I’d reach out to grab my smartphone only to realize there’s now two of them on my desk. I’m about to have a very bad day~

I can assure you, this is not about people wanting to take down the 15M subscriber titan. (though undoubtedly some haters are just jumping on the opportunity, I don’t think that’s the majority) For many of us fans, we have been seeing this coming for a while, or those who are blindsided feel utterly betrayed after such a long time watching LTT religiously. It’s always been possible to ignore the awkward moments in videos or write off the bad behavior as just an “on-screen persona” thing. There’s a clear problem with company culture at LTT, and these things usually come out in this way, with victims waiting for the right moment. Presuming innocence on his part means presuming lies on the part of the victims, and that doesn’t sit right with me. I wouldn’t necessarily take it 100% at face value truth but there’s no doubt something majorly wrong going on in that office.

As a fan, I want to see transparency and a healthy working environment behind the videos. Linus’ response wasn’t just underwhelming, it was a complete betrayal. Even before I knew about the nasty working conditions, the simple back and forth between GN and Linus was enough to put a massive crack in the LTT facade. I didn’t need someone to confirm the working conditions were bad, to make an educated guess at how the guy totally unwilling to spend “up to” $500 man-hours more on a video to ensure it’s done right probably isn’t running a fair system of work.

Lately there’s been this weird undertone of discomfort in Linus’ videos, and I think I now understand why. He does a great job appearing to be a decent and relatable guy who’s just being mean for a gag, but it’s becoming more clear that’s not a bit. His relationship with the people he appears with on camera only seems to work because there’s a back and forth in their quips and insults. Whenever he’s on with someone who’s not a staple of the channel, there’s this sense that he’s untouchable, that he can dish it out but grounds for pushback are shaky at best. Communication overall seems to suck, and there’s never not a Disappointed Linus moment when he’s involved in a project. You can really feel the unnecessary stress he’s piling onto the situation, and if it’s that obvious on-camera, how bad is it when nobody else is around? Or for the employees who feel like a bit of a squeaky wheel? It’s been clear for a long time that Linus is a cheapskate (he openly complains about relatively acceptable prices for the silly stuff he’s doing in videos pretty often) but for some reason in the back of my mind I thought maybe he wasn’t so stingy as a boss, where it counts. Wouldn’t bet on it now.

For someone who’s even a little bit out of place at LMG, I can 100% see how Linus has built a toxic work culture. It should speak volumes that nearly everyone, when given a chance to speak without Linus’ final say on the video, expresses much the same criticism toward his hustle culture. They don’t have the time they need to do good work, I don’t get the sense that they have a supportive and creative environment conducive to enjoying the process, and the output is clearly suffering.

Linus’ initial response dropped the ball harder than anything he’s dropped in his storied career of dropping things. But even if his response was heartening, the further reports of toxic culture and fanbase are enough for me to keep my distance. I’m going to miss their flavor of “tech nerd fun” videos, but the “Linus is a bad guy” Pandora’s box is open, and it’s going to take a lot of goodwill before I can just enjoy their videos again. Sad to see another titan of Youtube let it all go to his head, but this just goes to show that success doesn’t make a man better, it just makes him more powerful.

All I ever see around crypto is this vague notion that it could someday be acknowledged and used widely as real money is. But so could bottle caps. I don’t see the mechanism for how it realistically happens. It’s no less a moonshot than it was 3 years ago, IMO.

Just because a lot of people are buying into crypto doesn’t make the underlying inefficiencies in its design (depending on the coin) disappear and make way for common usage. As it stands now, cryptocurrencies are basically glorified ponzi schemes. The people nonstop defending them deserve to be treated with constant skepticism because they have skin in the game and know there’s nothing preventing them from losing it all. It’s in their best interest to believe in it and spread that belief.

It’s like the CEO of Reddit editing users’ comments. Once you’ve opened this can of worms, you can’t exactly close it again.

Outside of expected circumstances like long-term inactivity or having snuck an inappropriate username past automatic censors, being forced to forfeit your handle is simply unspeakable on social media platforms. Your identity can be straight-up stolen, or altered, without forewarning, for any reason, and you have no recourse at all. And the guy deciding who gets screwed over like this is a rich, entitled right-wing monster who blatantly hurts others if he~~ thinks it might align with his politics somehow~~ wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and you’re today’s punching bag, frankly.

100%, gotta be a car lobby thing. If dealerships provide an important service, then put it in the market’s hands and let people decide if that service is worth paying for.

