abraxas @ abraxas @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

I mean, at the 1-hour mark I was starting with space piracy and having a blast.

The first 10-15 are misery if you follow the breadcrumb trail and don't leave it. But the same is (more) true of Skyrim.

There's this weird anti-hype going on. Realistically, for people not loving it, it's defensibly a 7 or so. There's PLENTY of us who put it a lot closer to a 10.

It's a lot of things, but it's definitely not a "bad" game.

It's really weird how many people stop "a few hours in". Modern Bethesda games are notoriously slow-starts. A few hours in is still "training wheels" for the game.

I'm not saying you should go back to it, but how did you know it's not for you that quickly?

As for Outer Worlds. I enjoyed it for what it was, but I'm of the fringe view that it doesn't hold a candle to Starfield. It has more style, but less substance than Starfield IMO.

I beat Starfield the first time before the bad reviews started overwhelming. And I still don't get it (except perhaps as hype). Bethesda games are far from perfect (people seem to forget the negativity around Skyrim being compared to Oblivion), but they scratch a particular itch that millions of gamers have and crave.

What terrifies me is that this whole "Hey look, we're getting 2006 again" attitude is exactly what's going to kill off the Bethesda "genre" the same way SquareEnix gutted the AAA Turn-Based RPG. Sure, it means we might get a black horse game out of left field (Persona 5, talking about you) but it's a shame to see so much hate on the style of game that Bethesda is.

And we need to make no mistake. While some complaints have been valid, the biggest ones that started this snowball have been things like "I shoot guns around guards and nobody comments" or "I murder an entire town and then pay a small bounty and everyone's fine with me again".

I get the "huge procedural universe is soooo boring" complaint; I don't agree with it because I loved Daggerfall and because Starfield has more hand-made content than Skyrim, but I can respect it. But that alone doesn't justify all this "worst game ever" BS. It makes Starfield sound like it's worse than initial-release NMS was (and I can say from experience, it's not).

And for me, I just crossed hour 180 with Starfield, and have not been bored once. I don't expect it to be everyone's favorite game, but it's certainly mine for 2023.

You are under the very relevant misassumption that HR is less likely to be handling a situation inappropriately

I have something called an "expertise bias" that I use to make decisions. In a vacuum, I trust an expert to solve a problem over someone with no experience in a given field. I don't ask a barista to fix my car, or my doctor to fix me a latte. Both can screw up in their field, but they are less likely to do so than someone without experience in their specialty. I'm not a barista, a doctor, or an HR expert. Or to put it simpler, the odds of an HR person mishandling someone being non-serially abusive in the workplace is simply lower than the odds of the situation without that person involved. I need this attitutude to live; if a junior dev is trying to override the devops engineer on infrastructure, you'll never guess which one usually wins.

A simple verbal overstep, on the first occurrence

What are you talking about now? The topic at hand wasn't verbal and certainly wasn't merely an overstep. We have a an insulting teardown in writing. Substantively different from a verbal teardown. I never said the moment a person loses their cool with em and tells me "fuck off man" I'm knocking on HR's door. But if a senior dev on my team sends this flaming email to a junior dev on my team, I better find out about it and it's getting handled... By HR.

I love how everyone online is psychic.

Actually, I've watched two GREAT workers and good people end up losing their jobs because a easily resolved situation turned toxic. The person who felt uncomfortable tried to take care of it 1-on-1 but had too passive aggressive a nature to really be clear when she confronted the guy.

So 6 months or a year later, she was on the verge of quitting and went to HR. He was terminated because it had gone too far. She left soon after because she still wasn't comfortable at work after the cause of that ended.

...look. I "obviously never dealt" with anything because nobody is allowed differing opinions here, but I have 20+ years experience at businesses where the existence or lack of good HR has been a deciding factor of the work-culture and comfort level of team members. I work 1-on-1 with my company's Directors of HR on a regular basis to make sure my team is happy and because I am involved with other teams at my job who have their own interpersonal conflicts. One of HR's responsibilities in a good company is to involve themselves in interpersonal conflicts BEFORE decisive action has to be taken.

The problem is that face-to-face confrontations without a mediator don't always end well. And I would rather not have HR decide "we have to fire our Rockstar senior dev or this random guy". But if you address it earlier, HR deals with it earlier (yes, because the paper trail m eans HR can't just fire "this random guy" later over the Rockstar senior dev). It's win-win for all parties INCLUDING the Linus Torvalds in this explanation.

