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Live service games, MMOs, gatcha games, and many hardcore multiplayer games are the worst for this. They love to waste player's time on some repetitive grind because they want players to keep playing their game. They usually have either microtransactions (often for cosmetics) or a subscription.
Personally, I love MMOs, but I try to avoid playing any grindy content (or at least as long as I don't think I'll genuinely enjoy it). So I'll usually play a game for a few months (they're really big games) and then quit for years, if not permanently (I have a bunch of MMOs I intend to someday return to, but have not yet).
Single player games are generally much better at being genuinely fun. Especially story driven games. I also love open world games because you largely get to make them your own. It's perfectly valid to beeline the story missions if that's all you care about. Or you could do just the side quests. Or you could additionally explore like crazy. e.g., with Tears of the Kingdom, you really can ignore most of the shrines and largely focus on the story quests. None of the side quests are necessary, either. You don't have to explore the depths except for a tiny few places for the story. The vast majority of sky islands can be ignored. But I personally had a lot of fun exploring, so I explored nearly everything and loved it (except most of the depths -- they were way too big, empty, and repetitive).
Some people don't like long games, though. And that's fine! There's tons of short or more streamlined games out there that you can have fun with. e.g., The Last of Us is a fantastic one. The sequel is about 24 hours long for the story and it felt like it flew by in the blink of an eye for me cause I was having so much fun.
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To be honest, I rarely noticed the votes tally. I think the bot just applied a flair to the post eventually? It wasn't that relevant to me. I could see from the comments what the top posts were saying. For most posts, it's usually obviously leaning in one direction, anyway. I always went to the comments for the discussion and drama, anyway.
I do think the existing voting options are good. And think that all top level comments should contain either a clear vote or INFO, because I think the sub doesn't really work if people aren't voting in some way.
One rule of perhaps interest is the not accepting your judgement rule. I'm not sure if I care for that rule in the late subreddit. On the surface, it makes sense, since why post here if you're not going to accept the judgement? But I think we have to be honest here. The sub exists because it's amusing. The cases where OP doesn't accept their verdict can be quite dramatic and fun in a certain sense. That seems like it's conductive to the true goal of the sub. Also, I'd rather have an OP that argues against everyone than one who never replies (especially when there's so many requests for info).
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I also can't stand the fact that smokers can take unlimited 'breaks' whenever they please just to come back stinking up an entire room with their smoke.
That feels like a workplace problem. Why would a workplace give them unlimited breaks? And why would nonsmokers not be allowed comparable breaks? This feels odd to me. My recent jobs have been ones where nobody is micromanaging my time, so anyone can take whatever breaks they want. As long as productivity doesn't obviously suffer, nobody cares. My past jobs in retail didn't allow smokers to take extra breaks. They'd get the same breaks as everyone else (for an 8 hour shift, that meant a 30 min lunch and 2 x 15 min coffee breaks).
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And that's just what the Parliamentary Budget Office predicted. The article also has another prediction:
"There's a zero per cent chance it would be worse than what the Parliamentary Budget Office is saying," said Wolinetz, who predicts a cost impact of under 10 cents a litre by 2030.
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Good. Some people will try to phrase this as a bad thing because yes, you will pay more (eventually, anyway -- article says they don't expect "any real bite until around 2025"). But we should be paying more given the environmental damage that burning this fuel causes. We should not be effectively subsidizing oil companies by paying the cost of their negative externalities.
If anything, I think there should be even more than this. We should have Norway style taxation on fuel. They have a massive savings fund that massively dwarfs our own closest equivalent.
It's been over three weeks since Autumn Shaganash, a woman from Barrie, was last seen or heard from by her family. They are urging the public to help with the efforts, and told CBC Toronto that police in Barrie need to follow more leads.
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Some degree, I think is imported from the US. Let's be honest, US news dominates our internet more than Canadian news. I have to go out of my way on sites like this (or formerly reddit) to see Canadian news. I would actually say I am more familiar with American politics than I am Canadian politics (which isn't to say I'm unfamiliar with Canadian politics, but rather that I'm really familiar with American politics despite not being American). That means the current US culture war, which is very heavily attacking trans people and anything gender non conforming, is being a heavy influence on Canadians right now.