Around here (western-ish USA), EVs are mostly $50k+ SUVs and aren’t super high in demand, and dealers are dropping pretty big discounts. But it’s just starting to put them into affordable territory for me (at least, where I’ve set my expectations) and upcoming models are promising to compete comfortably within my budget so I’m hoping preorders are a decent means to get lined up for what may end up being some very highly in demand new models in a price tier that’s not seen much competition.

I’m hoping it prevents a painfully long wait if these prove to be the go-to new standard everyone’s lining up for once they’re getting previews/reviews. If not, shouldn’t be too painful to get my deposit back if I go another route. I’m hopeful this lets me keep my options open, even if it’s keeping some of my money tied up for now. It syncs up well enough with my strategy of waiting and I can keep an eye out on the market to see if something better comes along in the meantime.

They’re complaining about when people with preorders don’t pick up their order - which means those people basically gave the dealer a free $500~1000 with the only string attached being that the dealer now has one more vehicle on their lot to sell.

I’ve put down a few preorders and across the board the story I get is the same: once I fully place my order (customize and lock it in), I can’t get my deposit back. So the only ones really losing, IMO, are those who assume a preorder means a guaranteed sale. That was never the deal they struck, and it seems they’ve forgotten the wiggle room they built into the deal to manage the pitfalls of losing that ‘guaranteed’ sale.

Particularly when it comes to these trucks, both Ford and Chevy promised “$40k” for theirs and that definitely moved massive numbers of deposits. Both jumped to an entry level price of around $70k, and that’s if they even let a consumer buy the lower trims. If that keeps happening to other models, like the promised $30k Equinox EV, they really can’t get mad when people back out once more details are known, or get cold feet when they realize the market’s not in a good spot for them. Personally, I’m not finalizing any purchase or locking in my deposit if I can’t get hands-on time first. If that’s not workable for dealerships, then good riddance. They have one job, and that’s to educate me and let me test drive.

Convenience would be knowing whether the show I’ve queued up to watch will remain on the service, or getting warned well ahead of time if it’s going to expire. Or having every season of a serialized show available or at least something showing that not all of it is on the service before you get deep into it and suddenly cut off halfway through. Or easy access to my watch history and likes, as well as more robust settings (or heck, any settings) to tailor the way content is shown so I can get a consistent user experience whether I’m browsing new shows or diving back into the next episode of something.

I think Netflix could get a lot more convenient.

Going on about how “censored” everything is and how “certain political ideologies” are the only opinions allowed and anything else is “insta-banned” reeks of right wing extremism (hence, dogwhistles). I know I’m sticking my neck out to say so but given nobody has yet provided a single receipt/anecdote to back up their claims I find myself super skeptical at the idea that they’re presenting even a marginally balanced version of the truth right now. There’s a reason “certain political ideologies” (ie. the “eradicate trans ideology” and “destroy wokeism” crowd) are not accepted in decent online circles. There’s no room for that kind of hate, and I’ve never met someone on that side of things willing to hold an honest conversation on it. They just want a platform to be hateful.

This strategy reminds me of right-wingers I’ve dealt with in the past who complained about being banned from Twitter for ‘simply saying “learn to code”’. If you understand the context, the harassment, kicking someone when they’re down, the dogpile they contributed to, the absolute hate campaign their seemingly innocuous (piece of a) comment contributed to, there’s completely sensible reasons why a ban like that took place. But I know the playbook; these guys thrive in the darkness. The moment I start prodding into the nuances, they pretend they were trolling the whole time and basically ragequit. If they control the messaging then they can make themselves sound reasonable by tearing away context and presenting a whitewashed and often unrealistic version of what happened.

I could be wrong; for all I know this guy’s talking about truly god-awful subs like r/TrueRateMyFace (I forget what the name was and it doesn’t deserve to be remembered, as the mods explicitly support men posting their exes on there and actively ban commenters who “overrate” the scores they give out, while pretending they’re working with an objective measure of true beauty) but I haven’t experienced this egregious political de-platforming they’re talking about and it’s telling that they didn’t go into any level of specifics except to keep harping on the “censorship” point. Not every opinion or argument deserves a platform.

If your place of work has chosen to pay you so poorly that it’s now my fault that I’ve failed to supply you an adequate wage for your work in an industry where service is not a big component (the bakery employee bagging up some cookies for me is not getting a tip no matter how awkward their PoS system tries to make it - delivery drivers and waiters obviously are a different story) then I’m simply not supporting your employer and I genuinely hope others follow they go out of business, well aware that that fact is the reason they stopped getting customers.

