Call Of Duty Black Ops 7, however im hearing Battlefield 6 is also in the same boat.

A lot of gamers tend to also be teenagers/young adults who just want to play a game with their friends in their social group. I was a kid once too after all so its understandable. However its the “just want to play with my friends” crowd that enables the industries worst practices by being consumers who think of yearly video game release hype cycles as vehicles of social interaction instead of caring about games as an art form thats being slowly degraded by corporate cuckery over time.

Black Ops 7. Its got plenty of shaming going on for other reasons already but this is the first time ive seen this message.

Also the Phone must be at or under 200$ no matter the build quality. I get it, linux users are likely to be cushy financially well off opsec nerds will pay out the wazoo for hardkill switches which I guess is your bread and butter whales to target in this market. Please release something economical for us plebs it can be like a walmart tracphone for all I care.

Paid products can be enshittified. Also, its not just the quality of products that are getting enshittified but the concept of ownership over usage and access to digital data.

• Slowly raising sub rates with that boiling frog tek.

• No longer providing means to purchase local copies of data on a CD-ROM when you did before, just to pigeon-hole buyers down a subscription only access to the cloud.

• Not offering a one time lifetime subscription in your sub-only model.

It used to be that you bought something and owned it physically or at least owned a private copy of the data that could be cracked/ stripped of DRM so you could truly freely own and distribute. Now they all want to be digital landlords where you own nothing and pay a little more each month through the good old boiling frog while pinning price increases on inflation. The mid-term result is a 100$/year to rent out digital access to a dictionary when before you could buy a cd copy.

Also, I don’t buy the “academic quality things should be incredibly expensive because its meant for scholars and university libraries” argument. Fuck that grift man. I know server infrastructure. It cost less to update a database or serve thousands of visitors than you might think especially for simple database lookups sent through https.

It also cost practically nothing to distribute a digital file. So, Free digital access to educational and reference materials output by universities realistically should be a right in any sane society. Im sure Oxford University gets enough tax breaks and gov subsidy they could do it without impacting the stock holders precious quarterly figures. That entire 12 volume OED set + SOED takes up 500mb and can be fit on every modern tablet and phone. It sure as hell could be fit on a CD ROM years ago when they made that. The only reason its not is greed and maybe the dopamine rush scholars get from filtering the plebs.

so why all the fuss about the inaccessibility of OED?

Because the OED is the creme of the crop for dictionaries, particularly the SOED has some of the most well put together definitions of any dictionary for casual lookup. Because the 1200$ paywall they put behind the physical editions was always bullshit. Because they no longer have legitimate ways of purchacing a cheaper local digital copy when one was available before is bullshit.

Sure, wiktionary or webster might have an entry for the word but if you do side by side comparisions betweeen dictionary theyre mid compared to OED/SOED. If your reaching for one the logic should be that you want the best/most accurate and descriptive one possible, no?

I genuinely believe that universities have at least a moral obligation (HA!) to provide free public services that better humanity. These are places of education subsidized and given tax breaks by the government for gods sake, yet theyre so corrupt from the rich fucks that run them like a for-profit corporation.

I would make an argument that free access to the highest quality dictionaries thats the gold standard for scholarly reference and similar such materials should be closer to a digital right than anything. In a better world academia pricing structures get fucked, knowledge becomes truly open through digital online and local reference resources without DRM.

Of course, thats a pipe dream. So instead, I simply ask for the option of an updated CD rom to be released as a possible purchacing option in a DRM free format. You know, like they already did years ago.

I don’t own/use a kindle but did a 2 minute search and found this promising fourm post comment from user Enterio https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=360684

"On my Kindle (Paperwhite, 11th gen), the dictionaries are held in the “\documents\dictionaries” subfolder (I kept my firmware to an older version to keep my USB connection). When I bought them online (on Amazon, see Kindle Default Dictionaries category), I received pre-made MOBI files that I only had to place in the aforementioned subfolder, without converting them to other file formats. Afterwards, I set up my default dictionaries for every language on my Kindle in Settings → Language & Dictionaries → Dictionaries. Hope that helped. "

Also, the 1921 version of Merriam-Webster dictionary has entered public domain and is available for local download in stardict format here https://github.com/ahacop/websters-dict-1913-stardict

Double reminder that local offline copies of wiktionary.org dictionaries are available in Stardict, Tabfile and Kindle formats for download here: https://github.com/Vuizur/Wiktionary-Dictionaries

Sure! Heres links.

The full Unabridged 2nd edition (comes in 2 parts): https://archive.org/details/stardict-Oxford_English_Dictionary_2nd_Ed._P1-2.4.2

The Smaller condensed SOED edition: https://archive.org/details/soedrich-star-dict-2022-11-11

While your at it download the torrent link file themselves too in case these archives ever get taken down. I get the impression Oxford is particularly aggressive with takedown request so please consider seeding to keep these alive and easily accessable for others.

