I bought a 2DS on AliExpress. It was fine, original shell but a little scratched up. JP model. One dead pixel.

$211CAD so about $150USD. I’d do it again, I didn’t end up using it much as I had plans for it that didn’t pan out but I had no issues with it.

I said the complaints you listed had fixed in the new one. I didn’t say it was suddenly as good as a dedicated calculator app.

Doesn’t have much appeal if you pay for YT Premium. I also used to sideload Cercube so I get the appeal, but yeah. I would count that in the category of “++” apps that pretty much exist to circumvent ads or avoid paying for subscriptions.

I don’t have anything against them but it doesn’t help the image of open access being only useful for piracy or avoiding paying for stuff.

That’s true I suppose, but there pretty much isn’t anything I’m like “damn I wish that was on iOS but Apple’s rules won’t allow it” anymore.

I can think of a few examples that I have on my Android phone. TouchHLE, Mario 64 decompiled and Yuzu come to mind. But those are just fun to play with and not exactly things I care deeply about.

Just to be clear, this didn’t used to be the case. I used to jailbreak & sideload for years. But I just… don’t need to anymore. It’s all there. I figured it was worth asking if there was something I didn’t know I was missing.

Not only that, there is an upside too. The fact that IPAs can’t be easily installed on iOS drastically reduces piracy, and companies are more apt to release non-ad-supported, premium titles on the platform.

I have RE Village, RE4 and Death Stranding on my phone right now. I don’t see those coming to Android any time soon. So I would say it’s a double-edged sword.

I think there was an internal rule change a while back because there are a few others as well. Ruddarr is shaping up every well, and LunaSea has been there for years now.

All of that has been fixed in the iOS 18 calculator, they just didn’t talk about it in the keynote. It has history, multi-line, and your can place the cursor anywhere and edit expressions.

Give it a shot, you might be pleasantly surprised.

What IPAs do you want to install? This is a real question, I know there are a handful of apps that you need to install from outside the App Store but over the years as restrictions have loosened that has dropped to almost nothing for me.

I used to install nzbUnity which has been fully replaced by LunaSea at this point, and with the rule change allowing emulators they really took a ton of wind out of the sails of the 3rd party App Store push.

Apple Intelligence. The image generation and bullshit text generator aspects I’m over (although Genmoji looks cute), but the ability to process complex natural language requests using an on-device LLM so I can perform tasks via voice without laborious specificity?

I’m in. If they nail this it will be the biggest leap forward in human-computer interaction since the GUI.

The other features I already like in DB1 aren’t on this feature slide either:

• The new Calendar app with a proper multi-day view is great and has already replaced the “list” view I’ve used since 2009. I like “list” but it makes every day look busy visually, and makes it difficult to see gaps in your day.
• New Calculator app finally has most features people would like. Multi line, easy editing of mistakes, a history, etc. They only talked about the handwritten stuff for iPad in the keynote but the whole thing is vastly improved across all iOS platforms.
• This one is on the slide but the new Photos app is great, although some don’t like it I found most features in Photos were buried and people never used the tabs in the app, just scrolling down to see everything actually works quite well. Most users seem to think that the first tab is the only one you need to use and everything else is just settings and whatnot so it’s best to just adapt to that at this point.

you certainly won’t regret being bitten by 50 asps

Yeah I mean do whatever you want I just wanted to clarify that they aren’t linked in any way other than the cost, it’s not like your employer can manage your personal account.

I don’t know about LastPass but 1Password has the same deal and they aren’t tied to eachother, it’s not an account you create under their tenant it’s just a link you can generate that makes the 1Password for Families plan free on your account as long as your employer is paying for the corporate one.

That only happens to people with a very specific type of earwax.

Source: assumed everyone saying this online was correct and bought the camera myself to look. Sparkling clean despite using Q-Tips every day for most of my life.

Yeah I think it really depends on the type and consistency of your earwax. I’ve been using Q-Tips deep in my ears for my whole life, I assumed now at 32 I had impacted my hearing and had a treasure trove in there, so I bought one of those $20 WiFi ear cams with a scoop you can get from Amazon.

So disappointed, they were sparkling clean. Turns out my ears ARE effectively self cleaning which is why I use the Q-Tips, it helps clean out what my ears have already started ejecting, because that process is wet and itchy.

It also doesn’t help that this is a self-selecting group. I know I wouldn’t trust anyone who says this what they want in a partner, as the venn diagram between partners who want this and those who treat their partners poorly has more than a little overlap. Like cops and domestic abuse.

The sad part is this might actually end up being a net positive in the long run. Their two biggest acquisitions were Bethesda and Activision-Blizzard, one company that has started their decline and another that is deep into it.

Microsoft pissing away $100B to buy these companies only to turn around and kill them 5-10 years later will end up breaking up the gaming conglomerates that have killed the western games industry. The only sad part is all the people that will lose their jobs and all the classic IP that will be squandered.

AliExpress isn’t the problem here. This is fake Shopify sites spun up and down in a matter of days that only exist to harvest info and payment. I’ve placed dozens of AliExpress orders, I always get what I ordered even from new stores.

Has Microsoft put out a single worthwhile AAA title in the entire console generation? I bought an Xbox Series X after the Bethesda acquisition and I’ve used it once to boot up Starfield and then quit after 15 minutes when I realized it was boring as hell.

They have this uncanny ability to spend more money on acquisitions and then completely stall the output from that company until every game blows.

They had one good franchise that they didn’t run into the ground, Halo. And after they got control of it they killed that too. They own half the industry now and I feel like they produce less games than ever before.

I feel like they’re going to get bored, kill their games division in 5 years and the whole industry will have to rebuild.

Wow it’s almost like buying up half the gaming industry and then producing literally nothing wasn’t a great idea.

No shit it loses money. It’s a service. Not everything has to be run at a profit. Bring weekend and the return of direct to door delivery. Provide better shipping rates and services, combine parcel and mail delivery. Only deliver mail when critical items arrive or with packages.

I feel like there are creative ways to balance it, but they’ll always run at a loss if they have to cover this giant country and provide equal services. I’m fine with that, it’s a great use of taxes.

I hope Valve never does this. Tons of games on Steam only work with community fixes, it sets a bad precedent if they pull them because they don’t work in their official state.

It’s better to have them then not, I would just force a disclaimer during sale for abandoned titles that most players have reported that the game does not function without community patches.