You’re screwed one way or the other unfortunately, but I’d rather we send a clear message to the people actually responsible for this awful situation you’re stuck in where you have to rely on the generosity of customers to make a decent living, than continuing to subsidize their terrible business practices and allow this cycle of abuse to continue not only unabated, but actively financially supported. This can’t be the norm everywhere. Arguably it shouldn’t be the norm even in aforementioned businesses where it’s long been accepted as the norm already. You and I both know your idea of this being “selling labor directly without the ownership class taking a cut” is a falsehood, because their cut is coming from your base wages, while enabling customers to effectively ‘not pay’ for your labor, with nothing you can do to prevent that because you’re not in control of what you earn.

I would be 1000% in favor of people having that power to sell their labor directly and name their prices. But it’s this duplicitous system that doesn’t allow the laborer any control, while stealing from them, raising prices without the ability to be up-front and honest about what something is going to cost. The only reason you’re mad at customers and not your employer, is you feel you have the power to change one, and not the other.

They effectively have, via tipping. And the employer pays less so ultimately the employee gets screwed no matter what.

The fact they look to us as the problem and not their employers just tells me the scheme is working. Count the money, twirl the moustache and pet the evil lap cat, villains of the world. You’ve won as always, and the downtrodden are still too busy infighting over scraps to realize whose boot they’re under.

I think it needs to be pointed out how Thunderfoot’s videos came in combination with dozens of other fairly large channels all making “epic owned feminist” videos blasting Anita in universally extreme terms, simultaneously with her receiving incredible amounts of legitimate harassment and death threats. Never do I remember these people reminding their audiences not to act out like that. Not once can I recall them giving her credit for points well made. No balanced point of view was ever given. It’s just internet bloodsport.

I understand people having missed the broader context of contributing to a harmful pile-on, because my dumb ass clearly did back then when I was watching these channels. I would have been a lot more critical of what I was watching, a lot sooner, if I realized just how one-sided and tone-deaf these people were in light of what was happening to the targets of their hate campaigns. But they controlled the narrative as long as the people watching weren’t seeking out other avenues of coverage.

There was an era when I used to watch basically everything that Thunderfoot, Sargon, TL;DR and Bearing (and I’m sure others I’m forgetting) did and it’s shameful to think back on how gullible I was. Them piledriving on Sarkeesian was part of what drove me away from that alt-right pipeline. Much as I was cheering on their takedowns of her legitimately bad points, I was scratching my head at their inability to give credit to the good ones.

That’s the thing about these people; it’s all or nothing. Every point you can harp on about has to be added to the video. Exactly like the woman they were criticizing, they felt an inescapable urge to argue every possible point or angle, no matter how weak and indefensible, because otherwise there’s less video to monetize. They bounce between relatable and sensible counters, to complete nonsense with the exact same self-righteous “owned” energy. Much as I sympathize with Anita especially today, I don’t give her a pass on some of her boneheaded arguments. Bad reasoning deserves critique. But she got a lot more than critique. These internet bloodsports types went right for the jugular, and none of them had any credit to give on a point well made.

I think out of the lot, Thunderfoot is probably the closest to reasonable because he is legitimately educated and intelligent as far as I can tell, but I would caution anyone watching him to take it with a grain of salt because I can pretty confidently say he’s willing to bend the truth to make a point on a factual basis. I would not trust him even on simple math/science matters if there’s a possible agenda in the way. And that agenda might be as simple as wanting to dunk on someone he knows the algorithm enjoys him dunking on. Be wary of misinformation.

No, you are mistaken. That’s clearly Dog, not Rock~

You really should!

I was big into Starbound pretty early but never quite felt the highs I got from Terraria. I would say if Starbound is up your alley, Terraria is a must-try. It’s great with friends, too, and if they’re anything like mine, the moment someone brings it up after a year or two, they’re always down for another Terraria playthrough~

I think what appeals a lot about Terraria is the world. It’s like a living thing in its own right. Biomes don’t just sit in place, and the world doesn’t just spring up on creation and stay static except for what you do to shape it to your liking. Building is less convenient than Starbound, but also more central. As you stretch out into the world, it quickly becomes your home. It’s so comfy and pleasant to come back to and build a new place. Upgrades and progression are kind of nuts, too. You’re always moving forward on some game-changing new accessories, new crafting items, new NPCs to buy neat stuff from. Even when it’s starting to feel like you’ve explored everything, your progression is set to change the world and make it feel new again.

Starbound felt like more of a streamlined story/experience built around the bones of freely exploring terrain as you like. Worlds have this No Man’s Sky effect of being mostly the same across the whole surface and populated by randomized variants of the same recognizable critters, but ultimately not feeling like there’s much unique to make them distinct from each other. They feel rather disposable, like you have all this space but it only makes it harder to determine where you want to set down your roots and develop a personal connection to a place. Ultimately it was challenging for me to keep pushing through when it was so optimal to leave systems behind once I got what I needed there.

