In another post I wrote on this I encouraged the potential of 3rd party docks eventually happening

Thinking more on that I will say that nintendo probably did this because of third party docks damaging switches. I repaired a bunch of switches and a common issue I would see is a blown up pi3usb chip with often pcb damage leading to pin (iirc) 5. This was caused by cheap/shitty docks feeding too much power or incorrectly negotiating power delivery. It wasnt just like cheap AliExpress docks either, nyko, insignia(best buy), etc actual name brand docks would brick your switch.

Swapping the damaged chip for a good one would make the switch boot and work normally except it would only work in handheld mode. To work in dock mode you’d have to rebuild the damaged trace. Nintendo won’t do this; they would just replace the entire board, so to them this is a very costly repair (though tbf paying a tech labor to replace a chip and rebuild a trace is costly too as it’s much more skilled labor, requires more testing, and has a much higher potential for failure after repair)

That said I still think it’s a users right to use a third party dock if they so choose. Fuck nintendo. Though nyko should be on the hook to buy you a new switch if they design a piece of shit that wrecks your switch

Games suck now. Movies too. Culture in decline. We (millennials and gen x) got to see the art form (gaming and at least short form video on youtube and vimeo and stuff) evolve from studios owned by people who were passionate about the craft to the current state of big business making “safe” investments. It’s not that only bad games will ever come out from now on, indie studios exist and some big studios take chances, but there will always be a sea of remakes, remasters, endless sequels, generic safe garbage, etc

Also data is about 18-24 year old spending. I bet a lot of switch 2 purchases were by people 30+ for their kids

For the switch 2 it’s far more restrictive from the few videos I’ve seen where people have used flash carts and gotten banned. For one, a good deal of the games don’t exist on physical media even if you purchase physical copies. So an online ban means that if the console is ever reset for any reason those games are done. No updates obviously.

Though I do think some physical games will work without needing a digital “receipt” at least to activate and play, so you are correct in that the console isn’t entirely useless after being banned, just significantly limited in functionality and restricts you from playing a majority of your game library (even if 99% of those games have no online component)

That last point is the kicker for me. There should be regulation on this. If you’re sony/nintendo/microsoft and you’re pissed I modified my console and want to ban me because I might cheat online? Fine, I guess. If you want to ban me from making purchases because you’re afraid I spoofed the purchasing system? Ban me from making purchases, I guess. But you should never be able to ban me from redownloading titles I have purchased legitimately.

Frankly the 3ds freeshop fiasco (which, unlike switch freeshops that rely on external servers, was a system that spoofed nintendos purchase authentication ticketing system and allowed downloading directly from their servers) has likely made nintendo overly wary. The counterpoint to this though is that nintendo handled that situation terribly. The freeshop worked for years. They sent a dmca takedown almost immediately for the software but obviously people kept hosting copies. It took them almost 2 years to patch and at that point the 3ds was basically dead.

Imagine sony or microsoft in the same situation: their console is exploited with a softmod. They’re already probably working on a hardware revision to stop the softmod. But then an exploit comes out that allows modded users to download literally any game, update, or dlc from their servers, for free? They’d have that patched in weeks, maybe days (though tbf they’d probably also issue tons of bans here)

So essentially nintendo is overcorrecting because in the past they’ve made boneheaded security decisions and responded to people exploiting them like idiots. That’s not anyone’s fault but nintendos and it doesn’t mean they should be allowed to be super hostile to consumers. Fuck the switch 2

This is absolutely true. It’s called design-to-cost or design-to-spec. It’s not how every laptop is made but it’s how a lot of them are

Most companies will say “let’s make a $699 laptop built around amd ryzen with 15” display and 8gb ram” then engineerings job is to work around the constraints

That’s how you end up with plastic instead of aluminum casing, 60hz panel instead of 120, soldered ram, weirdly placed ports, etc

Some laptops are design first (macbook, framework, surface) but even these will have cost cutting measures to bring them to ideal price points

Look at this dumb asshole that got the $2500-2600 (assuming queen mattress) plus $17/mo or 199/yr subscription mattress cover (eg not the actual fucking mattress or bed frame). What a broke piece of shit. Should’ve gotten the $2850-2950 pod 6

After briefly googling what this actually is and the costs involved I have 0 sympathy for anyone involved. This is 100% tech bro bullshit. A temperature controlled bed sounds neat, I guess, and I am always a sucker for analytics, but this is possibly the most consumer hostile bullshit I have ever seen. It is all of the worst practices of modern tech wrapped into a device:

Grossly overpriced? Check

$350 upsell for physical controls? Check

Tons of vague language about health benefits that extrapolate valid claims onto their product, suggesting their product has benefits beyond something far cheaper (eg temperature does impact sleep but a $10 fan or $150 window unit would likely be fine because research is generally about environment and not about the surface of the bed)? Zero research about the device itself and zero funding for them to get this product investigated? Check

Subscription required? Not technically, core functionality still works, but you lose all the analytics, all the “smart adjustments” of temperature (it basically will just hold a constant temperature throughout the night whereas the subscription will adjust it gradually based on movement) and the biggest point is that your warranty is voided and you lose all support if you don’t maintain a subscription

Also while I don’t know this for sure I am betting there is 0 chance that you can fix this thing if it breaks.

