cobysev

?:)

• Epic wants to be Steam’s direct rival, so their storefront has many of the same features, but it’s not as popular within the community. I honestly have no opinion about them.

I have an opinion on them. They’re a terrible company with anti-gamer friendly policies.

I have no problem with competition. It keeps businesses legit and cheap/reasonable for consumers. Heck, GOG does a great job as a companion storefront with Steam.

Epic Games could have tried to be competitive too and provide a similar or better platform for games. But instead, they wanted to corner the market and steal gamers from Steam, so they started pushing exclusivity contracts with publishers. New games would come to only their storefront for the first year, then release to other PC storefronts after that.

Then they started publishing games themselves, which kept them isolated to their storefront indefinitely. Even game series that were released to other consoles and PC platforms suddenly had a sequel that was stuck on Epic Games. I’m looking at you, Alan Wake II.

Or worse, buying up IPs and removing them from other storefronts, like Fall Guys and Rocket League.

They also tried to pull people in by releasing a new game for free every week (even AAA titles!), which was actually the coolest thing they ever did. But it doesn’t excuse all their other anti-gaming practices. If anything, it made me feel dirty using their platform.

I have never given Epic Games a penny of my money and until they decide to be competitive with Steam instead of just stealing the market from them, I will continue to boycott them.

I’m not alone in this mindset. Ubisoft was releasing games exclusively on Epic Games for a while and they’ve just decided that their newest Assassin’s Creed game will release on Steam, due to poor sales on Epic. Also, Alan Wake II had dismal sales because it’s locked behind Epic’s storefront. So a lot of other gamers aren’t willing to put up with Epic Games’ BS and their model is crumbling.

Epic is what happens when a corporation pops up expecting to make money off gamers. Steam is what happens when someone who is a gamer themselves and appreciates the gaming experience creates a store for gamers. I have given thousands of dollars to Steam over the years and have a massive library of their games. I only have a few free games on Epic and I won’t even install their launcher anymore. As a consumer, I vote with my wallet, and Epic needs to get with the program or go away.

I would highly recommend not starting with phone games. 90% of them are designed to be addicting, borderline gambling games, which you can collect or accomplish more things if you just pay them an easy $2 or more… which quickly turns into $20, which then becomes $50+. Before you know it, you’re throwing hundreds of dollars at what is essentially a repetitive unending game, just for the dopamine hit.

I know; my wife is addicted to these games and I see $20 charges to our bank account every few days. Nothing ever changes in her games. She never progresses anywhere and there’s no end to the game, but it gives her a boost on scores or collectibles or rare limited items, so she drops the money. It’s been especially hard to break her of the habit.

I got her to sign up for Steam on her desktop PC and I gifted her a few co-op games, and so we play games online together to give her something fun to do that doesn’t require spending money to progress. She used to be awful at FPS games, but playing with me gave her more confidence and practice, and now she’s pretty decent.

She really loves Deep Rock Galactic, because a lot of the game is just mining and resource-collecting, with only a little alien bug shooting. She plays as the engineer, so she can set up a turret and not have to worry too much about aiming herself. Plus, playing solo means she gets Bosco, the flying droid, to help her with combat and resource-collecting too. If I’m not around to play with her, she has all the assistance she needs to relax and enjoy the game. It was a very good intro to video games for her.

Lemmy is my main social media account. I also switched from Reddit when Spez killed third party apps, and I won’t go back. I use Sync for Lemmy on my phone and tablet. I paid for the lifetime Ultra account, because that’s how much of a “fuck you” I wanted to give Spez. I’ll gladly pay the $100 for an alternative ad-free app than use Reddit’s free app.

I also use Imgur, although it’s been suffering from enshittification ever since Sarah and the team sold it. I can’t even save a post without getting a pop-up asking to subscribe to the user or follow similar content tags. Or downvote without being asked if I want to block the user or related tags. Just let me do the thing and move on! Stop trying to customize my experience! I’m still able to block their ads, thanks to my VPN service, but they built a dedicated ad space at the bottom of the app that I can’t make go away. So a section of the bottom of my Imgur screen is unusable black space. I miss being able to use my full screen to browse images.

I still have Facebook, but only because everyone I know from my childhood until now is there and it’s my main way of staying in touch with people. If I dump Facebook, I’ll have practically no one left in my life, except for my sister, wife, and maybe two friends. If I need social engagement concerning something going on in my life, I’ll post it there. But I don’t use it much.

