Not quite the same, but remember when everyone had a bare -r at the end of their name, flickr, tumblr, etc. What was up with that?

I was technically around as well, but I was in high school and was busy worrying about my own problems. Adults were doing adult things and making adult mistakes and bearing adult consequences. Even back then I knew adulthood was going to suck.

Makes me wonder whether people saw the dot com bubble the same way in the late 90s, with investors smelling their own farts and everyone else on the sidelines screaming about how stupid this is.

It was my understanding that it was a misconception that companies are legally bound to have an ROI or whatever. Not an economist so IDK. I just remember hearing that from several places. Regardless, the buyer-seller relationship is “I give you money, and you give me a product or service”. The investor-seller relationship is “We give you money, and you give us more money, and we don’t care how you do it.”

Counterpoint: games were more expensive in the past, sometimes even before adjusting for inflation. Goldeneye was $70 new.

The problem is that back then you bought a complete game to play forever. Now you buy an unfinished mess that despite costing as much, makes it abundantly clear that the game isn’t yours through DRM and in your face micro transactions.

Whenever investors get involved things go downhill. If the only two parties are a buyer and a seller, the only way the seller can make money is by making a product the buyer wants to buy. But investors don’t care about the product. They may not even understand the product. They only care that the product makes money.

AAA studios are failing because they want to please investors, not buyers.

murder bears

intensive Care Bears

Seems a bit over-engineered to me. Why would a soldering iron need a CPU?

Other guy: “Grab the supplies”

Me: “Where are they?”

Other guy: “Over there”

Me: “Where is ‘there’?”

I know next to nothing about Arc Raiders, so I may be assuming wrong. It’s not just about PvP, it’s about how fast-paced the game play is. I can bumble through a game of Deep Rock Galactic with friends because it’s (I imagine) slower paced and everyone is working on the same goal. My friends are also patient enough to deal with my issues.

I wish I could experience multiplayer games like this. Bad performance due to my vision would likely frustrate others playing with me.

update 2: I’ve now done the same to my copy of Gold. It requires a different battery compared to either yellow or sapphire.

The only thing I can tell you is my save survived the battery replacement, which tells me it’s flash and not SRAM.

One theory for why there were so many serial killers in the 70s was because of lead paint.

Update: Now I’ve replaced the battery in Pokemon sapphire. Luckily since it uses flash memory my 25 year old save file is intact.

The real hazard is inhaling rosin fumes (says the guy who doesn’t properly ventilate his workstation). If you’re anxious about lead (I was) there is lead-free solder, though it requires higher temperatures to work with. As far as lead goes, the risk is from getting flecks of it on your fingertips and then touching your eyes or mouth. I imagine it’s less of a problem than it feels like in my head, but something something environmentally friendly.

I’m blind (the device in back with the Freedom Scientific logo is an assistive magnifier). Both cooking and sewing are common skills taught in rehab centers for the newly blind, and soldering has aspects of both, being mindful of something very very hot near your hands, and having a certain amount of dexterity.

Here’s what I did to build up confidence. I bought a bunch of perf board and resistors and I just started soldering the resistors to the perf board, that’s it. No goal other than to practice soldering. I had tried one of those beginner’s first electronics kits off Amazon, the ones with just an LED and a switch or whatever. I got discouraged because I messed up. So I figured if I didn’t actually try to make something, I could relax and focus on soldering technique. I was eventually able to solder header pins onto a Raspberry pi zero and even terminate a coax cable, and now I can say I replaced a GB cart battery.

It’s lead free solder. I think that affects how the joints look.