It’s weird seeing that branded as Sage - I’m so used to seeing it as Breville here in Australia.
Had that one for ages (a decade or so?), before it finally gave up the ghost. I replaced it with the glass version, and that’s been kicking on for a few good years now.
Literally hard for me to consider any other brands of kitchen appliances, honestly - Breville is my default pick now, whenever possible.
Echo’ing the other reply, but the Assassin’s Creed franchise (at least up to, but not including Origins) scratches my alt-history itch like nothing else has been able to.
Likewise, both Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 5 (inc. expansions) were absolutely fantastic IMO - and are some of the rare few FPS games I would willingly revisit.
Don’t take the above to mean my opinion of Ubisoft as a publisher is particularly glowing - let’s be honest, most publishers are absolute dogshit, due to perverse Capitalist incentives - and Stephanie Sterling’s segments about them on the Jimquisition should have been the final nail in their coffins.
I’ve found that as I’ve gotten older and more curmudgeonly, I’ve also become more nostalgic for the “good ol’ days” of gaming in the up-to-and-including the PS3/X360/Wii era - so my money has stayed largely away from AAA-publisher bank accounts.
My bad!
How could I literally forget Sega’s last, beautiful disaster? 🤦🏻♂️ I spent so much time playing Street Fighter III: Third Strike on it back in the day…
Not just NES; games were largely designed with CRTs in mind all the way through PS2/Xbox/Gamecube console generation!
Legitimately would love a decent CRT TV (and room for it) to be able to authentically play Point Blank again - light gun games of that era only work on CRTs.
It honestly feels like original and creative works are exclusively the domain of indie developers nowadays.
Given how bloated AAA budgets have become, publishers seemingly don’t want to risk taking a chance on some more whacky ideas - at least until an indie dev proves it out first.
We are at a point now that games from the PS3/X360 era still look and play well, so newer titles need to contribute something new in order to make an impact.
If a AAA-studio releases a 7/10 title in 2026, it’s not just competing with the 8s, 9s, and 10s also releasing the same year - but also every single such title from the past 20 years!
This will also only continue to get worse in coming years as the backlog of exceptional titles will continue to build.
Unironically, you’re missing out.
Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are both just ways to project the smartphone already in your pocket onto an additional screen (like plugging a second monitor to your laptop or PC).
Manufacturers like GM and Tesla hate it because it stops your data from being readily collected and stored with the purpose of building up a profile of ‘you’ that they can then sell to advertisers and insurance companies.
Now if only manufacturers had the good sense to keep things like climate control as physical switches - that’s my own personal bugbear. 🤬
I’m in a similar boat, our next TV will be a commercial display if I’m not confident that we can successfully air-gap the TV.
Something like this, ideally: https://www.lg.com/au/business/information-display/oled-digital-signage/oled-pro-monitor/65ep5g-b/
Yeah, in hindsight it really landed at an opportune time.
It’s a crying shame how greedy companies like Nvidia & Micron have gotten from back-to-back runs on their products - it feel like it will take a generational downturn for them to pull their heads in, and return to the more modest profit margins of the past (which even then was around 30%, IIRC).
Ah, completely forgot that Intel 6th gen introduced DDR4 - I would’ve sworn it was much more recent than that!
You’ve certainly gotten your money’s worth out of your system - that’s for sure!
I went from a 3570K, 16GB, GTX 670 -> GTX 1080 (later SLI’d), to my current rig:
5950X, 32GB, RTX 3090 -> RX 7900 XTX
Just before the Ethereum mining rush took off, and with the current pricing due to AI fuckery - I don’t think I’ll be switching up anytime soon.
I get where you’re coming from, and in certain situations where you can’t otherwise get around it, you can configure your home network to not allow the Smart TV to phone home with telemetry or to accept any inbound external network traffic, so it can only access local network data such as your PC for Steam link.
I’m not confident enough to configure my home network that well (yet), hence I just opt to have the TV air gapped instead
The thing with smart TVs is that you don’t need to connect them to your network to use them.
LG, unfortunately, still make the best OLED displays at the moment, and Samsung are arguably even worse when it comes to not respecting their customers.
Our C2 65in is hooked up to an Apple TV for all of our media streaming needs.
64GB of DDR3 RAM in a system of that era is straight nuts!
The US Economy after the inevitable, next global depression:
I’d be more curious to see what percentage of game sales were for 2025 titles versus older.
I think that would paint a truer picture of player behaviour, and whether there are any fundamental shifts in trends.
I don’t think that’s implants - it’s even worse; it’s a liquid they inject called “synthol”.
Looks like it’s from Dango, based on the design elements: Dango Products
Looks very similar to Dango, they have a bunch of similar metal framed, leather bound wallets.
Somewhere out there is a parallel universe where Al Gore won the 2000 election, 9/11 never happened, and Donald Trump is best remembered for his multi-award winning, 10 season syndicated TV classic - $h*! My Dad Says, before tragically dying on the toilet with a hamburger in one hand and his cellphone in the other.
It is a pretty common phrase in Australia - though mostly among older, more “stereotypical” Aussies.
But like with most things here, it all but surely originated in Europe and was brought over by migrants sometime between 50 and 100 years ago!