Our marketing team isn’t good enough to change consumer behavior like that. I’d love to work with a team with that ability.

Some games do that, especially at a generation border. It’s not a ton of extra effort, but it’s low-return: a game doesn’t sell better or get a lot of press for being smaller.

The majority of disc space on a game like CoD is textures, audio and FMV. There’s no compressing 4k textures to get them to a reasonable footprint without losing quality. Same for 4k FMV. It’s not management that drives the desire for high-res textures and diverse asset libraries, it’s generally the art team. Once they’re allowed to care about what kinds of shrubbery exist in Borneo and which exist in Minneapolis, you end up with 30 kinds of plants. Multiply that out for rocks, cars, rugs, etc and add in the expectation for 4k or 8k screens and individual assets get huge and the library gets huge.

You’re right that it’s possible to do “pretty good” graphics for less, but it’s telling that your examples are from a decade ago and/or heavily stylized.

It’s also about what people want to buy. If games with that aesthetic reliably sold like gangbusters, AAA would follow.

Game Dev here.I WISH we could still ship with N64 quality textures and audio. We’d use so much less disc space and probably finish sooner and cleaner.

My city does something like this as part of our homeless program and we’re at “net-zero” homeless. It doesn’t work on it’s own, but the tiny homes give people a stable place to keep their stuff safe and the elements off their bodies, it gives them an address they can use for things like mail and applications, and it gives social workers a place to find them reliably. It’s the start of a long process to help them back to their feet.

Vice signalling

The antivax movement goes back farther than Wakefield and the “causes autism” thing. That’s just when it became really popular.

The MMR (measels, mumps, rubella) vaccine is the one Wakefield was against. The OG of the vaccines cause autism movement.

Remember to send them an email and let them know you’re boycotting them. They don’t have to know how long you’ve been doing it.

I have a Viture One and an Xreal Air 2. They’re both solid for gaming as a screen directly attached to your face. Neither do floating or body-anchored screens out of the box. The Xreal can do it with a breakout box, and the new generation of the Xreal that’s coming out in March is supposed to do it on its own.

Viture One came with a better carrying case and is easier to hook up in the dark. It’s slightly more comfortable to wear, and it has built-in focusing dials. Picture quality is good for gaming and watching videos, but not good enough for extended text reading - books and websites aren’t recommended.

The Xreal Air 2 has a much better screen, good enough for reading for an hour or so. The edges get some chromatic aberration, but most of the screen is good. It requires prescription inserts if you need glasses - a mixed blessing since it adds a hidden $80 to the price, but means you can wear them as real glasses. The nose bridge has size options, but none are quite as comfortable as the Viture. The Xreal uses standard USB-C cables, which is good for compatibility, but bad for attaching in the dark. As mentioned above, Xreal has a breakout box that gives different options for how the screen is displayed - attached to your head, attached with a delay (better for motion sickness), PiP so you can look at the real world with your media in the corner of your vision, and attached to your body giving the illusion of a TV screen sitting a distance from you.

It depends on what you’re looking to do with the screen, but I’d probably wait until the new generation of Xreals.

Mine’s around somewhere, too. I didn’t do a lot of gaming on it, but it was a very solid media streaming box for the time.

I enjoyed my Ouya back in the day.

I picked up a construction-grade tablet PC back in 2010, and while I haven’t been todler-tough on it, it’s still running great and the peace of mind of it being so rugged has been great.

My current setup has 6, but that’s across 3 PCs and a devkit.

I find 2 per PC is my useful limit. Which means my current 5 isn’t quite enough. Monitor arms are always a challenge at that scale, though.

My family was religious enough that they made it super clear that Santa was fake. Us kids still got little gifts “from Santa,” but they were of the stocking-stuffer variety. All other gifts were from specific people. As a kid I liked getting stuff, but the more important thing about the holiday was spending time with family, and them showing their love. Gifts was one way to show, but spending time, preparing meals, and just being present without worrying about other life issues also did it. It is the thought that counts, but you have to show that you’re thinking about them. Honestly, your kids might appreciate not having to pretend they still believe in Santa. As other people have said here, don’t catch your kids in the crossfire. If there’s something they’re really looking forward to, get it for them, but label it “from Dad” or Mom and Dad if you’re feeling generous. If they don’t have their hopes on something, a trip or experience might be good. Not sure what experience fits both a 6 year old and a 12, but I assume you know your kids better than I do. As for the rest of your family, they can stick it. They don’t seem interested in participating in the holiday, so don’t include them.

Additional context: the squirrel bit one of the officers that was confiscating it. So they absolutely needed to test for rabies.

Don’t post your crimes to social media folks. Or do, I’m not a cop.

Aleve (naproxin sodium) is the only OTC painkiller that reliably works for me. So first I take one, and if that doesn’t work after an hour or so, I take another and a nap.

The worst thing about standups is that about once a month I catch a problem early because of what someone says. The tradeoff doesn’t feel worth it time-wise. But it keeps me from skipping them.