People shit on the franchise because they did kind of rush production, but honestly they hold up if it’s what you’re into. It’s just kind of sad they can’t all be AC2 quality, that was probably the best of the lot in terms of storytelling, intriguing exploration, etc. I still remember climbing into that girl’s place in the opening as Ezio.

Oddly, 4 does have a few cities in addition to the nautical stuff. They aren’t big name cities, but Havana, Kingston and Nassau of that period. Kind of interesting, especially right when Pirates of the Caribbean was popular.

I like this analogy and generally avoid using GPS (admittedly it’s out of laziness lol). The most insane part to me is I live where everything is on a grid and somehow people are still impressed I can figure out how to get places, even without having been there. GPS brain is real.

Bad news except you can’t trust TV either. Or reading the news, lately. At least regardless of the medium, general advice carries-- double check sources, learn which are credible, etc.

I just hope people are following links and not just reading headlines, right? …Right?

I also notice a lot less traffic on the west side during Jewish holidays. By this logic, is the suggesting rounding them up, too?

I hadn’t even thought about it until you brought it up. Kind of disappointed in people jumping on this like flies on shit but like… it’s 2025, so bigger things to be upset about.

In any case, apples and oranges. And PSA, if you need a Switch 2, grab em on the rebound. There’ll be used ones, likely hackable in 6 months and none of that goes to Nintendo. Don’t forget what their legal department has done in the past few years.

Piracy and emulation is inevitable, although we’ll see if it’s months or years. I’m boycotting Nintendo over their legal practices, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to play their games. It’ll be extra juicy to be able to emulate it eventually, although buying used is technically an option too.

Honestly their algorithm seems to mostly push low quality, South Asian, and/or AI generated content lately, when randomly playing off of something like Ms Rachel or Sesame Street. Nothing disgusting, although maybe a little trippy (in AI case). My daughter really digs the Bollywood inspired kids stuff though.

I’ve been using Launchbox, especially since I play emulator games. They’ve improved the efficiency of large libraries and added support for RetroAchievements, although I manually toggle completion status since I don’t always use it to launch my games so the time tracker isn’t accurate.

More importantly it let’s me hit randomize, so if I’m feeling adventurous it’ll pull a game from my backlog I might have got from anywhere.

A year ago is certainly a while back, although RA has such active forums I’m not surprised people aren’t really using Lemmy for it, haha. I would have posted about my GCN summer last year, haha.

I keep Java installed for one thing and one thing only… modded Minecraft.

Just reminds me how I miss the Mountains to Sea Trail. I didn’t think about the Santa Ana one though, glad there’s at least an option.

No, I went to school (k-12 and later, uni) in the bike friendlier upper-middle neighborhoods but your observations do stand. Every neighborhood is different. I do teach in both downtown and in the mountains, too, although in the later one kind of has to drive because it’s both very vertical and very narrow roads so it’s basically suicide to bike there.

In Santa Monica, you do see much of what you’re referring to plus their city is heavy in anti-car for eco reasons. I heard from someone at city hall that they purposely reduce parking in venues to encourage biking, so even during rush hour you’ll see electric bikes pretty regularly-- even going to surrounding cities since they made driving unbearable.

In Orange County, you don’t see the same trends… but Irvine, where I attended grad school, is a planned corporate community with extra wide roads, lots of parks, and man made trails. Biking is strictly a recreation to them, and 90% of the bikers I saw on trail were grey hairs with extremely expensive bikes zooming way faster than my used mountain bike could ever go.

Somehow, though, my neighborhood with none of that still has so many more bicycles and walkers than either of the places actually trying to encourage biking. Necessity is simply going to beat desire, even for people who prefer biking — 100% is always higher.

My neighborhood is one of the poorer ones, and it’s got more people taking bikes than most other places I’ve seen in LA, yet the only places that get dedicated lanes or bike paths are wealthy areas where I don’t even see recreational bikers, let alone those getting to work.

That said, I’m 98% certain my local conservative city council is skimming the coffers, so I’m not expecting much.

In other words-- your sexting is safe, friends.

Same, but given the time sink I’d like an abridged experience. I heard they doing that with DQX so why not FFXI?

Couple other things to add to this beautiful list others have: meta gaming and chat.

They barely added achievements and only for a couple games, while steam has that, guides, community art, and even a newish notes feature in case you’re playing an OG game that makes you track stuff. Guides have kind of been better than more traditional sources.

Chat is… better on steam, although discord kind of supplanted it. Game based emoji, stickers, etc. It’s actually very good, though, with support for couch coop stream gaming, etc, with voice comms.

One could also point to the generous family sharing function, but I’m not sure what Epic does in that regard. DRM is DRM though. Do keep in mind, though, the philosophy behind Steam is to make DRM palatable by adding features. Epic philosophy (on paper) is to give devs a higher cut, although I’ve heard devs feel more supported by steam-- especially since they aren’t afraid to throw obscure indie games into a users discovery queue.

A tool is a tool. Main problem are the tools using the tools, usually.

Reminds me that just recently I heard they equipped busses with automatic “AI assisted” detection in their lanes. In very little time they’ve issued 10k tickets, though.

https://laist.com/news/transportation/la-metro-bus-ai-cameras-transportation

Traditionally, yes, but I do want to note that modern takes use it to also argue for cooperation, since working with with others is good for survival and passing on genes. They also are the first to tell people how bunk the alpha male crap is, and the fact a lone wolf is a dead wolf.