I have LinkedIn and spent years keeping my profile up to date and super detailed, expecting to need some good references and a solid history of experience and accomplishments. But then I retired at 38 years old and found out I don’t need to work anymore, so it’s just been collecting dust for the last 2 years now. I still get the occasional request to connect from someone offering to help me find a job (I’m a veteran), but I don’t need their assistance. I’m quite happy being retired young.

I have a Discord server I built for my closest friends to stay in touch, but only 2 people regularly interact on it. I subscribed to maybe 30+ other random servers, but I mute pretty much all of them so I’m not inundated with Discord notifications all the time.

I have Twitch, but mostly used it to stream the games I’m playing when I’m bored. I’m happy if I get 1 or 2 views. I do it just for the fun of it, not to build a following or anything.

I have NextDoor, but there are thousands of people in my town who use it regularly, so it’s hard to stay in touch with my “neighbors.” I mostly ignore it unless I’m trying to find suggestions for something local.

I made a Bluesky account last year; got an invite from a friend before it opened up to everyone. But I hardly ever used Twitter in the past. I always felt like it was pointless unless you were a celebrity with tons of followers. So I’m having trouble thinking of ways to use Bluesky now.

I have Instagram, but only because Facebook merged my account with Instagram when they bought it. I’ve never used it, not even to browse others’ content there.

I made a Snapchat account in high school, but never used it. That was over 20 years ago. Back then, Snapchat was just used to share selfies, and I didn’t like taking selfies so I had no use for it. Is Snapchat still a thing?

I had a MySpace account when I was a teenager, but I guess the site got sold sometime in the past decade or two. I kinda forgot about it, and the last time I went to check it out, it was a totally different site and didn’t recognize my login anymore.

I made an account on Pixelfed last year to share pictures, but I don’t really have anything to share right now. I only remembered I had the account because I just now found their app in my phone.

I use Patreon, mostly just to follow a few people I know and support them.

I worked as an IT guy in the military, and we were explicitly banned from using TikTok when it became popular, because it was a Chinese spyware program and they didn’t want it stealing data on US military members. When you installed it, we found that it embedded itself in your phone in a way that was extremely difficult to fully remove, then granted itself full access to your phone and started trickling your data to Chinese servers. It was a massive security vulnerability, which is why President Biden pushed to block TikTok from the US. But the app was so popular, he got a lot of pushback and it never got blocked. It’s still wildly popular, but I’ll never touch that program.

It’s being sold via ConcernedApe on that Steam page I linked in my previous comment. So he’s earning the money from sales.

Uhh… I guess it’s not technically DLC, but ConcernedApe is selling the game soundtrack for $5 on Steam. It’s in the game’s DLC category, but unlike some other soundtracks on Steam, it’s not dependent on owning the base game to purchase.

But it’s also downloadable content, so it is DLC… I guess it depends on how you want to define DLC nowadays.

Be careful… Don’t just click “Reject All.” There’s a category called “Legitimate Interest” that will still be enabled.

It was meant to be a way for websites to collect relevant data for adjusting content to your interests, but it’s been so loosely defined in legal requirements that literally any advertiser could pull your personal data through that category and use it however they want. This legal loophole is how websites continue to collect data and build profiles on you without violating the law. And clicking “Reject All” won’t disable anything in that category.

As much as it sucks, you still need to review all categories and manually change your advertising settings, then click “save preferences” (or however it’s specifically worded) instead of just clicking “Reject All.”

Same here. I exclusively browsed Reddit via app on my phone and tablet. After watching my wife struggle with the official Reddit app, I decided I would never use it. So when that became the only option, I decided it was time to move on to Lemmy.

Besides, I’m very anti-advertisement and Reddit has turned very corporate lately, looking for every way to make a buck at our expense. So I’m done supporting that site. Information and community discussion should be freely accessible, not buried behind paywalls, awards, and advertisements.

[…] I don’t think YouTube is even profitable for them.

Correct. Even Google, one of the richest companies in the world, is struggling to afford the massive infrastructure required to run YouTube. That’s why they’ve been cracking down on ad-blocking software lately.

