HeyListenWatchOut

I used to think this… but it’s just not true.

Device software updates only make your device worse now.

If it ABSOLUTELY MUST get online, you DO need to let it update for security purposes, but in most cases now when you buy it from the store, it’s got everything that needs and you just need to block it from getting online all-together.

My LG CX from 2021 has not been online even once since I bought it.

I don’t know if people realize how amazing this is.

People who make games work so goddamn hard and are treated like trash… usually thrown out right after working hundreds of hours in unpaid overtime because they’re so passionate about making something they love…

…And for a studio as major and long-standing as id Software AND it being physically located within the heart of TEXAS is also big.

The techno-artisan work of game development might finally become a field worth getting back into and actually sticking with - instead of how it has been now since the mid-2000s - where people burn out and leave the industry all-together… meaning we have almost zero long-term master game makers except for a handful of people who are at the very tip top.

I personally left games after the studio I worked at for 2 years (making them literal millions per day in revenue at one point) closed down only about a year after our hit game was released.

My heart goes out to the guys at id. They are some of the GOATs and this is something they’ve long-since earned.

Agreed on the “shifting focus” part for vignetting specifically - but everything else… outside of specifically tailoring to fit a particular “aesthetic” I think are crutches that are generally used to obscure an overall graphical presentation in order to work in a similar way to how squinting your eyes works.

I agree that highly stylized games like “Bodycam…”

…use things like a specific kind of grain, noise, distortion, aberration, etc. to create a highly appealing visual aesthetic designed to match an actual low-fidelity police body camera, but Battlefield and CoD have much less excuse in my book.

The camera aesthetic stuff only makes sense on things like the AC-130 killstreak in CoD where you’re emulating the on-aircraft cameras actually used in the real deal.

I’m okay with a little chromatic aberration and vignette.

Why? It’s literally something that pro camera tools have added in-software fixes for to remove them. Like - if you’re simulating an old JVC vidicon tube camera and wanting to make something specifically look like an image capture device from a specific time, I get it, but otherwise, it just seems like a way to hide the fact that your graphics aren’t quite hitting the realism mark and you think if you obscure it a bit, players will think it looks more “real.”

Hey now… Don’t forget camera bob, “lens dirt,” chromatic aberration, and vignette!

AKA - the video game graphics equivalent of “beer goggles.”

Thermian. One of the all-time greatest gags we lose in the streaming era.

When a company is using AI in place of a person, it’s not a sign of that they are “futuristic” or “forward-thinking…” It’s a sign they are cheap, chase fads, and make short-sighted decisions that are not designed to improve their relationship with their customer.

Anyone using some headless white-label monthly subscription version of ChatGPT in an attempt to save a nickel on their bottom line - even if it means making everything worse for the company, product, employees, and customers in every way possible - is probably someone you don’t want to do ANY kind of business with - whether you’re a contractor, customer, or client.

The democratization of technology is a double-edged sword.

For every improvement in UX and lowering of a once impassible barrier of entry, we seem to inevitably gain a massive number of “eXpErTs” who can suddenly stand upon the now much lower skill floor.

Shortly thereafter seems to be a destruction of the general reliability of whatever field these “eXpErTs” flood - usually a field which used to be inherently cryptic and had complex prerequisites just to begin operation within, let alone master.

Like… it makes me almost miss when “using a computer” meant you had to understand how to browse a directory in DOS…

Because at least then you literally couldn’t begin to operate in the field unless you could wrap your head around understanding the basics of syntax.

Now you can just have an entire legion of dullards misspell or misspeak 30% of a malformed question to some random free LLM that still has trouble telling you “how many Rs are in the word strawberry,” and have it confidently fart back out a wrong answer that they will then copy-paste into a paper or article which will then be added to the pile of growing misinformation currently stuffing a frighteningly expanding part of our collective knowledge base.

Maybe I should start like a service where we get someone like a dedicated “agent” who has their assets hidden to buy tickets for you for a small fee… and then transfer them… like an agency… for travel…

WAIT a second 😱!

True that no matter what - Phil IS a CEO, which means he’s not a good dude… but I guess I just look at it as shades of gray.

I think Microsoft decided it doesn’t want to do ANY kind of hardware, because of how poorly they did both in the X era, and in international markets like Japan…

And like you said - if Xbox becomes a brand rather than an actual piece of hardware, then there’s no reason to buy an Xbox. I had a 360 starting right before Halo 3 came out in 2007, but with every single one of their games being fully multi-platform with ZERO exclusives I never had a reason to get any of their systems after my original Elite.

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It’s an expensive carbon spewing parrot.

For your web browser, don’t use Chrome. Use Firefox with uBlock, NoScript, Sponsorblock, and a VPN like Mullvad.

For Smart TV usage, block your TV’s built in “smart functionality” and its access to the internet via MAC address blacklist on your router. Also use SmartTubeNext on a Shield Pro with FLauncher instead of Google’s.

For mobile, use 3rd party YouTube clients on your device like Vanced on Android, and Unwatched on iOS.

Can you Shift and/or Ctrl click to select more than one layer yet?

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The same way Digimon, Monster Hunter monsters, and every other unique IP looks nothing like Pokemon. Make completely original designs that don’t look like fan art or knock offs of another artist’s specific trademark style.

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