Honestly? Aloy from the Horizon games. She’s maybe not the most rounded character, but she is a very strong, determined, stubborn, and intelligent person. She knows what she wants and will stop at nothing to get it. I think it also helps that the games don’t really have many choices or multiple endings, which I think was a good design choice. The story belongs to Aloy, not the player.

Also she’s not a protag (sorta, you can play as her) but I would like to give a shoutout to Lae’zel from BG3. I suspect a lot of players haven’t explored her character questline much because of how prickly she is at the beginning, but her character development is extensive and, at times, heart-wrenching. A story of someone getting the entire fabric of their life and soul torn out from under them.

MacOS updates don’t cost money. They’re also completely optional (even security updates) and major OS versions introduce new features.

The US has surrendered almost all of their manufacturing power and knowledge, absolutely kneecapped their education system(s), and stripped away most of its incentives and soft power projection. Trump certainly put the final nail in the coffin but the process has been ongoing for decades.

The US doesn’t make anything and a lot of what it does make is bullshit like the entire corn industry. Much of the “value” in the US is speculative and, for lack of a better way of putting it, a complete and utter fantasy. As soon as that house of cards starts to become unstable and the world moves away from the USD then the US economy is going to implode so hard that it would make a black hole blush. They have less and less to bring to the table except their buying power and that is tumbling quickly as their wealth inequality shifts dramatically.

And that’s before you even factor in the self-sabotage with things like the random tariffs every 15 minutes and constant threat of being arrested and thrown into a camp. There are companies in the US that have to do their business outside the US because they can’t feasibly import product into their own country. It really is difficult to express just how badly the US has backed themselves into a corner.

Shareholder-led design.

I use Win11 on my main computer for work and school reasons. I need maximum compatibility and reliability and it has met those goals. Back in the day, I used to use Linux on my old laptops and I dual-booted it on my main PC. It has been awesome seeing how far it has come and I would like to get back into it some day.

That being said, a huge barrier for Linux and prospective new users is the community. The Linux community is highly combative and toxic and it absolutely sours what should (and could!) be a great experience. Almost every interaction I had while troubleshooting had some level of condescending attitude or outright hostility and there were numerous times I was directly insulted for asking for help - the most recent being a couple years ago when I was trying out a distro and had sound driver issues.

AMD Ryzen 5 7600x, RTX 4080 Super 16GB, 64GB system RAM, and like 10TB split up over multiple drives both SSD and HDD. I don’t remember what PSU I put in but it’s an 850W Gold from Corsair. Case is a Fractal North XL in white with glass side panel.

Usecase is 3D modelling primarily. I mostly work in Blender so getting a capable GPU was a must and the large amount of system RAM is nice when I’m working with textures in Substance or editing large files. I may upgrade my CPU as I move into more CPU-rendered tasks but right now I’m doing just fine.

Only a matter of time before Google will shut that down too.

I stopped using Spotify years ago and every time I hear about it I only get my decision further reinforced. What an absolutely cancerous company.

An American solution to an American problem.

I stopped playing when I learned the DLC I paid for would be removed and no longer accessible. I already had some growing negative sentiment towards the game at that point but being outright ripped off was the last straw.

The quality of those games is irrelevant. The user asked why people still use Windows and I gave a few examples. Simple as that.

You are arguing for the sake of it.

I never gave a reason why a game would/wouldn’t run on Linux. I just said that games are a reason some people continue to use Windows.

A lot of software still requires Windows.

Games are a big one for sure, but there is a lot of productivity and creative software that does not run on Linux.

This was inevitable. LLM chatbots were always going to end up as vectors for ad delivery.

The surprising part is that it took this long for a company to do it.

And I can confirm that I Won’t Be Playing It because Ubisoft blows chunks.

There is a waning interest, but it wasn’t the singular reason the game flopped. It’s because it was a painfully mediocre game at an extremely inflated price.

Mass-produced corporate sludge like Outlaws is exactly why interest is waning. It sucks the soul out of the franchise and makes people lose interest.

Nebula has certainly improved but I still think they need to put more effort into getting new creators that aren’t political or news. I just did a skim through their uploads lists for various topics and news and/or political (or political ish) content is still the most active. Topics like technology and gaming see far less uploads.

This game is screwed, calling it now.

Someone’s $50,000+ car malfunctioning and killing them isn’t natural selection. That’s not what that term means.

If we lived in any sort of reasonable or responsible world then these cars would be banned from public roads all over the globe.