Again, I make my own judgment call. If something has tons of negative reviews, then I might read some just to get an idea what everyone’s upset about.

If it’s a common complaint about a specific thing, then I’ll decide whether that thing is a deal breaker for me, or not that important. If it’s just a bunch of random complaints, then I won’t trust any of them and make my own call.

But in general, I don’t really pay attention to reviews. I guess Steam reviews on games are pretty much the only ones I ever read, simply because they’re displayed prominently right at the top of every game’s store page. If a game is review bombed, I might read some recent reviews to see what the deal is. But I’ve definitely bought games that have tons of negative reviews, simply because people didn’t give reasonable explanations for their negative reviews.

I don’t trust others’ reviews. Some people rave about a product or service and then I try it and it’s actually garbage. Or worse, you can’t really tell what’s a legit review from a customer and what’s a paid review by someone within the company. Or AI generated.

In the end, I prefer to make my own judgment call rather than trust reviews. So I don’t expect anyone to trust my reviews.

Which is kind of ironic, seeing as I write lengthy movie reviews and video game reviews. But in my defense, I do that purely as a hobby, so I can rave about something I really like (or on occasion, dislike).

I do it for fun and I don’t make money on anything I post. Which, in my opinion, makes it a more pure review because I’m not motivated by pushing a product or meeting a deadline. I’m not required to highlight certain features, push a popular trend, or promote an event or sale. I can just speak from the heart, write whatever I want, and geek out about something I personally enjoyed.

As someone named Coby, I liked that no one else seemingly shared my name. I’ve never run into another Coby in my entire life. Although I know they exist because a simple Google search brings up a handful of people with that name. But every time I hear “Coby,” I know someone’s trying to get my attention.

Then Kobe Bryant showed up and became famous. Now I hear “Kobe!” everywhere I go, and it’s giving me whiplash. I keep thinking people are talking about me, or calling for me, and it’s just people throwing trash into a basket from across the room.

It’s a damn shame what happened to Kobe, but I’m a bit relieved that almost no one seems to be calling out his name anymore. Although I constantly need to spell out my name every time I give it to people, because they always write it as “Kobe” now. I used to get “Colby” or “Cody” all the time. Now it’s just “Kobe.”

Thank you for not calling it “Daylight Savings Time.” That’s never been the correct name, but almost everyone here in America has decided to call it that for some reason.

Note for those passing through and not reading articles:

This is not a summary of the article, but OP’s suggestion for a solution. The article talks about creating a yeast product that’s lacking in bees’ diet due to climate change and a lack of diversity in flowers.

OP suggests combatting the effects climate change has on biodiversity by planting your own diverse flowers. Which may work, or climate change may just kill those too.

If checking age on social media is all it ever does, then sure, whatever.

You’re forgetting an important detail: you submitted an official ID to prove your age. Which means your face, address, and legal name are also on record. So every time you get age-verified, you’re basically checking in with your full legal identity, leaving a breadcrumb path across the Internet of everything you do. That data can be used to track your online activities and build a database on who you are as a person, based on the things you access.

THIS is why age verification is a terrifying thing for computer access. It’s a form of government tracking that should be illegal. Cops can’t legally barge into your home anytime they want and go through your stuff. They can’t take your computer and scan it for data collection. Not without a court order.

With age verification embedded within your OS, it won’t matter if there’s a court order or not. If your computer is connected to the Internet, you’ve just publicly broadcast all your data to the world, and anyone - cops or not - can tap into that data and build a profile on you. You don’t even need to be browsing the Internet; if your OS is verifying your age, it could also be broadcasting that verification for every program you use locally on your computer. None of your data is safe; it’s all tied to your legal identity and trackable.

When I became a sysadmin 24 years ago, I figured the general public was still adapting to the rapid overnight advancements and integration into the tech industry. I assumed that as people figured out how to use software and computer technology in their daily lives, help desk support would practically disappear and we’d be able to move our efforts toward fully maintaining systems instead of customers.

I had no idea how resistant the general public would be to actually learning and understanding technology. We went from recommending customers avoid certain bad programs and hardware, to being forced to incorporate them into our infrastructure because the general public didn’t want to give them up.