But that's only "some degree". We aren't blameless. While it's nice that we have a PM that has a mostly pretty great on gender matters (no matter your opinion on Trudeau for his other faults, I think we can all agree he's very progressive on LGBT+ topics), that only goes so far. Canadian news media often leans right (and we're currently seeing a risk of the Toronto Star being acquired by a right leaning US media company). Pierre Poilievre has been stoking these alt right flames. And now we have a bill that is going to see more people using US media because Canadian media won't be found on Google search. And that's because of our own, badly written bill (it should have been written just so that sites couldn't copy/summarize most of the story without sending clicks to the original site, but for whatever reason they instead wrote it as requiring payment to link to news at all!).
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They don't even try to hide their close friendships with developers.
I guess it wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that the PCs clearly cannot separate business from friendship, too. We do need development in the province. But not at the cost of the Greenbelt. Nor do we need things like selling off highways or healthcare for profit.
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Truly terrible and I'm glad that nobody died. I wonder why the attacker hasn't (yet?) been charged with attempted murder?
Some people in the class tried to stop what was happening, while others fled the room, he said.
Those people who tried to stop the attacker are very brave. Kudos to them!
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Yeah, to be clear, MediaWiki is open source and also has alllll sorts of really cool extensions. You also already can download the entire contents of Wikipedia.
I think this desire to federate everything is going too far. Most things don't benefit from this and in fact just become over complicated. If you can host a regular copy of a site easily... that's frankly most of the benefits there.
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That is the best part and honest one of the best parts of gaming in general.
Kinda reminds me of burning the weed fields in Far Cry 3.
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That's the part that keeps me from doing it. While portability is nice, I have a really great desktop with an ultra wide. That ultra wide in particular is what makes PC gaming really great for me. I think I'd only use it on longer trips, which isn't that often.
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I'm sorry, are you saying you indent the braces? Cause if that's not unintentional, those are both horrifying!
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It's really hard to get them started though. Especially when I want a discussion on the topic now. I actually did try and start my local city sub and it was me shouting into the void as the only poster. It's not very fun posting stuff without ever getting replies.
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Yeah. It might not be some massive move, but it does mean something. It's great to see your employer, other possible employers, your local politicians, your municipal services, and even just random businesses that you might use (or not) show that they're accepting, especially when the status quo is to keep quiet to satisfy bigots.
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Naw, I still use Google. With an ad blocker, I find it to provide the best results by far (though the ad blocker is important, because they get misleading ads sometimes). It's superior when searching for descriptions (e.g., you can't remember a movie title and have to describe it) and local results. Plus I use Maps heavily (it's superior to its competitors) and that integrates into Google.
I just frankly don't care that much about tracking my searches or the likes. I see it as the cost of getting a quality product for free. The only reason I even have the ad blocker is frankly because their ads are terrible. They don't do enough to curate their ads, so scams sometimes slip in. I also think it's very scummy that you can search, e.g., "pizza hut" and get an ad for Dominos above the Pizza Hut result.
There's once again separate Canada day events in Waterloo Park and Downtown Kitchener (and probably several other places, too). Last year I went to the Waterloo Park one mostly because of the drone light show (which seems to be returning this year), but found that they were waaaay overloaded for food options. What were the other events like last year and where are you planning to go this year?
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At 7 a.m. on Wednesday, the Air Quality Health Index measure for Kitchener was a 6, or “moderate risk.” This is coming down from a 10+, or “very high risk” rating hours earlier at 3 a.m. The local forecast is calling for parts of Waterloo Region to return to “very high risk” levels during the day and into the evening Wednesday.
www.therecord.com
A special air quality statement has been issued by Environment Canada, but conditions are expected to improve by Thursday evening
tlwr.substack.com
We probably should have signed the kids up for camp.
