Sploosh the Water

Backyard baseball, loved that game as a kid.

Vlemmy.net here, loud and clear!

1. Mental Omega, a total conversion mod for Red Alert 2, Yuri’s Revenge.

2. Age of Empires 2.

It’s a moving target. For me, I would say anything older than about 15-20 years is “retro” and anything older than 30 years is “vintage.”

Ikr! So glad I got them, especially after wasting hundreds of dollars over the years on various “gaming” headphones that kept breaking after 12-18 months of light use.

Nice!

Right on! Great gift.

I’ve heard so many people say this. You’re probably the 6th or 7th person in the last few years that I’ve heard say it’s amazing. I really should look into it, no pun intended haha.

I hate simping for the government, but damn if TSA pre-check ain’t amazing. I can’t fly without it now, makes everything so much less stressful.

I breeze past the 20-30 minute regular security line and walk right up to the pre-check. I haven’t had to wait more than 5-7 minutes at most, even at huge busy airports like O’Hare or SeaTac.

Lol nice.

Vivo brand monitor arms, the simple pole clamp ones. 40 bucks give or take, I’ve had them for 6+ years and they should last for another 10+ I would think, awesome value.

Sennheiser Momentum 3 wired headphones. Used and abused, replaced the cord and ear cups after about 3-4 years for 35 bucks total and they work as well now as they did brand new. Sound is great, they are comfy too.

Sony A6000 camera. Works great, awesome pictures.

IFixit multi-bit screwdriver set with the hard case. Had it for around a decade so far. Nothing broken, nothing worn out. Use it all the time on computers, furniture, electronics, etc. Plan on having it for another 10 years easily.

Steam Deck. Best general purpose gaming handheld out there. Moddable, repairable, high quality, super fun, runs everything I want.

So is a coffee mug.

Capitalism codifies the acquisition and control of capital by an owning class separate from the workers (employees). The owners always want to see their profits grow, because in a system that is zero sum, where competition is glorified as the primary mechanism for fair pricing and business success, if you aren’t growing, then other competitors will eventually extinguish you.

Capitalism mimics evolution in that way, where all organisms compete against each other in a winner-takes-all setting. Talk to any hardcore Capitalist and they will talk about Capitalism being the “natural order”, “human nature” etc. I know, I used to be a hardcore free market capitalist.

A system that places profit and private ownership of capital above all else will always result in the kinds of oppressive systems and company practices we see today.

It’s like how fundamentalist religious institutions are having abuse scandals over and over for literal centuries. They are built in such a way that makes abuse easy to get away with. Even if it starts out perfectly clean, safe, and incorrupt, eventually the very structure of the organization itself will cause abusers to join or allow already abusive people to commit those acts without significant consequences. It is a negative feedback loop that perpetuates itself until it collapses totally or is extinguished by an outside force.

Lol stop attacking me! 😭

Capitalism is a system built on greed as a foundation to function. In a capitalist system, you must always continue to grow, expand, engulf, absorb, and acquire. This is why it is such a toxic and destructive system. Capitalism will always incentivize companies to get the most people possible to spend as much as possible on as little as possible, that’s literally the core principle of maximizing profitability.

It’s why enshittification keeps happening, the system isn’t broken, it’s working exactly how it’s supposed to.

Independence Day or Armageddon. Both scientifically ridiculous, trope-heavy, super predictable plot, but hella fun to watch lol.

I think it’s generational. When I talk to folks about gaming in their early-mid 30’s, the majority of them either also game, or at least don’t think it’s weird. Video games and board games too.

I think once you hit that rough age cutoff for millennials, late 30’s-early 40’s it seems video gaming and board gaming also largely falls off. At least that’s been my experience.

My spouse and I are in our 30’s and most of our peers game. Keep it up and never stop having fun!

Honestly, if the FOSS community wants better adoption of these technologies, there needs to be an stronger emphasis on presentation and UI/UX.

The general public isn’t interested in using something that looks janky, behaves glitchy, or requires fiddling with settings to get looking nice.

Say what you want about that, I’m not defending it. I think people should care more about content and privacy/freedom vs just shiny things, but that isn’t the world we live in right now.

The big tech corpos know this, companies like Apple have become worth trillions by taking existing tech and making it shiny, sexy, and seamless.

Maybe that is just antithetical to FOSS principles. I don’t know what is the correct approach. All I know is I’ve heard so many folks who are curious about trying out FOSS software give it up because they encounter confusing, ugly, buggy user experiences.

Some FOSS products have figured this out, Bitwarden, Proton Mail, and Brave Browser have super polished and clean UX and generally are as or more stable than their closed-source counterparts.

Sad truth. I’m super happy with my FOSS experience overall, but I’m also a techie and very open to tinkering with stuff.

OP, I like several of your examples though. Lots of the old school tech is really solid. Just needs a clean fast front end in many cases.

My choice is Vim and its variants. Add some plugins, it’s a really great way to write code. I have no interest in GUI IDEs anymore since getting my NeoVim installation set up and tuned.