paultimate14

joined 2 years ago
[–] paultimate14 36 points 7 months ago (5 children)

A few years ago my friend's father passed away. My friend's mother continued to live in the house for another year or so. She never worked and had to eventually sell the house and downsize.

My friend had referred to her mother as a hoarder before. I've seen the reality TV shows about hoarders. But you don't really understand just how bad the problem is until you spend several days helping your friend clean out their childhood home for sale, filling up several dumpster bags worth of... Stuff. Apparently the mother has always had some mental health problems and a shopping addiction, but spending over a year alone in that house drove her off the deep end.

We could have opened an entire new Harbor Freight store. There were clothes in sizes I didn't know existed. My wife casually found a pistol just shoved in a random box. It was madness.

[–] paultimate14 1 points 7 months ago

Just looking through my HLTB at things I've done recently:

The Ace Attorney series Sucker for Love Coffee Talk Haven (good for co-op)

If you want a bit more gameplay, but still chill:

Paradise Killer Braid Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

More gameplay focused:

Control Portal Wargroove Cat Quest Knack (I know it's a meme, but the games are actually pretty fun)

[–] paultimate14 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The opposite is true as well. A couple years ago I got an alert for a sale on Dualsenses and I pounced on it in the morning. I ordered it in the morning and was expecting to receive it within the next week or two. It arrived in LESS THAN 4 HOURS. I ordered it on my lunch hour and it arrived before I got off work.

I'm not sure if they used some other gig service like DoorDash or Uber Eats or if they just had some store employee deliver it? I don't mind receiving things that quickly, but I certainly don't want to force someone to piss in a jug to get me my dumb little consumer electronics faster.

[–] paultimate14 46 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Gomes then sued, alleging absentee ballot mishandling and supplying video footage showcasing Geter-Pataky, a member of the Democratic Town Committee, repeatedly dropping absentee ballots into drop boxes or handing them to others, who then did the same.

If I'm interpreting this correctly, it sounds like a couple of election officials just put absentee ballots in with regular ballots instead of... I assume they should have been set aside for vetting? The article doesn't say what should have happened. The article doesn't really go into the impact- seems like they just really, REALLY wanted to print a headline about Democrats meddling in the elections process.

When I think of "stuffing" I think of people creating wholly illegitimate ballots, which does not seem to be what happened here.

Also worth noting that this was for the Democratic primary for a mayoral position in 2019, and some of that info probably should have been in the headline.

[–] paultimate14 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I actually think it's worse for Meta to take a loss on hardware. That tells me that they are expecting to make that money back and then some elsewhere. It's possible that they are just hoping to make that money back through software sales (similar to Sony), but I just have a hard time trusting the company. The "Meta" name is such a turnoff that I don't want a piece of their hardware in my house, let alone on my network, so I haven't even looked at their offerings.

Also, I disagree with the notion that "for a budget rig somethings got to give". The answers for a "budget" rig are... Nintendo Labo. The AR games with the 3DS. The various ways of strapping a smart phone to one's face. Things that the VR community scoffs at, but the average consumer is much more likely to purchase.

I think the "budget" option is to just... Not use VR. For me, the adapter isn't a huge deal. They just cut the price by $100 earlier this year. The Horizon bundle, plus an adapter, comes out to $560. The Valve Index can vary based on the setup, but I figure that'll be at least $1k. The HTC Vive products seems way more focused on business than gaming, and all of their headsets are >$1k anyways.

So for me I have 3 options: wait for Valve or HTC to make more value-oriented products, get the PSVR2, or just not do VR. And I'm perfectly at peace with just abstaining from VR- I certainly don't regret that I didn't buy a 3DTV for example. But this PC adapter has suddenly made the PSVR2 an option where it previously was not one.

[–] paultimate14 1 points 7 months ago

In this entire article, not even a single attempt to quantity the number of complaints.

This sounds to me like an extremely small minority. It appears as though Fallout 4 has sold over 25 million copies, and there's.... Maybe a couple dozen people on the Internet complaining?

[–] paultimate14 1 points 7 months ago

There's just no pleasing some people I suppose

[–] paultimate14 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

For me personally, I dislike Meta strongly enough that the Quest was never an option.

I already had a PS5 and have a couple of digital VR games Sony have away a while back, plus there's a few more I have been interested in. But until now the library was so restrictive that I could not justify the price tag for a PSVR2.

The only other option I considered was the Valve Index. I like Valve a lot and I'm sure it's great, but at this point it's 5 years old and would be 2x the price of the PSVR2. Not being comparable with the PS5 for those couple of free games plus exclusives in interested in like Horizon is a minor setback as well, although it's not a huge deal and Horizon might come to Steam anyways. Also I would have to upgrade my PC a couple years earlier than I would otherwise- my RX580 is mostly fine now, but I don't think it could handle VR.

[–] paultimate14 1 points 7 months ago

Couch gaming.

I'm a technical person and I've tried a lot of different methods to do couch gaming with a PC. From having some sort of lap tray to various wireless mice and keyboard solutions. I've currently landed on having my gaming desktop just stream with Steam Link to my living room. As long as I'm selective about which games I want to play, I can usually get a good experience. But I still have at least 60% of my steam library that isn't a good experience doing that.

Having a dedicated piece of hardware with a custom OS that is designed around a controller is a huge difference maker. Plus you add in how ridiculously expensive it is to get either a USB external optical drive or internal SATA drive to watch DVDs and Blu-Rays. Heck, even just watching Netflix or YouTube in the living room is easier on PS5 than a media PC for the average user.

There's a reason Valve tried to make the Steam Machine.

[–] paultimate14 1 points 7 months ago

Except that there is plenty of evidence that alcohol is physically addictive and causes withdrawal symptoms. So, by my logic, alcohol addiction is a thing.

Because it's not just my logic. I'm leaning on the history of years and years of medical professionals and scientists doing research. And their conclusions are that alcohol addiction is a thing porn addiction is not.

[–] paultimate14 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Seriously I'm not sure if you messed something up or if Lemmy is messing up but I can't read any of that text other than the title

[–] paultimate14 2 points 7 months ago

That study is pretty outdated. Here's a more recent meta-analysis finding the opposite.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1524838020942754

view more: ‹ prev next ›