I want to first say that if it was 2005, hi-fi was expensive. Today hi-fi is cheap and you quickly run into diminishing returns at like ~$300 for around ear headphones but IEMs are cost effective and you get good quality starting at like $20. The gist of the history is that ChiFi changed the whole audio market for quality at affordable prices

Any bluetooth headset will work from what I’ve tried. You don’t have to spend a lot. You can use the Anker brand Soundcore bluetooth noise cancelling headsets

https://www.amazon.com/Soundcore-Cancelling-Headphones-Comfortable-Bluetooth/dp/B08HMWZBXC

https://www.amazon.com/Soundcore-Adaptive-Active-Cancelling-Headphones/dp/B0B5VHRX7F

Not sure if anything beats the Q30 at its price point but bumping up to the Q45 is an increase in build quality so even though my Q30 are multiple years old, I’ve heard from others who are more abusive of their gear it breaking. You can also use wireless TWS earphones. Like I have moondrop and earfun brand TWS (category of earphones that Airpods are). They’re cheap and are adequate at low prices though you can jump to the higher priced ones they have and get better mic quality. Examples such as

https://www.amazon.com/EarFun-Canceling-Snapdragon-Bluetooth-Detection/dp/B0D5M9SH1X

https://www.amazon.com/Moondrop-Space-Travel-Noise-Canceling-Low-Latency/dp/B0FGDBP2ZZ

The IEM market is insanely competitive. You can google best IEM’s for $30 and see dozens of brands you’ve never heard of but if you aren’t deep in the placebo, you’ll probably find any of them pretty good

I have no cadence. Unless whatever software you’re using is unstable, you probably won’t notice updates. I update on a whim which is often because it’s habit. Though sometimes it can be weeks between when I run the update

After Mattrick, they probably shouldn’t have promoted internally from the executive class that went along with the pivot of internal studios to kinect and home theater media center. They needed leadership that knew how to deliver quality games on time. Saw Sony hit its stride mid-PS3 era with the advent of the AAA narrative action adventure game and could never adjust to that. I know American company, but maybe they should have looked to Sega, Capcom, Koei Tecmo to lead Xbox game studios and someone else to lead hardware and services. Xbox was at its best when it was paying for timed exclusives in the 360 era from third parties and funding 2nd party exclusives. Their internal studio production has been weak for like 20 years. Halo, Gears, Forza Motorsport, Fable has fallen to all of them in the doldrums and Forza Horizon being their only high tier Xbox associated IP now. I’d take someone from Square Enix today to lead Xbox studios today. The last decade they’ve churned out games even though mostly not AAA, they’re mostly solid games and satisfy a lot of niches like Dragon Quest Monsters. Square Enix games are oddly experimental and creative for such a large publisher. Something Xbox sorely lacks. Master Chief is barely surviving as a console mascot and that’s practically all they have at this point. Conker and Banjo are irrelevant with how they’ve handled those IPs

Now with MGSIV PC announced, mainly care for God of War Ascension and Eternal Sonata. Eternal Sonata you can get through but you’ll have to change settings at different parts in the games that crash or when it crashes, you run the game again and successfully get past the part it crashed at. I tried a little bit of White Knight Chronicles and that worked. Just haven’t tried to get far. RPCS3 is incredible. I remember like a decade ago people were saying it’s design was a dead end and they’d have to start over. Good to see those people were proven wrong

I religiously watched Toy Story 1 and 2 as a kid and day one for 3 and 4. Not a fan of Woody going back to a family with the rest of the toys. Seemed a fitting end/new direction to become independent and pretty much live out a commune life with other abandoned toys. In this case it’s Disney that won’t grow up and move on

Plenty. Old ones like Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Ghost in the Shell SAC. Akagi and Kaiji. Mobile Suit Gundam Universal Century - especially Zeta. Kyoani stuff like Sound! Euphonium and the movie Liz and the Blue Bird. I though Sakura Quest had real good characters. Fist of the North Star is hilariously consistent with its characters personalities. My Hero Academia Vigilantes is a lot better than the main series in my opinion. Hunter x Hunter and Yu Yu Hakusho. Fullmetal Alchemist. Bocchi the Rock. Black Lagoon. Fate/Zero. Chainsaw Man particularly the manga is really good. The artwork and pacing of the manga is really different than the first season of the anime and really helps with characterization that I think gets lost in the anime. Chihayafuru. Hikaru no Go. Hajime no Ippo. Initial D. Sports/competition anime are all about character writing.

