I didn’t own a laptop at the time. I wasn’t going to take my big desktop to school regardless.

I used Arch Linux full time from about 15 years ago to 8 years ago. I stopped when I went back to school to get a degree. I was tired of fixing things all the time and I didn’t want to have to deal with that when I had assignment deadlines looming, so I bought a MacBook for school.

I’ve since graduated but I really haven’t looked back. I’ll probably start using Linux again for some hobby projects and maybe to build a SteamOS computer for gaming, but I doubt I’ll switch back to Linux for my main computer (a MacBook M1), especially since the public blowup of Marcan over Rust for Linux and the uncertainty that brings to the Asahi project.

I never use AI. Can’t stand it. Wish it would go away!

I also think it’s completely stupid and overhyped. I took a course in 4th year on building and training neural networks with PyTorch. I know how it all works at an intimate level. It’s not going to lead to a singularity any time soon (as so many people think).

I think there’s a lot of explanations for the decrease in value of the ads:

• ad market saturation
• user ad fatigue
• rampant ad blocking
• less engagement overall

I’ve heard YouTube video ads pay a lot less to the creator than they used to. A lot of creators are struggling and feel pressured to release a lot more videos and more consistently. But this can all be measured by view counts where the numbers drop off as engagement disappears.

One of the worst things a YouTube creator can do is completely change the type of videos they make. This often gets people to stop clicking videos and YouTube’s algorithm takes this as a sign to stop recommending that creator, causing their views to drop off a cliff.

I wonder if there’s a similar issue with the ads on game review sites today. I have seen some YouTube video reviews that include a sponsored segment for a game I’d never in a million years consider playing (which has no relevance to the video at hand). Maybe if people are reading reviews the ads aren’t relevant to the games they’re playing so they never bother with them?

Video game reviewers used to provide a valuable service. Back when all video games were Nintendo expensive, we needed trustworthy reviewers to guide us towards making the correct purchase. Paying the inflation-equivalent of $100+ for a single video game made a single bad purchase really hurt.

Nowadays, people log on Steam and scroll through hundreds of previously purchased (never played) games they picked up for a few dollars each during a Steam holiday sale 3 years ago. They can just click download and start playing anything that tickles their fancy!

Plus I’d also add that many gamers have found games that have enormous replay value (especially multiplayer games like League of Legends or Hearthstone or Fortnite) and they sink thousands upon thousands of hours into that one game.

What room is there for professional game reviewers reviewing new games every week and writing about them? Most gamers seem to have more games than they could ever want, plus single games that could last a lifetime by themselves.

The same could really be said for music reviews. People used to read magazines like Rolling Stone in order to get reviews of the latest songs from the hottest bands. Nowadays people just listen to the music themselves and decide whether or not they like it, no reviewers needed.

Edit: I forgot to mention streamers and lets players. People can watch a lot of these videos by amateur or professional content creators and judge whether or not they like the game based on how it plays. Reading an article, even a very well-written one, pales in comparison to a gameplay video at the job of communicating how a game looks and sounds in motion.

This really shows that refs have too much discretion with technical fouls. I don’t think the NBA will do anything about it though. I’m sure they see it as critically necessary to stop players from saying/doing family-unfriendly stuff.

The favouritism towards Lebron is really corrosive though. They should never have let him become such a whiner in the first place!

I don’t mean just this game. LeBron does it every game but he never gets T’d up! Why does LeBron get so much leeway from officials but not Luka?

And guys on other teams will get a T for just some frustrated arm swing gesture. I don’t get it!

What I don’t get is why LeBron doesn’t get T’d up. I see him barking at the refs all the time and they don’t care. I guess he’s really careful not to say any swear words?