But I've "obviously never dealt with a real-world scenario" and my experience doesn't count. So you can ignore everything I said.

It does not show that

Agree to disagree.

your link lists MPG of 21.82 for 2023, that is almost 1/3 worse then your friend.

That is for a non-Hybrid Silverado, and my friend has a hybrid. Seems to make sense.

The legal issues are a issue not because these are unsafe or high-emission (they are not). They are a major issue because the auto industry has fed you that tripe and like a lot of US consumers you bought it.

That is sorta tinfoil. There is a process in most states to get ANY vehicle street-legal. But Kei trucks don't just need safety features retrofitted, apparently they lack a sufficient roll cage to pass inspections for valid safety concerns. Even Kei fans can't agree on whether it's more or less safe in a crash than a motorcycle.

As for emissions, in a lot of states you just have to pass standard EPA emissions guidelines like any other vehicle. Apparently that's very difficult for a Kei truck to do. Perhaps it uses a gallon or two less per hundred miles, but its emissions are worse.

Lots of Kei truck fans out there bitch about how the EPA should have better things to do than care about fehicle emissions, but I'd think a "fuck cars" community would care about vehicle emissions.

These are not good on gas, they have convinced people that 29mpg in a hybrid that costs as much as a house is good.

So your viewpoint is entirely about money. Just be straight with it.

and in no world would you catch me in anything made in north America for the last 20 years. Like many other people I had to buy a very old truck (carberated v8 that gets 14ish mpg btw) and it sits by my barn until it is needed.

Why is that? Newer vehicles tend to be safer in collisions and better on emissions than the equivalent older vehicle.

The “cure” to the f150 is just the option to buy a old f150

Circa 2000 F150s rate as low as 10-11MPG. New F150s rate as high as 25MPG. And new F150s are a lot safer to drive. I'll ask again, is this entire rant of yours just about money? Because maybe I'm the wrong person to respond to if you're just cheap. I get it, I'd rather take a bus myself than have a car payment.

Thanks for providing some info, sadly the 29mpg on the hybrid is not the norm or good

For a load-bearing vehicle it absolutely is. And I showed that it compared favorably to these minitrucks. This whole thread is about comparing trucks to trucks. If you need to carry shit, you are hurting the environment if you buy a mini-truck over a Silverado or F150.

it looks like your buddy is doing some great mileage compared to say the info from

Well, 10 years goes a long way. You literally picked a 2011 Silverado. Perhaps look at 2023 numbers on the same site?

As for Kei, as I said it's hard to get a fair chance when the only places nearby sell heavily-used older vehicles. Gas mileage has largely skyrocketed of late because Auto manufacturers are getting scared.

But ultimately, If you have any truck and don't need its carrying ability, you're an asshole. I think the case of a japanese mini-truck being the "best choice" is ultimately too rare to hold your breath for.

A step further, the REAL sad truth is that most minitrucks aren't even legal in the US without being modified to a max speed of 25mph because they don't meet safety and emission standards for road vehicles. That's why so many around here are old. Before 1998, they're grandfathered in and people in other countries that don't grandfather old vehicles are offloading them.

Do we really want to be cheering on unsafe high-emission vehicles as the "cure" to the F150?

The term is "hostile work environment". HR doesn't just respond because of strict liability. Just one occurance of something like this can lead to an otherwise solid worker to spiral from discomfort of the situation, both feeling like a prisoner at their job and producing far less value for their employers.

The latter is why HR cares, but the former is why it's OKay to go straight to HR. If HR is well-trained, things like this shouldn't escalate just because you went to HR. They should be able to diffuse it productively.

A quick google suggests "real world" use of modern microtrucks is 28ish mpg without heavily modding it or super-efficient variants. Older Kei trucks are lower. Actually, much MUCH lower according to minitrucktalk. 22-23.

I know someone with a 2021 Silverado Hybrid holding at 29mpg. And they regularly lug full loads that would take four trips from a Kei truck. Admittedly the "hybrid" part stops mattering with full loads, but I guarantee Kei isn't going to have great MPG numbers carrying 1000lbs of cargo.

Minitruck owners (sometimes rightly) lean on a soapbox where they and those around them rarely lug any cargo. IMO, might as well drive a Prius at that point but whatever. But ya gotta stop the circlejerk enough to acknowledge that someone who does regularly carry a full cab worth of stuff is in a better position with a normal truck.

Flip-side, very few people need a truck. And those that don't need a truck also don't need a kei truck.

