Are you willing to disclose where you are (even just the country), and what level of debt you’re in? e.g. US, ~$10K

It may help some of Lemmings to perhaps point you in the right direction if nothing else?

ETA: hang in there, debt collectors are limited to what there can do, and are not worth losing sleep over. I managed to get myself into a massive hole in my early 20s due to credit cards, and it took me the better part of a decade to knock some sense into me - but I now have a nigh-perfect credit score and an ability to save.

The console manufacturers will raise prices globally to cushion against the US tariffs, because the calculus is that by keeping the costs low for the US - they can make up the difference with game sales over the console’s lifetime.

I think something similar will happen to smart phones and tablets also, because of the trailing revenue.

Hardware like CPUs and GPUs lack that additional revenue stream, so it will depend on if AMD & nVidia determine it’s better to push the tariffs exclusivity onto US consumers, or spread them out globally and dampen the impact.

That is very true, but the Venn Diagram overlap between Gamers^TM and ‘Nintendo gamers’ is a rapidly shrinking area.

I know, which is why I specifically called out from GTA3 onwards. 😜

They’ve been console first for a lot longer than not; pretty much ever since they changed their name from DMA Design to Rockstar North.

GTA V was originally planned to have a number of single-player DLC campaigns akin to the ‘Lost and the Damned’ and ‘Ballad of Gay Tony’ for GTA IV.

This is what people - including me - are bitter about; the immense financial success of GTA:O (namely Shark cards) diverted all resources away from additional single-player content.

I wouldn’t have minded paying for an additional perspective campaign (like GTA IV) or an additional post-campaign chapter heist. GTA V was a complete experience at launch, so additional DLC content would have been welcomed by the community - DLC only becomes problematic when it is clearly part of the core experience, but arbitrarily removed in order to charge more.

Unfortunately, due to having to prioritise shareholder returns - investing resources into anything beyond the most immediately profitable route (ie. online) leaves the board and C-suite open to litigation, because as we should have all learned by now from this series, Capitalism will ultimately ruin everything in search for more and more profits.

Prior to the US tariff fiasco, I would have easily recommended something from Dango - I absolutely love my T01, which I’ve had now for the better part of a decade and the only way to tell is to compare the rawhide under the band to the rest of the body…

…so while I don’t need a replacement anytime soon, I am also keen to see others recommendations!

Feel free to complain, no one is trying to stop you. Just understand though that you are screaming into the void, and nothing will come of it bar heightened cortisol.

Grand Theft Auto is the arguably the most profitable gaming franchise ever, and it got there doing this exact release cadence. Rockstar Games & Take-Two Interactive will continue to do so for as long as it continues to maximise profits.

Does it stuck for us gamers? Absolutely, but that’s just Capitalism. Given how quickly this hobby has been enshittified over the post decade, we should probably be counting our lucky stars that it looks like Rockstar is still investing heavily into the next entry, and not just pumping out shallow annual releases like Call of Duty!

Maybe I’m just old, but I feel like all the people complaining about no PC port at launch, or how this trailer doesn’t show gameplay must be ‘new’ to the series (which to be fair, could mean as much as a decade).

This is how Rockstar have pretty much always done it, going all the way back to GTA3 on the PlayStation 2; PC ports have always been 6+ months after.

Trailer 1 tends to be about the setting, Trailer 2 about the primary characters, then Trailer 3/4 about the supporting characters. ‘Gameplay Trailers’ usually don’t come out around/after launch as that’s usually what’s being still being worked on by the devs.

Likely 6, given just how badly the LNP got beat - it’s going to take them a long time to rebuild.

Gives me some hope that the Future Made in Australia project gets far enough along that it secures its own future, lest it get molested during adolescence like the NBN did.

I am in no way, shape or form defending Trump? The man should be rotting away in a Federal prison not serving a second Presidential term, but that’s really outside the scope of what we are trying to discuss here at this very moment.

As the Republican Party began to hyper-radicalise during the Obama era, there was a marked shift in corporate spend from the GOP towards the Dems. That’s not to say that no such money is going towards the GOP at all, but they have more-and-more begun to rely on dark money via SuperPACs. That means that their stances will continue to skew towards the extreme, further alienating corporate donors towards the Dems.

So clearly, while they aren’t doing it for noble reasons (as it’s likely a billionaire donor’s pet cause - my bet would be either Thiel or Murdoch), they are proceeding with anti-trust cases against Big Tech. It is almost like the horseshoe theory of politics, in this case.