Also, this is likely why they’ve been pushing their new updated Chromium-based infrastructure for web browsers, which will prevent ad-blockers from working on websites. If you’re not using Firefox or Safari to browse the Internet by now, you should switch. They’re the only independent browsers not using the Chromium framework.

American here, who has spent about a decade living in various countries around the world.

The biggest problem with my fellow Americans is that we’re raised in an isolated country, which only borders two other countries (Canada and Mexico). And our country is so massive, probably 90% of Americans don’t live anywhere near either country border.

Crossing borders is a big deal too; it’s not like Europe where you can be driving and suddenly see a sign welcoming you to a new country. There are checkpoints, blockades, passports, regular inspections, etc. Especially since 9/11 happened, our borders have become even more locked down. Plus, going anywhere else requires expensive plane tickets to fly over the oceans.

This leads to most Americans having no social interactions with foreigners most of the time. We’re fully ingrained in our own culture bubble and we don’t get a lot of interaction with other cultures, outside of stereotypes through pop culture.

Combine this with the fact that we’re taught from childhood that we’re the “greatest nation on Earth,” and you get an entire culture of entitled, narcissistic jerks who think the American way is the best way.

Our education has been failing for decades now, thanks to politicians on both sides of the aisle realizing that we’re more easily manipulated if we’re less educated. So there’s this race to the bottom, where we’re being fed lies and embellishments about how great America is and how we’re this amazing country that the rest of the world looks up to and admires.

With this entitled world view, it makes Americans scared when foreigners come to our country because we only know of their culture through stereotypes and we fear their culture taking over our “amazing and most perfect country.” Just as we’ve stepped into other countries and spread our own democracy, we’re afraid other nations will attempt to do the same to us.

It doesn’t help that we have an entire political party who maintains their voter base through fear mongering about foreigners taking our jobs, stealing our women, and destroying our “great culture” for their “backwards and corrupt” values. It’s complete lunacy, but to the average American who has no regular contact with the outside world, it seems plausible.

So yeah, a lot of Americans get uncomfortable when foreigners speak their native language around us instead of English. They tend to find it rude at best, and offensive/dangerous at worst. And some of the worst Americans travel abroad and expect everyone to essentially worship the ground they walk on, so they get offended when other people don’t know or speak English. It’s a really messed up world view, but it’s hard to change when we live such isolated lives.

I used to use Gboard. I still do, but I used to as well.

It used to be my default. Every time I got a new android device, I would immediately install Gboard before doing anything else.

But lately, it’s been garbage. It’s been getting words wrong that I never had problems with previously. It randomly capitalizes normal words in the middle of sentences and I can’t seem to train it not to do that. Like “Ever” is the standard capitalization now. I need to manually fix it every time I use that word.

It’s been forgetting my name, which is annoying because I have a very unique first and last name and I had previously trained it to swipe my name.

It’s also just sticking with variations of a suggested word instead of giving me words in the same swipe area to select. Like if I swipe “food” and it autocorrects with “good,” my options to correct the autocorrect are things like “goodness,” “goody,” “God,” etc.

I’m trying to de-Google my life right now, so finding a new digital keyboard seems like a good idea. I’m gonna try some of the suggestions in this thread. I am definitely NOT recommending Gboard.

So it’s totally fine to chug a beer, huff some glue and eat a can of cat food to help you fall asleep; As long as you otherwise eat healthy.

I see you, Charlie Day.

Yeah, I was pretty jaded by the end of my career. Couldn’t wait to retire, which is why I left as soon as I qualified for retirement. I served exactly 20 years and 6 days.

I only made it to Technical Sergeant (E-6), but it was my ideal rank. I had enough rank and authority to manage personnel and resources, but I was also the technical expert and could get down on the ground level and do the work alongside my Airmen and NCOs. All career fields operate differently, but my IT field specifically didn’t allow Senior NCOs to do the job. They were upper-management; they always got put behind a desk and made to do paperwork, pass down orders, and oversee projects.

I didn’t want that for myself, so I stopped trying to promote once I made TSgt. I expected I’d have to keep working once I retired, so I wanted to stay technical and keep my IT certifications and experience strong, so I could transition into a high-paying gig on the outside.

Little did I know that I’d earn that coveted 100% Permanent & Total disability rating. Now my medical and dental costs are covered for life and my monthly VA check is bigger than my pension, so I’m essentially making a little bit more money than when I was serving, just to sit on my ass all day. So… yeah, I’m enjoying that hard-earned freedom right now.

