Lurker > adjl

When the mods keep siding with radical leftist positions like not exterminating the gays, what else are these poor, impressionable young men supposed to think?

Neopian posted...

i'll try everything except for sports games

In that case, to just go through my library and name every one I've enjoyed to some extent or another:

• Awesomenauts (MOBA)
• Dr. Langeskov (whatever genre you'd call The Stanley Parable)
• IdleOn (Idle)
• NGU Idle (Idle)
• Path of Exile (ARPG)
• Phantasy Star Online 2 (MMO)
• Picross Touch (Puzzle)
• Planetside 2 (FPS, haven't played in a very long time so I can't speak to its current state)
• Warframe (ARPG/Third-Person Shooter)

I think that's all, though I feel like there may be some missing that might not have been on Steam or that I might have removed from my library when I left them. Either way, it's a start.

The biggest thing that confuses me about this whole matter is that so many people seem to think Bud Light has anything to do with beer.

What kind of game are you looking for? I've played quite a few that I liked, but they span many genres.

TheGuiltySpark posted...

Additional "forward" and "back" (as in web pages) buttons on the mouse instead of having to click them on the browser is a bonus.

I'm so horribly spoiled by this.

I'm still using the basic Acer keyboard that came with a prebuilt I got 15+ years ago. Nothing special, but it still works just fine. Current mouse is a 6-year-old Razer Diamondback, selected pretty much entirely because it was the only ambidextrous mouse I could find that had extra buttons (I use lefty mouse most of the time, swapping to righty mouse for WASD-based gaming). It does the job, though it's started to occasionally register extra clicks on the left button and the scroll wheel is getting a little inconsistent, so its days may be numbered.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

A friend of mine had one of those types of jobs where sometimes you're overworked and doing like three times as much as you're capable of because everything comes in all at once, and then the other half of the time you're sitting around going crazy because there's literally nothing to do because you're waiting on other people.

Working from home is great for jobs like that. It makes easy (perhaps a little too easy) to put in a bit of overtime if needed to handle the busy times without completely destroying your ability to have a life outside of work, and when there's downtime, you can just treat it like actual time off and either get things done around the house or slack off properly.

LinkPizza posted...

Its like the difference of watching a trailer and the first 15 minutes of a game

Exactly. Real-time footage of somebody playing a small snippet of the game is inevitably going to be less dramatic and exciting than a condensed showcase of all the dramatic excitement the game has to offer.

Yellow posted...

I have a friend in Arizona and he also just let the lawn die. Apparently, the previous owners got really upset about how he "ruined the yard", even though it looks like how land should look in that climate

"Sir, you live in a desert, that is not a good use of your finite water"

And even if you are going to spend water cultivating something that wouldn't normally grow there instead of xeriscaping, there are countless other options that are more useful, less thirsty, and better-looking than "green square." Unless you're actually trying to maintain a heavily-used play surface, grass is just a terrible idea.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

how tf was todays trailer more information dense than the f***in direct they did

It kinda makes sense. A trailer that aims to showcase the story in an exciting way is going to be more informative and exciting than a showcase of a couple new game mechanics that's specifically designed to avoid indicating anything about the story. This is indeed a particularly dense trailer, though.

captpackrat posted...

If tin whistles are made of tin, what do they make fog horns out of?

They usually just cut them right off the fog's head.

Especially seemingly having both Demise and Ganondorf, when SS all but explicitly said that they're the same entity. Personally, I'm inclined to just go with "they make up whatever timeline they need to shore up the story they want to tell." The official position was that there was no timeline outside of the direct sequels, right up until they decided they could make money knitting one together to sell Hyrule Historia, so I don't think there's actually any plan to establish and maintain a consistent canon.

Cacciato posted...

Icoyar

ARE YOU ICOYAR?! IIRC he closed that account but he still has his TheWorstPoster account. Unless that got banned

I'm not actually sure what the status of his account is, but he disappeared from the board shortly after suffering explosive diarrhea due to the stress of Biden winning the election. I would guess he retreated into more of a right-wing echo chamber than GameFAQs could give him.

Zareth posted...

What the hell is hatching from 32 inch eggs

Something hungry.

Statistics at its finest.

Those sand textures would barely have been acceptable on the N64. 3/10.

That is indeed a very hype trailer. Not on the same scale as the last pre-release trailer for Xenoblade 3, because that was absolute peak trailer, but a very hype trailer nonetheless.

Revelation34 posted...

That's impossible. There's not enough good gear that early on to beat the game that fast.

There are plenty of Any% speedruns out there under 25 minutes, let alone a few hours. Those do, of course, make extensive use of glitches to skip content and zoom around the map far faster than would be possible normally, but as far as weapons go those runners just use what they can grab on the way through the castle. Even if you aren't breaking the game in half like speedrunners do, it's perfectly possible to beat the game as fast as he suggested.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Tact is just not saying true stuff. I'll pass.

Peantically, you chose not to say an entire universe's worth of true stuff in making that post.

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with preferring a more linear Zelda experience in line with the traditional formulas over BotW's open-world approach, but BotW definitely doesn't suffer from not giving you any indication of where to go.

keyblader1985 posted...

Fellas is it gay to ingest potassium

Well, "ingest" means "eat," and "potassium" contains ass, so you tell me.

LinkPizza posted...