It beggars the question, if you truly believe that republicans are irredeemable - and absolutely nothing they could ever do would be worthy of support - what is going to be the ultimate outcome? Thinking more broadly, we Progressives are generally known for in-fighting over ideological purity - there ends up being “No True Scotsman”.

The reason why the far-right has been able to succeed over the past three decades in particular has been their willingness to make ‘allies of convenience’ with those that they don’t necessarily agree with on every topic.

Wall Street didn’t care about repealing Roe v. Wade, but they were more than happy to go along with is as long as the Religious Right delivered tax cuts. Quid Pro Quo. …

It’s getting very late here in Aus (1AM) and I have work tomorrow; but I want to pick this up again tomorrow as I still need to circle back around.

Can we please stop parroting this “Trump supporter” nonsense?

Trump is an absolute piece of shit with nigh-zero redeeming qualities, but nothing that Andy stated in that tweet is false; The first Trump administration did begin the anti-trust proceedings against the Big Tech firms. The Democratic Party has largely been co-opted by corporate money and neo-liberalism.

It sucks to hear it coming from the Trump camp, because I hate to admit that they’re actually right about something, but we are better than the types of people who would rather stick their fingers in their ears and yell “La la la La…” because someone didn’t live up to some imaginary Internet-hive mind purity test.

NFI, but this feels like such a “Trump just found out that this is the first time since the unwitting of Hollywood that a foreign film is on track to be the highest grossing film of the year (Ne Jha 2)” moment, and this is own daft knee-jerk reaction.

But by imposing a tariff (ie. Sales Tax), would it not artificially inflate foreign film box offices, making them out-perform American films even more?!

Vampire Survivors

It might just be because I was actually early aboard the hype train for this one; but this one just scratched that “one more go” itch until 2am like nothing else.

Enter the Gungeon

Randomly came across this via a YouTube short, and the art-style just meshed with me. Absolutely love the messy bullet-hell quick-play genre in general… Hades being another great example of this.

Millennials are no longer the media scapegoat; we’ve aged out. Gen Z are copping all the blame now!

It’s basically FOMO, people just want to be a part of living culture.

That sounds suspiciously like vaccine herd immunity; be careful or the Department of Health & Human Services will come for you…

…or to really mess with people, Half Life: e

Since Euler’s number is a smidge under 3 (~2.72).

Never mind that they’ve been seeing a sales decline for longer than just the past 100 days, and their sales declines aren’t limited to just the US.

Here in Australia their burgers have gotten so expensive, and so small - you’d be forgiven for confusing it with one of those gummy burger packets!

At least Hungry Jacks (our version of Burger King) has largely still maintained the same size; the Whopper offers infinitely more value and the Angry variant (spicy fried onions and jalapeños) kicks ass!

We had a not too dissimilar experience here in Australia with the privatisation and/or ‘deregulatory’ sabotage of our public infrastructure (SECV in the ‘90s, Telstra in the ‘00s, NBN in the ‘10s); I liken it to pigeon politics - they fly in, shit on everything, then promptly fuck off!

I imagine with the amount of snow cover you guys get up there - solar wouldn’t be feasible for ~40% of the year and likely cause massive load balancing issues in the summer due to the glut of supply, so that’s probably why they try to cap the size of systems you can install.

Feels very short sighted though, could be putting surplus production towards industry, rather than incentivising them to shut down!

Best of luck to you, hopefully Carney is going to be able to help address some of the issues you guys are facing!

If you’re still curious:

I’m a Data Analyst, I’m always curious! 🤣

You’re getting absolutely railed on your connection charges; that’s like $4.88CAD a day!?

I recently resigned with our provider so we only have 21 days of usage, we’re in summer, and we have a 5 bed, 3 bath two-storey home with solar panels for 4 adults and a child:

Factoring in the exchange rate, $1CAD ~= $1.12AUD; just makes the comparison even worse.

My state’s energy composition locally is ~35% renewables, mostly wind and solar, with the rest being a mix of natural gas, black & brown coal.

As an aside, our feed-in tariff (i.e. how much we get paid to export excess solar into our grid) has absolutely cratered over the last few years: down from ~15c during COVID to only ~3.3c this year - it really incentivises us to explore solar batteries as an option.