I don't really know about the uptick, but the general trend upward over a longer period of time I kind of wonder if it's due to things like the steam deck. I played around with gaming in Linux with wine back in the early 2010s and was woefully unimpressed with how little I could do, especially with the amount of work involved. I didn't really give it a second look at all, but after the deck released I was blown away by how much has improved, and it's motivated me to see how much I can get away with without windows. I wonder how many people have had a similar experience.
Most of the interactions described in the patents imply that the commercials wouldn't be indefinite, instead just being like a regular commercial that you can fast forward or skip through by interacting, such as the patent description of throwing a pickle to "speed up" a potential commercial.
An ad that requires user interaction to continue is awful indeed, and we already see something close to this with I believe Hulu ads asking which cut of a commercial campaign you'd rather see, but it seems like most of these are just trying to engage the user more in trade for less time intruding. If it really was just blindly saying a phrase to instantly end a commercial, I'd be concerned about what it does for people who exhaust their will to resist regular commercial exploitation, but I wouldn't mind getting back to my show a little faster if I just can't get rid of commercials.
I have a friend like this, I'm a Nintendo collector and enjoying the hardware is my hobby. I know it's an expensive endeavor, and I don't expect anyone else to do it. I genuinely think any game should be up for piracy and emulation support, and it's incredible what can be done to make games look, sound, and play better than the original. But when I'm sitting there having fun with Metroid Fusion on my GBA SP and you sit there going "why would you ever do that when emulating is cheaper and better" I don't think you're conversing in good faith.
Yeah, Photoshop is honestly a hard piece of software to replace because it frankly does so many different things quite well. Most of those things can be covered by breaking out into multiple software, like how I use Krita for illustration and Aseprite for pixel art, but yeah general image manipulation is really the main thing left.
I'm vaguely familiar with it, but it seems more like maintaining Unity 7 than continuing development of Unity 8. I've also seen UBports Unity8 which seems to have taken a backseat to maintaining Ubuntu Touch so I'm not holding my breath, but thank you!
The Copilot and Recall integrations just happen to be the straw that broke the camel's back. I've been wanting to make all my software as FOSS as possible, and the AI stuff has just been a catalyst. Especially for Adobe, I don't have a good replacement for Photoshop as GIMP has been a nightmare to use and Photopea isn't FOSS but I won't be using any Adobe products ever again.
Windows 11 across the board, though I'm trying to migrate. I used Ubuntu as a daily driver in the early 2010s but I was soured by the retirement of Unity and was disappointed by the gaming at the time. These days I've liked the idea of KDE Neon, but I've got a lot to do to be ready for a full migration. I'd take my time with it but the AI stuff has rushed me to move faster.
So, how many more generations before people finally escape Nintendo's crafted stereotype that games are for young boys? Never? Fantastic. I'll try not to think about how I'll magically be too old for games in 7 months.
Genuinely, I've also been an AMD buyer since I started building 12 years ago. I started out as a fan boy but mellowed out over the years. I know the old FX were garbage but it's what I started on, and I genuinely enjoy the 4 gens of Intel since ivy bridge, but between the affordability and being able to upgrade without changing the motherboard every generation, I've just been using Ryzen all these years.
Giving a CPU more voltage is just what overclocking is. Considering that most of these modern CPUs from both AMD and Intel have already been designed to start clocking until it reaches a high enough temp to start thermally throttling, it's likely that there was a misstep in setting this threshold and the CPU doesn't know when to quit until it kills itself. In the process it is undoubtedly gaining more performance than it otherwise would, but probably not by much, considering a lot of the high end CPUs already have really high thresholds, some even at 90 or 100 C.
Honestly just in general BotW was so amazing when it came out because it really was this break in formulaic gameplay that was really needed, but as soon as you complete a casual campaign or two it wears thin as the flaws start setting in. Seeing TotK really focuses hard on those flaws while also spelling out a future of even more formulaic games than ever before. Considering that Eiji Aonuma hinted that TotK is the baseline for future Zelda games, it seems clear that they're falling in the exact same trap as they did with OoT, the trap that he acknowledges in that same interview. It kind of feels dooming for the future of the mainline Zelda, since we already see the flaws of this style very early on.
Super hyped for Echoes of Wisdom though. That one looks like it could be fun if executed well.
Definitely there on Other M too. The story is pretty mindless but the gameplay is pretty addicting and the FPS missile context switching is as fascinating and creative as it is awkward.
In general, I'm tired of seeing this trend of open world being just a superior format to linear gameplay. It feels like this encroaching new version of "3D is objectively better than 2D", and watching Nintendo IPs fall into this trap one by one is kind of depressing. Open world is for players crafting their own story, and linear is more fitting if you want to tell a story. It's certainly why the delivery of TOTK's story is so repetitive, and how most open world games aren't really open world because it just ends up on a linear track as soon as you reach an objective. Meanwhile, Metroid Dread the first go around honestly feels like an open world game despite being a total rollercoaster because the game design pushes the player's intuitions so well, combining what the industry learned from games like Half Life, Mirror's Edge, Uncharted, etc.
For real. I love Supergiant games and Bastion has been a personal inspiration in my gamedev journey, but I have Hades loving friends that look at me like I'm some kind of alien when I prefer doing another run in Dead Cells.
I recently had to replace my phone and just needed something working. Not even a fan of Samsung but I bought a Z Flip 4 for like $300 and it has like a scratch or two on the screen I barely notice. It's been fantastic and I see no reason to really get a 5 or 6...
I don't really know about the uptick, but the general trend upward over a longer period of time I kind of wonder if it's due to things like the steam deck. I played around with gaming in Linux with wine back in the early 2010s and was woefully unimpressed with how little I could do, especially with the amount of work involved. I didn't really give it a second look at all, but after the deck released I was blown away by how much has improved, and it's motivated me to see how much I can get away with without windows. I wonder how many people have had a similar experience.