Quit_this_instance

“Unauthorized Bread” by Cory Doctorow is a short story about this. Great read.

Almost all these smart devices are useless. Just give me a fucking toaster or microwave that doesn’t die in six months, there is no world on which being able to connect my microwave or dishwasher to the internet is relevant or helpful to anyone but the data miners.

Glad another Marxist said it. The problem isn’t that capitalism was always the wrong choice, it’s that we’re clinging to it long beyond its best before date.

New Comments is also good.

Jokes on them, we can’t sort by upvotes and downvotes in most cases anyway

Compared to account growth that’s low but a 33% growth in four days is hard to call “low”

That’s never been my experience in the slightest.

Personally I never understood the hate for hl2 vehicle sequences. I love them, particularly the boat one. They aren’t so fun if you’re a completionist, but if you’ve played them before… Just ram the throttle and enjoy the velocity, and.they don’t take very long at all

Eh. I don’t really agree. I agree that they’re both excellent games and that they differ in the ways you’ve listed, but I just replayed both and I have to say, hl1 drags. There are long chunks that consist of seemingly endless corridor crouching jumping puzzles with headcrabs lurking predictably for jumpscares.

The things you call “gimmicks” in hl2 to me broke up that loop. They are still parts of the game and use the same mechanics, but they shake the loop up just enough that you don’t get sick of doing the same jumping puzzle–>crouch through narrow tunnel and hit headcrab with crowbars–>fight pattern, and it still includes enough of those to feel like an extension of the same game.

I do think it was a mistake to keep Gordon mute for hl2. He had a reason to not talk in hl1, there wasn’t really anyone to talk to. It makes way less sense in 2, and hamstrings them on further story aspects as they try to get serious with the plot.

Tempted to plug in, you mean?

In my day we used emojis made of ASCII punctuation mark and we were happy. You kids today don’t know how good you have it.