gusgalarnyk @ gusgalarnyk @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

I don't think you're helping the cause. A perfect solution is not the goal, and a good idea that fails to address the targeted problem is still a good idea.

You can at the same time think:

• people shouldn't be allowed to have a salary of 1 million
• that the ultra rich aren't ultra rich because of their salary
• believe that we should tax ultra-high income individuals highly
• believe that we should tax ultra-wealthy individuals highly

Don't be a bad progressive by discouraging progress. "Tax wealth not work" is a great slogan to unify the working class. We should also probably tax ultra-high income individuals as well.

I completely agree with the concept of taxing income above a certain limit entirely. I think that only solves a portion of the problem, with the majority of the problem being solved by well implemented wealth taxes. Every dollar of wealth over something like 50 million USD should be taxed at 100%. No one should ever become a hundred millionaire again, let alone a billionaire.

I think this was is sufficiently different, if you like any kind of shooter I'd say give this one a shot.

Very jealous, I'm excited for that game. I just hope they nail the fun aspect. Hunt showdown is so much fun but has almost no meta progression and very little customization - hunger seems to have that addressed (or is planning to). Grey zone Warfare is very cool, hardcore, and slow but it's got almost no gameplay considerations; it's like barely a game in the traditional sense and had a terribly short shelf life for me for that reason. That's where I'm curious if Hunger can pull it off - from what I've seen it's too early to say.

Thoughts?

Arc Raiders may be the most exciting PvPvE launch I've had in a long while. A lot of the comments in this thread seem negative, but I would bet money this game is going to be successful for at least the first 6 months. It's just too good right out of the gate.

As for 1 year+, depends on how well the company is at producing new material. I think they have something special with this game. If Hunger comes out, or Marathon (lol), and does something just as compelling I could see Arc having a hard time but I doubt Hunger will eat the same player base and I doubt Marathon will feel very good (they seem like they have too many problems at this point).

It's the best extraction shooter I've played in the genre by like a country mile. Obviously we haven't seen what the full economy looks like or endgame but there isn't a single component that doesn't outclass the competition in my opinion.

Like the immersion is top tier with the sounds, the graphics, the feedback, the movement. It feels really good.

The gameplay is also top notch and does things others in the genre don't do. Namely:

• variable game length that feels rewarding. I can do a 5-10 min run and get quick and dirty loot with a free load out or I can stay in the map for the full 45 and look for exactly what I want.
• the items themselves are compelling game play pieces. Like the rare weapons are full on laser rifles and mini missile grenades - they're cool and change how you play, not your power level. Like in Gray Zone Warfare nothing I get feels meaningful different or cool, other than the bullet spongy nature of higher level zones and even that's not super noticeable. I had no reason to want to chase loot in that game.
• the meta game is sick, probably comparable to Tarkov (although I didn't play enough to actually compare this). Every match I feel like I'm working towards a goal of making the gear floor higher and gear ceiling easier to attain. Again, we need to see what the full game is like but collecting recipes, upgrading my workbenches, and collecting targeted materials feels good.

I'm positive I'll get 3+ months of good fun out of this before I might start mixing other things back in. If the end game is really good I'll be able to make it 5+ months with no content additions I think. The real question for any multiplayer game is can they add material at a fast enough pace to keep it compelling long term. We'll have to see, but they have dozens of levers to pull on compared to a traditional fps or PvE game. New ARC, new bosses, new map mods, new events, new maps, new guns, new gadgets, new subsystems, new modes. Lot of different angles they can add to in parallel.

You're being purposefully obtuse and dim, but I'll respond once more incase you are actually trying to understand the world around you instead of ragebait.

We have "heroes" we celebrate, mythicize, and owe the US's history to which I would qualify as American. We're not talking about "blaming the US for government sanctioned activities", we're talking about what the fuckin comic is talking about which is the history of American heroes. So no, youre not even commenting on the correct concept.

This is completely ignoring the fact that "American" is a bit of a erasure of the reality that Native Americans were American, Canadians and Mexicans live on North America. There's a whole other fuckin continent called America whose residents should be considered American... But that's a bit pedantic even if there's some meaningful lessons there I'll drop that topic to focus on what's actually more telling.

We have a holiday for Christopher Columbus. I grew up learning about him for multiple years of my history education as the person who discovered America, viewed in a positive light despite what he did. Benjamin Franklin, one of the beloved heroic founders, was born in like 1706 putting a ton of his actions and horrific behaviors prior to the founding the USA. There are several characters like Pocahontas and Captain John Smith that we again point to and learn about as heroes in the American Mythos. Idk if I'd consider them citizens of the USA but I would definitely consider them Americans. Like first of all is 320 years (BF's birthday to today) so off from 400 that you'd make a comment? Is drawing a line at what Christopher Columbus did as not American really so important to you, given we have events like the Trail of Tears taught in every classroom in the US. It's all an extension of the same evils you're erasing accountability for over less than 100 years? Like it's just weird man. Big touch grass energy. Is it cause your identity is tied to Americans doing no wrong? Or are you just bored today? Like I'm genuinely curious, I'm not exactly interested in being your therapist, but like wtf is this worth to you?

