Where do we go if we want to take our business elsewhere? All the mom and pop stores are dead. The local businesses are all megacorps.

If our choice is megacorp A or megacorp B, then megacorps get all the profits.

Nothing is going to give. The megacorps have cracked the code. Megacorp profits will continue to increase, and the poor will get poorer. Welcome to Amerikkka.

Better than Ghost in the Shell's SAC opening "Inner Universe" by Yoko Kano? I think not.

Everyone who doesn't support [insert group name here] or [insert cause here] is a NAZI

Best anime opening ever: https://youtu.be/xNkmz_sF-tE Best anime closing ever: https://youtu.be/UptDZeIeVOI

"Because it's a soul-crushing, dead-end minimum wage job" Then why are you applying now? "Because I've always dreamed of working at Chipotle. I love this franchise, the food, the people, and want nothing more than to work for you"

You have to keep them off balance!

The only way I can use WIndows 10 and 11 is with open shell installed. The built-in menu is completely dysfunctional. No shortcuts to my computer, or printers, or the control panel. The search bar doesn't work and can't find files that I know exist and can browse to in windows explorer. Whoever made this doesn't have a clue how to make a functional user interface. It's completely broken and useless.

Windows UI peaked with Windows 7. I don't care if the backend works better in 10 or 11. I would still be using 7 if I wasn't forced to upgrade to use Steam and play the latest games.

The obvious solution to this is to not seek the bug bounty. The next time a critical security vulnerability is found, sell it to the highest bidder. I'm sure there are black hats out there willing to pay the money that the megacorp refuses to pay out.

That's weasel speak. Hiding behind a user agreement is a pathetic excuse for bad behavior on the part of the developer. The developer decides what is in that agreement. It can be changed at any time, and 'but you agreed to this" is a poor excuse for laziness and disrespect for the community that supported them for so many years.

Transitioning the game into an offline mode could be done with some development time spent on a final update. Take out the multiplayer stuff, let the game run offline, and put the game up for sale as an idler for like $5 or $10. It might not make much money but it lets players continue to play a game that they love. It shows that you as a developer care about your product and the customers who have supported you for so long.

Campsite water system for RV's. I'm wondering if it was well water, and wasn't chlorinated?

I spent like $2000 playing Star Trek Online. Lockbox keys, lifetime sub, all sorts of ships, items, and boosts. They introduced Mark XIV equipment with a gambling-based crafting system. You could spend dilithium (which you could buy with $) to have a chance to upgrade your equipment.

The straw that broke me? Their shitty customer service. I wanted to gear up an alt and give them the Jem'Hadar battleship with the Jem'hadar attack ship so they could launch the attack ships from it as fighters, which you could do if you had both. Problem was some ships were account bound, and some ships were character bound, and I lost track of which was which. I ended up claiming the box for one of them on the wrong character. Easy fix, right? Well not every MMO is run to the same standard as Blizzard. Craptic absolutely refused to help me. So I cut ties.

It was after that, when I experienceced withdrawal, that I read about gambler's fallacy and sunken cost fallacy and I really analyzed why it hurt so much to leave behind my addiction. I never went back, because I know that whole game is run like a casino. They do everything they can to hook you in.

This is fascists using "think of the children" to violate everyone's online privacy and spy on everyone worldwide.

I just don't see a place for it in the market. Steam is the big daddy DRM store. GOG is the old school DRM-free store. Itch is the small time indie dev store. Epic will never be a general storefront like one of the above. The only reason to use Epic is to play one of their exclusive games, and in that case they're no different from any company that refuses to multiplat their games. Blizzard selling their games on the Blizzard store or Nintendo selling their games on the Nintendo store. It just comes down to wanting a larger cut of the sales, instead of paying someone else to use their storefront.

Fine. Charmander it is.

This is true. I've been grieving the loss of Isekai Demon Waifu, which shut down only a few days ago on the 19th of this month. I had been playing it over 3 years, and had unlocked most of the girls, become the #1 on my server, and had grown attached to seeing my harem girls every night when I play the game before bed. I missed the server shutdown notification and I was messed up the next day. It hit me hard.

I hope there is another harem game with succubi and monster girls. IDW had a lot of charm. The music, art style, aesthetic. Amazing monster girls. I'm going to miss seeing Ephinas, Fiadum, Hastia, Scardia, Palotti, Ymir, and all the others.

It doesn't seem fair that we can spend years of our life, hundreds or even thousands of dollars, make a game experience part of our lives, and then one day it just goes poof and it's all gone. Part of you vanishes in that moment. It's like a bandaid being ripped off a wound, or a light in your life going out. Because someone else decided it cost too much to keep a server running?

They should be required to transition the game into an offline mode!

Tool of power? You mean when the Catholic church was founded?

My boomer parents think less of Trump after this spat. They agree the 3.8 trillion spending bill is ridiculous, and they also think DOGE was doing good by cleaning out fraud and corruption. We all think that there's something ill about Trump's second term. Like he realizes he can't have a third term, so he doesn't need to act conservative anymore.

I've spent hours using the phone finder at gsmarena and not being happy with the less than 20 results I get.

Closest is maybe the Samsung S25 but it's still too big. Also I don't want to drop $500 on a phone. Anything over $200 is too much.

This is just miserable.

This is a good question. I live in the USA and most fundraisers are for clubs, sports, and extracurricular activities. But we spend so much $ for our kids schooling, and I believe in other countries like Japan the school will actually give clubs money to spend on supplies, so they don't need to do this. Why are our schools so expensive and give so little back to the students?

Also our teachers are underpaid for the work they do. So are the support staff. Cleaners, IT, all underpaid.

Do you know who isn't underpaid? The administrators. Our schools have district offices with lots of overpaid administrators. I work in IT at a school and I make the same as the cleaners do. I can't afford a car, and live in a trailer park. During the last round of contract negotiations, the superintendent negotiated a 7% annual raise on top of his already six-figure salary. My group? We got 2.5% which was less than inflation. It was during COVID and inflation was about 7%.

Where is all the money going? Look at the district offices. We have a problem with corruption in this country. Everyone wants to be a feudal lord and rule over the serfs. All our money is going to create and prop up an aristocracy, which has so far managed to hide itself from public view. We need to shed light on the aristocrats.

We could build Sword Art Online, but I think we all know that this technology will be used to beam ads directly into your head 24/7. You won't be able to sleep because of the penis enhancement ads.

Great. This is just what we need. Sexually confused AI. This is all your fault, leftists!