I find this alternate timeline incredibly likely. I had a friend in college who was all about SCO Unix back before they went evil, even when Slackware was the go-to distro. We would have a lot more BSD forks out here now, although NextStep (and maybe even OSX) would probably still emerge as one of the better commercial ones.

As an aside: what I find amusing is that Homebrew is basically BSD Ports, served from a git repo. In 2025, it’s a completely insane way to ship OS software to a single platform, but it does work.

Nani?

I miss it too. If I had to guess, Arin sees a day with wall-to-wall recording sessions and meetings, and misses those chaotic early days.

I look at it this way: it’s a lot less home-grown now that it’s grown up. In exchange, they employ people, make Starbomb tours actually possible, and fund wildly off-the-wall games. Along the way, Dan was propelled into modest stardom, a lot of other folks from their camp got a boost for their endeavors, and they got to make some memorable moments with a few celebs. They’re not at “Liquid Game Grumps” levels yet, but it’s amazing to watch unfold. Maybe that’s worth it.

As someone that works in software, what he does to turn running code inside out, is kinda sexy. The guy is like a bloodhound for bugs and poorly-built software.

Game developers: Yeah, buy our game and play it however you want. It’s all for fun!

Josh: ::proceeds to out-QA the publisher’s QA department, breaking the game in the most egregious ways imaginable::

Game developers: No, not like that!

Speedrunners:: ::furious note-taking sounds::

The only “streaming” I can watch are Game Grumps, but I get that’s not live, and it’s by and for a completely different demographic.

I’ve tried, but I find a lot of Twitch play-throughs to be low-stimulation, low-information, and low-entertainment. I think they’re better suited to a dual-screen kind of situation, but then I’d rather be doing far more engaging things like playing games myself.

You can never really go home.

Fuck.

I’m just as mystified as you.

The only time I interact with the service is when I’m sent a link to a cool band/song and I wind up on the site. “Oh, this again.” I really have zero concept of fandom for something like this.

IIRC, there were human survivors and hold-outs, but not many. Consequently, the vampire’s numbers were also rather small in turn. It was all a slow-moving apocalypse.

Really, it’s only just good enough of a backdrop for some really solid gameplay, set-pieces, and great voice-acting (well, for Soul Reaver anyway).

also the Empire had a space program

Easily one of the best unintentional “easter eggs” I’ve seen in a video game.

Meanwhile, in Legacy of Kain:

Vampires: Uh, boss? You corrupted the pillars of Nosgoth - which is great and all - but now the sun kinda/sorta doesn’t work anymore. It’s always dusk.

Kain: So what you’re saying is that we vampires can move around freely. All the time. Excellent.

Vampires: Won’t that eventually kill all the humans? Yanno, with no food and all?

Kain: ::shrugs:: Fuck 'em.

Of course not. You can’t monetize nature all that directly, so clearly it’s not “better”. /s

advertisers prove that they are absolute scumbags

I honestly didn’t believe that until, one day, a scumbag came calling with a ‘brilliant IT idea’ that only myself and my colleagues could build. I’ll put it this way: we realized that this guy would literally not stop until he covered the entire world with advertising, as though we were supposed to live in an environment modeled after a college dorm corkboard. No thanks.

On the home-gamer gameplay side, this is a solid list. On the technology side, I think there’s even more that makes sense for a curated museum tour. There were big leaps made in arcade tech through the 80’s and 90’s that were pushing all manner of graphics and sound, head-and-shoulders above the previous generation.

Sega’s “super scaler” boards come to mind, allowing for games like Hang-on, Outrun, and After Burner. Digitized sound samples started with Sinistar and Tempest. Dragon’s Lair amazed everyone with an interactive LaserDisc experience. There were also notable forays into AR with Time Traveler, and VR with Virutality. Lastly, we have the fully-enclosed and immersive cockpit of early Battletech simulators.

This, right here. It’s like Nixon’s “war on drugs” that went on, and on, and on… The goal was not drugs, per-se, but to use drugs as a pretense to police people of color.

You are not kidding. I have some experience with startup stock options and… it’s not pretty.

Before anyone retorts with remarks about “phantom stock” and other similar offers, I want you to do some math.

Figure out what the ‘strike price’ of that stock is likely to be when it matures, and calculate what the payout will be. Then figure out capital gains tax and subtract that. Divide what’s left over by the amount of unpaid overtime (hours in excess of 40 a week) you’re going to put in for the maturation window. Lastly, compare these figures to other testimonials in your field, and also, look up typical yearly bonus figures for more mature companies. You’re going to see that it’s not a lot of cash for the extra time, that it’s nowhere near your base pay rate, and more established companies are going to do a better job of compensating folks for less effort. You may even find that with a 996 grind-set, it might pay out less than taking a second job at retail.

I can also warn you that if the company sells instead of going IPO, you may get a much smaller payout than all that. I was in a situation where they threw the advertised strike price in the trash, and negotiated a sale of everyone’s stock to the buying company for much, much less.

Exactly. Censorship, ultimately, doesn’t work.

Remember, “the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” While we’re talking about just one website, the above quote really speaks to online culture and, perhaps, humanity in general.

This is exactly like the pearl-clutching we had back in the 1980’s around D&D and music lyrics. At least we moved the goalpost from satanic panic and thinly-veiled racism, over to “art that features sexual expression I don’t understand.”

If history is any indicator, their actions are only going to increase awareness of this kind of stuff.

Thanks for the added opinion and context.

When I read he actually used the word “seppuku”, I immediately knew that it wasn’t just suicide he was talking about. He’s also saying that the oldest generation needs to admit they screwed everything up beyond repair, and answer for it.

Then maybe the buried fertilizer will become so valuable that it can be dug out and sold as fertilizer again.

Between the methane that generates and easily obtained phosphorous trapped down there, that’s strictly a matter of time, unfortunately.

it talks like a human so it must be smart like a human.

Yikes. Have those people… talked to other people before?