I thought about this before, and mostly agree. My mom knows nothing about computers and could probably use Ubuntu if I stick it on a machine and gave it to her. The thing preventing me from doing it is that when things go wrong in Linux, it often requires extensive terminal usage to fix. And my mother can often find new and creative ways to break a computer. If something went wrong with it, I would have to fix it. There is literally no one else she knows who would even know where to start. At least if she’s on windows, she can find someone to help her.

Evidently playing the game isn’t a fun experience either, Aaron.

So, uh, not to sound out of the loop here, but what exactly is Sega getting here? They spent close to a billion dollars for…the Angry Birds IP?

And it’s prioritizing short-term views over long-term stability. Sure, rushing the review gets you views now, but if companies realize that you’re not going to give their product a fair shake, they’ll stop sending you products. Then to review things, you’ll need to buy them yourself, further cutting into your profits. If Billet Labs ever makes another product, they’re not going to send LTT a review sample because of this whole shitshow. Other startups are now going to be hesitant to send LTT review products because 1. They may not get a fair review, and 2. They may not get their review product back.

This is an important point. We’re all pissed at LTT right now so are eager to jump on any story that supports that narrative. I’m not saying I don’t believe Madison (what she says pretty much lines up with what I would expect). But before we convict Linus in the court of public opinion, we should allow him to argue in his defense.

Like, is the Billet Labs issue supposed to be sabotage or something? He’s shitting on it right from the beginning, uses the wrong card, installs it poorly, then refuses to retest because…it’ll cost him…like…$500?

It’s like if I was reviewing a screwdriver, decided to use nails because I couldn’t find any screws, held the thing upside down, then bitched about how shitty it was. And when it’s pointed out that my review isn’t fair, refuse to retest because a box of screws is $8 at Home Depot and the screwdriver probably sucks anyway. And on top of that, just sell the screwdriver to someone else instead of giving it back.

Does LMG have investments in a competitor or something? It is so willfully irresponsible that I almost want to claim conspiracy because I can’t believe that a company would make so many poor decisions by mistake. What is going on over there where a $500 reshoot that would ensure a fair and balanced review of the product is such an nonnegotiable prospect?

Either:

1. Hire more staff to do more development/QA in a shorter timespan
2. Delay release schedule to not be annual releases
3. Reduce game scope to something the team can accomplish

Gamefreak cannot keep its historically small team size while trying to make large, open world titles that release annually. Tears of the Kingdom tool over 5 years to develop, and that was working with pre-existing assets. Gamefreak’s model is not sustainable.

Is there a way that this fight can end with them both losing?

Death is inevitable. Nothing I do will avoid it, I can’t escape it, and it will get me eventually. Thus, there’s no point worrying about it. If I live my life in fear of death, I’ll be just as dead as if I didn’t.

I’m not religious, so as far as I know this is the only existence I’ll ever have. I didn’t exist for billions of years, I exist now, and then I won’t exist for billions of years. In this brief window of consciousness, all I can do is live my life and try to experience it as much as possible. When I die, all I can hope for is that I was a good person who left the world in a better state than how I found it.

I won’t lie and say death doesn’t scare me. As I get closer, I’m sure it’ll scare me even more. I don’t want to die, so I’ll take whatever steps I can to avoid it. But to allow it to preoccupy my thoughts does me no good.

True. Just like free speech only matters when a far-right news pundit is banned on social media.

But you know the industry will learn the wrong lesson from this.

“Wow, people really like Baldur’s Gate 3. I know, it must be the dice rolls! Let’s have every interaction in Assassin’s Creed: Tropical Freeze be determined by RNG!”

There really does need to be a limit of how many magazines you’re allowed to moderate. There’s no way you can effectively moderate 59 different communities.

11 of me could probably take a buffalo. We might lose one or two of us, but come out on top.

Ever notice how with the far right, the second amendment is the only one that matters? Any attempt to restrict gun access in any way is immediately challenged as unconstitutional, no compromise. But the first amendment never gets that benefit. We’ll ban books and raid newspapers just fine.

BS looks better than AAS, but honestly that’ll only really apply for your first couple jobs. Once you’ve got a few years of experience, your specific education matters less and less. I will say that a BS is “better” in terms of teaching you more, but your Associate’s credits will transfer if you ever decide to go that route.

Also, once you pick up one language, you basically know them all (with some obvious exceptions). If you know PowerShell, you can pick up Bash pretty easy. If you know JavaScript, you can pick up Python. If you know Python, Java is pretty easy. If you know Java, you pretty much know C#. Learning a language becomes just figuring out how that languages does things. Picking up a new language goes from being a process that takes a year or two and schooling to taking maybe a week and watching some videos. There are some exceptions (Python doesn’t tell you much about SQL, and systems languages like C/C++ are their own animal).

Star Trek: The Next Generation. Watching that is the TV version of getting comfy under a warm blanket.

It’s tricky. Depending on what direction you take, CS can be very math heavy or not. If you get into algorithmic stuff, deep learning, data analysis, etc., that has a lot of math. But if you focus on, for example, front end development, there’s not that much.

I won’t lie and say CS has no math. At my university, you were able to avoid higher level calculus by doing a bachelor’s of arts instead of a bachelor’s of science. Calculus 2 is usually the highest level you have to take, which focuses primarily on integration. I was kinda in your boat of being hesitant to do CS because of the math, but I ended up minoring in it. The CS-focused math is mostly logic stuff and discrete math, which I feel is way easier than calculus. And honestly, calculus isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation would have you think (until Vector Calculus, that almost broke me).

Look into it, but I’ll say that while the math is there, it’s not as bad as you’re probably thinking. And if you know you’re not going into heavy algorithmic stuff, see if there’s a path that avoids most of it. And once you’re out of school, you’ll never touch calculus again (unless you do a lot of physics, maybe? Game dev, perhaps?)

I think better advice would be “invest/save” in general. You could just throw money into a mutual fund, index fund, savings account, whatever. If you get a job with an employer matched 401k, max that out. I don’t think you need to worry about trying to play the stock market by buying individual stocks. You’ll end up spending way too much time doing it for minimal gains over an index fund, and a lot of the time you’re just basically gambling on what companies you think are going to do well.

For IT you could do Computer Science, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, etc. There’s a whole lot of angles you could come at it from too. Would you want to maintain systems or develop them?

If databases interest you, you could be a DBA. If networking interests you, a network engineer. If you want to do development, you can focus on front-end development, back-end development, full-stack, embedded systems, and more. Maybe hardware interests you, so you’d like to be a computer engineer. Computers/IT has a lot of components to it, and even if you find yourself a person that likes to bounce between different things, there’s a lot here that you can bounce between. School will have you touch a little bit of everything, and you can find that part you want to specialize in.

My advice for picking a degree: pick something that you want to do, but also something marketable. The degree is useless if you can’t get a job in it.

If you’re worried about college being difficult, it can be, but 95% of your success is going to be based on motivation. I was a TA in college, and the best students were the ones that asked questions, came to office hours, and participated. I saw many a “smart kid” bomb a test due to overconfidence.

If you’re not sure what to do, you can start with general education credits or even do the first part of your degree at a community college to save money. A lot of times a 2 year associates degree will serve as the first 2 years of a bachelor’s.