I served in the US military. I was in the Air Force, but my profession was IT, so I spent my whole service working as a sysadmin.

You can officially retire and collect a pension after only 20 years served. I joined at 18, so I retired at 38 years old. Normally, a 20-yr pension isn’t enough to fully retire on, but I got a bit messed up during my service. The VA gave me a 100% disability rating, which includes a monthly pay bigger than my pension! Plus. My wife also served and was medically discharged with a 100% disability rating as well. So she gets the same medical benefits and pay as I do (minus a pension).

With all three sources of passive income, we can live without working. We’re not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but we pull in enough to live comfortably and have all our basic needs met.

Like I said, I could go back into the IT field and double my current income (or more), but then I’d be stuck working all the time again, and I don’t want to do that. The military was a 24/7 gig for 20 years. “Service Before Self” was one of our core values; we always had to prioritize the mission over our personal lives, and we could be recalled to work any time, day or night. So it’s nice to actually have some “me time” now, where no one can make me go anywhere or do anything. Not looking to go back to work and give that up so soon.

I did work in IT, but now I’m retired young. I could go back to work and make double my income, but I just don’t wanna. I’d rather have less income with a stable, comfortable life and the freedom to do whatever I want every day, than spend all day stuck in a job just to have no free time to enjoy the extra money I’d be bringing home.

Retired at 38 and living childless with his wife in the countryside… What will he do with the rest of his life? #7 may surprise you.

I knew a guy when I served in the US military who got caught cheating in a semi-related way. He got assigned to a base in a new state and his wife refused to relocate their whole family for the few years he’d be assigned there, so he went by himself, leaving his wife and kids in his home state.

Turns out, he was sexting one of his younger subordinates at work. One of his daughters found out when she tried to use an old tablet and found out his account was still synced to it. She saw all his texts updating in real time.

He was ultra-conservative and didn’t believe in divorce, so he was doing everything he could to save his marriage. His wife forced him to install security cameras in every room of his apartment and banned him from going anywhere after work. She knew his schedule and expected him home immediately after work ended. He was basically on house arrest until his job was done and he could move home.

The last I heard, he told his wife the landlord needed to paint the walls, so he removed all the cameras, dunked them in the bathtub, then played dumb when none of them would work when he set them back up again. He was seen inviting young women over to his apartment after that. So, you know… he didn’t learn his lesson.

This is actually my life right now. I retired from the US military at 38 years old and received a pension which I will collect monthly for the rest of my life. On top of that, they messed me up enough that I got the coveted 100% Permanent & Total disability rating from the VA. So I’m getting free medical and dental for life, plus a monthly paycheck from the VA that’s bigger than my pension. My wife also got the same VA deal (she was actually medically separated from the military), so we have double the VA benefits coming in.

All this passive income means we don’t have to work for the rest of our lives. I just turned 40, and after spending the last couple years getting settled back into civilian life, I’m starting to invest my free time into hobbies and projects.

My father just passed away a few months ago and I inherited his house (my childhood home) and its 6 acres of property. My dad didn’t take care of the house or land (he was a bit of a hoarder), so I’m working on fixing up the house and cleaning up the property. That takes up a lot of my free time during the summer.

I wanted to get involved in my community, so I’m on the parks committee and communications committee for my local township, where I help to improve our local parks and trails, and ensure information about our local area and its events is disseminated to all our residents.

I’ve been playing a lot of video games lately. I have a steam library of over 3,400 games and I’ve been picking through my library, trying to discover hidden gems that I’ve missed. My library is so huge because I’ve been a Humble Bundle subscriber for a long time now, so I get nearly a dozen games a month. I also play online co-op games with some old childhood friends of mine every week.

My wife and I picked up Duolingo again recently and we’re trying to learn a foreign language. I’m juggling both Japanese and Norwegian right now. I learned some basics of Japanese when I was stationed there 2 decades ago and I really love the language, so I’m hoping to master it. Plus, I have living descendants of my ancestors who still live in Norway and I’d like to communicate in their language one day instead of forcing them to use English to communicate with me. I also took 4 years of French in high school, and I was stationed in Germany for a couple years, so I have both of those languages cued up to learn if/when I get bored of my first two.