Oxford English Dictionary is directly funded by Oxford University. Im pretty sure a world class old money university can afford to subsidize public access and periodic updates to a digital dictionary database without putting it behind a subscription based paywall. At least they could try to offer a lifetime sub option.

Well, that sure is an option, though one that I would rather not take, like ever.

Coincidentally a copy of the Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary 2nd edition stardict is currently available for free on the internet, only requires approximately 200-300mb of storage space, can be installed on my e-reader or pc software of choice for potential automated database retrieval / RAG, ect ect.

In case anyone is wondering you can download a stardict of the shorter oxford english dictionary (and most of the other dictionaries mentioned in this thread!) and have a local copy then use software like stardict or svdc to look up. I actually put up a copy on the internet archive earlier this year. Good timing huh? https://archive.org/details/soedrich-star-dict-2022-11-11

A few days ago I gotta message from google saying they “can’t verify my age” (meaning they want gov ID I’m sure) so I’m forced to use safe search and other stuff too.

Fuck. That!

Theres a high likelyhood your bank still allows access through a web browser. I think a lot of people forget that browser shortcuts that you can add to your home are a thing that makes a lot of apps partially if not fully redundant.

They haven’t really unless you count the post-dbza content with the shorts and the streaming. Hellsing ultimate abridged was made along side DBZA timeline wise about the time Twilight was still popular.

Hellsing Abridged from TFS, classic. If you’re gonna watch it you should do it on twitch since they used a copyrighted song for an epic sync that happens in one of the later episodes that got muted on youtube. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/294882536?collection=Y4Lf2g4TSRXQGQ

during the time I was born TVs were small square boxes powered by glass tubes and turny knobs. I want to say 480p but tbh if you were using a junky 10 inch display at the turn of the century on satallite it was closer to like 240p. The jump from square 480p to widescreen 720/1080 was an actual graphical revolution for most people in a very big way, especially for watching movies that were shot in wide. In terms of games 1080p is both where 16:9 took off and the point where realistic looking graphics meet acceptable resolution for like skin pours and godrays shit like that. GTA5, TLOU and RDR are the examples that come to mind from the AAA 1080p era and their original states still probably hold up today.

When the 4k stuff finally came around and it was advertised as the next revolution I was excited man. However compared to going from 480 to 1080 it wasn’t a huge change tbh. It seems once you’re already rendering skin detail and individual blades of grass, or simulating atmospheric condition godrays, there isn’t much more that can be drastically improved just by throwing a billion more polygons at a mesh and upscaling textures. The compute power and storage space required to get these minimal detail gains also starts escalating hard. Its such bullshit that modern AAA games are like 80gb minimum with half of that probably being 4k textures.

I will say that im like the opposite of a graphics snob and slightly proud of it so my opinions on 4k and stuff are biased. Im happy with 1080p as a compromise between graphical quality and compute/disk space required. Ive never played a 1080p at maximum graphics and wanted for more. Im not a competitive esports player, im not a rich tech bro who can but the newest upgraded gpu and 500tb of storage. I don’t need my games to look hyperrealistic. I play games for the fun gameplay and the novel experiences they provide. Some of the best games I’ve ever played look like shit and can be played on a potato. Most of the games I found boring were AAA beautiful open worlds that were as wide and pretty as an ocean but gameplay wise it was as deep as a dried up puddle. I hopped off the graphics train a very long time ago, so take my cloud yelling with a grain of salt.

I have no issue with remakes themselves. Games are a kind of art, and good art should be kept alive for the next generations to enjoy. The problem to me is:

1. the only thing big studios now want to put out remakes/remasters of the backlog they already made because its a safe and easy cash grab. One of the top comments about there being 7 skyrims and 2 oblivions before ES6 is soo real man. Its like all the people who founded the companies who were responsible for creative novel design/story that gave big titles their soul in the 2000s no longer exist in the industry except a few indie devs. Now all big game companies are just run by business associates without a shred of humanity outsourcing everything for a quick buck.

2. Graphics have plateud from late 2010s and onward. Remastered and remaked stuff made a lot more since for the ps2/xbox and backwards, with the ps3/x360 1080p resolution it made a little less sense but I could still understand them porting like TLOU to ps4 at 4k or whatever. But now were remastering games that came out 5 years ago at 4k and trying to sell it as some huge graphical overhaul worth the asking price. Maybe im insane or old but my eyes can barely tell the difference between 1080p and 4k, going from 4k to 8k is like the same picture with slightly different shaders.