I admire your optimism! I could easily see us living in a Mad Max situation in 200 years.

One thing I never see people talking about with fossil fuels is that they were a one shot deal in earth’s history, never to be repeated. If global civilization completely collapses (particularly the industrial base) then attempting to start over without fossil fuels could leave us stuck in a 17th century type situation for an extremely long time.

The problem is that renewables just don’t bootstrap. They require huge amounts of minerals which we’ve only been able to mine and process using heavy equipment and manufacturing powered by fossil fuels. Trying to do all that from a minecart-horse-and-pickaxe level of technology isn’t going to work out.

The other major factor is of course all the really easy mineral sources are gone too. Instead of mining directly from the ground we’d be salvaging scrap materials from the mountains of disposable electronics we’re producing right now. That’s where things really start to look like Mad Max.

Was there a time in the past you would have preferred? I grew up in the 90s and I really miss that time period but I don’t think I’d prefer to live at any time before the 20th century over now. As complex and difficult as life is right now, other time periods tended to be much nastier for various reasons.

The whole history of compound interest is quite fascinating. Early arguments for it are that seeds and livestock are capable of reproducing and multiplying themselves. If I lend you a handful of seeds and a year later you give back the exact same size handful, I have lost a whole year’s production I could have gotten out of those seeds.

Furthermore, assuming you actually planted the seeds instead of tucking them away in a drawer somewhere before giving them back later, those seeds produced a crop for you. This crop you could harvest and sell or feed yourself or your family or livestock. You could even save seeds from the harvest and pay me back the handful while keeping even more seeds for yourself. So by lending you seeds interest-free I’m essentially giving you a gift of harvest potential as well even more seeds in the future, at my own expense. Thus is the time value of money.

From this initial seed of an idea grows a huge amount of the financial system.

Note that this really only affects researchers/historians who were hoping to have a copyright exemption for controlled digital lending. This would let them virtually borrow a copyrighted retro game ROM file (from an archive such as the Internet Archive) and play it via emulation through the browser. I have actually played a few retro games on IA using their browser emulator and while it is playable it wouldn’t be my first choice.

For retro game enthusiasts who weren’t aware of these browser emulators not much will change. You still have the same exemptions covering abandonware for personal use and for playing multiplayer games where the publisher has shut down the servers. No, you’re not entitled to the publisher helping you run those games but you are protected if your goal is to reverse engineer the game code in order to create your own fan-made server. Several old multiplayer games have open source servers for this!

Also if you’re playing on original hardware then of course you’re still fully in the clear to buy used cartridges, make backups of them, play them all you want. Yes, some rare are super expensive but a lot of that stuff is due to people collecting sealed and graded games which really has nothing to with actually playing games. You’re not going to spend thousands on a sealed game and then crack it open to play it when you could just buy an open copy for far cheaper or even download a ROM for free.

Anyway, yes, these publishers are idiots pushing out crap games we don’t want to play. That’s fine. If their goal was to kill retro gaming to try to force us to buy new games then they’re still a thousand miles away from that!

Yes, Terranigma let you do a lot more different moves in combat which was cool, and the inputs were faster and didn’t involve charging which was a bit annoying in IoG.

I’ve seen this repeated a bunch of times but it seems to be an opinion predominantly held by Brits who played Terranigma growing up. I don’t understand it, as I played Illusion of Gaia growing up and love the game dearly (and have replayed it many times since then) but I’ve played Terranigma multiple times and lost interest not long after passing Bloody Mary. The game has gorgeous music and graphics (especially the two world map themes and the early areas) but the story didn’t engage me like IoG.

Maybe. A lot of ktec’s posts are like this. Seems very bot-like. I don’t mind too much since the information is interesting to me.

That’s legit though. I’m talking about the people who buy jeans that are pre-worn, with big holes and cuts in them from the store!

Yeah I don’t understand shabby fashion at all. I mean if I’m wearing clothing that’s full of holes it’s because I’m too cheap and lazy to buy new clothes.

That’s an interesting take! I’m getting to be an aging gamer myself and I no longer really play story-focused games. I play Roguelikes which I can pick up and drop any time, 5-10 minutes at a time, here and there. These games are designed to have maximum replay value. So even though I don’t have a lot of time I spend it on replaying rather than playing new games!

It’s an interesting difference and I think it depends on what we both look to get out of games.

I think it was inevitable. Before HL2 we had Deus Ex. It was glorious. Fans loved it. Game devs looked at it and went “F*%@ that! We’re not making 3 games worth of content when you’re only going to see 1 on a given play through!”

So that defines the basic tension. Gamers love replay value and multiple paths and different character builds and tons of secrets to explore. Game devs on the other hand want players to see every little blade of grass and tree they worked so hard at placing in the game. I think they also have a lot of data from achievements that show most gamers barely finish the game once, let alone discover all the secrets and alternate endings etc.

Yeah that’s how the Total War series does it. A single unit could be up to 200 people. It tends to make the unit far less maneuverable though. This means it leans pretty far away from what the WarCraft/StarCraft fan is looking for with highly microable units.

I read a piece not too long ago by one of the developers of WC1. He originally had it so you could select all your units at the same time and just order them to attack. The lead designer said that was too boring and easy, so he had him limit the unit selection to groups of 4.

After trying it both ways, they agreed the smaller group limit made the game more skilful and interesting to play. Ever since then RTS games have gone towards increasing the selection cap more and more! I think it’s a mistake.

I loved the first one so much. I’ve been hearing the remaster for WC1 won’t have online multiplayer. That’s a huge disappointment for me. Hardly anyone ever got to experience that game multiplayer. I played it with my friend exactly once, when I brought my computer over to his house. It worked over LAN and I think also modem, but not the internet.

I would prefer it not be owned by Google as well, though that wouldn’t really change the economics of the situation.

There’s nothing wrong with it. Both are pickled. The pink stuff has a bit of food colouring.

In some cases it might be non-vegan due to cochineal dye but beet-based dyes work just as well. I guess you’d have to ask wherever you go.

No ads so far here but I definitely will cancel Premium if I start seeing ads. That’s literally the only thing I’m paying for.

I told you not to vote for the Sheep-Eating Wolves Party!

Tomatoes are about 95% water, 1% fibre, and 4% other carbs (sugars and starches). Even with no added sugar, any tomato sauce is basically all carbs and sugar (if you ignore the water).

Even though we think of tomatoes as a vegetable they’re actually a fruit. Eating a whole bunch of tomato sauce is not much different from eating a bunch of pureed strawberries. Tomatoes just don’t taste as sweet as the strawberries because because they’re more acidic.

Yes! Something about her face really attracts boats for some reason!