When I was 13, I discovered I was a prodigy at the piano. I taught myself how to play because I heard Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and really wanted to be able to play it myself. My wife is actually sore about it because her bachelor’s degree required that she take 4 years of piano lessons… and I’m still better than her at piano, without ever having a single lesson. Unfortunately, I haven’t touched a piano in nearly 2 decades, so all my skill has gone to waste. So I bought an electric piano recently and plan to re-learn how to play. In my childhood, I had to read sheet music and sort of figure things out myself, but in today’s world, there are all sorts of training and tutorial programs and videos online that I can use, so I imagine it’ll be super easy to get back into it.

My wife and I watch a ton of movies and TV shows. If we’re ever tired and just don’t want to be productive for a day, we’ll just sit on the couch and binge shows or movies all day. When we’re extra lazy, we’ll order DoorDash so we don’t have to cook. We live in the countryside, about a 15 minute drive from the nearest town, so it’s easier to order DoorDash than head into town for food some days. We always tip extra for the drivers, because we know our home is out of the way for them.

When I used to work, I always looked forward to the weekends. But now that I’m retired, I actually find myself hating the weekends and looking forward to weekdays. On the weekends, it’s always so busy in town. So many people running errands, eating out with their families, partaking in local events, crowding parks and trails, etc. But during the weekdays, everyone’s at work, so the town is quieter. Sometimes I like to go downtown and sit in a coffee shop or restaurant for a few hours and just idly browse my phone or read a book. Or go for a walk or bike in one of our parks and just enjoy the peaceful nature. Or browse some stores, knowing it’s just me and the shop owner. I’m not bumping into other customers, I can chat with store owners, etc. I’m starting to understand why old people like to chat up employees so much. It’s kind of nice when it’s not busy.

As a 100% disabled vet, I get free passes to all national, state, and county parks, and there’s a public park with a beach just a couple miles from my home, so I go there in the summer to swim and try to build my strength back up. It’s especially nice on weekdays because there’s no one there. I can swim laps and not worry about bumping into people. And since it’s just down the road from my house, I can head over there anytime, all summer long.

I have a few other hobbies and projects on the back burner. A buddy of mine wants to build furniture and I’ve always been interested in woodworking, so we’ve talked about maybe starting up a workshop in my garage. Plus, I was a pro at electrical engineering stuff in my high school years, so I’d be interested in learning more about that field. My house is in rough enough shape, my wife and I have been talking about just tearing it down and rebuilding from scratch, so we’re currently designing our dream home right now to see if that’s a feasible project. We have enough land that we’re interested in learning how to garden. Ideally, being able to live almost completely off our own produce. I’d also like to set up a giant solar panel array in our back field, so we don’t have to pay much (if anything) for electricity anymore.

Plus a bunch of other little interests that I want to indulge in over time. In the meantime, I don’t have much of a schedule. I go to sleep whenever I’m tired and I get up whenever I naturally wake. I’m a night owl, so that means I’m usually up most of the night and then sleep until almost noon most days.

I dunno what else… I guess I’m just living in the moment now, trying to focus on what makes me happy each day and not worry about trying to be productive or accomplished. I did all that when I was working, and now I can just focus on being comfortable. It’s a wonderful feeling, knowing that I have no commitments outside of my control. My wife wants to go back to work one day, but I think I’m done. I much prefer the ability to plan my own days on a whim and not get tied down with long-term commitments. Every day is an adventure that I get to choose.

Yeah, that’s the one. Since I didn’t qualify for it, I didn’t pay much attention to it. They always just told us it’s kind of like a 401K, where you contribute up to a certain amount and the govt matches your contribution.

If you have a government job, pensions are still very much a thing.

I just retired from a government job 2 years ago (US military). I received a pension, but only because I was grandfathered into the old pension plan. The military stopped giving out pensions in 2017. They switched to the BRS (Basic Retirement System), which is basically their version of a 401K.

When they switched, they gave all service members with less than 12 years of service the option to switch to the BRS or stick with the old pension program. Anyone who joined after the switch doesn’t get a choice. They’re automatically enrolled in the BRS.

I had 15 years of service at the time, so I didn’t qualify for BRS. It wouldn’t have benefited me anyway; there’s no way I could’ve saved up enough money to retire on in my 5 remaining years. I much prefer my monthly direct deposit for the rest of my life.