thatKamGuy
@thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Texas National Guard arriving in Chicago 9 hours ago:
Food deserts are such a weird concept to me; Australia has about the same land-size as the continental US and only ~8% of the population. Yet even for all their perceived faults, our two biggest supermarket chains are able to deliver fresh produce to pretty much all but the most remote communities.
Meanwhile, sections of major US cities are somehow lacking access to fresh produce?! 🤯
- Comment on Texas National Guard arriving in Chicago 9 hours ago:
Legitimately could be underestimating it, honestly… after all, everything is bigger in Texas!
- Comment on Once again, looking for PS2 game suggestions! 2 days ago:
According to protondb.com the entire Final Fantasy catalogue is pretty much flagged as either Gold or Platinum so you shouldn’t have issues.
For what it’s worth, the console versions also run great through EmuDeck and RetroDeck on my Steam Deck too!
I need to get around to playing Clair Obscur - I’ve seen and heard great things about it, but with a 2yo running around the house - I just don’t have the bandwidth currently to invest in new games… 😅
- Comment on Meh, I'm more of an Aragorn fan... 2 days ago:
Perspective; the 2x2 is closer to you than the 2x4.
- Comment on Once again, looking for PS2 game suggestions! 2 days ago:
To each their own, I suppose!
FF7 was my entry into the franchise, and I went back to play 4-6 after 8 left me disappointed. I ended up (regretfully) skipping 9 until revisiting it much later. I’m saying this specifically to point out that I am not biased because FFX was my first.
I skipped XI as MMORPGs didn’t hold any interest to me at the time - but WoW would change that, and cause me to skip XII altogether!
I didn’t like the combat of XIII, it was too much of a departure of what came before (variants of ATB and general turn-based combat) - and I did not find the plot engaging enough to persevere much beyond I think the ~10hr mark?
I haven’t bothered to revisit the newer entries since, even though I have added XII, XIII, XIII-2 & Lightning Returns to my retro collection. Perhaps one day?
- Comment on Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, a great looking game but with pacing issues 2 days ago:
Which JRPGs have you tried so far? The community might be able to help guide you towards a better entry point, if they can figure out what titles you bounced off from.
- Comment on I finally decided to go full piracy against big companies 2 days ago:
I stopped (console) gaming right around the PS4 era - partially because side I was heavily invested in WoW and PC gaming in general - but also because I was livid over how Sony handled the Anniversary edition launch, where scalpers scooped up ~98% of available stock.
I feel like I lucked out opting to become a retro gamer around that time - there are just so many great games from the PS3 generation and earlier that I could dedicate (my diminishingly little) spare time towards and never run out of absolutely incredible content.
Hell, my PS2 version of Vice City runs just as it did when it was new - complete with Billie Jean being the first track on the radio; something that can’t be said for any current/PC versions I believe.
- Comment on 'No one can find him': Trump drops from public view again after 'slurring' military speech 2 days ago:
The fault with this train of thought is that it assumes that the MAGA nutters will see the correction. They won’t, and they’ll go on parroting the initial incorrect statement and that will just become yet another ‘alternative fact’ that they abide by.
- Comment on Why do companies always need to grow? 2 days ago:
It’s literally sad that the only hope for EA to become less scummy as a privately held company, than it was as a publicly traded company, is for the Saudi Arabian regime to proactively use them to win over gamers through the digital equivalent of ‘sports-washing’.
It’s depressing to think that we are at a point where EA could be considered the lesser evil in comparison.
- Comment on Once again, looking for PS2 game suggestions! 3 days ago:
Beyond Good & Evil
Devil May Cry trilogy If you liked God of War (and its PS2 sequels), another franchise well worth checking out!
Final Fantasy X Hands down the best entry of the franchise (fight me), and one of the best introductions to the series.
Ico + Shadow of the Colossus Literal works of art.
Killer7
Manhunt + Manhunt 2 If you like Bully & PS2-era GTA entries, this series is well worth exploring. Very dark and gory.
Need for Speed Underground + Underground 2 Some of the best racing OSTs ever, and the offline PS2-editions don’t lose tracks when licenses expire.
Prince of Persia - Sands of Time
Silent Hill 2
Viewtiful Joe + Viewtiful Joe 2 An incredible 2d beat-em up with a great vibe.
The Warriors Rockstar’s love letter to a cult classic 70s film.
Zone of the Enders + Zone of the Enders 2nd Runner Hideo Kojima just doing more of his thing outside of the MGS franchise.
- Comment on Everybody is fine with celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg making up fake names for themselves, but when someone chooses a name for themselves to suit their gender identity it's suddenly a problem 5 days ago:
Does it ever make you think that when her parents were having sex that one fateful night, they would later be able to look back upon it and say that they were making Whoopi?
- Comment on Cast your spell on me 6 days ago:
The maximum I’ve ever consumed was ~1,200mg (1.2g) of caffeine over a ~16 hour timeframe.