The first US colony in America was established in 1607. Honestly, your comment is pedantry so I'm not exactly sure why I'm responding to such a valueless comment, but something rubs me the wrong way about casually pretending the "American" tag starts at 1776 or whatever and therefore minimizing the horrible actions of both our founders and the people who came before them.

The first settlers may not have been citizens of the USA but they were the first Americans to commit despicable acts against the natives, their eventual slaves, the women of their communities, and no doubt the LGBTQAI community. Just feels wrong to pedantically correct someone calling out the horrible shit we did prior to (and during) WW2.

Ownership is cool and customizing your stuff transforms it from something impersonal or commercial into something intimate, revealing, and special. I believe the world needs to rubberband a bit back away from factory made, hyper-commercialized, and unrepairable goods to the hand crafted and human creations we all long for in the utopian media we consume.

As someone who loves sci-fi films and the Tron aesthetic, and who generally enjoyed the two previous films, a sequel should have been an easy sell to me.

Unfortunately, the whole "Tron bikes" and "Tron jets" IRL was - to me - such a huge red flag I skipped opening weekend. It gave the feeling of big action set pieces in the real world where the least amount of creative work would be needed and I had no desire to watch the military or the rag tag group of heroes fight computer programs IRL.

My favorite part of Tron was going into a new world and seeing the digital landscape. I want the lore, I want the "computer program's are people and mechanics" vibe, I want the fantasy portion of the sci-fi. I do not need another boring ass marvel / Star wars movie with a Tron paint job.

We need an actual trilogy, an actual story with actual arcs, we need actual stakes. This movie convinced me from its trailer alone that it would say nothing, fail to surprise me, and play out in a safe and predictable fashion and do it in such away that it wouldn't even be fun. I'm all for repetitive dime store movies, but they have to be compelling, well paced, and self-aware. I doubt this movie was any of those.

So much!

The things that I immediately felt:

• I sold my car, I walk or travel by train/bus everywhere. It's less dangerous, it's more calm, I can write or read or game while going anywhere, and it costs me a flat €50 a month which is far less than gas+insurance+loan+maintenance of a car.
• related but I moved from a suburban environment in the US to a city environment in Germany. There are multiple grocery stores, restaurants, parks, and hobby spaces within 4 blocks and there's not a single patch of harmful grass anywhere lol. Hated living in identical boxes with Monolithic grass borders and absolutely nothing nearby - felt like a constant reminder of our societal failings. Now I pick up groceries by backpack and recognize people in the city.
• as a renter I had to buy my own kitchen, sounds like a negative, is a negative in some ways, but now I have a well designed kitchen with an induction stovetop and a steam+convection oven. No more poorly designed kitchens maintained by landlords that don't care with cheap appliances. No more forced gas stoves or electric coils. I cook nearly every day and the change in stove was a meaningful upgrade in my life, even coming from a kinda nice gas stove (cause gas is just that much worse than induction).
• I kept almost the identical job, my pay stayed the same and my purchasing power went up and my costs went down, I was automatically included in a union so my job security has never been higher, and I got 6 weeks of vacation automatically instead of the 3. I doubled my vacation! That is such an unbelievably life changing difference that I'll do everything in my power to never go down from that value - and honestly make more major life decisions based around getting that number up. I feel like I work meaningfully less and have more time for hobbies and big vacations and if I could give one thing to every American for a year I'd pick this and I'm positive there would be a revolution within a week of it being reversed.
• I lived in KC. By car you could get to St. Louis or Des Moines, Topeka, Wichita, or Omaha within 4 hours of driving. If you've been to any of those cities, I'd argue (and I'm sorry about this) but only St. Louis really crossed the boundary of "worth it" as far as "places worth visiting multiple times". Now I'm 3 hours away from Paris by train. Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich, cologne are all within 5 hours. Zürich, Hamburg, Amsterdam, I think are right on the cusp of that timeline. All by train, less than €100 tickets for all of them which again isn't far off the gas I'd have paid for getting to St. Louis and back. To get to Paris for cheaper and quicker while being able to do things instead of driving the whole time... I mean that is just unbelievable. So weekend trips or day trips have vastly improved.
• booked multiple dentist appointments for cleaning and wisdom teeth removal. It has always been fast, free, and high quality. Nothing super remarkable because I had "good" "insurance" in the US but here it felt less like a capitalist racket and more like a neighbor who happens to be a dentist taking care of the city.
• Germany does this weird thing where Sunday everything is closed. It's low-key annoying because that's one of the two days you have off so like you want to shop and get groceries and what have you. BUT the benefit is nearly everyone has Sunday off so gatherings on Sunday have been Ultra-effektive. I have had multiple DND groups meeting regularly on Sunday, it's made scheduling so easy.
• I've felt the news be slightly better with a functioning government. When I moved here, for the first two years A) things were passing their equivalent of Congress and B) those things were good news like easier path towards citizenship and weed decriminalization and investing in public transit. Now that was the traffic light coalition, which got back stabbed by the traitorous FDP Party (who are kinda likes tea party or free market Republicans, think deregulate everything and help the rich under the guise of being good people and trickle down economics). Unfortunately because of the SPD's (their centralist Democrats) unwillingness to run on wealth inequality and general slow nature, we're back to a CDU based government (their Republicans pre-trump) with the threat of the AfD looming large (their Republicans Post-Trump but also in some ways more extreme and in others less extreme (this comment may not age well with the US's current trajectory)). So the news has once again turned sour and I once again feel like I'm in a country of people losing the information and class war and we're hovering over the slow self destruct button. BUT FOR A MOMENT IN TIME, the first time maybe in my life, I experienced a working government doing generally good things for its constituents and it was inspiring.

