it’s a lot more than puddles looking fancy. it’s the entire lightning engine. like how real light will come in the window hit the wall, the floor, the grass outside, and you, bouncing off of all of that to difuse those colors and tones throughout the room and change as you move. that’s what raytracing does. without it they just have to create different color lights sources in the room to approximate that, or just create a single color light source. raytracing is infinitely less work for the devs and is infinitely better as a light engine.

the problem is the whole industry glommed onto it before hardware could handle it.

i don’t play any, but genshin seemed like it intentionally mimicked the environment of breath of the wild, then just slapped anime characters into it. i can’t differentiate them enough to speak on the others…

shit, i can’t tell the difference between this game and the thousand other anime gacha games out there with characters that look like genshin and honkai and the like 5 new ones announced at the game awards…

so i don’t think the style is anything interesting either. just one more identical looking game for the pile. do the characters at least have the same art style as the environment in this one?

this is by far one of the most credible news organizations in the world. and one of the least ad infested old media sites.

calm down.

I’m from a place that gets that cold and has many homeless people. yes, some die in the cold, but it’s far from guaranteed. remember, homeless people are still humans and humans are resourceful clever monkeys. they find ways to stay warm.

sure, but that’s not his fault.

Amazon’s bullshit goes waaay past retail though. and they did to independent online stores what Walmart did to brick and motor stores, but even more blatantly and directly. just look at what they did to diapers.com

the real scary part of Amazon is how much control they have through Amazon Web services. i get a chill every time i remember that Jeff bezos controls one of the largest backbones of the Internet. like imagine if Walmart owned the highways…

there’s also the fact that dji released its first large form factor commercial lifting drones just a couple of years back. those things are big and bright and fast and typically used in areas where you wouldn’t expect to see drones otherwise. they’ve quickly been getting more and more popular for so many uses. from painting roofs and tall buildings to clearing snow from power lines. they’re starting to show up everywhere.

i bet these alien conspiracy theorists would shit themselves if they saw one of those hauling a crate in the distance. or God forbid, spraying “mysterious” chemicals on our food supply (fertilizer).

i mean, it’s just so iconic. when you picture the wizened owl archetype this is the owl you think of.

hmm, more like jumping into a new series in a franchise that rebooted a decade later. like saying you can’t possibly like the dark knight because the 90s Batman movies were bad. they’re completely different.

the Witcher franchise is based on books. the games happen chronologically after the books. the first two games don’t really follow the book story. the third one decided to pick up the book story again and can be approached on its own. the first game was the first thing they ever made as a tiny Indy studio. the writing was bad and the gameplay was completely different. it’s so old that it’s from before 3d movement was standardized in games. they learned a lot over time.

you’re not being fair by judging the later games off of the first.

oh man, to judge the entire Witcher series on the first one is intense. they’re all very very different games. you should try the third one on its own.

it’s like saying you don’t like mmos because you didn’t like classic RuneScape in the 90s. or like saying you don’t like rpgs because text based adventures weren’t your thing. not exactly representative.

IDK, honestly. one of my biggest takeaways from cp2077 is it felt like they wanted to do a more guided story in an open world and struggled with the custom character aspect. like how the origins were all basically meaningless after the first 10 minutes.

the frustrating part of cyberpunk was feeling railroaded into a specific character with specific attitudes and ideas. really, they were just doing what they know and what they’re good at creating a character driven narrative based on existing characters. I’m happy to see them go back to that because i think they’re just better at it.

shit, i would say school shootings are endemic now.

I’m not saying i shouldn’t understand compound interest. I do understand it. I’m just saying it hasn’t helped me.

like what are you even implying i should be doing that I’m not?

the fuck can i do about those people and their actions in today’s world? other than shooting them.

I’ve heard that before, but I’m my lived experience the horse race once has been way more common. maybe it’s reversed if you live somewhere that dogfighting is more common.

doesn’t matter if I understand that when rent has going up $100/year for the last 4 years and now consumes 99% of my income leaving me deciding between rent, food, and electricity. none of that matters when i have negative money to invest with and no debt.

because she’s self medicating for trauma and it’s making her paranoid. this is clearly not a very stable person. in fact, believing the first thing you read on Google about how to use guns is another pretty good sign that that aren’t going to use it safely.

there’s better and worse ways to use drugs. self medicating to escape something is generally the worst way to use them. like, i get it. I’ve been there. it’s how i went from casual user with company to unstable addict. I eventually recognized that and have gotten clean. the reason we need a doctor to help us with dosages to relieve symptoms without losing ourselves is because drugs make us feel good in general. it’s basically impossible to look at yourself and know when it’s too much or inappropriate usage.

all that said, i get it. when you can’t afford a doctor to do that for you sometimes you just need to kill whatever feeling is inside of you. sometimes you need to run away to survive. just don’t buy a firearm while you do that…

you know, i wouldn’t expect that. however, anecdotally, all of the heavy smokers I know were already heavy smokers before legalization. I only know one person who began consuming marijuana regularly after legalization.

as much as i hate the “both sides are the same” argument when it comes to actual individual politicians, their actions, and policies. this is the one thing that the vast majority of them do have in common. taking billionaire money and letting it affect their decisions.

we were fucked as soon as citizens United passed. that was probably the inflection point that made violent revolution inevitable. when political bribes became legal.