I’m sure they’re well aware that the biggest knock on Starfield are its forgettable plot and universe and too much loading screens. It’ll be less of a problem in an Elder Scrolls game as it’s building on a great lore foundation and it’s a region rather than a bunch of planets. I’m sure in the 7+ years later I expect to actually play the game, loading screens won’t be much of a problem. Improved graphics will be a given. It won’t set the world on fire but it’ll look firmly like it belongs in the PS5 generation which is good enough for me

Crazy. They could have at least put them on a new remake project. I don’t understand closing studios that are provenly productive. Replace leadership. Replace directors/leads if they’re not proving to lead well or their ideas aren’t panning out commercially but don’t shutter the whole studio. Like 343 Halo games aren’t critical success but they deliver products. Obsidian games aren’t selling great currently but they ship products on the regular. Bluepoint could be making smaller games like Twisted Metal. More remakes. Jak and Daxter remakes or sequels. Square Enix get’s a lot of flak like every mega publisher but I think they’re great for making a bunch of smaller AA games along with big games like Final Fantasy

I agree. It’s the same to me with how people get mad at yearly phone releases. There are people upgrading every year. It could be after 3 years 5 years. It’s best that they have the best that is possible that day then buying 3 year old hardware because some people think release cycles should mirror their upgrade cycles

Plus hardware progression pushes the low end higher which is a great thing. The Steam Deck 4 years ago was an awesome thing. It was cheap for the time. Sub $400 for access to nearly the whole PC library. A successor would make more higher end games that have released since more accessible especially if pricing didn’t become so wonky since. Plus older games could then be played at 4-10w TDP settings meaning longer battery life on older games

Same with the Steam Machine. Could have been a great cheap Valve supported mini-PC gaming console that was multiple times stronger than a Steam Deck. It’s was something that can push forward open platforms (Linux) in multiple ways. It would have in the box a gamepad. It would be a play for the living room. Maybe services like Crunchyroll and Netflix would have interest in releasing apps onto Steam or Flathub for it. It could grow to be a strong competitor to Android TV and fully proprietary walled gardens like Apple TV and Roku. Any delay delays the ecosystem developing

Delaying the PS6 is unlikely to mean an upgrade in its capabilities. It’s waiting for manufacturing prices to drop, not for engineering to complete. Upgrades require further funding for engineering redesigns. Really a PS6 delay is only good for the continued viability of the Switch 2 and Steam Deck for new releases

Poor optimization is also a result of the democratization of video game development. You don’t need to be a wiz at assembly, C, and C++ anymore. You don’t need to be a wiz at shader programming, GPGPU programming. You don’t have to learn the nuances of the underlying hardwares architecture. Not it’s GPU, CPU, memory design, etc. Most devs aren’t engine developers and I’m most games people enjoy today would not be made today if it wasn’t for the streamlined development that video game engines like Unreal, Godot, Unity, Creation, Source, etc enable. Even with source available, only a limited number of developers would modify Unreal Engine for optimizations (I wouldn’t do that for Epic. It’s not a free engine. That’s their job). Most won’t modify Godot or O3DE

If someone doesn’t like Mozilla, use a Firefox fork rather than a chromium one. Brave and other chromium forks to get away from Google surveillance and dominance of web standards makes no sense to me

You can use this to connect your TV to bookshelf speakers through an optical cable. Just need some speaker wire or banana plug cables to go with it

https://a.co/d/06KEUx7E

This one has HDMI ARC which most sound bars use for connection along with optical

https://a.co/d/0cKQrMAZ

Then offerup/craigslist/marketplace for used bookshelf speakers. Practically anything will be far better than your TV. Like $50 used polk, klipsch, and sony speakers are real common on the second hand market. They may be old but speakers last a real long time if you’re not blasting them at super high volumes. Go for speakers that have 5.25"-6.5" woofers. You’ll appreciate them for music too

