IT nerd

  • 4 Posts
  • 146 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Pricing is dictated by what someone is willing to pay for it.

    For me, $70 USD is too much for the average game that is being sold at that price tag because those types of games(AAA/AAAA) are:

    • Broken at launch
    • Unoptimized/framegen crutch
    • Basic features missing
    • Nickle and dimed to all hell

    Again, not all, but the average AAA slop title usually has one or more of the above points.

    BUT, that doesn’t mean that Indie games at $20 USD are a “steal” or “bargain” either. There are many Indie games I bought at their launch(Silksong), but others I have waited for a decent sale.

    If everyone stopped buying games at $70 USD then prices would fall and/or projects going forward would be re-evaluated to either keep costs/expectations down. But people are paying the $70 USD so that price point is here to stay.




  • eli@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldKellogg ---> Epstein
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    3 days ago

    I don’t know what the cost for my insurer was, because we never even got a bill in the mail. I even called the financial office or whatever it’s called for Kaiser and made sure we didn’t owe anything and they said that we were covered and owed nothing out of pocket.

    My post was a reflection of my own personal anecdote because I see stuff online all the time that insurance is terrible in the US and that we all pay $20k for a birth when that isn’t the case for everyone. I mean if the average is $18k then someone is definitely paying that amount(or more, because average) but some also pay zero. My post wasn’t meant to diminish. I also think all of this should be free for everyone anyway.

    I do also think some people pay more than they have to, as in they are having unprotected sex and can switch to a HMO over a PPO, but they stay on the PPO plan because it’s “cheap” and end up paying $20k for a birth when they could’ve switched to a HMO before hand and paid the $50-$500 a month(depending on employer or if your state has a marketplace) and saved the difference. But they don’t think that far ahead.


  • As a Californian, the state is absolutely huge and I have never been affected by any of the wildfires and frankly I doubt more than 1% of the population has even been affected directly by the fires. It’s a completely overblown issue. Does it suck? Yes. Does the media make it seem the entire state is on fire 24/7? Yeah. Don’t believe the media.

    The real issues Californians face are:

    • Housing/Zoning/NIMBYs
    • Public transportation
    • ISP services(or lack thereof)
    • Huge population(traffic, cars, etc), of course some areas are worse than others

    We do have pretty cheap groceries as long as you don’t shop at Target or Pavilions. Costco, WinCo, Aldi’s, etc. all have great pricing compared to other posts I see from around the country. Same goes for gas. Costco is around $3.50-$4.00 a gallon(for 87) for the past couple years. But the Chevron or Shell down the street is $4.50-$5 a gallon.

    Taxes are also overblown. Everyone looks at our marginal rates and go “so high!” but never calculate what their effective rate is, which is usually much lower.

    And then people love to bring up “the homeless” like there’s a camp on every street corner. Like yeah, maybe in LA. But for my city I have only seen the occasional pan handler on the freeway off ramps, which I doubt are even homeless since I’ve seen at least one leave their corner and go to their SUV in the nearby parking lot and drive away at the end of the day, like it’s a job for them.

    We have our issues, the state is far from perfect, but I’d rather be here in Cali than any other state at this point.




  • eli@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldKellogg ---> Epstein
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    3 days ago

    I just had two kids back to back. Both born in California and at Kaiser. The only thing we had to pay for was my wife’s post-partum medication, I think $50 total between both kids.

    All prenatal appointments/care? Covered. Two separate scares where wife was admitted overnight? Covered. Both births with epidurals and overnight stays and meals(for mom)? Covered. We didn’t even pay for parking.

    Idk if it’s because we planned this and intentionally had a HMO plan, but wanted to share my recent experience.







  • True, we all also interacted in the real world for years before the internet.

    So the Internet is also non-essential!

    But, it makes it convenient. Discord is also super convenient.

    It’s not like we didn’t see the writing on the wall 10 years ago, but all of us accepted convenience over everything else. Now we are reaping the “benefits”.

    For me I have a private self hosted wiki that I use to document everything from gaming to my servers to just general life stuff. I’d love to start up a forum for gaming/tech, but I don’t have the resources nor funding to do that, plus there’s a decent amount of others already out there…


  • Sucks that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all alternative, yet.

    Stoat doesn’t have enough features.

    Matrix is confusing for the masses, plus there is so much conflicting information online of what home server do you join? You shouldn’t join matrix.org’s because of admin abuse? Element clients on mobile are meh.

    TeamSpeak is a voice first platform.

    For my situation it looks like I should move my wife and I to Signal and then my friend group to Stoat, but the recent server issues(prob due to influx of new users) has caused a bit of my friends to have a sour taste out of the gate…

    Nothing is ready to replace Discord IMO. And that sucks. We need dedicated forums again, more wiki servers, and better chat applications.


  • Either parent your kid, or don’t, but it is not my job to make sure your kid is coddled on the internet.

    As a recently new parent myself, your post is great. And as a IT nerd, your post is also infuriating.

    It is so beyond easy nowadays to monitor and restrict your child’s access to online content. Seeing the post you’re replying to just reminds me of everyone I’ve ever talked to that had X issue and their only response is “throw hands up in the air after trying nothing”.

    My kids are still too young to be reasoned with, but my wife and I agreed that:

    • No dedicated personal phone until middle school, and it ain’t gonna be some top of the line iphone
    • No “tablet kid” bullshit
    • No unfettered YouTube access

    So far our oldest loves finding our phones and can open the camera app from the lockscreen and she runs around taking photos. So we’ve been letting that slide…but we don’t unlock the phone, so it’s a compromise we’ve made as she LOVES taking photos and seeing photos, which I want to encourage. As for content watching we have a TV with Plex and if there’s something we approve of on YouTube and we want our kids to watch it(Ms. Rachel), then I download the YouTube video and put it on my Plex server. No ads, no algorithm auto played videos, just pure approved content. And we have classic cartoons(Rolie Polie Olie) and disney/pixar/ghibli movies, etc.

    Of course if your kid is at school with no phone but its recess and their friend has a phone with zero limits…yeah I can’t control that. But I can at least parent my kid to know that I don’t like that and I don’t want them to participate it.

    Also when they’re a bit older(5 or 6 years old) I plan on teaching them internet safety. Don’t post PII, don’t visit certain websites, always use an adblocker/ublock, only talk to people online that you know in real life, etc. I do plan on playing video games with them(if they have an interest) and I know that will eventually lead to online lobbies, but I am hoping to teach them in private Minecraft servers certain etiquette first and go from there.

    I’m both excited and terrified, but this is my job as a parent!



  • This is what I got blindsided by when I tried out Mint a decade ago. OS is up to date and pretty, but kernel/drivers? Old, or “stable”.

    And it’s weird seeing all of these recommendations for Mint on YouTube/social media this past year. And then watching the videos everyone is just gawking about Cinnamon…which you can install on any other distro too.

    Lots of normies hopping on the Linux train and have no idea what they’re getting into lol