Yeah I found deep solace in technology in a time where it was pervasive, but not all-consuming. I had a computer in my room which was like the peak of being “online” at the time.

I couldn’t imagine trying to navigate childhood and being perpetually plugged in like this. I spent more time on the internet than anyone else I knew when I was a kid and it wasn’t always good for me. Your average kid these days is wayyy more online than I ever was.

Depends how.

Using Rimworld as an example because I’m playing it now, I’ll occasionally create a separate save file in the same seed at the same location and turn on god mode to see if certain defensive strategies will work before I implement them in the actual game.

Additionally I’ll sometimes save scum, but only if I think the consequence I’m trying to avoid would ruin the fun for me, I remind myself that sometimes bad things happening can be interesting, but I work a lot and don’t want to have to start from scratch because a mechanoid colony landed in the perfect place to wipe my tribe.

But I don’t give myself infinite food or the best weapons because that just wouldn’t be fun. I need challenge, I need to overcome hardship and come out ahead. I don’t want to cheat myself out of my victory.

That being said people still shouldn’t cheat in multi-player games.

Which to be fair so is reddit. Redditors have always been mercurial but it does feel like in recent years they’ve been much more combative.

I imagine it varies. I don’t ask about AI usage in interviews but if I did I would prefer a balanced answer.

Skepticism tells me you’re not going to try to vibe code something important or try to install unapproved models. Not being completely anti-AI in the interview tells me you’re not going to insult a manager when they’re being stupid.

Oh god yeah this and bullet points

I used to like the punch of “It’s not just ___, it’s ___” but I’ve pretty much removed that from my vocabulary.

Yeah this thread has been… enlightening. Lemmy might be more prejudiced than I would have initially thought.

Depends on the audience but I’ve found adding “it’s just common sense” to the end of my argument tends to be more effective than citing sources.

I just felt less like a sith lord and more like a douchebag most of the time in Kotor.

Evil can be fun if it makes sense. I sometimes enjoy games where I find myself backed into a corner and have to do something bad to get out. Or I find myself genuinely drawn to the power that an evil choice tempts me with. Or circumstances beyond my character’s control compel them to use The Evil to get things done. It can make for an immersive and nuanced story.

The problem is if the “evil” path is more just “asshole” or “kills everyone in sight” then I tend to find it less fun.

My hypothesis is this is tolerable for iced coffee but it would be too much with hot coffee. I feel like the scent alone would be too strong.

The same people when I was trying to warn them in like 2012 - “They don’t want my data, I’m not that interesting”

I’m pretty sure this was what a couple of my substitutes were doing when I was in school.

At least where I am in the southern US self-checkout ends up being slower.

Ten years ago my experience was likely similar to yours, pretty quick to just scan your own groceries, not much of a line to speak of as some people are opting for a cashier. Go for the self checkout every time.

The trouble now is that there aren’t enough cashiers so almost everyone has to go through self checkout. Longer line but you would think it wouldn’t make that much of a difference.

But they only have one attendant watching all the self checkouts. So if three people are buying beer at once you have only one to go around checking their IDs. If an item (usually a fruit or vegetable) doesn’t have a proper entry in the kiosk’s database and no barcode to scan then the attendant has to go by and manually enter a code scan the item to unlock the machine. For example when buying habaneros my grocery store only had an entry for “green habaneros”, if you selected them the machine would call a cashier over because you picked an item they don’t actually have. Don’t even get me started on their touchy anti theft measures erroneously triggering because you moved your hand weird when setting down a bag.

Again, none of this was really a problem back then, but now at my grocery store it’s one attendant handling 8 self checkouts at once where any number could have these problems to resolve.

This part may be more in my head, but I also frequently feel like I’m stuck behind people who have never used a touchscreen before, or been in a grocery store, or exchanged currency for goods. Someone always needs help with some part of the process and if you add that to the problems I listed above, it can really slow things down.

In 2016 I used self checkout if I wanted to get through quickly.

In 2026 I look for a cashier.

It’s actually amazing how quickly it killed my usage of the site. I deleted my account years ago but still lurked every now and then. Now I literally can’t go back, I won’t download the app and the new site layout is pretty much unusable for me.

I wish I could somehow convey to whoever is collecting data on me that this is a thing I like.

Like there’s all these entities trying to collect data on me to figure out how to sell me stuff and I want them to know the fact that Aldi lets cashiers sit down positively influences my decision to shop there. If other grocery stores adopted this I would prefer them over stores that do not.

Rimworld

Stellaris

FTL: Faster Than Light

Crusader Kings 3

XCOM: Enemy Within

Honorable mentions:

No Man’s Sky, Baldur’s Gate 3, Dwarf Fortress, Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas.

It is an essential aspect of being Linux users that we claim our preferred distro is the absolute best and others are garbage not worth using. It’s in the terms I’m pretty sure.

Weak to slop and they don’t seem to have an internal “okay that’s enough I should put my phone down” voice.

Even young people I know who are on their phones a lot have some concept that it’s time to look up and forward, but endless content seems irresistible to the brains of boomers.