I did not feel OK afterwards; reading your comment just started giving me heart palpitations… 😅
- Comment on Shortly After Xbox Game Pass Prices Spiked, the Page to Cancel Game Pass Subscriptions Was Overwhelmed 6 days ago:
I haven’t used a killawatt on it to check, but according to the specs it uses ~30W while in operation (plus whatever additional draw for the four drives). It’s pretty negligible, overall as far as I can tell.
- Comment on WoW dies with the Lich King 6 days ago:
Hard disagree; Cata was definitely a stumble, but Mists of Pandaria did a lot right, as did Legion. BfA also had its moments, even though it was severely hampered by needlessly obtuse systems.
Shadowlands is where it truly died.
- Comment on Albanese invites Arab 'hypermarket' to compete with Coles and Woolworths 1 week ago:
Except, that they do? Go back to the Big W link you posted earlier - they’re back up to the MSRP:
It’s something that every company does, because if a product is permanently ’on sale’, then they run the risk of being fined (maybe by the ACCC? I’m not quite sure which body is in charge) for false advertising. There are strict guidelines that dictate what a product must be at the “was price” for a certain length of time, within a certain timeframe.
It’s not just Coles and Woolworths that do this; every other retailer is equally culpable: JB HiFi, Bunnings, Myer, Kmart, Chemist Warehouse etc.
- Comment on Albanese invites Arab 'hypermarket' to compete with Coles and Woolworths 1 week ago:
Revenue is just cash in, it goes hand-in-hand with inflation. Shit is getting more expensive, no one is arguing that.
The cause of price increases are coming from higher up the chain; the big multinational corporations that supply into the supermarkets dictate prices. Those increased costs are passed onto the consumer.
But Net Profit % is the metric you need to look at in order to determine whether a company is price gouging or not. After covering supplier costs, logistics and storage costs, staffing costs, utilities and other overheads, as well as paying taxes, if a company is only pocketing 5-6 cents for every dollar in, that’s not them being greedy and pocketing ever increasing wads and wads of cash.
Honestly, I think a supermajority of shoppers wouldn’t even notice a ~5% reduction in the individual prices on a shelf label - not because they’re rich enough to notice care, but because it’s so insignificant when compared to the bigger costs they currently face (rent/mortgage, utilities, motor expenses etc.).
That is why I’m saying that adding another supermarket into the mix here in Australia is not going to have a noticeable impact on customer wallets. It’s just a distraction from the issue of land hoarding and rent-seeking causing the coming generations to be noticeably worse off than the ones that came before.
The sooner we stop following whatever distraction corporate media throws our way, and demand change that actually matters - the sooner we’ll be able to wrestle our futures out of the hands of the 1% of the 1%.
- Comment on Shortly After Xbox Game Pass Prices Spiked, the Page to Cancel Game Pass Subscriptions Was Overwhelmed 1 week ago:
Even better! What are you running on your server?
Ours is just an old QNAP I dug out of storage with 4x8TB drives in RAID5 - but am eager to try out HexOS on a proper system once I have some spare time.
- Comment on Shortly After Xbox Game Pass Prices Spiked, the Page to Cancel Game Pass Subscriptions Was Overwhelmed 1 week ago:
The missus and I sat down about a year ago and tabulated up how much all of the various streaming subscriptions were costing us per year (it was close to $1,000 when including YouTube Premium).
We cancelled every single one, and put that money towards building a home NAS and filling that up with downloaded media. No more ads, stupidly low bitrates, or TV shows & movies disappearing because a license expired.
The server has more than paid for itself at this point, and every additional spare dollar is being put aside for our kids’ tuition.
- Comment on Albanese invites Arab 'hypermarket' to compete with Coles and Woolworths 1 week ago:
Coles and Woolworths have pretty consistently posted Net Profits of ~5-6% for over the past decade (probably longer, I CBF checking).
Meanwhile Coca Cola most recently posted a Net Profit of ~22.6%; PepsiCo, Mondelez & Kraft-Heinz all post Net Profits of ~10-12%, while all avoiding paying Australian taxes - but nah, the Supermarkets are the ones being greedy.
I return to my original point; the reason why people are feeling the pinch at the checkout lane is predominantly because their discretionary spending funds have been annihilated directly (and indirectly) by skyrocketing property prices.
Everything else, including this baseless discussion on how just adding one more supermarket chain to the Australian market will somehow miraculously solve the current affordability crisis, is just theatre to distract from the actual underlying issue.
- Comment on Albanese invites Arab 'hypermarket' to compete with Coles and Woolworths 1 week ago:
Again, I reiterate that Coles and Woolworths posted a net profit of ~5-6%. Meanwhile, Coca Cola posted a Net Profit of ~22.6%. But sometime, it’s all Coles/Woolies fault - and some mythical additional supermarket entrant is going to come in and single-handedly fix the affordability crisis.
This whole fixation on Supermarkets price gouging is such obvious political theatre, and it’s saddening to see so many people just go with it, and not question why that narrative is being pushed.