Those are the things I've felt most readily. But there have been numerous statistical improvements that I want to highlight:

• odds of getting violently hurt in anyway plummeted. Of course gun violence went to zero.
• average education went up
• average age when married and having kids went up
• risk of bankruptcy for any reason plummeted
• risk of losing my job went down, but also my salary due to an accident, pregnancy (i can't but just to be clear protecting women in the workplace is cool lol), major illness.
• cost of healthcare went down, I felt the lack of a monthly charge but taxes went up so it felt more like a wash which is why I'm including it here. The fact that every prescription has been free or less than €20 has been noticeable. Still I haven't felt the lack of financial shock from a major illness or that whole experience so I'm placing it here.

Moved from the US to Germany in 2023 through my work (and the EU Blue Card). It has been life changing and I want to stay forever, eventually becoming a citizen and renouncing my US citizenship.

AMA

I bought a Synology after I moved to Germany in a moment of weakness where I wanted a NAS but was dealing with immigrating and wanted something easy.

I wouldn't say I regret it because it worked out of the box and now I self host a bit. But my next NAS will be custom as I've been disappointed with the hardware and the company since.

I use kagi and I love it. When everyone else complains about search engines go to shit, I still get Kagi surfacing great finds or exactly what I'm looking for pretty consistently.

I'm also in the mood and in a financial place where paying for something is substantially better than watching ads. I want a product who's purpose is to improve the functionality I purchased it for, and I want no reward structure that incentives lessening that ultimate goal.

I would say Kagi is worth it for anyone who has the capacity to pay for good software or donate to open source stuff.

If they can keep the funding rolling through current means, cool. I love any game that can sustain itself through non-shitty means and provide me more gameplay.

That being said, I don't foresee myself giving them another dollar unless they release a legitimate DLC as the passes aren't worth their price and I only jump in for a couple hours every year at this point. It's fun, but they can't seem to make content and fix bugs and the systems/balance don't encourage experimentation with your builds.

I'm not gonna shill for any company, so no worries there, but our governments aren't breaking up these monopolies so we have to. If my options are a trillion dollar company and a 10 billion I pick the 10 billion.

I wonder if a company can get to X billion dollars in revenue and not be bad.

Just chiming in as another kobo guy. I like it's UI better personally but most importantantly it displays books, holds books, battery lasts forever, and is an eink display - like it's an ereader, I'm not in the percentage of people who can meaningfully discern between the two.

Kobo being theoretically repairable and not supporting a trillion dollar inshittification machine was good enough for me to swap.

We need to elect a party that actually wants to improve this country, not just loot it. We should be investing in our infrastructure and our quality of life, and raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy to pay for it.

Merz left his party when he got shamed for being too right wing (crazy I know, but times were better then). He went to Blackrock and made "a low six figures" as a salary. He came back when an opportunity presented itself and now we've approved a massive debt bill that primarily focuses on military spending. Blackrock will find their investment lucrative, I'm sure, by the end of the CDU's term if they haven't already made their money back.

I focus on the leader of the CDU but I'd like to remind everyone it's the whole party. They fundamentally have a view that promotes the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and the quality of life for everyone being treated as a second rate metric when compared to the performance of company stocks and international investment in Germany.

While the CDU or AFD are in charge, you should expect even long standing morals or practices to have a price tag.