastes that my local stores don’t cater to.
And hey, if they won’t sell me what I need, I’m not going to feel bad about buying it somewhere that will 🤷♂️
Well, that’d mean missing out on some really cool stuff.
Games like Vampire Survivors and Stardew Valley were made by a solo developer. A couple thousand bucks is a LOT of money for some people. I’d hate to have missed out on either of those.
We certainly do need some quality control, but I don’t think the financial route is the way to go.
Assume all contacts are hostile and practice good OPSEC.