I'm kind of in that boat - digital art, and so on more. I never understood buying a computer monitor of over about 22" that was 1080p resolution. I want decent colour reproduction - I get it, it won't be perfect unless you spend a fortune but it should be at least decent.
120hz w/ good HDR support is fantastic for content that supports it, and 240hz is just buttery smooth. Variable refresh is pretty much a must for modern gaming.
In a round about way? Maybe. But no.
The first commercially available variable refresh monitor came out like a decade ago, needing expensive bespoke hardware to drive it. Now? We are at a point we are reaching commodity level costs. And yet we still have piles and piles of bottom tier and crap tier products being shoved onto the market.
Sooner or later, the machines and production lines for making those monitors will need overhaul, and at that point - it would 100% make sense to just go to variable refresh.
The reality is, the benefactor is you - if you get a GPU upgrade: You get more frames. If you don't, variable refresh can still provide a smoother better game experience. This is especially true as frame generation, and upscaling techniques have gotten extremely good in the last few years.
you don't need to upgrade the GPU to benefit
I want to spell that out clearly: AMD doesn't need you to buy a new GPU to benefit. NVIDIA doesn't either. But it also means, if you buy a new monitor that is variable refresh today - when you upgrade your GPU, you get to really take advantage.
Where my perspective comes from
I did the monitor upgrade before a GPU upgrade a few years ago. Variable refresh is king. HDR when the content supports it is amazing - provided the monitor has decent HDR support (low end monitors... don't).
Given that I had my previous multi-monitor set up for over a decade, and went through 3 system builds with it - Your monitor is something that is going to hang around, and have more impact on your overall experience than you realize. Same with the keyboard and mouse. Unironically the part that you can likely get away with cheaping out the most on in your first build is... the GPU. Decent CPU will last a good 5-6 years at least these days. So get a decent monitor, get good peripherals - those will hang around when you upgrade the GPU. Then start that CPU - GPU - GPU upgrade cycle where it's CPU, then GPU, then GPU, then back to the CPU. The reality is, once you have a base system - storage carries over, PSU can cycle over a build, the case can be reused.
So I guess what I am saying is: Spend the money on the things liable to hang around the longest. It will lead to a better overall experience.
What Big Publishers think make good games:
What ACTUALLY makes a good game:
This is ultimately why a relatively small team producing an Indie game can create a 10-20 hour expierience, sell it at like 20-40$, have a total of like 5 people work on it start to finish, basically have no marketing budget, fire off an early access when they have a reasonably complete product where they are largely doing core gameplay refinements, and doing bug fixes... and end up selling like 2 million copies. It's also why your first game will probably suck, so will the second one. But if you refine the process, get feedback, and figure out how to improve the process: You can do it.
The problem with big publishers is the executives look at the big newest game and go "WE NEED TO MAKE THAT" not understanding that players will play just about every genre IF IT IS GOOD. I mean, seriously until Baldur's Gate 3 came out a bunch of people were like CRPG's are dead... no, there just were not any good ones coming out.
How AI can make a game like Baldur's Gate 3 even better... and why EA (probably) won't figure it out*
A Company like Larian is passionate about the game world, the player expierience, the interactions, and creating a very systems (read: Game loop driven) driven game. The amount of interactions that happen in Baldur's Gate 3 that occure because the game is based on systems, and the pieces are present - enabling players to just experiment is incredible.
If you take something like UE5 with it's newer tools for filling in terrain, the lighting engine, and more - and hand that to a company like Larian you aren't going to get a lesser product. Instead - you might very well end up with Larian going "Alright, we need a mount system, and an improved interactive camp system where the party has hirlings and the members of the party in the camp are defending it". And suddenly the Shadowfell is a huge expansive place that is dark, dangerous, and explorable - not just with bespoke places, but just stuff team members slapped together, random encounters, and more. You might even go to a more Milestone experience system - just to enable the flow to feel better. You could have an AI trained to have relevant conversations about events going on, weather, and more - and it could be seeded and filled out so that you aren't really sure what will be said.
The reason a company like EA won't is at the end of the day - doing those things, needs time to figure out how to work it, how to catch errors, bug fix, improve training data, and a lot of testing to validate. EA just wants to shot gun out whatever seems popular and profitable at the time - instead of creating a unique experience that players will engage with. And that is because EA is ran by Marketing folk and MBA's instead of Game Dev's and Systems Designers.
