They don't care. That kind of thing would be censored locally but as long as it makes them money, it doesn't matter.

Took my second JLPT mock exam yesterday. 10 point improvement from the first one. Comfortable margins above the minimums in all three sections, which is huge.

It's kinda wild that I still need to improve my reading/answering speed by 30 minutes or so to not run out of time but I'm still somehow well into passing territory. I guess that's just how it works when 90/180 is a passing score, lol. Also speaks to my strength in reading comp--it's by far my strongest section...other than the speed issue. Test-taking strategy alone is doing a lot for me. I know exactly what passages to skip and return to if I have time.

Going to do three more full weeks of reading practice and then a gradual taper before exam day. It's kinda crazy to think about actually having time to do things 😅 Between studying for the JLPT and job search, I've put in an insane amount of hours for more than half a year now.

Got any good reading?

It's gonna be so weird playing this at non-slideshow framerates. Wonder if I'll even still like it lol

It's as good as advertised. The adaptation of book 2 (S2E6-S3E6) is still my favorite season of television ever. The character of Camina Drummer is also one of those wild TV adaptation stories where the new writing and the actor were so good that they had to keep bringing her back.

I'm okay with where the series ended--even successful shows these days aren't likely to get full adaptations--but the shortened final season still makes me sad. It's even shorter than it looks on paper, too, as part of the runtime includes one of the novella plots, which only serves to set up a future storyline. Maybe they'll pay that off eventually with a new production, but it's awkward as hell in hindsight.

The word "tycoon" was brought into English from the Japanese word taikun (大君), one of the words for "lord." The Japanese word itself would have been brought over from China a long time before.

It really didn't take him long to spend what little goodwill he got for punching Apple in the mouth.

TRON: Legacy, although "terrible" might be bit harsh on it. I first watched the movie when I had a fever of 103 and it was perfect for that.

All-time great movie soundtrack, though.

Considering we've already got the one former Larian employee speaking out against this, it'll be interesting to see how many more show up off the record (or maybe on the record anonymously). I'm sure there was an internal battle over it.

There aren't many (possibly none) with more goodwill banked among enthusiast gamers than Vincke, so I feel like we're about to see just how far a popular figure can step into this particular puddle without coming out soaked.

74% describe Obama, someone that literally wrote a pro-deregulation op-ed in The Wall Street Journal while in office, as left wing.

This is what people are talking about when they say there's no left-wing representation in America.

100% of the gamers still interested in physical media could stop buying and it still wouldn't make a dent. It's just not a large part of the market anymore.

And even if it was, we're long past the point of voting with your wallet anymore in this age of tech oligopolies. You're going to have to get politically active if you want this. Plenty of allies to be found in cultural preservation efforts across many different media!

"All the companies out there were like, 'It's a single-player RPG, it's not going to do that big in numbers, and Wizards owns the IP. So why are we spending our money to increase the value of their IP? Why don't we do our own IP?'" he recalls, to PCGamer.

Those companies are right, and this is exactly why Larian passed on DLC for BG3 and moved straight to Divinity. Why pay out a cut when you're riding high and can work on a game where you don't have to? Narrowing your margins like that is the kind of thing that can sink a studio.

It's also an especially tough ask in a style of game where a given player isn't going to see the majority of the content in the game because everything's branched out. I hope people appreciate BG3 for the rare bird it is, because studios are rarely insane enough to take the kind of swing Larian did on it.

Their reviews aren't frequent. This is more of a "we ask around the org for what everyone liked this year." It's a consistently good list year after year.

It's 100% cultural, a combination of generational trauma ("I did it so you have to") and pressure from upper management leading to performative effort. We now know from productivity research that overtime periods in game dev get diminishing--and even negative--returns pretty quickly.

Disappointing, though ultimately a small part of my PC library in the end. Enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn and loved both parts of The Last of Us. Yet they never did bring over The Last Guardian, Bloodborne, or Bluepoint's remakes (I played the original Shadow of the Colossus and Demon's Souls).

Intergalactic is the only upcoming title I'm interested in, and that's nowhere enough for me to spend on a PS5.

I heard the lead guy for HuniePop say the same not very long ago. He said the turnaround time for games made in regions with looser IP laws could be insane at times, and before you know it, your preview assets show up in some product.

I've noticed this is especially bad in Japanese games for whatever reason.

This article didn't even go into the service disruptions Perplexity has had the past couple of weeks. In short, the best thing Perplexity does is give you access to multiple models at once, but frequently when you try to select one for a specific thread, it will throw an error and (quietly) kick the response to your prompt to a backup.

Perplexity's calling it a technical issue but it looks more like throttling, especially considering API access to Claude is expensive and that's the one that is having the most "technical issues." I would have already gone elsewhere if my sub wasn't free, and if it continues to be this bad, I might end up going elsewhere anyway.

The Expanse is the only show I've never once skipped the opening credits on, even on rewatch. The song's a pitch-perfect mood throughout the whole series, and a great length, too. Doesn't overstay its welcome.