I think colloquially people have begun expanding use of the word to include anything where features or product are removed but the price stays the same.

Maybe there’s a better word for that, but I understand the parallel.

Sounds like you just had a badly made one. Not all franchises are equal.

A well made big Mac tastes good. There’s a reason it’s been around this long.

You know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese??

It’s worth trying if you’re interested, IMO.

Nothing mind-blowing (except the morning crunch wrap, which is mind-blowing). But they are pretty consistent, and have a lot more options than most fast food places when it comes to healthy-ish options.

It’s not Mexican food, it’s not even tex-mex. It’s just taco bell. It’s its own category of food. Go in without preconceived ideas of what it should be and you might find that you enjoy it.

I like McDonald’s. I know, wrong opinion.

Maybe it’s because it was an occasional treat when I was a kid, but there is something nostalgic about it. Sometimes I just want it.

But it’s definitely hard when eating at McDonald’s with our family of 4 is equivalent to eating at a fast casual place, and starting to approach the cost of a sit-down restaurant. The big happy meals are over 6 bucks now, and that’s starting not to be enough food as our kids get older. If we get a value meal it’s $8-10 each for me and my wife. So even if we go minimal, which usually results in people still being hungry, we are already at ~$30. It’s not hard to get up close to $40.

Remember the dollar menu?? I mean if we break each of those meals down to their components of sandwich/fry/drink, if we stayed on the dollar menu what now costs $30 could have been bought for $12. Obviously inflation comes into play a little bit but I’m not sure prices needed to nearly triple.

Sit down restaurants obviously have increased a ton too, but if they have a reasonable kids menu we can do it for $50 or $60 depending on the place. Yes, more than McDonald’s, but McDonald’s also has no business being that close in price.

Hey, you too buddy. Thanks. As with anything there are ups and downs. We just take each day as it comes.

Came here to say this one. It's been ~30 years and there still isn't another game that quite hits in the same way. The perfect combination of jrpg, weirdness, emotion, humor, horror/dread, and lightheartedness. Earthbound has it all.

This is how my wife and I are, as well. It really is exhausting.

I think some of it is a level of social anxiety. Some of it is this feeling of not wanting to "waste" our time (even though we understand rationally that doing nothing is usually the more objective waste). Some of it is a constant feeling of exhaustion, and a fear that whatever thing we are planned for will result in us feeling even more exhausted. And maybe part of it is simply depression.

I don't know, but it's not a super healthy-feeling way to go through life, that's for sure.

5900HX: mobile Radeon CPU 6800M: mobile Radeon GPU

This game looks roughly equivalent to TW3 because it is roughly contemporary with TW3. (2015 vs 2017). HZD was well known for being a very pretty game in motion when it came out, though this video doesn't really do it justice to be honest.

I imagine the point of the video is seeing the framerates on mobile hardware in Linux.

Huh. I always heard 3 copies, 2 locations, 1 of the locations offsite. Yours makes sense though.

Don't forget hangouts! That was a really fun one to convince my users was a real professional application back in the day.

That’s an interesting comparison to Deus Ex. I hadn’t thought of that but I agree. It’s definitely got that feel, it’s just much more shallow. Good call.

Nonetheless, it didn’t really feel finished, y’know? That part wore on me, and I think is what undermined my enjoyment the most. It really was released too early.

The performance issues seem to be what every article and blog post focuses on because it’s the easy thing to talk about, but I think this right here is what the actual biggest issue was and the real reason people shat on the game.

I didn’t hate it by any means. And I, like you, ran it without issue. I just sort of lost interest because it was janky and super unpolished. Like I was playing an early access game. It wasn’t big bugs as in the game breaking and not running. It was just lots of little annoyance that felt unfinished or half conceived, or like they didn’t undergo full play testing.

The massive performance issues experienced by some just compounded those issues that existed even when it did run perfectly well.

The issue was that there were multiple huge problems with the game spread across various platforms that created a big shit storm of negativity.

• It was straight up broken for many console players.
• Some PC players had performance issues.
• For those who had no issues actually running it (like me), the game still had floaty controls and weightless guns. NPCs and vehicles that popped in and out at odd times. Dialog that clipped or played over each other. Completely broken police/wanted system. Confusing and largely ineffectual skill tree.
• Once you got beyond those issues with game polish, then you were dealing with it not really being the deep scifi RPG they promised, but more of a shooter with RPG elements.

So you’ve got potential issues from multiple angles, and it just all compounded on itself. For me, I just got bored of dealing with it after like 10 hours. It was janky and that combined with it being nothing like what they hyped it up as just sorta killed it for me even though it ran with no issues.

With that said, I played for an hour or two after the update and my first impressions are a ton better and it seems like they have really fixed a lot of things. I’m excited to come back to it.

Pretty simple root cause analysis to conclude that the game’s brokenness was the ultimate reason though. Like, why was the game being massively refunded?

Do this, but also cover the whole operation with a towel. Not quite stealth maybe but it’s about the best you can do.

The argument works exactly the same the other way. Your rationale is based on your own preferences.

In a vacuum both tobacco and alcohol are destructive vices with no real discernible objective “benefits” to larger society. The argument against alcohol is exactly the same as the one against tobacco products. They harm the user and potentially those around them.

I’m not saying that tobacco should be further regulated while alcohol is not. But I am saying that the rationale for alcohol regulation is ultimately based on a desire to limit destructive behavior, which is the same rationale for limits on tobacco. You cannot effectively argue for deregulation of tobacco while arguing for increased regulation of alcohol. They are two sides of the same coin.

But… It’s still not bad that those smoking regulations are being put in place.

It weakens the argument for additional alcohol regulation when you keep insisting that the regulations being put on another similar vice are pointless.

Only one reply saying you should involve your wife in this decision. Not enough.

You need to involve your wife in this decision. Her use case is nothing for a modern laptop, either Windows or Mac. Anything new will run like a dream in comparison to what she’s got. Literally anything. Get her to a physical store to type on the keyboards and make sure she likes whatever models are in contention. This is highly personal and subjective so other opinions aren’t worth much.

I do think it worth mentioning that switching ecosystems isn’t something to do lightly. She needs to be involved in that decision. I’ve used both Windows and Mac. I’m comfortable with both, but generally prefer Windows. They are way too different to treat the possibility of switching flippantly.

That is threadbare justification for deregulation of something we know has basically entirely negative effects and absolutely is something that kids have historically done.

Kids’ habits are fickle and unpredictable. Removing barriers to destructive behavior simply because they don’t do that behavior as often anymore (the current regulations seem to work??) makes no sense.