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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • I suppose the reason I’m so forgiving of the online features, is that I don’t use them. They’re a nice little addition for sure, but I do not see them as core to the game.

    I think it’s embarrassing that they’re sooooo far behind. Definitely if they’re a thing you’re expecting, it’s going to sour your view of the game.

    Performance is a personal thing.You’re not alone, it’s a common complaint, I won’t deny that. I’ve played all three of those games, Kirby, Zelda & Mario but never remember having an issue. I’m sure I did, but it never stuck with me. I remember Arceus looking like an GameCube game. But I also remember completing the Pokedex 100%.

    I was burned by Super Mario Party, so that franchise is dead to me. Maybe others will burn me too.

    I think the Switch 2 launching with just Mario Kart was a huge mistake. No Mario. No Zelda. I can’t remember the last time that happened. Donkey Kong is coming soon, and it’s supposedly similar to Oddessy… But we’ll have to see. There are great DK games, but he’s no Mario and it’s been a while.


  • Oh I absolutely agree there are plenty of criticisms about the company itself and their other offerings, but the games are absolutely top tier.

    Their online is miles behind, games from Smash Bros to Mario Maker to Mario Kart could all be improving with better online, but since they were terrible at online I never used them, but those games were still excellent.

    A lower powered system or poorly optimized game has some frame rate dips or stuttering, but never in a way that gameplay was affected. I know people will disagree but I’ve never had an issue with it.

    Yes, joycon drift is a real problem. But that’s a hardware problem. We should absolutely give Nintendo shit for hardware problems.

    Suing fan projects or being aggressive about YouTube/Twitch take down, all fair. Fuck Nintendo for all that.

    But all of that is different from their games being solid. I don’t blame people who choose to emulate their games, they’re awesome games.

    I’ll give you that Sony might be competitive, I don’t see Xbox/Microsoft anywhere close. I think Valve and the SteamDeck are probably 4th in the race, but Valve has to actually make a game. They made great games and should continue to do so.


  • Nintendo gets away with it because their games rarely have a discount. An $80 game today will be $80 in a year. After several years you sometimes get a limited discount for their best selling games. A bundle or a voucher can be a small loss leader, usually if you buy one of something you buy another.

    The other thing of course is that Nintendo makes absolutely top tier games. The fan base is earned. You can buy a Mario or Zelda game, knowing nothing about it, and it’s going to be good. Pokemon is the obvious exception here, the mainline games are fine, but would be nothing without the brand. (I also won’t forgive them for Super Mario Party, that was a $30 game, not $60.)

    I don’t expect $80 games to go away, because as long as someone will pay it, it’s free money. But if sales slump too much in the long run I do see quick discounts, possibly even for Nintendo games.




  • David F. Sandberg aka “ponysmasher” comes to mind. He started doing largely horror films himself on no/low budgets. One of his own films got opportunity to become a feature film. That then gave him future opportunities, the largest of which was Shazam! (2019).


    Additionally when YouTube Premium (YouTube Red at the time) first launched they also launched YouTube Originals. Many of those programs were created by YouTubers.

    The “Originals” eventually stopped being made, but it’s not clear if the issue was the content, the service or a bit of both.




  • See but I would argue that five different version numbers across five different operating systems is broken. (Ok two of them do match up.)

    Specifically the watchOS version is the important one that stands out. watchOS version 1 works with which version of macOS? Which version of iOS or iPadOS?

    Also when it comes time to end support for devices, how do you keep track? If Apple provides 5 years of updates, do you know if your phone is still supported?

    If my phone is running iOS 14, is that supported? Is that new? Is that old?

    The key thing to keep in mind is that the entirety of this ecosystem is based on yearly releases.


    Just for “fun” let’s look at Windows. The current version is 11. It was released in 2021. So I guess as long as I have Windows 11, I am up to date. But… That’s not true. Windows 11 does have a version number that’s not directly end user facing. That version is 24H2.

    Now the “24” is the year, that’s useful. Now what’s stupid is the “H2”. Because sitting here in June 2025 I would expect “25H1” to be released anytime now. But Microsoft only used the H1 once, about five years ago. Now “Window 11 version 24H2” is better SEO vs “Window 11 version 24”, so maybe that’s why they kept it.


  • How would you prefer they handle it?

    Just to look at macOS version history,

    The first public release was “Mac OS X 10.0”, this continued until “Mac OS X 10.7 Lion”. The “big cat” became part of the marketing name because the OS & version were a mouthful and throwing numbers around wasn’t helpful.

    We drop the “Mac” next year, then switch to mountains, but it’s not long before we reach, “OS X 10.10” aka “OS ten ten ten”.

    Well it wasn’t long before we simplified further and just said “macOS”, but then took a while before we dropped the “10”. Now we just get “macOS 15 Sequoia”.

    For nearly 18 years the Mac operating system had an unnecessary “10” that conveyed zero information.


  • It’s not a matter of biggest number, it’s a matter of consistency.

    They have five operating systems, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, visionOS.

    So currently we have macOS 15, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, watchOS 11 & visionOS 2. That’s absolute confusion. Do I have the latest version? Dropping support for an older version, how many years ago was that?

    A version number should convey useful information, and the year it was released is useful information. Especially when major updates come every year.

    Edit: I forgot tvOS, also version 18. So six operating systems.







  • whimsical nature

    Which is why my favorite Daniel Craig Bond moment is the Casino Royale naked torture scene. Bond telling the torturer to hit him again, then laughing because he’s “scratching my balls” is peak whimsy (within the new Bond universe).

    I want my Bond to be a bit silly, and that was sadly the only time they did it.



  • AI as auto complete is exactly what I was thinking.

    I’ve seen lots of cases where AI appears as an auto complete suggestion and I can just hit <TAB> and it finishes the current line. It’s essentially filling in the boilerplate text. Heck in some cases it isn’t even right, but it’s close enough that I can change a few values.

    I also want to point out that this isn’t particularly new technology. This existed before AI. It has perhaps expanded more, but it isn’t a revolutionary improvement, it’s an incremental one. So when we talk about usefulness, I think it is actually more useful.

    Now if it could do all the magic planning and thinking, that would be more useful, but we’re not there yet.