I don’t want to gatekeep what is and isn’t aww, but I definitely don’t appreciate the realization that something fake was slipped in right under my nose without warning. AI may be harder to get good results from than I imagine, but if it’s not being presented as exactly what it is upfront, it’s naturally going to fool a lot of people into thinking they’re seeing an extraordinary image.

Come to think of it, this doesn’t just extend to AI. If someone was trying to pass a photo realistic render or heavily Photoshopped pic off as real (and I mean on the level of replacing, grafting and moving parts of multiple images to make something that gets attention for how surprising or special it seems) then I would feel the same way about that. It’s about honesty. I want to see all kinds of mediums on here allowed to shine, but not if it’s done through obfuscation of the medium used.

And also, AI stuff just skeeves me out. I want to be able to filter it out, or just know that there’s a rule against it and another community for that content. There’s something deeply human and heartwarming about an “aww” to me, and if it’s not real, or at least presents itself honestly in a way I can appreciate the love that went into the craft, it’s no longer aww.

I’m on my way out of this sub right now due to AI posts, so feel free to disregard my salty butt, but I feel the need to say that I’m really not okay with AI generated content in this community, especially it being allowed to go up un-tagged and un-filterable (if there’s a way to filter out posts on this site I wouldn’t be totally against it as long as there’s a rule to tag images appropriately).

I find the idea of putting an AI generated image up as the community’s banner is asking for exactly the wrong kind of content. Look - real life can’t compete with this stuff. Any random dude with a graphics card can Stable Diffusion the cutest and most exotic pic you’ve ever seen, (an approximation of) the kind of thing a photographer might capture after years of seeking out that perfect one in a million shot. The guy who made this can casually pump out several dozen like it’s nothing. You want a baby red panda and a squirrel instead? They’ll have it generated and posted in the time it took me to write this rant.

There’s a specific community on this site for AI generated aww, and I recommend people who like these go make it active. I don’t think I’m alone in saying people don’t expect that content here. Most don’t know what to look for and aren’t zooming in to spot it, and while this form of misinformation (presenting pictures that are not real as if they were, as another AI generated post here has done by being posted without context or tagging as AI generated) is far from innately harmful, I don’t think it should be allowed in this sub’s rules. If that other post’s comments are anything to go by, people feel cheated realizing it wasn’t real.

Again, I don’t entirely mind if the sub isn’t strictly limited to real pictures only. Aww comes in many forms, from real life to movies to games to art. IMO, AI is far too much of an ‘easy button’ to get a free pass, though.

I think Active needs some harsher falloff for older posts. I always seem to see multiple days-old posts on the top under Active because they keep getting new comments which appears to bump them right back to the top. Recent comment activity shouldn’t be weighted anywhere near as highly as the post being more recent, and I’d honestly prefer a fairly hard cutoff after 24~48 hours.

Wouldn’t seem like it should be a problem but the end result of using Active is that every time I refresh I’m seeing mostly the same stuff I saw several hours or a couple of days ago. Hot always ends up giving me super recent posts (last 30~60 minutes mostly) where the comments haven’t filled in much, while Active is leaning on too much older content. I find there’s no happy medium like I had with Reddit where every ~4 hours I’d have a mostly fresh selection to look at.

While we’re on the subject of DS classics, here’s an even more obscure one: Over the Hedge.

While admittedly it never quite got the time in the oven it deserved, being a release tie-in with the movie and put out alongside all the console versions, this one in particular was something special. It’s a third-person over the shoulder perspective stealth game with tank controls, sneaking into the hilariously well-protected homes of humans to steal their junk food. And if that wasn’t enough, it had you managing two characters in real-time by swapping back and forth between them, using their varying strengths to defeat the ridiculous laser alarm systems and traps along the way. It’s slow paced and relatively simple, and I used to have a blast finding ways to completely break the game because the devs didn’t have enough time to iron out all the kinks entirely, but it never quite got the attention it deserves for being such a unique labor of love.

I have to give it massive props for having so much creative heart when a tie-in for a mediocre animated movie has no right to be that good. The developers saw the opportunity to make something that put its source material to good work instead of just another hack-and-slash romp (like the console tie-ins were) or a minigame collection (like the later DS game (???) was) and their dedication to the craft of game development really shines through some of the jank involved in its presentation and sometimes wonky physics. By now, a unique take on a stealth game is nothing all that special, but at the time this was one that really grabbed me.