Not sure if “bands” is necessarily the right word here. Most of the artists are solo producers, and them touching anything acoustic for their music is a rare sight these days.

There’s definitely still a huge scene out there for the Early Hardcore stuff, with most of the crowd going into their 40’s now. And a lot of the originals are still performing to this day. Most of the scene is concentrated around the Netherlands though, as loud, obnoxious music is definitely in our collective DNA. But we are seeing increasing amounts of tourists traveling from far away just to be part of the larger events like Thunderdome, Masters of Hardcore, Ground Zero, Defqon.1, Dominator and so on.

• Laughs in Dutch EDM * 🤣

(Hardcore/Gabber starts at ~160 BPM and goes all the way up to ~300 BPM). Definitely too fast.

NVIDIA shareholders hate this post!

I am absolutely baffled how this project wasn’t instantly shut down the moment it was announced.

Aside from the fact there’s no evidence any form of service will be provided, the whole thing seems like a giant breach of data waiting to happen. Nothing about this is ethical, nor a good idea.

Same goes for all of these crypto driven projects, they all follow the same pyramid scheme scam formula where the only one actually benefitting from it all is the creator of the project. Yet they all publish these buzzword filled whitepapers stating how they’re going to change the world.

When it comes to potentially sensitive information (which is especially true for any identifying information), the first rule of security is that everything is need-to-know only. You don’t need my biometric information in order to legally identify me, therefore you are not collecting my data.

Just to be clear, Monster Hunter is 60% boss rush, 30% resource management and 10% gear progression.

Compared to Souls gameplay, Monster Hunter is more grindy and mission-based and you’re always pointed at the next big thing. Beat a monster, collect materials, craft weapons and armour, repeat ad nauseam. And do everything all over again when you hit High Rank.

Don’t go into Monster Hunter expecting a Souls game, it’s a different experience.

That said, I absolutely love the Monster Hunter series and have probably sunk over 800 hours into different entries combined. Definitely give them a go! And if you do, keep in mind that the newer games have some handholding QoL features not found in older games, so keep that in mind when you decide in which order you might want to experience the games.

I hate the fact that none of the big names support CalDAV natively. DAVx5 is cool and all, but app developers really need to step up their shit and support CalDAV already. Not just Microsoft Exchange and Google Calendar but CalDAV as well. It’s not like they need to rebuild their apps from scratch.

At this point you might just be better served using a web app instead of a native mobile app. Maybe K-9 Mail transformation into Thunderbird Mobile might bring some good news, but I’m not holding high hopes.

Maybe we should, under the EU’s DMA, force anyone that bundles a calendar/note app with their phone OS to support CalDAV as well as any proprietary protocol of their choice.

Excellent analysis. Especially this part:

It will be much more productive to try to solve this with the handful of Browser vendors than trying to regulate each and every consent banner.

Early cookie banners were a bad experience but they were manageable. But now thing have transitioned into content-blocking modals, dark patterns, forced individual consent/rejection for each and every one of the 943 partners they’re selling your data to, sites that refuse to serve content if you reject tracking and other ways to frustrate the end user.

I’m done with every piece of shit predatory actor inventing their own way of malicious compliance with the GDPR. You either implement the user-friendly consent API or you get no more tracking at all. Paywall your shit for all I care, at least then you’ll have a sustainable business model.

Yeah I believe this to be a fallacy. If all your contacts use WhatsApp, they still haven’t grasped the concept of installing two applications side-by-side. Or they don’t fully understand why people are using signal over WhatsApp. If you fail both of those, congratulations, you’ve failed to be a self-aware tech user and you’re now demoted to a braindead consumer.

I know, mind blowing right? Point is, society in general should not accept others forcing you to keep the WhatsApp monopoly in tact, which is exactly what’s happening here.

It will take some time but eventually adoption will spread, even among your contacts. It’s just a matter of critical mass, and there are some pretty compelling features within Signal that make it a worthy replacement.

NATO was originally founded so that we’d stop invading each other, which should still hold true today.

I like to think of most developed nations as young adults. All of us are supposed to be mature, which means no more war. We can just talk about things like responsible adults.

Sadly, some of these younger fucks still haven’t grasped the concept of “don’t be an idiot”, and we now need NATO for a strong message of “no, you’re not going to touch us, there will be consequences”. It’s a sad thing that we still need to do so, but I’d rather have a large group of friends that I’m sure will have my back if someone would start shit.

So yes, Sweden joining NATO is a good thing. If anything it will lead to better cooperation and coordination between our countries. Not just in the event of war, but just sharing defense resources and intelligence as well. But the best argument is that we just like you Swedes, and we want to keep hanging out together.

Yep, though I feel it is mostly nostalgia.

The game has devolved to a point where only tryhards and boosters (or people paying for boosts) are having any fun. The rest of us having to wade through the toxic waste they leave behind. The game feels like middle management having control of all the resources and if you’re in a lower position you get screwed over.

Ahead of the Curve achievements, gear scores, raider.io, simulationcraft, DBM, perpetually unbalanced classes and specs and mechanics interviews over Discord have ruined the game to a point where I no longer feel I can play the way I want to. Rushing to the point where you’re ready to raid and then spend hours reading strategy guides, configuring DBM, applying to groups, is not a fun way to experience end game content while basically skipping all the storylines, and everything that makes the world feel like an actual world.

