It was definitely the most portable console. Made it very easy to just throw it in a backpack and bring to friends’ places for Smash Bros nights.

What’s funny is you don’t even really need the bar. It was officially called the sensor bar, but it’s a misnomer because the sensors are in the Wiimotes. The bar is just a pair of IR emitters.

Anything that emits light on the infrared spectrum can be used instead. One “hack” is to use two lit candles spaced a bit apart. Around the holidays, you can just use a Christmas tree. Or on a good day, you can even sometimes use this magical thing called the sun (though its position won’t be static).

You could also buy two IR LEDs and stick them in a 3D printed frame for a DIY solution (or just tape them to a stick). It’s definitely the least critical component of a Wii to have to replace.

Gamecube probably holds the most special place in my heart. More for the games that released for it than for the console itself.

Agreed. “Failed to disclose” isn’t condemned as harshly as “Blatantly lied”, even if it should be. So obfuscating a project’s AI usage may be seen as less risky than being upfront about it.

A responsibly transparent project should advertise itself as AI-free if it truly is.

it makes no sense to me that anyone would buy into SpaceX.

Index funds, mainly. The thing about index funds, though, is that they incorporate investments with little to no consideration of the product a given company makes. They just play a meta-game in the market itself with its own rules and conditions, and become attractive investments for portfolios looking for steady, “safe” growth.

Their link is to a mod page that adds motorbikes to the game.

Even then, though, I wouldn’t trust preorders enough to do it. Stores love taking preorders, but they don’t factor that in with the amount of stock they’ll receive.

I remember seeing posts from folks who lined up to pick up their preorders of big games like Spider-Man and Tears of the Kingdom on release day, only to get told by the store that they didn’t actually have enough stock to honor everyone’s preorder.

Nintendo maybe. Sony likes buyouts too, just not on the scale of Microsoft. Ask Destiny fans how well Sony’s buyout of Bungie is going.

You only get ID’d for alcohol if you look like a kid. I haven’t been carded in years. And when you do get carded, they look at your license, check the date, and hand it right back. No copies are saved to a database that could get leaked who-knows-where.

If a social media site is concerned that a user may be underage, I’m fine with them asking for some sort of verification. But a blanket request on everyone to ID themselves by default is just not the way.

I am in favor of keeping kids off of social media, but I think the method of ID verification as default is entirely wrong.

Parents should ultimately be responsible for the activity of their child. If you can’t trust your child to use the internet/social media responsibly, they simply should not be given access to smart devices.

If a kid gets onto social media and does stupid things there, go after the parents for neglect. The same would happen if I wasn’t supervising my 8-year-old and they sneak off to vandalize someone else’s property.

At most, maybe conversations could happen with ISPs to standardize an optional whitelist system for home consumers with children to block access to key social media domains for unapproved devices, but that’s as far as I’d go. Empower parents with better supervisory tools to be more involved, no need to violate the rights of everyone else.

I thought Wilds was regarded as substantially worse than World. Its ratings seem to indicate as much, at least, and Steam player counts still show World as the more actively played.

So seems to me like they made one good game and then a cash grab retread of the same formula.

takeout.google.com will give you options to download your data for any Google service (guessing this is where you saw the note about obtaining the mbox file). This is probably the easiest way, and Thunderbird should be able to open that mbox file directly after you obtain it.

Signal is just an E2EE message service. It’s a good protocol, but you won’t find VPN/email/whatever else that you may be expecting with Proton.

The only real argument that I’ve heard for not using Signal is that they’re based in the US, but their protocol remains secure from government requests at any rate.

I’m of a similar mind, but at least no remake, good or bad, will remove the original. Thanks to the hard work of decompilation teams, anyone can play a truly definitive version of the original OoT at any time. It’s both preserved and perfected, available as it was but with support for the controllers, PC setups, and refresh rates that we are used to today.

That’s why I’m okay with the remake even if it is a strong departure from the original game. I’m more interested in a reimagining type of remake rather than one that just tries to do exactly what the original did with better graphics.

I’ll always advocate for patient gaming, but in case you were looking to catch up on the first two before this one comes out, I would start sooner than later for a couple reasons. First is just because they are absolutely massive games that may take longer than expected to complete, but second because I think they benefit from taking a break in between. I wouldn’t do one right after the other.

Spring 2027, so less than a year away (assuming no delays). Also will be a simultaneous launch on all systems, no exclusivity window this time.

FWIW, this one isn’t just jumping on a trend, it has a whole fucking odyssey behind it.

Patrice Desilets (original director of the Assassin’s Creed series) had a falling out with Ubisoft and left the company to begin developing this game with THQ between 2010 and 2012. In 2012, THQ declared bankruptcy, got chopped up into pieces to sell, and their Montreal studio along with the 1666 Amsterdam IP were bought up by Ubisoft.

After the buyout, Ubisoft then fired Desilets as a spite move for his earlier departure, canceled the game, and dissolved the studio into Ubisoft Montreal. The only real evidence that this game even existed in tangible form was an early development reel that leaked a few years later. In the interim, there was a whole big lawsuit, and it somehow eventually ended up with Desilets becoming the rightsholder to Amsterdam 1666 again.

So this game has been in something of a development hell for about 15 years now, and it’s pretty cool to see it finally come to light.

Glorious.

Basically. There’s a mostly linear plot with some diverging narrative choices that affect outcomes. There’s some sort of mystery element, you gather up information/clues/resources, and most of the games have some sort of superpower gimmick that you use to explore the world and story (e.g. rewinding time, telekinesis, aura reading).

The games are like an old point and click adventure, but without the pointing and clicking. Or the adventure. If that makes sense.

And yet a lot of kids are entering the workforce today not knowing how to use a computer mouse or what a web browser is.