My professional opinion was overruled many times because someone higher up the food chain wanted to use a device or app that hurt our client base or mission parameters, but was familiar to them, so they wanted it included in our suite of tools.

I’m grateful to see a lot of public resistance to AI, even if corporations are doubling down on their investment into the technology. But I don’t have any hope for the future of technology or the general public who use it daily. AI is just the latest excuse for people to not learn how to use technology efficiently.

I expected younger generations to be raised on this tech and be absolute wizards in its use, understanding it even better than I do! Instead, they were raised on slop and ad-riddled ADHD-promoting garbage apps that rotted their brains and prevented them from learning basic tools and functions. As a millennial, I’ve spent the better half of a decade teaching boomers how to use this tech, and then the next decade trying to reeducate zoomers on how to properly use tech and break their life-long bad habits.

I retired from the IT industry after only 20 years. Now I enjoy tinkering with technology in my free time. I always enjoyed teaching people how to use their personal computers and smartphones, but I can’t spend another minute on a help desk, fielding calls from people who still don’t know how to read error messages that pop up in their face. AI will be the death of the industry if integrated into everything and left unchecked. Maybe it’d be for the best.

Chronologically, Metal Gear Solid 3 is the first game in the series. It shows Snake’s origin story, which leads into the original Metal Gear 1 and 2 games for the old Nintendo Entertainment System (long before the Metal Gear Solid series). So it’s a perfect place to start if you’re picking up the Metal Gear franchise for the first time.

Metal Gear Solid ∆ is just a modern remake of Metal Gear Solid 3, so it’s basically the same thing but better graphics and controls. I read once that due to the falling out with Hideo Kojima, Konami can’t legally re-release the original MGS3 game, so a remake from the ground up was their legal compromise.

Now Metal Gear Solid 4 is the only Metal Gear game that hasn’t been re-released on any other platform since it debuted on the PlayStation 3. But Konami plans to finally release it for PC and all modern consoles in August this year. Woo!

I had planned to review Metal Gear Solid ∆ for my Lemmy screenshot series, but I was having so much fun with the game, I forgot about preparing a review and just played my way through it. MGS3 is my favorite of the entire franchise! There’s something rewarding about actually trying to avoid detection in a game. It’s easy to go in guns blazing, but sneaking past guards and not alerting anyone? That takes skill and dedication.

I live in a forested countryside in the Northern Midwest. Leaving the windows open invites in bugs and other small critters. Even with screens on the windows, insects crawl through the cracks, and I’ve definitely had several field mice chew their way through screens. I also have rabbits and possums who tend to nest up against the foundation of my house, and if a lower window is left open for prolonged periods, I sometimes find babies nesting in the window frame.

If I open my windows, it’s for a limited time to get some fresh air moving through the house. I’ll turn on strategically placed fans in various rooms to encourage rapid airflow through the house so I can close the windows sooner.

I only open windows in the winter if I need to cool a room quickly. For instance, I’m renting my first floor to a friend and I live on the second floor. But I only have one HVAC unit and thermostat for the entire house. The first floor always stays a few degrees cooler than the second floor (heat rises), so I keep it a little extra hot upstairs to ensure I’m not freezing out my friend. But I’m always hot in general, so I’ll either have fans on me all winter, or I’ll occasionally shut myself in a bedroom and open the window for 15-20 minutes, just to lower my body temp a bit and help me tolerate the hot house.

There have been a few winter nights where my wife and I have left the bedroom window open to cool down our bedroom, while burying ourselves in thick blankets. We don’t sleep well if we’re sweaty and stuck to the bed. I usually get up a few hours later and close the window, so we don’t freeze overnight.

When I was deployed to Iraq in 2007, I worked for a Communications Squadron, which managed the base’s computer network. Someone built a media server in our server room, so we could legally host movies and music on our network for other military members to enjoy at work.

We would borrow copies of DVDs and CDs from our base library and rip them to the server, then we built a rudimentary website where people could browse the catalog and stream content through the site. Nobody could download copies of anything, so we weren’t guilty of government-sponsored illegal filesharing. It was basically a way to digitally access the content from our library.