This was my take. Considering the bed is wider and deeper, that black truck can literally hold 4x what the other truck carries.

Also from a quick google, I only see a single mini-truck retailer within 500 miles of me and they only sell very-used, with worse exhausts and MPGs than an F150.

Most people don't need that bigger truck, but if they do that smaller truck won't cut it.

From my memories of the Arch linux labs in college, no there isn't...

... genuinely I've never been offered (even had to google EMLA)

But now that you mention it, I've never had this particular issue from novicaine at the dentist. And they always use a topical.

Next time I need a shot/blood, I'll see if they're willing to try that! Since it really does seem to be about the poke itself, something that changes the feeling might be exactly what works.

I hope being able to plan ahead for the occasional jab makes it not much of a real issue in your life.

Basically that. I schedule a day off if I need a jab for any reason, and work from home anyway when I'm miserable the next several days.

Does it happen for accidental/“natural” pokes? You mentioned the splinter thing, but if you had a thorn, cactus needle, or even a piece of glass stuck in your skin and pulled it out, would you do alright?

All of those are fine. And unlike a lot of people with my issue, blood doesn't bother me in the least. Once in a great while I've gotten a mild version of that from an insect bite, but the feeling is just completely different.

Oddly, I think if a needle hurt more and did some tearing, it wouldn't bother me so much.

But you're asking some really thought-provoking questions. I have a lot of food-related texture issues and while this is COMPLETELY different, I'm suddenly wondering if it's a little more similar than I thought. I do believe there's a psychological component to it; I haven't been able to test, but if I were surprised with a needle jab outside of a medical setting, I have no idea if it would happen to me or not.

What I did discover is that my blood pressure doesn't rise and my heartbeat doesn't go up in "prep". I don't seem to have a stress-rise effect for it to be stress-plummet related. I'm not asking anyone to surprise me with a shot, but I really do wonder what would happen.

Honestly, I wouldn't trade it for the medical conditions of some of my family and friends. It sucks, and makes me hate doctors, but it won't kill me.

I mean, I'd take this over diabetes and/or asthma shrug

Yeah, exactly. And I agree that there's separate categories for skill, dedication, and niceness. Some folks are damn good but lazy and don't care, others make up for being "only ok" by trying really hard and caring a lot, and some are just friendly when they screw up. It's nice to have more than 1 of those 3 at a time. Someone in my family went to a weight loss doctor and asked me to come along. She was the friendliest doctor I'd ever seen... and the appointment finished with "I'm really lost. I don't think there's anything else we can try right now. You're doing everything right". Don't know WHAT that was in the spectrum of skill and dedication. Maybe it's true, maybe she was just giving up. But from what I've seen/heard, it's definitely better than "well try harder, eat less, and workout more" that heavier patients hear from doctors who don't even ask what they're eating or what their workout regimen looks like.

I don't have to deal with a lot of that stuff you do, but I can imagine it since what little I deal with has shown me multiple sides of people (doctors too, I suppose).

Yeah. I half-mentioned it elsewhere. I was in an ER and needed to have blood drawn. I was just barely staying conscious by leaning back with an ice pack, but they needed the room so a nurse came in and said "yeah you're fine" and lugged me from the blood-draw chair into a wheelchair. My wife wanted to hit her (lol) but it took the 2 of them to keep me from hitting the floor instead of the wheelchair because I started to black out from suddenly standing.

Some nurses are idiots.

I mean, it could be. But Microsoft does not have a background of operating at a loss.

That said, months ago there was mention that Game Pass revenue was topping $200M/mo ($230M for an example month) and that a majority of Game Pass users were paying for the highest tier. That puts us at $2.7B/yr revenue. I can question whether their CLOUD service is profitable yet, but Microsoft is not going to get $1B in download and bandwidth costs in 2023. That still leaves $700M for employees, incidental servers, and "necessary expenses" to stay profitable.

I am convinced they're making money off their customers. Which I guess is a good thing because they can't use "we're losing money left and right" as an excuse to raise prices. Like they've ever needed an excuse, though.

They pull in $between $2.7B and $3B of revenue. Actually the question is what their profit margin is, not whether they're pulling one.

They're making just under $3B/yr on Game Pass. It seems absolutely obvious that the vast majority of their costs will be game licensing. That's why they rotate games in and out so often.

For what it's worth, the same announcement about spending $1b/yr included a confirmation that the Game Pass is currently turning a profit.