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You know what, I can answer my own question. From reverse image search: https://wallhere.com/en/wallpaper/70953
The reverse search also found this reddit post of the same place but different angle (a little better quality, but still pretty bad): https://www.reddit.com/r/Breath_of_the_Wild/comments/uu9rvc/nature_overtakes_an_abandoned_tunnel_in_france/
On July 9th, 2023, Squirtle returns to Pokémon GO for a Community Day Classic event, giving players an opportunity to evolve a high-level Blastoise with Hydro Cannon once again. During the event, Squirtle will appear more frequently in the wild, and players will have a chance to encounter a shiny Squirtle. Blastoise’s exclusive Community Day […]
I just finished Horizon Burning Shores (I know, a bit late) and wanted to discuss it! FULL SPOILERS FOR THE DLC SPOILERS SPOILERS So, random thoughts in no particular order: 1. The Horus fight was fantastic and a long time coming. I think we were all waiting for a chance to finally fight a Horus and it didn't disappoint. The initial sneaking past the invincible and very hard hitting tentacles set things up great. Seeing the whole thing rise up had me giddy! And then it just goes on and on and really makes us work for it (I would have been disappointed if a Horus -- even an ancient and rusty one -- was too easy). 2. I liked Seyka and also liked that there was a romance option (but it also made it clear that saving the world is the priority). It's just nice for Aloy to have someone she can relate to in that way. 3. I wish there were more machines. It kinda felt like the bilegut was the *only* new machine. The waterwing feels nearly identical to the Sunwing. The stingspawn don't feel like standalone enemies (more like a part of the bilegut). The Horus is great, but it's only a one off boss enemy. I was hoping for some fresh new enemies to make exploration more interesting. 4. Exploration sometimes felt a little disappointing. I enjoyed how absolutely gorgeous the game is. It is fantastic world building. But so much of the map just doesn't have anything actually there. It looks pretty, but besides machines and generic items, there is nothing to collect. I feel like a few more side quests were needed and for a several more buildings to actually have some kinda lore to them. As an aside, I don't understand why datapoints are so hard to find. I scoured every inch of the map and found fewer than half of the world datapoints 5. Overall I liked the villain. It was good to have a single villain to focus on so that he could be built up more. I felt a bit bad for him when I learned his wife cheated with his best friend and that was the start of his rampant paranoia. But then I learned he was literally brainwashing people (plus the whole radiation space ship thing) and it was back to "yup, he's gotta die". 6. I'm really glad this DLC takes place after the base game and takes advantage of this. Waaaay too many games these days are seemingly afraid to make DLC require beating the game. I guess they want to make the DLC more accessible? Putting the DLC after the story let it utilize the threat of Nemesis as well as carefully incorporate flying. 7. I do kinda wish there were more returning character interactions. It was nice to chat with Sylens for a bit, though. 8. I really liked Pangea World! It was a fantastic setting. Full of interesting old world sights, lots of potential for stealth, it was compact and had lots of depth, and I always like theme park levels in general. 9. I kinda think Nova, Walter's AI, was a bit underused. A thousand year old AI from off world? I would have soooo many questions. But instead she almost immediately asks you to kill her and you do. Wish we could have sent her to live freely with Gaia so that she could lore dump us in the third game. And a bit more lore dumping in this DLC, for that matter. 10. The Heaven¢ sanctuary was really neat. Stepping into that place and seeing all the gigantic posters of Walter's face was quite a moment. It was when we really started to learn what Walter was like. I felt bad for those Quen. To them, the ancestors are like gods. But they seem to know the ancestors are dead. Finding out an ancestor is alive and witnessing their god-like technology has to be seriously convincing. And those Quen thought they had a chance at a better life. A world where they wouldn't be constantly fighting against horrifying machines to survive. Only to find out it's a sham. Oof. 11. Some of the new abilities are neat. Though a bunch are so forgettable that I don't remember what most of them are. I loved the grapple critical strike and used that a ton. I also found the valor ability that berserks all nearby enemies to be very fun for dealing with large groups. 12. I like that we got a smidge of progress against Nemesis, in the form of Walter's notes where he lists 21st century arms companies that may be useful against Nemesis. I was kinda expecting the DLC to dance around Nemesis, leaving it entirely for the third game. Was good to get some teases. Similar for Walter's notes giving the first person perspective of just how Nemesis killed some of the Zeniths and how terrified he is. 13. Perhaps I'm too used to other games where anything that looks interesting probably contains *something*. But this DLC is just chock full of buildings that look interesting but in fact have nothing. Can't be entered, nothing on top (I checked a bunch), nothing around them. In a way, this is probably just a sign of how great their world design is such that downtown LA is actually full of unique towers, but does feel a bit oddly disappointing when most of them are just for looks. Overall I'd give the DLC an 8/10. I enjoyed the story and setting a lot, but it felt empty at times and I really wish there was another machine type or two.