I sure hope this doesn't happen but if things get bad enough? We could see people do something like burn Air BNB's to the ground. If enough of them go up in smoke, insurance companies will start putting in anti-short term rental conditions in their policies and that will largely be the end of it. Doesn't really take much to not insure a property used for commercial use, with a residential insurance plan.
The end result of that would be making it non-profitable to run an air bnb.
And if you need a lesson: Go look at the brutality that happened between Union Busters, and Unions back in the day that lead to actual labour laws. Those people weren't messing around - they got armed, and they dished out the pain to those they suspected were trying to do the same to the point that it basically brought local economies to a complete halt. The reality is? Properly applied violence tends to get results when nothing else is working.
Like I said: I hope this doesn't happen, but things are getting pretty bad and heading to worse.
Divide, then Conquer. That's the name of the game of the Left right now.
The short is: If you want to push certain agenda's, the first thing you need to do is divide people. The best long term success strategy for this is attacking the education system to cripple critical thinking, and critical analysis. Finally - ensure the mainstream media is entrenched in it's place for official broadcasts and in control of the main message as much as possible: And get people to parrot the message - without consideration.
If the above sounds familiar: It should. USSR did this. China does this. and... Trudeau's Government does this. In many ways, it's in part why I think Trudeau attacks alberta so bloody often. Alberta has high education results - despite being conservative voting. In other words, the narrative of Alberta being some backwards hick place falls apart when people actually examine the evidence. When you look at what the Premier of Alberta is stating: Let adults do whatever they want, but protect kids in their developing years when going through a HUGE WILD WACKY CHANGE we call puberty. Even the thing about sports: Lets figure out how to ensure Woman can be safe when competing, that Men can compete, and those who are Trans can compete - and have this be as fair as possible. But the Media and Trudeau would have you believe it's all 100% anti LGBTQ+.
And I could go on.
So why would you remove things like To Kill a Mocking Bird? Because ultimately understanding that writing requries: 1. Critical thinking, 2. Critical Analysis, and 3. Mastery of language. Those three things are a huge threat to any organization attempting to push their narrative hard and fast.
If this is going to be fixed
Several things need to happen.
An alternative learning path. This may seem insane - but, it solves two problems in one go. The first - Those who drop out for WHATEVER REASON are granted a new path to work on in their time to achieve the requisits of a Diploma. Second - It provides a foundation for students to challenge and accel in their studies.
Constitutional Reform - Stop the verbatum attack on legal gun ownership which does not solve the problem, neutralize the ability to suppress rights like Freedom of Speech, Right to Protest, Etc. And in so doing stop the government from being able to make arbitrary things illegal, and require them to engage with those upset with the status quo. Seriously: Farmers and Truckers are the lifeblood of our economy - they get food where it is needed, and they grow food (respective of the relevant profession) These are people that DO NOT want to be standing around protesting, they want to be working and making money.
Electoral Reform
Stop the flood of immigration
Build more houses
Invest in infrastructure based on population, not on Political interest. It's time we have an investment tool for this country that ignores political interests. I don't know exactly how to make that happen - but it is needed.
Clamp down on administrative overhead of post secondary institutions. And if that means we change the rules on non-profits and accreditation to be a university/college so be it.
To Summarize
This problem started decades ago, and we are only now seeing the consequences of actions taken starting in the 1980's (or there about). It is going to take a monumental amount of work to fix the issue and move forward. I hope enough people see this and push back - but it is going to take action at both the Federal, and Provincial levels to force a change. And right now - the federal government is absolutely 100% on board with this kind of BS.
Websites that are funded through ad's are not going to want you using an ad-blocker. And frankly, if you are not a paying customer, but taking up space - the business typically has right to have you removed. In physical stores it's obvious but, the online space is not much different.
What I would love to see is some sort of initiative where users can pay like 10-20$ a month, and say 90% of that divided between the websites they view based on engagement metrics on those websites. You could have some modifiers based on the type of website as well - obviously reading news has limited ways of verifying engagement, but we know that there is a high amount of time used per article. Overall this would result in less trackers being needed, websites could feasibly decouple from the ad-driven model entirely, and that might be the best outcome.
