Listening to audio would be the least effective and most expensive method of data collection for advertisers. It’s not happening. They already have literally over a million data points on you, there’s nothing useful for them to glean from your audio that they don’t already have ad nauseum.

You see thousands of ads and recommendations every day. You finally found one that was relevant to you. It’s not that deep.

Watchdog groups have been monitoring these services for years now and have yet to find the “your phone is listening 24/7” smoking gun.

The Cerberus mission was so good! I usually don’t like when games do the “hide from the invincible monster” trope, but they managed to do this really well. Making the doors extra slow turned that mission into one of the tensest moments I’ve ever experienced with a game. My watch gave me a high heart rate alarm halfway through it lmao

I am absolutely not advocating rudeness to the cashier.

IMO, lying to somebody, specifically with malicious intent (as opposed to a white lie to avoid hurting somebody) is rudeness. Just because they might not catch onto it doesn’t change anything; you’re being a bad actor in this scenario, and taking out your frustration on somebody who had nothing to do with your ire.

People do have that phone number, you know. It’s not reserved or blocked.

I’m a gamer myself, and therefore I know what I’m talking about.

Except the person you just signed up for unwanted spam texts.

Yeah, that’ll teach a lesson the minimum wage employee who didn’t make the rules.

I’ve been in that situation. At first it’s kinda nice being able to sleep in without worry for a little bit. But after a while it really starts to drive you crazy just not having anything to do with your time. That restlessness quickly turns into depression.

A big complaint I saw about the live-action Cowboy Bebop adaptation for Netflix was that the acting was too cartoony/over-the-top.

Personally, I thought the acting was spot-on for what they were trying to accomplish. It was meant to be a live-action anime, so it was never intended to be 100% tethered to reality to begin with. The characters are meant to be characters, and I thought they did a great job with it. Spike, Faye, and Jet were all perfectly-cast, IMO, and they all felt like their original characters felt from the animated series. There are so many times where you can just close your eyes and listen to them talk to each other, and it feels exactly like it felt watching the anime on Adult Swim back in the early 2000s as a kid.

I honestly loved the live-action adaptation and thought it was amazing. I’m still immensely disappointed that the reception was so poor that Netflix decided to cancel it halfway through the story. There are so many characters I wanted to see that didn’t appear until later in the original series. I would’ve loved to see a live-action Toys In The Attic or Heavy Metal Queen.

I had a 2006 Ford Taurus that would’ve been stronger if it was built with Legos. Water pump fell off one day - like… just… fell off. The brackets weren’t broken or misshapen or anything like that, it just fell. None of the bolts were loose or unthreaded or anything. I know that doesn’t make sense. I KNOW. It makes even less sense that it happened twice.

There was also some kind of electrical issue that I could never isolate, but it was causing fuses to blow out every couple months, and would burn out the starter about once a year. I had to replace that starter so many times that I stopped needing to refer to my Chilton book for the steps. Sometimes the power steering would just stop working and then start working again with no warning.

I loved Control so much, I’m glad to see that Remedy’s still expanding on that universe.

If you’re just looking for the out-of-the-box experience, I’d say a Pixel is probably your best bet. It’ll run stock Android, get updates the fastest, and generally perform very well. My Pixel 6 Pro is still running smoothly today. I’ve never dived too deeply into it, but I believe Pixels will also run GrapheneOS, if you’re looking to really lock your device down and de-Google it.

I haven’t actually played any of the Far Cry games, so I couldn’t speak to that. But if they play anything like Cyberpunk, I might have to give them a shot!

I love Celeste so much, the writing was way better than I anticipated a platformer game to have.

I also love some of the easter eggs they put in, like the white block in one of the earlier stages, where you will fall “behind” the block if you crouch on it for a few seconds; a nod to hidden mechanic in Super Mario Bros 3.

Cyberpunk 2077. I’ve been known to simp pretty hard for this game, but I do consider it to be one of the best games ever made. The story, the music, the acting, the gameplay, the visuals… Every single part of the game is just masterfully done. I feel it’s one of those games that everybody should play; a sort of “milestone” game like Ocarina of Time or Skyrim. Even if you’re not a fan of FPS or RPGs, it’s worth turning down the difficulty and playing just to experience the best story ever told through a video game, in my opinion.

They’re not stealing your data, they’re pirating it.

Museum visitors are given 10 digital coins they can use to play the games, but be warned: it’s not possible to buy additional ones, so players will need to strategize and choose wisely.

This is so idiotic, yet somehow still 100% on brand for Nintendo.

It’s a museum.

Yeah, I’ve got a lot of channels I subscribe to. I don’t know the total count right now, but last I checked it was 100+. Some of them are daily/weekly uploaders, but I think a majority of them are much less frequent. If I had the means, I’d rather financially support those creators directly, but that’s just impossible for me right now. So at the very least, I’m making my views more valuable to them.