It’s also a gift to Russia since middle-eastern oil is effectively shut down now and the price of oil is skyrocketing, so Putin can get a fresh injection of cash into his economy.

So… the doomsday clock has run out of time, is that what you’re saying? Seems apropos.

That may have been the intention but I doubt it ever worked as effectively as they claimed it would. Besides, it will probably cost at least 1 AI data-center of carbon emissions to continuously surveil all these people with TPMS sensors, so the argument could be made that you’re actually reducing carbon pollution at this point by removing yours.

They would be. That’s why you don’t tell them. If you’re treating your insurance company as your friend not an adversary, you probably don’t understand how their profits grow year over year.

I’ve been driving for 30 years. Do you want to guess how many times that’s happened to me?

Meanwhile, I’ve apparently been living in a totalitarian surveillance state for at least a few years now, and you know how many times that’s happened to me? I’ll give you a hint, it’s more than the number of times I’ve run over a nail causing me to drive around on low tire pressure without knowing it.

Even broken clocks are right twice a day. It doesn’t make them useful, they still belong in the trash.

I agree that quadlets are pretty ugly but I’m not sure that’s the ini style’s fault. In general I find yaml incredibly frustrating to understand, but toml/ini style is pretty fluent to me. Maybe just a preference, IDK.

Systemd killed my father, but it’s okay because he was Darth Vader anyway.

That’s not proof that’s AI generated slop. It sounds plausible and it’s all nonsense.

Wayland is fine. Xorg was cool, and might still have a few uses, but we’ve moved past a point where it should be the default.

I think it’s a fair criticism. The combat/random encounters are generally the most tedious part of any jRPG but certainly FF in particular. There are some really unique and interesting random battles or areas where the constant battling is intense and exciting rather than annoying, but they are rare.

Overall though, I think the rest of FF7 more than makes up for it. I can certainly understand not being able to get past that though, although I’m curious how far you got. The game goes through a lot of different “stages”, which is one of the things I like about it, but it means the gameplay while you’re stuck in Midgar is quite distinct from the open world, and becomes distinct again once you get access to the Golden Saucer, or the airship, or into Midgar again.

FF has been steadily turning from actual role playing games where the gameplay was once in the driver’s seat and the scenes and story add spice and flavor, to vaguely interactive “cinematic experiences” where the story being endlessly shoved down your throat is the purpose, and the gameplay is just a repetitive distraction from the real novelty which is the crazy stories and cutscenes they come up with.

Ironically FF7 itself was probably the beginning of that trend, thanks to the ability of Playstation CDs to hold so much FMV compared to the limits of ROMs at the time. They dove in headfirst and never looked back, and that came to define the franchise from that point forward. 3 Discs of FMV was pretty over-the-top for their first release on the platform, but the franchise’s addiction to relentless cinematics never waned, it only increased. And the relegation of gameplay being put in the passenger seat, then the back seat, then the trunk, then dragged behind the vehicle to its inevitable death as the art and story become the sole focus became more pronounced with each new entry in the series.

I loved FF7 (and 8, and somewhat less 9, and even 10, and 12 have some redeeming qualities) but the steady and continuous trend away from compelling gameplay towards visual spectacle is abundantly clear.

I haven’t played an FF game since 12, remakes or otherwise, and I don’t plan to. I’ve read the writing on the wall, and I see who they’re making games for, and it’s not me. Maybe it’s other people. Maybe it’s themselves, I don’t know. All I know is it’s not me. I have no interest.

To me, it makes sense for things that are simple to review, have clear, binary acceptance criteria, and little to no meaningful attack surface or dangerous failure modes. If you are trying to make an AI develop a bulletproof filesystem device driver or network stack you’re a fucking maniac and should be pilloried in the town square. If you want to throw an AI-generated github actions build script at me that’s perfectly fine and once I’ve reviewed it thoroughly it doesn’t bother me one bit if it’s AI-generated.

It’s a way to socialize a bit while gaming for your own entertainment, the goal and focus needs to be to enjoy it yourself, your spectators are just going to drop in and come along for the ride (maybe), try not to completely forget they’re there, but don’t let it change the way you’re playing, just play the game like you would be if some friends were on your couch watching with you. The harder you try to “put on a show” the more awkward and uncomfortable it will be for everyone. That might be something that comes later, as you develop your skill at streaming (yes, it’s a skill) but you can’t start there.

Treat it like a hobby, it’s just something you’re doing for yourself, for fun. If other people enjoy it, great, if they don’t, big whoop. Maybe you think you’re boring. Maybe you are. But everyone on this planet has different personalities and different things that interest them, I don’t care how boring you are, there are some people on this planet who will guaranteed NOT find you boring at all. Don’t try to be someone you’re not to attract people, let the people who don’t find you boring find you. There may not be very many who ever show up, but that’s pretty common even for streamers who aren’t boring. Don’t look at it as you failed, look at it as you didn’t win the lottery. Because you probably won’t. It would be nice if you did, but it’s a hobby, not a career. Stick to the hobby.

well obviously, all this proves is that copper wires are just as bad as wet mud. Every audiophile knows you need gold oxygen nitrogen purified wires blessed by a voodoo witch doctor.

Among several other things, yes, that is indeed one of my bugbears, I could name countless others too.

But like I implied it’s not just one specific bad decision for me, just the general attitude and direction of the developers. Not that they’ve lost the plot completely, but that they just have a specific plot in mind that diverges pretty significantly from mine and it is never going to satisfy me. Every time it updates the feeling grows that it’s always going to be a struggle to get the game I want to play out of Avorion’s future, that I’m always going to have to be plastering mods over top of the decisions I don’t like, and it’s just… exhausting.

That’s what indie games are for, instead of these absurd-budget blockbusters that often aren’t even fun, but also, the world just needs to be cheaper to live in. Games are first on the chopping block because disposable income for entertainment is always the first to collapse.

Check out the workshop for it too. The ship builder is extremely flexible and people create works of art with it, and it can make the game look truly incredible. Of course, things like battle-bricks and battle-sticks (or battle-bricks WITH battle-sticks) reign supreme at actual combat effectiveness not to mention cost effectiveness, so it’s sort of a tradeoff.

Avorion… like, don’t get me wrong, I’ve got 1,200+ hours in it, and on paper it still features literally everything that is like digital crack cocaine to me… but the updates and changes just keep going in directions that don’t interest me, at all, and even though they’re not explicitly bad per se, I find myself overwhelmed with disappointment about what the updates could’ve been, and I just become less interested, and end up playing less and less, to the point that I never even bothered installing it in 2025 and still don’t have it installed and when I do install it I generally just play it for a little bit and quickly become bored and disillusioned and end up going back to the X series or something to scratch the itch that it’s just not scratching for me anymore.

Stupid is good. Stupid can be exploited. Evil is unfortunate, but part of the human condition. We must destroy it, by taking advantage of it whenever it tries to do stupid evil shit. If they do stupid evil shit (and they probably will) we will destroy them. There is no other option. Appeasement does not work. Tolerance does not work. Concessions do not work. When it comes to evil, only total victory is worth pursuing. I am a militant pacifist, I will fight all evil until we can have some peace from it. But evil is eternal, and the cost of freedom and peace is eternal vigilance.