With the proposed model - yes, some companies are still going to hard paywall, some might have limited content available to this model and have a 1-5$ a month subscription on top for premium access, and other companies might stay exactly as they are - say like Wikipedia - but be less strained for donations.
This type of arrangement could feasibly end the need for ad's entirely. Though you could conceivably have an Ad-supported tier as well, whereby if the user is not subscribed to the service they get ads, and if they are they don't.
The real key to making the proposition as mentioned above work, is to require the payout method to be agreed to be a replacement to seeking ad-revenue for it's subscribed members. Overall it's likely (using quick napkin math) that this would provide more revenue per user anyways. It may also devalue web based advertising so hard that it absolutely kills it - and that would mean Content is king. We could end up in a realm where the likes of Youtube don't block content because some advertiser doesn't like certain topics. And as more news is consumed online, it may be able to kill the stranglehold the pharma industry has over the news media industry.
Sorry: This is going to be a wall of text. But short answer: Not directly.
Websites, unlike your network administrator of a school, or China, or your ISP can't actually see the network protocols in use; So no - they don't KNOW you are using a VPN, they just suspect it with strong evidence. What they CAN do, is blacklist known public VPN server addresses, same way they can block known TOR exit nodes. In any case - a custom landing page can be put up, with some BS like: "In an effort to stop and prevent hacking attempts, we have made the difficult decision to block regular usage of our website and service from known VPN Server addresses. We apologize for the inconvenience.".
So: What CAN you do if you want to use a VPN? Well: Two basic options - Self host (VPN or SSH Port Forwarding), or Rent a Server and set up a VPN there.
With the first option - Self hosting - the easiest and most straight forward way is using available VPN software. However, you can also use SSH port forwarding to get the same result. In either case - you are simply taking your traffic from your Laptop/mobile device and routing it through your home network. If you are simply concerned about public WiFi and wish to ensure intercept attempts are impractical - this is the way to go. If you want to hide who you are: Well, that won't do it.
Second Option - Using a Shared/Rented Server provider. Depending on how it is set up, and masked, it will be more difficult - not impossible - to single you out. Ideally you want to go in with a group of people to rent the server space. Just be aware, that some hosts are not going to like grey-area activities on their infrastructure, so make sure you do your research on who the host is - just as you should do if/when selecting a VPN service provider.
In either of these cases, you as the administrator of these services need to understand the risks of opening your network to vectors of attack. Because of the way a VPN is set up, you are functionally punching a whole in your network and stating "Forward Connection Attempts on [selected port] to [System hosting the VPN Service]" - and if the VPN software you are using is flawed - that does open you up to being hacked. This goes the same for hosting using a rented server - shared or dedicated, just the exposure is NOT in your own network.
User generated content has a presumption of consent: It is PRESUMED that the user who is uploading the work work likely created it - and it is reasonable to presume those involved in said work gave consent or otherwise the user had rights to use the content in this way. When you DO NOT have rights to the work, that is when DMCA take downs come into play, and other legal actions - and in that case, you can expect financial penalties, account suspensions/bans, and so on.
There are some serious problems in Canadian law. This situation doesn't come even close to one of them.
It's not. The fee was added to encourage people to join in with the Cineclub thing. The back end for seat selection existed before the online reservation fee did as far as I can recall.
Step 1. Get a record of how few votes can swing a riding.
Step 2. Get people into the awarness that their vote can really make the difference, especially if they convince a few of their friends to vote at the same time.
Step 3. Campaign on "Want better politicians? Get out and vote for them - or at least vote against the worst ones".
Very important: Do not associate with any party while doing this. Just get out and encourage people to vote. Talk about early voting times, talk about optional mail in ballots for special cases, and above all else: JUST ENCOURAGE EVERYONE TO VOTE. Maybe we can get a non-profit going that is literally "Helping Canadians Get out and Vote" who's entire job is to ensure Canadians are Informed, and able to get to the polling stations.
I have an Odyssey g9 and it has a 1000R curve - and sits about 3 feet from my face and that feels about right. At a guess - at 800R it is a bit too tight to sit far enough away to have a proper wheel and such in between you and the display.