This thing is so dumb and if you buy it I will judge you. You could buy a 2001 Honda accord LX with 141,000 miles. for that price. That’s a reliable car. I had one and drove it to 200k, sold it and I’m sure it ran for a while longer. Maintain it well and you’ll get 250-300k out of that bad boy. Meanwhile your dumb water bed cover will break and leak all over which is apparently so bad people all worry about all the posts theyve seen about leaking and the social media team has to come share blog post about how they make them less shitty now. sorry if you got the first batch, i guess. But it’s okay because as dumb redditors point out you can give them another $500 to extend the warranty to 5 years. Just remember to keep that subscription active or that warranty is void you stupid piece of shit.

you still need a fucking mattress! You know someone buying this isn’t throwing it on a $400 ikea mattress. They’re going for the $3200 foam mattress. I am so mad about this

Edit: it also sells the biometric data its harvests about you to advertisers. Reddit posts show it uploads anywhere from 10-30gb of data per month, so it’s collecting quite a bit of data

Spoken like someone who has normie glasses

Talk to me when your prescription is -13 or worse, your glasses always have to be special ordered with the most expensive high index lenses, your glasses are physically heavy, and they distort your face so the area around your eyes looks far away.

You go to warby Parker and get the $99 frames but it’s still somehow $230. Even a place like Zenni is $75 for 1.74 lenses (not including frames).

Also you have to be cautious about what frames you pick because the larger your lenses are the thicker they’ll be. You one of those zoomers that wants cute big grandma glasses? Bad plan

Rebecca ass is shockingly tame for old James Bond

Pussy Galore is unironically a character name in Goldfinger (1964)

This is pretense to intrude on other things and more importantly remove the ability to browse pornography anonymously, which is dangerous. I would never use an account to browse a porn site because why would I ever want that data linked back to me? Look at the government right now. You watch a gay or trans porn video and in a few years that could be grounds for never being able to have certain types of jobs or worse, being deemed a “miscreant”

If this was truly about protecting children they would encourage open dialogue on sex in homes and increase inclusive sex education. This is evidence based. It would still be necessary even with this nonsense because obviously vpns exist, as well as amateur run sites, sites run from outside of the USA, torrents, etc that don’t give a shit about us laws requiring age verification and will show all kinds of obscenely hardcore videos

I remember when compression was popularized, like mp3 and jpg, people would run experiments where they would convert lossy to lossy to lossy to lossy over and over and then share the final image, which was this overcooked nightmare

I wonder if a similar dynamic applies to the scenario presented in the comic with AI summarization and expansion of topics. Start with a few bullet points have it expand that to a paragraph or so, have it summarize it back down to bullet points, repeat 4-5 times, then see how far off you get from the original point.

preface: conjecture

musk and zuckerberg benefit from “othering” a group so that the majority of people get caught up in arguing about the rights of that group. While you’re busy being distracted by that they can push for agendas that benefit their companies and personal wealth, which inherently fuck you over.

musk does seem to have a personal vendetta as well given his issues with his trans daughter but I truly think this is ancillary to enriching his wealth and power. He also seems to love getting involved in topics that rile people up because deep down he’s a 14 year old reddit troll

rowling is double down and attention. She has a shit take, posts about it, people call her out. She’s a literal billionaire “beloved author” used to being surrounded by hangers on so being challenged wrecks her shit. Rather than reflect and look at scientific consensus she doubles down on her shit take. Because of people like above this gets her increasing amounts of attention and relevance so her beliefs are reaffirmed and deepened constantly. Now she’s consulted to speak authoritatively on the matter despite having no actual qualification other than being a rich lady who got into twitter arguments about it

Many of these apply to nobodies as well. Your stupid anti trans neighbor benefits from “othering” someone because it gives them someone to deflect blame onto. For most of American history it was black people, or Hispanic people, sometimes Jews, basically any minority. They also will double down when called out on shit takes and will absolutely respond to attention given for shit takes.

Total fiction. Everyone knows you have to go to a unlicensed seller at a gun show in the majority of states for that, not a gun store

Anon is slowing disarming America