There’s a bunch of brands and you really can’t go wrong compared to TV speakers. Edifer powered speakers don’t require a separate amplifier. Other major brands like ELAC, Kef, wharfdale, paradigm, …

Usually when I hear someone swear by lossless audio one service provides compared to another, I swear the reality is either placebo or one service is just using a better masterering of an album compared to another. The service that has on their service the better version album mix and mastering. Like they could serve it as 192kbps MP3 and sound better than a lossless encoded album version with the non ideal mix and mastered release

I’ve been in the audio enthusiast community for like 17 years now. When I was fresh, the internet commentators had me thinking there was some audio heaven in the high end compared to the mid range priced gear. Now I know better and the gear community is not so high end price evangelicals like it used to be. I feel like there was a before and after the $30 Monoprice DJ headphones and the wave of headphones since. Then especially IEMs. Once ChiFi really got rolling with IEMs and amplifiers and DACs, $1000+ snake oil salespeople got to deal in a way more competitive market

Same with speakers. Internet changed everything. No more at the whim of specialty audio stores stock and Best Buys. Now you got the whole worlds amount of speaker brands at a click of a finger plus craigslist/offerup. Also again ChiFi amplifiers and DACs. Also improvements in audio codecs whether for wireless or not. Bluetooth audio was awful until it stopped being awful as standards improved

These days I mostly see the placebo audio arguments in streaming service and FLAC/lossless encode fanboys. Headphone and speaker communities these days seem a lot more self aware and steeped in self-deprecating humor over the cost, diminishing returns, placebo, snake oil they live in today compared to 17 years ago. I want my digital audio cables endpoints plated with the highest quality diamonds to preserve the zeros and ones. No lab diamonds. Must be natural providing the warmth only blood diamonds that excel in removing negative ions. I treat my room with the finest pink himalayan salt sound absorbent wall panels to deal with the most problematic materials used by homebuilders. Authentic himalayan salt has been shown to be some of the highest quality material in filtering unwanted noise and echos while leaving clean pure audio bliss

I know Element sucks compared to Discord but with more users and potential funding interest from that user base growth, it can get a lot better and snowball to fast improvements. Blender was the butt of jokes until version 2.8. Like 15 years of being easily dismissed as major commercial production worthy. Element can get better. It’s the story of pretty much all the well regarded general consumer targeted open source software we use today

There are levels of paranoia that gets to the point of excessive time spent managing your footprint that could be better used elsewhere as I would imagine especially if you’re not a high value target. I am not a high value target

In my group of friends I describe what I feel related to this as, obsession with youth/fear of aging, and consumerism/tourism rebranded as spirituality/wellness/experiences

I really enjoyed the first game but couldn’t get through the second. Too much of the same without the interesting enough for me mystery. Enough reveals in the second game and my interest in the story tanked

Regardless of that, I ignored this news until I started reading that this is actually guerilla games studios work straight up rather than licensed out development with them more as narrative/art consultants. The game doesn’t look small. What’s the developmental state of a third game when this is a main studio game rather than a licensed out game

Definitely felt like everyone had one. Nintendogs, Cooking Mama, just something basic PictoChat were all super popular. I felt like Diamond and Pearl were really hyped up. The power of casual games and local multiplayer made the DS so much more popular than hardcore home console and PC gamers ever recognized. I imagine the Switch being the only console to be as much of a menace in the classroom for teachers as the DS was

I’ve had Super Bomberman R on the Switch since sometime 2017. There are probably Bomberman connoisseurs out there but for me, R is all I’ll ever need for playing with friends on occasion

The main thing is if you like or can stomach the combat. The games stories are connected but work fine standalone. I like XC 3 the most. They’re long games. The second games story takes a good while to really get going and the it’s entertaining the rest of the way. The environments are big, annoyingly big in my opinion, but I play the games for the real sincere passionate teenager saving the universe type story in a convoluted mess of a universe. It’s cheesy teenage scifi fantasy fun