With the right level of Government support, bubbles can seemingly go on for literal decades. Case in point, Australian housing since the late 90s has been on an uninterrupted tear (yes, even in ‘08 and ‘20).

I swear I played D2 at 800x600 - was that enabled in the expansion pack?

Yup; RIP to Billie Jean as the first song you hear when you jump into a car for the first time in Vice City.

Yikes; whatever I expected from the remasters - this ain’t it.

The original C&C remaster did a similar graphics upscale, but they at least managed to at least mostly pull it off.

Given they could have potentially rasterised WOW assets to provide a cohesive feel to players, this is just a total ball-drop.

Say what you will about that Hitler guy - but at least he did do a good thing or two, like killing Hitler!

Not that I’m actually trying to defend MS/Teams (seriously, fuck ‘em both); but this is more due to IT Admin settings.

We have similar in our company, that’s in place because we handle PIR data regularly and it’s meant to be a speed bump rather than full roadblock.

I’ve been mulling over this the past few years, having finally kicked the WoW habit in the second year of Shadowlands (approaching ~3 years now)…

…but how often are quests/missions/objectives etc. just a combination of go to x, collect x of y, kill x of y? At a certain point, all of these become generic - right?

VPN to a country with a lower cost, and sign up there. It used to be Turkey and India, where you could get a Family Plan for like $2/mo - but they’ve cracked down a bit on it.

We use YT for so much in our ‘household’ that it made sense to pool together and get Premium, and honestly it feels good having ~5 people who consume a tonne of content ad-free for nearly no cost while still supporting our preferred content creators.

Understatement of the decade, IMO!

I’ve barely touched my Steam games library as it is, have just dived headfirst into emulating my retro game collection (PS1, 2, 3 & Portable); along with SNES predominantly - because fuck Nintendo.

I was actually thinking coloured O rings to define specs, but that still means I’d need to have a colours guide somewhere too…

…yours might be a more practical solution. 🤔

To clarify; I have a 100W Ugreen Nexode 4 Port USB Charger that I use to charge my laptop (~60W), Steam Deck (~40W), iPhone (~20W) and AirPods (~5?W).

The problem is if my original product cable has gone walkabout temporarily and I need to use a random one to stand in - there is no clear way of telling if I’m accidentally using a 5W-max cheap cable to try and keep my laptop charged while working.

Obviously there are some context clues depending on cable thickness etc., but with how common cosmetic braiding is becoming a thing - even that’s getting harder to rely on.

Yes, you can. The charger and the device communicate between one another what they can support, and pick the highest one they both agree on.

E.G. my laptop charger can charge at full speed (100W) for my MacBook, but only at 20W for my iPhone.

That bit is pretty straightforward and transparent to end users (there are a few rare conditions where devices might not agree on the fastest, and have to fall back to a slower one); the issue is more with cables not having sufficient gauge wire, or missing connections that prevent the charger and device from communicating their full functionality.

It’s been more of a pain in the arse than initially expected.

Most motherboards (for example) only have 2-4 USB-C ports, meaning that I still need to employ A-C and C-C cables for peripherals etc.

My main gripe is that the standard just tries to do too many things without clear delineation/markings:

1. Is it a USB 2.0 (480Mbit), 5Gbit, 10Gbit or 20Gbit cable? Can’t really tell from the plug alone.

2. More importantly, for charging devices: How the heck do I determine maximum wattage I can run?

For all its faults, at least the blue colour of a USB-3.0 plug (or additional connectors for B/Micro) made it easy to differentiate !

Now I’m eyeing up a USB Cable tester just to validate and catalogue my growing collection! 🤦🏻‍♂️

Is this loss?

Ever since watching the latest season of Clarkson’s Farm, I can’t help but hear him say ‘space penises’ any time I read the word mishrooms…

He was discussing options where people oppose both ads and subscriptions as methods of payment for consumed media.

IMO YouTube Premium is the only subscription that I will probably never cancel as not only does it pay more to content creators than ad revenue does (per individual viewing), it directly financially supports the hundred-odd creators I enjoy (large and small).

If the cost is too high for you to justify, you can band together with friends to split the costs of a Family Plan and/or do as I do and VPN back to my home country where the cost is significantly less than it is where I live now!

…or it’s available on the service you subscribe to, but not in your region.

I doing think it was an one thing, but more-so a build-up over time - a death of a thousand cuts, if you will:

It was a cultural moment generally, just think back to all of those celebrity commercials (“I’m Mr. T and I’m a Night Elf Mohawk”). All cultural moments pass eventually.

The third expansion (Cataclysm) was quite weak to begin with; coupled with a lack of content in the tail-end of the second (Wrath of the Lich King), which itself was incredible - narratively wrapped up the story that began all the way back in Warcraft 3.

So a lot of people chose that time to bow out of the game, as it required a fair bit of time dedication and seemed like an appropriate time to do so - given the narrative pay-off.

Lastly, the introduction of a number of game tools to automate the group composition process meant that the impact of player reputation on servers was severely diminished. Before then, there players who were toxic (stealing items, intentionally killing the group, failing quests) were infamous on a server.

Once this tool was further opened up to allow for groups to form across multiple servers - the sense of community was shattered as you would have no way to know if the person from another server was good/bad etc. it stopped being about bringing in the individual player, and just getting a body in to fill a role.

As someone who was lucky enough to get to experience those first ~6 years; it truly was lightning in a bottle.

20 years on, I am still friends with a number of those I met in WOW - and an in contact with a few more beyond that!

Unfortunately, it does feel like that sense of community those early years fostered are long gone, save perhaps a blip when Classic first launched.

Who knows when the next game will come along, which will be able to foster such relationships.