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Agreed on never being the one blocking merges, but for the merging party, “if people don’t prevent merges” is such a huge caveat that I think attempting a zipper merge at a lane ending at any appreciable speed is impractical at best and downright dangerous at worst.

If everyone is traveling slow already, failing to merge quickly at the lane ending isn’t a huge threat to safety and just a slight hit to efficiency. Most merges I’ve experienced are probably in the 40 to 80 mph range though. In that case, you absolutely do want to take the first decent merging opportunity you can, because waiting to do it until the lane ending can have huge safety and/or efficiency consequences if another good merging opportunity doesn’t open up at speed.

Also, I’m pretty sure zipper merging was mentioned zero times in driving lessons and tests where I’m from, so you should basically just assume other drivers don’t even have it as a concept. If you’re from somewhere where more people practice it regularly, then I can see why you are more encouraged to enforce it as a baseline.

I agree in general. People have different brain structures. Some people literally can’t even visualize things in 3D, so they are effectively driving with an entire layer of information removed.

That said, it’s not about wanting everyone to drive fast. It’s about wanting everyone to have some level of self-awareness and drive accordingly to minimize how much everyone else on the road has to accommodate them. Think of someone pulling a trailer on narrow roads where passing opportunities are rare. Around me at least, it’s common to see these drivers pull off the road periodically to relieve everyone else built up behind them.

I mean… if you are regularly camping the red car spot, this feels like a good spot for the “he’s out of line, but he’s right” meme.

I watch my mouth in general, but I wish we would stop normalizing the idea that people have a right to not be offended. Also, if someone uses a slur, any judgement on them should be based on the intent behind the usage, not the usage itself. Cue the Michael Scott R-word clip here.

I actually did buy in and don’t regret it, but I definitely had to make sure my expectations were in the right place. My rule for buying all games, early access included, is only buying for what’s in a game now, never on promises or plans. Star Citizen as it is now is a very expansive sandbox sim with a lot of unique tech and mechanics already functional, but I’d hesitate to recommend it to anyone without massive caveats.

You got a lot of good replies already, but I wanted to add that my “eventually” was intended to be vague enough to cover multiple decades. I occasionally play 30 year old games already, so half that is actually making good time in my book.

Also, it’s not like most or all of these exclusives won’t eventually be in emulation territory.

Yeah, YouTube is still great if you reject the algorithm and continuous feed junk. I’ve got my subscriptions categorized in a set order and just run through them every so often.

See my other reply here, but if you’re the admin for your account, open the desktop version of Excel (or Word or PowerPoint or OneNote) and navigate to File > Options > General. There’s supposedly an Enable Copilot checkbox somewhere there.

To anyone else who might find this comment later, disabling Copilot is not currently possible in any of the web versions.

An option to disable Copilot exists, but you need to be the admin of your account. I think most people still using Office (365 is a dumb name) have it via a work license, in which case the option to disable Copilot must be done as a company-wide policy by whoever administrates it at that level.

To add to what the other reply said, developer verification comes with the implication that Google reserves the right to refuse verification. There are also legitimate reasons a developer might not even want to attempt to verify with Google to begin with. Admittedly, the vast majority of Android users probably don’t use software from outside the Google Play Store, but it’s a right they’ve always had and one Google is about to make much harder to exercise or discover, hence a loss of true device ownership for everyone.

If you’ve only ever lived in ecosystems that only permit software installs via first-party means (think Apple or game consoles), this may not sound alarming. To those of us used to the software situation on PC, where you can freely run any software as long as it exists, this feels like a major hit to software freedom.

Just curious, did you play the original or the All Stars version? The water mechanics were designed for the GameCube’s analog triggers, so the Switch’s digital triggers forced All Stars to use a workaround. I never played the All Stars version, so I don’t actually know if that made much of a difference.

Agreed on boss repetition. I was definitely less sensitive to that as a kid. (Maybe I still am?)

Fair enough. I liked that the maps felt lived in and connected, so exploration was actually more compelling for me in Sunshine, and I tend to lean away from darker games in general. Different tastes.

I loved Sunshine and only learned later it was one of the more divisive 3D Mario games. What didn’t you like about it?

If you think LLMs are good at anything, I am almost 100% certain to disagree with you about pretty much everything, to help you understand this distinction.

Depends on what you mean by “anything.” The current obsession in the tech world of trying to shove LLMs into the AGI box? Yeah, not a good fit. Pure language stuff like translation or brainstorming? Very useful. LLMs now even surpass DeepL.

why do I even feel the compulsion to preface by saying my bit about ai and llms?

I have a similar compulsion to clarify that my interest in LLMs centers mainly around local open-source models that can run on consumer hardware.

Yeah, it really sucks, because LLM tech itself is amazing. Quantifying language and ideas into what’s basically a massive queryable concept map is a huge achievement. What do the tech giants decide to do with that achievement? Shove it every little place it doesn’t belong making everyone hate it.

Oh well, I’ll keep backing up the interesting local open-source models people make and playing with them in the corner.

I think LLMs are an interesting technology. Of course, the output is inherently untrustworthy, and that rules out a ton of applications tech bros are trying to cram it into.

In case it works for you, I use IsThereAnyDeal instead of Steam for sale notifications. You can either import your Steam wishlist or make a fresh one on the site, then make a notification system as simple or as complex as you want. I’ve got my setup to notify me only when my most anticipated games hit new historical lows or when anything else in my wishlist hits 90% off.

What a coincidence. My memory is also really shitty.