And most of it is just symptoms, it used to be that bosses had relatively simple mechanics and raids were there to experience crucial battles in the story. People used to just get a group together and try defeating a raid, not too worried about failure. Nowadays people are obsessed with managing away risks of failure.

Being kicked from a group halfway through because your spec has slightly lower DPS for the specific encounter while topping the damage done charts in others is the kind of bullshit that I won’t deal with anymore.

Actually engaging with the end game content feels like applying for an entry level position where they require 10 years of previous experience to even qualify.

Yeah that’s the thing. Users stick to reddit because they have ties with the individual communities, not so much the platform itself.

People used to use Facebook for similar reasons. “Because all my friends are there”. Not because Facebook was so great.

It can be difficult to leave communities behind that you feel a part of, even if you just lurk most of the time. The fact that reddit was turned into a corporate dystopic shitshow does bother users, but it hasn’t outweighed their needs to still be part of their respective communities.

But seeing as official reddit sources claim that “they’re still in the early stages of user monetization”, it might not be long before we see what’s left of the platform turn into the biggest dumpster fire the internet has ever seen.

Yeah, most western European languages actually.

Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian… Though most of these languages alternate between “taking a decision” and using a form of “to decide”.

German seems to be the exception. They just had to be different. Guess that’s that German precision for ya, they have to “hit their decisions” otherwise they won’t count.

I have no idea why they’re even remotely interested in Windows as a product anymore. Surely they can’t expect that much revenue from integrated AI services when most of the general public’s needs can be covered by web services that will severely outmatch Microsoft’s development speed (y’know because of juggling legacy code and all).

Considering the fact that they gain most of their revenue by far from their Azure cloud services and enterprise customers, it just seems like a stupid business decision to invest this much into all kinds of random features for their desktop OS aimed at consumers.

In proper systems architectecture theory, we generally try to avoid mixing up functionality this much because a modular design allows your system to evolve without too much pain. Why build all this crap into Windows when you can just opt-in by installing an application for it?

I really don’t get it…

Apple’s whole modern “it’s reliable and just works” cult following exists because they found a fix for situations where the problem was between keyboard and chair.

Both Windows and Linux-based operating systems are plenty reliable if you actually know what you’re doing and you know how things work. Apple started a culture where you don’t need to know how things work because you have no influence over your own devices. Which lets people do the simple tasks without adressing the problem that your userbase will not amass any computing knowledge whatsoever.

And when Apple devices do fail (and trust me, they do), they fail catastrophically without a way to fix the problem yourself (which is by design).

The distinction is larger for computers than it is for mobile devices, but yeah in general Apple devices are for simpletons. But the biggest issue is that Apple’s design philosophy actively creates these simpletons.

It’s strange to me that the differences are so vast between different continents.

I know litteraly no one who actually uses iMessage. Never once (in recent years) seen some communicate through a channel that isn’t WhatsApp, Signal or something similar. The whole “ew, green bubbles” drama just isn’t a thing here. (Though the existence of iPhone users still harms society in different ways)

Though I do agree with many commenters that the EU caving to the lobbyists is a bad thing. Having the law only apply to “problems that are big enough to care about” is still a loss for the consumer in the end. I’m all for standardisation and free choice, which means any commercial messaging service should comply. Exceptions only for open source projects funded by non-profit organisations.

Right, like how they design connectors that when shorted will instantly fry your CPU.

Or the part where they design flex cables that are too short for you to bend your screen back all the way.

There is a long list of hardware fuck ups that are outright stupid choices that competent engineers would never make. The only reason these defects exist is because they cause people to buy new devices more frequently.

They know how to do fancy hardware, not how to do reliable and durable hardware.

It crazy how worked up non-customers get over this stuff. It’s not like rabid apple fans are grabbing their pitchforks.

See, here is where we disagree. The amount of revenue Apple generates, makes them an example for other companies, and you see them start making the same dumb choices.

I want this trend of tech enshittification to stop and the brain-dead Apple fans are to blame. Because they allow themselves to get milked for revenue, the whole consumer space has to deal with companies trying hard to nudge the boundaries with every new product. All aimed at extracting just a little more money than they did before.

So no, in addition to not buying their shit devices and services, it actually helps to make others stop buying their shit as well. I am done allowing people to take the easy way out and to stay ignorant about the consequences of their choices. If you praise Apple to me, you’re going to get an earful.

I don’t think anyone here is against this per se. It’s just that this store was probably intended for other purposes than providing an infinite supply of digital waifus that will actually respond.

I’m all for degeneracy, everyone has a right to get naughty, just like everyone has a right to friendship, love and happiness. Which is why it is a good thing these exist. I just don’t think they intended for them to be here, and in such large numbers.

Exactly what I was thinking. The whole AI hype has been cringe so far and this just confirms it. Seems that the ratio between legitimate use cases and fucking around is kinda skewed towards the meme side of things.

Or it might just signify our population has a HUGE lonelyness problem (for a myriad of reasons).

Especially Germans, and your cousins who live in the swamp next door.

We can’t help the fact our languages just arent’t that elegant, no need to apologize for it.