A part of the server that was locked down just for our squadron included video games we could install and run from our work computers. Our squadron especially liked to close up shop around lunchtime for some “simulated warfare training” and then jump into a giant Call of Duty multiplayer free-for-all map and shoot each other up for about 30 minutes.

Anyway, this is a long-winded way to explain that one day, I noticed someone added World of Warcraft to the server. I thought it was odd, considering MMOs needed an Internet connection and our military networks are specifically designed to block most non-work related content. Battle.net would definitely be on the block list.

Still, curiosity got the best of me and I installed it on my PC. And to my surprise, it was a local server instance! I could access all of vanilla WoW, and I was the only person online.

I don’t know what exactly that game mode was. I thought maybe it was a beta instance, but I’ve never been able to get any of Blizzard’s beta or test servers to run locally without an Internet connection. Someone had obtained an actual working offline copy of the game to play!

Suffice to say, that kept me entertained for most of my deployment. Back in those days, there were a lot of griefers online and you didn’t have much of a choice in avoiding PvP (this was before they started making specifically RP servers), so I was frustrated when other players would interrupt my gameplay to fight me. Having a whole MMO to myself was fantastic!

The only downside was that my character was isolated on my local server; all my progress couldn’t come with me when I left Iraq. But I was addicted to WoW back in those days, so it let me continue to enjoy the game while I was unable to access my actual account back home.

This is why I keep a tablet next to my bed. When I want to recline in bed but watch something, I can do it on a decent-sized screen instead of squinting at my phone.

But my couch also has two “zero-G” recliners on either end of it, which basically means they recline so far, my feet are slightly elevated over my head. So I don’t really need to go to bed to lie down and watch something.

It’s more about if I’m trying to settle down for the night or not. I have wireless headphones for my TV, so I can watch shows late into the night without disturbing anyone, but if I’m gonna fall asleep myself, I’d rather be in bed already so I can just set down my tablet and sleep without any more effort.

The Gary Jules cover of Mad World, for the Donnie Darko soundtrack.

Similarly, the original song by Tears for Fears sounds really upbeat and happy, but you’d never know it was a sad song unless you paid attention to the lyrics. I love both versions!

I barely got grandfathered into a pension program with the US military. They went away in 2015. I had served over a decade at that point and they still let me retire in 2022 under that program. The new program is a sort of 401k type system, but I didn’t have enough years in service to contribute to it for retirement, so they didn’t even give me the option to switch over.

Granted, I retired after only 20 years served so my pension is not very big. But it’s money in my pocket every month for the rest of my life, so I’m not complaining. I’ll never starve or go without shelter.

There was a moment in that fight where Pink got killed and dropped a bunch of grenades when he went down (an ability one of your custom uniforms grant you). And we all happened to be grouped a little too close together, so we all got blown up by him. That’s my one death in that mission - a team kill. I wonder if that did enough damage for his score, or if he kept flagging people with his rifle while shooting enemies.

That’s one of the interesting things about this game. Some players have asked the devs for the ability to turn off friendly fire, but they refuse, saying that friendly fire is funny and part of the ridiculousness of the game.

Right? The way I hold controllers, I can barely reach the bumper buttons without shifting my whole hand, so it’s much easier to just use those underside buttons.

This is my situation too! I bought the original LCD one when they were on pre-order, then my right bumper button broke (a common issue with the first models) and I took too long to request the free fix/replacement from Valve.

So my wife encouraged me to just buy one of the new OLED ones that had just released and she’d take my old one.

She hardly games on it anyway, and when she does, I showed her how to remap that bumper button to a different button. Almost no games use the trigger buttons on the underside of the Steam Deck, so those are always available.

They try to keep a low profile globally, but they fully support Russia and North Korea. Not to mention, all the drama in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the surrounding seas.

This happens to me on Android, but it happens whenever I make a comment on a post. My window shrinks after I submit and stays that way until I close the app and reopen it. Here’s a before and after from about a week ago:

EDIT: It happened when I posted this comment too. Literally, every comment I post does this.

Yeah, they must mean the original, since this mod just released today. But if you read their whole review, they don’t directly reference the original game once, they just gripe about all the things they don’t like about this mod.