Yesterday I learned about [https://lemmy.ca/c/ontario\_community\_directory](https://lemmy.ca/c/ontario_community_directory) (edit: I got a wrong link somewhere -- this one should have been [https://lemmy.ca/c/ontario\_index](https://lemmy.ca/c/ontario_index)) and my local city sub of [https://lemmy.ca/c/waterloo](https://lemmy.ca/c/waterloo). I can't find them in magazine search (eg, [https://kbin.social/magazines?q=waterloo](https://kbin.social/magazines?q=waterloo)). They're not brand new (several days). If I visit the URL I expect them to have (eg, [https://kbin.social/m/waterloo@lemmy.ca](https://kbin.social/m/waterloo@lemmy.ca)), I get a 404 and no option to subscribe (I heard some people mention before how Lemmy would show empty communities until the first person on your instance subscribes -- not sure if that even applies to kbin and I can't seem to subscribe anyway). I can see other subs on the same instance. The whole reason I learned about these subs is because I can see [https://kbin.social/m/ontario@lemmy.ca](https://kbin.social/m/ontario@lemmy.ca) fine. So it doesn't appear to be the instance. Anyone have any ideas what's wrong and how to fix it?
kbin.social
I intended this to be akin to r/Waterloo, since there's a ton of value in local recommendations and discussion. I've met some really cool people from the city subreddits and hope to rebuild that here. Link: [@Waterloo](https://kbin.social/m/Waterloo) [!Waterloo@kbin.social](https://kbin.social/m/!Waterloo@kbin.social)
Eg, particular features, types of pokemon, stuff like open world, etc
The Imagus [Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imagus/immpkjjlgappgfkkfieppnmlhakdmaab) and [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/imagus/) extension shows image previews on hover. Currently with kbin, hovering over the thumbnail in the frontpage or magazine view just shows the thumbnail but slightly larger, which isn't what we want (especially since the thumbnails have a distorted aspect ratio). Here's how to make the extension show the full image when hovering over the thumnail: 1. In Chrome, open the extension options from the extension menu (puzzle piece icon in the toolbar). The Firefox version likely is somewhat similar. 2. Go to the "Sieve" tab and click the "+" button to add a new rule. 3. In the `img` field, use: `^kbin\.social/media/cache/resolve/entry_thumb/(.*)` 4. In the `to` field, use: `media.kbin.social/$1` 5. Save and refresh any pages that you wanted to use this on. [What the rule should look like](https://i.imgur.com/FOv2o1u.png) Before ---------- [Before screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/Lnrzw3k.png) After ---------- [After screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/6jRWFPv.png) For non-`kbin.social` instances, you most likely just have to update the domain in the regexes above (steps 3 and 4) to whatever your instance's domain is. I escaped the dot in `kbin.social` to be safe (if you don't escape it, it matches any character), but it's unlikely to matter.
A B.C. family has garnered sympathy online — and international media attention — after sharing what they described as an incident in which a man questioned their nine-year-old daughter's gender during a sporting event.
**Spoilers, obviously!** Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Saw the movie today. Went in completely blind, not even realizing it was a two parter. The animation style is stunningly gorgeous and unique. Just by aesthetics alone, it was a complete joy to watch. The use of colour was fantastic, including being a perhaps subtle hint that Miles wasn't in his own universe. The plot was fantastic. Full of the usual Spider-man quips that make his movies fun, yet also extremely touching (Gwen's moments with her dad in particular). I wasn't sure how they'd top the team of Spider-people from the first movie, but somehow they did it (with a whole freaking tower full of Spider-people). The music was also fantastic. I'm gonna lookup a playlist for work tomorrow because there was a lot of bangers that were unfamiliar to me. My only complaint is the lack of closure due to the "to be continued" ending. The chemistry between Miles and Gwen is great and has me excited for the sequel. Honourable mention to the daughter of Peter B -- she's adorable.
One thing that made Reddit great and scalable was that you'd typically not view all Reddit subs (or even all popular ones), but rather you'd subscribe to subs that interest you. Kbin has subscriptions. But they aren't the default and are quite hard to figure out. I had to look alllll over on mobile before I realized that the subscribe button is really far down (basically underneath the entire page of posts). It should be at the very top. It'd also be great if when you create an account, there'd be some wizard to help you pick magazines to subscribe to.
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CoderKat
CoderKat@ kbin.socialI write ̶b̶u̶g̶s̶ features, show off my adorable standard issue cat, and give a shit about people and stuff. I'm also @CoderKat.