Property prices sky-rocketing over the past 30 years has caused the biggest wealth transfer away from the working class over the past ~150 years. The knock-on effects of this are why people wince at the checkout line - not because cans of Coke are ~$1ea now.
- Comment on Albanese invites Arab 'hypermarket' to compete with Coles and Woolworths 1 week ago:
I am in no way, shape or form saying it is? Just stating a fact - this is a practise called price anchoring.
The comment I was replying to was trying to use it as an example of supermarket greed & price gouging - when it’s really just a way to make the price they actually expect to sell it at (with the regular 40-50% discount) seem like a great deal in comparison.
- Comment on Albanese invites Arab 'hypermarket' to compete with Coles and Woolworths 1 week ago:
It’s not collusion; that is a specific legal term - but even more broadly, there isn’t any active discussion between the two retailers. If there were, given the tens of thousands those two companies have employed, wouldn’t you think there’d have been whistleblowers, ACCC fines and the like?
I’m not trying to defend supermarkets here, just dispel miss-information.
Prices are rising because costs are, I worked in agriculture when the Russian invasion of Ukraine occurred - causing fertiliser costs to literally triple, and labour costs for farm hands sky rocket due to the lack of backpackers during COVID lockdowns. Both of those costs got passed on to the supermarkets and ultimately to consumers.
Publicly traded companies have open financials; anyone can open up their most recent P&Ls and see what their actual Net Profit %s are, and they’ve remained flat for a very long time.
You would be able to see that there isn’t heaps of fat that another player in the space could do to noticeably impact basket spend.
We already have Metcash/IGA, Aldi, Amazon, Chemist Warehouse and Bunnings all providing a tonne of competition in key grocery categories.
What makes you think adding another would make any difference?
- Comment on Albanese invites Arab 'hypermarket' to compete with Coles and Woolworths 1 week ago:
This isn’t some big gotcha… it’s literally the standard weekly catalogue promo cycle; Woolies/Big W might have them on sale this week, and Coles will have them on sale the next. Rinse and repeat every few weeks.
They don’t expect (m)any people to buy them when they’re not on promotion; they use the inflated RRP to make the promotional price (that they actually expect people to buy at) all the more attractive and get people into the store.
It’s not some grand conspiracy, it’s basic Marketing.
- Comment on Albanese invites Arab 'hypermarket' to compete with Coles and Woolworths 1 week ago:
Honestly, it’s not going to do much - even Aldi has had a limited overall impact.
Both Coles & Woolies are publicly traded companies, we can freely see their financials every quarter. They both post a net profit of ~5-6% once it’s all said and done - hardly a fat margin for other players to come in and drastically undercut.
The bare truth of the matter is that we have a small population in a large amount of space, with compare high wages (this is good). Transporting fruit and veg from tropical FNQ to VIC and TAS in the winter comes with associated costs; labour, fuel, wear & tear all need to be accounted for.
It all comes back to property prices, though - we feel that food is expensive because the cost of keeping a roof above your head, whether through owning or renting, has just skyrocketed over the past 30 years.
Every other beat-up article talking about inflation or supermarket prices is just another distraction from the actual underlying cause: housing being turned into a financial vehicle.
So let’s ignore the noise, and actually address the root cause by going after all of the unfair tax incentives and subsidies afforded to the land-hordes at the cost of everyone else.
- Comment on It's official: EA is going private. 1 week ago:
EA has basically been dead to me for a very long time, even though I know a couple of people who work there.
While the whole Saudi Arabia / Private Equity angle is terrible, part of me thinks/hopes/wishes that this is part of their whole sports-washing angle - and there is a slim but non-0 chance that there will be an improvement in the quality of their studio output over the next few years.
I’ll continue to avoid buying their games, but it would be nice to see those that still do not getting nickel-and-dimes as hard as they currently are.
Who knows, there is also the potential that this buyout backfires and Saudi’s human rights abuses become even more public knowledge as a result?
When times are as bad as they currently are, we have to hope.
- Comment on Doug Bowser Retiring From Nintendo, Successor Announced 1 week ago:
OK, so which of the Koopalings is next in line? My money’s on Ludwig!
Given my general distain for modern Nintendo, I’d have no qualms in using AI to generate a Succession parody using the Koopa Kids, if only I knew how… 😅
- Comment on A broken clock is right twice a day, but a wrong clock is just wrong. 2 weeks ago:
Ah yes, it’s heil past neon!
- Comment on Xbox invests big into indies, signs Game Pass deals with over 50 studios 2 weeks ago:
Maybe not; but my bigger worry is that while this is good for indies initially, by guaranteeing a minimum fixed income for a project - the long-term effect will be that Gamers^TM^ may just begin to expect indie titles to be “free” via GamePass and won’t buy them otherwise.
This would pretty much monopolise those sorts of titles to XBox and leave developers dependent on Microsoft for their continued existence.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Yes, but they are a minority - and they alone cannot prop up the franchise if the rest boycott Disney/ABC.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
For those that can’t quit the content cold turkey, there are other avenues of consuming that don’t benefit Disney… 🏴☠️
