Does Microsoft make Halo? Halo’s developer is owned by Microsoft, just as Xenoblade’s developer is owned by Nintendo.

Xenoblade

The Xenoblade series is made by a developer that is owned by Nintendo. If Nintendo doesn’t want people to rag on their products, they should make them better.

The longer the cord is the more resistance there is; ie the more electrical load on the circuit. As long as you are pulling less than what the circuit and cord is rated for, there isn’t an issue, you will just be wasting a little extra power from the extra resistance. The plugs themselves can also have a bit of extra resistance.

Two pieces of advice that will make the biggest difference:

• Keep the total length of all extension cables used as short as is reasonable. Don’t use a 20m cable when a 4m cable will do.

• Buy extension cords with higher wire gauges (higher wire thicknesses). A 12 gauge cable (4mm²) will provide notably less resistance than a 14 (2.5mm²) or 16 gauge cable (1.5mm²). The packaging will say what gauge it is. Note, I’m talking about the thickness of the metal itself, not the thickness of the extension cord as a whole. I have seen some very, very thick extension cords with absolute trash wires inside.

Yeah, I have some EBL brand 1.5v rechargeable batteries since the VR handsets I own are pretty sensitive to low voltage. They were unfortunately a bit more expensive than regular 1.2v rechargeables.

If you got that 30% haircut just before you needed to sell

Yep. They key part is to invest for 20, 30, 40 years, where those consistent 10-20% gains compound and vastly outweigh the occasional 30% losses. Even if you had invested at the worst time in 2007, you are currently up 285%.

Put money into index funds every paycheck and don’t sell them for 30 years. Compounding returns are damn strong. And yes, lots of people do it, it is the most straightforward and common strategy.

Investing money generates more production and profits, it is very much so not a zero-sum game. There is good reason the average standard of living has increased dramatically over history, and it has increased faster in modern economies with strong monetary availability and movement, something investing directly contributes to.

I remember back when Halo 3 and 4 were out for one Microsoft gaming platform (Xbox), but not the other (Windows); and Halo 2 for Windows was a disaster area (Games for Windows Live, ugh). Went on like that for years and years. I just couldn’t figure out why even first party Microsoft games were not available on both Microsoft platforms.

I would have bought the Halos in a heartbeat from a Windows-locked store back then. Though, I’m glad that by the time they launched an official MS store (and much, much later released Halo 3+ for the PC, and Halo 2 in a way that didn’t suck), I was already souring on Microsoft as a company and didn’t want to lock myself into a platform-specific store.

who the heck even buys gas leaf blowers anymore

Gas blowers are about half the purchase price. And in this ‘first thing I looked up’ match up, are slightly better speced and higher rated.

Since y’all aren’t sharing a room, closing your door and speaking softly is usually sufficient. Make sure you have a mic that rests in front of your mouth, and isn’t setting far away on your desk. That way it can pick you up easily.

Exactly, every time I say ‘I’m thinking of putting up a Factorio server, you want in?’, they are significantly less likely to be playing (or paying for) the newest game that has kernel-level access. Why, because we are playing Factorio for the next few weeks together and Factorio is fun.

Factorio isn’t the only game we play, but the point is to reinforce yours. If you are playing fun game x, your friends are more likely to play x instead of something else. Even if they have no care about Kernel-Level access, the fact you do affects their buying (and playing) patterns.

First of all, plenty of people would be happy to self-host a game for their friends, if they were still allowed the option.

Exactly! Me and my friends often play on modded Factorio servers that one of us hosts. This is only possible because the developer doesn’t lock things down to only the first-party (official) servers.

We don’t play with cheaters either (you aren’t getting invited to our server if you are). We play with our friends because it is fun, in a way no official server could hope to work.

Why would they listen to your personal complaint if you, singular, are going to buy it anyway? Your voice only matters to a company if it means you won’t buy their product otherwise. Don’t buy the game, then tell them why you didn’t.

Yeah, Democrats have no pipeline to generate top talent. Their last candidate got trounced in the last primary she attended. Democrats didn’t even want her. They got a wake up call in 2016 and failed to fix the problem, they need to take the call this time and fix it.

Maybe they should spend less money. Something like Hollow Knight was made at a fraction of the cost of a AAA game, but is excellent.

If you spent a tenth as much on each game, you only need one or two games to do well for the whole set of ten to be a success.

The company also has a vested interest in keeping PC players on their OS, while simultaneously treating the platform like a second class citizen for years. Anybody remember the abortion that was Games for Windows Live? And it isn’t like Windows Mixed Reality or ‘this is now a tablet OS’ are doing them any favors either.

God am I happy I didn’t buy any software on the Microsoft store.

Agreed, seems OP is getting tired of the live service grind. Subnautica (start with the first) and Hollow Knight are both excellent single player games to try out.

It continues to gather interest. If you don’t pay it down, you will have a larger loan in the future.

Pay your debt.

Thank you for the solid points. People are dooming way too hard, simply because their preferred candidate lost this round. There is an opportunity for Democrats to improve themselves. They had that wakeup call 8 years ago, and they didn’t take it. Hopefully they will this time and strengthen the quality of the party and the candidates. Simply being ‘not Republican’, their primary strategy, isn’t enough.

teetering on brink of another civil war

Shit has to get much, much, much worse before people are willing to take up arms against their own family member 'en mass. A civil war isn’t one in which you fight a far away enemy, a civil war is one in which many of your family members and friends are on the opposite side. We are nowhere near a civil war, not even close.

Assuming you are talking about who won the US presidential election. Happened 8 years ago too, it wasn’t the end of America then. It won’t be the end of America now.