falkerie71

Good luck on your Warframe journey! Where are you in the story right now? I dropped it after the railjack came out, and am tempted to go back and see some of the new stuff. I just don't have that much time and patience for grinding all the resources now, maybe I'll just see a playthrough or something.

I'm ashamed to say I've stepped into the Gacha rabbit hole with Zenless Zone Zero. It's a fun game, combat feels quite good on PC, characters are likable, and the story is intriguing so far. Though I'm not ashamed to say that I haven't spent anything on this game, and I'm sticking to free to play, as the value you get out of spending in game just isn't worth it. There are much better ways to spend money than rolling for a chance to get a character. How much the whales are willing to spend for a character will never cease to amaze me.

Ease of access.

I think you're confusing desktops with laptops.

In case it wasn't a joke, I imagine it would be high enough for your finger to just poke under it to push the button, like you would a monitor with buttons on the bottom of the screen.

The price of the storage upgrades. Jesus.

You're lucky there's a higher up that could talk down the even higher ups. Though, sometimes it's not even about the r&d teams.

I saw company wide HR educational emails or courses telling you how to improve you work quality/efficiency, and one of them tells us to "research AI" and learn how to utilize it, talking about how great it is and improved the work efficiency by 30%. Sure, it has its uses, but I won't go touting how great it is. And with how ChatGPT works, you have to be the biggest idiot in the world to upload all your sensitive stuff to ChatGPT just for it to make a spreadsheet faster. But without these disclaimers in the email, I doubt regular clerical staff knows about this, and it's extremely dangerous.

This. Exactly.

For real. Being a software engineer with basic knowledge in ML, I'm just sick of companies from every industry being so desperate to cling onto the hype train they're willing to label anything with AI, even if it has little or nothing to do with it, just to boost their stock value. I would be so uncomfortable being an employee having to do this.

Going wireless will always add a layer of energy loss, in this case heat, during charging, no matter if it is properly aligned with magnets or not. So first step to reducing heat is to charge wired only.

Fast charging is also a way of generating more heat while charging, so limiting the charge speed is also a way to reduce that. If you're going to charge your phone through the night, it's probably a good idea to use a 5W brick to manually limit the charge speed. A quick way to enforce that is to use the USB-A port on the brick instead of the C port, that way the PD standard won't be activated and will charge at a slower rate. (Though if your phone fast charges through USB-A like Quick Charge or SuperVOOC, it will not default to 5W. Use a cheapo brick or a computer USB-A port instead.)

Last would be to limit the charge level to 80%. Batteries are the most stable at half charge and stressed at both extremes, but that's not practical for anyone to limit their devices between 40~60% charge, so 20~80% is a better compromise. iPhones now have the ability to limit their charge to 80% or 90% in iOS 18, so set that if you can. On Android, you'll need to see if your phone and OS supports it.

You know, looking at reports, I definitely think that it was an idea that was executed badly for reasons that were not just because of the open world concept. Maybe if they had developed a better engine that offloaded the tech debt they had for so long, or if their hiring practices weren't on 18 month contracts, or if they had a better vision in the game direction, etc., the game wouldn't have ended up in this place, and the open world might have worked out, and they didn't have to cut so much from the game. But asking what ifs is no use, the game in the end still left much to be desired.

I share the same opinion as you, that the story in Infinite did not really satisfy me. But it still got some positive responses to it and some people liked it, and I'm happy for them. The open world concept in Infinite is inspired by the semi open world map in Halo 1 like Arriving on Halo, art direction is inspired by Bungie Halo but much more polished, and lots of story pieces are referenced from old Halo games or extended universe materials. So saying that the devs did not do their homework is kinda unfair, imo. For that, the Halo TV show by Paramount takes the crown of disregarding original materials (or even the basic concept, even).

There's a pretty good video essay on YT that goes more in depth into what 343 did right for Infinite's story, I'll link it here. Although 1 hour long, I highly recommend giving it a watch. His Halo 4 retrospective video is pretty good too.

I definitely still prefer a concentrated and linear story line, though. Like watching a movie or a TV show, I want to be on the ride that the game designers intended. Not saying that open world games can't deliver the same experience, but linear games have the advantage of having more control of the story beats in the game. I guess we'll see what the new leadership would bring.

I hope Halo can use this opportunity to invite Joe Staten back on board. Their Creative Director opening on LinkedIn was closed recently, but who they actually hired we don't know.