Looks both promising and sketchy at the same time. Have you personally tried these? How’s the ANC?

I think that’s one of the dilemmas of westworld. William starts off as you describe: peaceful, not really wanting to hurt the hosts at first. But he’s kind of like a fish out of water. To me it seems heavily implied that the only ones able to afford to go to Westworld are the rich psychopaths who exploit their own environment for personal gain. And we also get a look at how William turns out by the end…

You are allowed to watch the Overwatch porn without playing the game

Luckily the app is generally (but not always) backwards compatible. It’ll just nag you to upgrade the server.

The server doesn’t, except if you have watchtower or something similar.

The app auto updates on your phone though, unless turned off.

Like everyone is saying, Immich.

But keep an eye on updates because it is under active development so breaking changes tend to happen every once in a while.

Good game. I played during/after the beta, I felt like it needed a bit more variety in guns and maps. Have they been adding stuff since?

What systemic issue? If you as a player don’t like steam, you can just not use it. It’s not like apple where the hardware is locked to a single storefront. Even the steam deck is open for people to get games from anywhere.

Developers are allowed to do whatever they like too, including not putting their games on steam as a form of protest. No one will stop you. They can even sell their games on multiple platforms and reduce the price where the storefront cut is smaller. The only thing they are not allowed to do is sell steam keys on their own store below the price on steam, which is completely understandable. The fact that they are allowed to sell keys directly (AFAIK for no cost) is already a huge boon.

The one’s actually behaving in anticompetetive behaviour is Epic with paying devs for exclusivity to their store. This is forcing you to use the platform to play certain games without having any other options. Of course the devs taking the deal are also complicit but that is somewhat more understandable, being a gamedev is difficult these days.

The difference is obvious, you don’t have to be a genius to see it. Epic is the plague of modern capitalism and greed, where the product is kept afloat by an unsustainable inflow of investor money. The service is ready to enshittify the second the amount of users crosses a certain threshold. Then they will continue to fight with dirty tactics to keep users locked in for as long as they can. How long do you think giving away free games weekly to anyone can last. (Aswer: as long as the fortnite money is coming in)

Steam is an old type of corporation (for now anyway). They focus on making a good product for a “fair” price. Fair as in this is what makes the platform sustainable. If they were to charge exorbitant prices, there would be a huge developer exodus. But there isn’t. Most devs seem to have come to a conclusion that paying this optional fee is worth it for that value that steam provides. This money allows them to reinvest in the platform to make upgrades, and yes, make profit too. What other reason would they go through all this trouble for?
Steam is also a privately held company, meaning they are not beholden to the short term vision of investors’ pump and dump schemes. But to reiterate, literally no one is forcing you to use steam.

These days you have to capture a large user base with unsustainable prices/practices and then extract every cent for infinite growth. This is not just bad for users in the long term but also means setting up a “normal” company offering a good product at a “fair” price is impossible because everyone is buying the cheap unsustainable products essentially below cost.

I miss the times when a company would make a good product at a fair price and that would be enough.

Edit: that was unnecessarily harsh. I can see you want positive change but unless someone opens a FOSS storefront and pays for the work/distribution, steam is the best we have for now (as gamers). And reducing costs by ~10-20% is not going to make it better for us long term.

Then stop complaining and go buy the game directly off the developer’s website. Many large publishers have their own storefront. Or you can tell your favourite Indie dev that they can set up a virtual storefront (with diacoverability so users find their game), distribution service with CDNs, support forums, online user reviews, customer support, and who knows what else for their own game. If this sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is. Alternatively, they are allowed to pay someone in the form of profit sharing for all of this if they want to. But no one is forcing you to use Steam.

It just seams the majority of pc gamers find the service useful, so they tend to buy the games there.

Because the world isn’t “ending”. Yes climate change might bring famine, destructive weather events, or plague but in the meantime we are living in the safest, healthiest, and most technologically advanced era of humanity up until now, especially for those of us living in democracies. Most diseases that would have killed you a few hundred years ago have been solved, in general there are very few wars (compared to the constant on and off warfare in history anyway), and in most of the world slavery has been eradicated.

Yes, there is societal divide (mostly due to economic difficulties and how social media influences people), yes there is bigotry and a rise in nationalism but much of this is only noticeable because of the media and the 24 hour news cycle. There has to be a constant issue hanging over our heads to make sure we are glued to our screens 24/7 improving shareholder value of the companies supplying the news on the current crisis.

So in conclusion, there are some global issues, but there is no reason not to go on an adventure, pursue that girl/boy you like, build a shed, or do whatever “side quest” you are up to at the moment. It’s not like you’re gonna solve climate change alone but you’ll be completely miserable if that is all your life is about. The world is not ending for now, go do your side quests.

I’ll be honest, I’m actually cautiously excited for this

He’s usually on point but I don’t always agree with him personally. Still, it’s easy to decide because he usually makes a point of telling why he likes/dislikes something. People have differing opinions on the same things and that’s okay. Great review, as usual.

There is a very clear spoiler section in the review, easy to skip. It’s not looking too good so far though sadly.

That makes sense then, I wouldn’t trust the plane luggage handlers with the pc. In that case you’re probably right to sell. I would still price compare for a gpu or cpu and get the rest of the build later, but also heavily factor in the hassle of carrying stuff and basically not having a warranty for parts that you bought in the US.

I did actually move with my gaming pc twice. But I had most of my stuff shipped in a truck and only the essentials on the plane. You’ll probably end up having limited space/weight in the checked luggage anyway. Gool luck with the move!

Might be better off building a new one in the US and shipping it with your other stuff. Sales tax (import tax?) is pretty bad for electronics in the EU, stuff is a lot more expensive. Everything costs pretty much ~30% more.

You can package the computer in the box of the case and maybe take out the gpu and/or the cpu cooler and pack that separately so it doesn’t break in shipping.

How much stuff are you bringing? Are you getting like a shipping container for furniture, etc. or just essentials? Are you staying in one spot for long? If not, gaming laptops might suit you better (once again, cheaper to buy in the US).

Any specific one you would recommend?

It’s interesting that they are so repulsive to almost everyone (including me). I wonder what the specific traits are that makes people dislike the cast, I can’t quite put my finger on it.

(Except maybe for the roomba/hoover robot, that one seemed kinda interesting as a concept)

In 6 your buildings in cities are categorised into districts. The districts take up a hex on the grid and receive bonuses based on adjacent hexes. A large part of the game revolves around planning your districts in every city as once they are placed, they cannot be moved. This is a slightly different playstyle compared to 5 where only the city location itself matters.

Some other changes were around science, policies and eras. You unlock policy cards which you can swap out for different bonuses when needed instead of a constant effect. Policies are just as important as science this time around, and researching science and policies is boosted by actions in the game instead of only using Great scientists/writers. Every set amount of turns the world enters a different era, which also offers different policy cards for that period.

There are no (or few) multiplicative bonuses. Having more cities is always beneficial.

Apparently there is! There is a mod for SPT called MPT (now renamed to fika). It has a github but the download is only available through their discord. Took me a while to find it. Gonna see if we can get it working tomorrow.

Is there?