Thats why I said to start it once a week or so. Even once a month. I can usually go home for a month and start my car up when I get back. And several hundred seems high But I guess it can change based on different areas

Generally speaking, you won't be able to renew your insurance for less than a year at a time, and a year's insurance plus a year's registration are likely to cost at least a few hundred dollars. Past that, simply starting the car isn't enough. To keep a battery properly charged, you're going to want to drive it around for at least 10-15 minutes (30 is what's recommended after boosting a dead one), and that is also a good idea just to make sure all the moving parts maintain reasonable coverage of the various fluids and don't rust. You can't really drive around for 10-15 minutes without a valid plate or insurance (or at least you shouldn't).

LinkPizza posted...

You could maybe buy one close to the price you sold it for. But you probably dont have that money. Most probably would have used it for the house. So, you are still probably making payments for it when you could have instead kept it And depending on the price of the new one and how long you went without, it may have been cheaper to have just kept the old one

If the person in question needed the money from the sale of the car to afford a house, then they wouldn't have been able to afford a house with a larger lot that would have a driveway anyway.

LinkPizza posted...

Maybe they need more people to get a bigger fleet, but then that means they should be able to properly clean the few cars that they do have, though And even then, they should point people to cars that they have. Its still weird to send people to an empty lot when they asked for a car

Depends how often they're being used. Like a lot of businesses, there's a feedback loop for quality of service: If the cars get used more frequently, that produces more revenue, which pays for more staff that can inspect cars pre-emptively or respond to complaints about dirt/mechanical issues more quickly, which makes cars more pleasant to use and increases their frequency of use. Naturally, there needs to be a front-end investment to keep an acceptable level of service going until that frequency of use takes off, but with lower demand for the service in the first place, that front-end investment isn't likely to pay off. In the same vein, GPS tracking cars to be able to tell people where they actually are instead of directing people to where they're supposed to be and hoping the last driver parked them there costs money, so offering that from the outset instead of after a stable revenue stream has been secured is hard.

I don't disagree that service needs to be better for the industry to succeed, but those are issues that solve themselves if the demand is there to drive usage even when the service standard isn't quite as high as perhaps it ought to be (especially once there's enough demand to stimulate competition).

LinkPizza posted...

Even with good public transportation, you have to build you schedule around it

Not really. If a train comes every five minutes, you just go to the station whenever. That's a concept that's really hard for people who come from areas without reliable public transportation to wrap their heads around, since I know I've always had to check bus schedules whenever I want to take one and few things compare to the abject misery of narrowly missing a bus and having to wait half an hour for the next one, but that's a service standard many cities have been able to very comfortably achieve, as idealistic as you might think it is.

LinkPizza posted...

I wouldnt say beneficial.

All of the things I listed there are objectively beneficial.

LinkPizza posted...

I was saying I wouldnt want to take the risk of building a bunch of houses with no driveways because public transport was suppose to be good, but then the deal fell through That was the risk I was saying I wouldnt take

That's really no different from taking the risk of building a suburb in a manner that relies entirely on a major road to get in and out, then having another suburb built a mile up the same road that adds so much extra congestion that the residents of your suburb now have to spend twice as long going anywhere. No matter what you do, you're relying on infrastructure that's out of your control. At least with planned transit, you can get a contractual obligation from the city that allows you to sue them for damages if the plan falls through and the value of the development tanks as a result.

LinkPizza posted...

I just wont use it as its not good enough for me

This is exactly what I'm talking about: because you've never known how well a proper transit system can work, you've already decided that it's impossible for transit to ever work for you. You've based your opinion entirely off of personal experience and are unable to imagine that it could ever be good enough, despite countless cities elsewhere that have made it good enough and seen massive improvements for doing so.

LinkPizza posted...
And even if it was better, I absolutely wouldnt get on the buses in my city since I know what happens on them

Presuming you're talking about various violent/criminal activities, that tends to improve with more ubiquitous transit use. What you're experiencing now is largely a consequence of buses often being pretty empty (fewer witnesses) and being used almost exclusively by people who can't afford cars (lower SES being pretty strongly correlated with criminal activity). With more witnesses, more socioeconomic diversity, and more buses running (so not everyone gets on the same one), as well as improvements in security services that become possible with greater ridership, those problems get better. As a secondary benefit, when a city is designed such that people can get around even if they can't afford a car, overall SES tends to improve because more people can get to work without spending more than they make at work to do so, and that also improves crime rates.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But it does mean they still retain the right to nuke your criticism or ridicule into the abyss when you use their actual content do it.

Indeed.

Only if you also buy lube and make intense eye contact with the cashier the whole time.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Ironically, if you DID have that aversion, then you wouldn't be replying to my post right now, because I do that all the time!

Literally.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Mainly because I believe in the concept of linguistic drift and evolution of language by usage, which means that if enough people "misuse" a word for long enough, the connotation changes and the usage becomes valid (and new dictionaries will start including the new connotation as an official definition).

The boat on "literally" has long since sailed (Ambrose Bierce was pointing out people used it that way 150 years ago, and modern dictionaries actually include the alternate definition of "literally" used for emphasis), and at this point the people complaining about it are actually the ones in the wrong.

I don't disagree, but I do appreciate the absurdity of having a second word become its own antonym (the first being "cleave," though the "cling to" definition of that word has almost completely left the vernacular), and I personally try to avoid using it as such for precision's sake. I do, however, enjoy saying that "literally" literally doesn't literally mean literally anymore, entirely because I am a silly goose.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Yeah, but then you're pushing up on the fact that you don't actually have any sort of inalienable and innate human right to digitally ignore anyone you want, and online services aren't obligated to provide you with the ability to ignore other users at all.

Well, no, but it's never been a question of upholding rights. It's a question of providing a service people like using enough to use it, and if tweaking how the service is provided will make it more enjoyable for some while taking nothing away from others, suggesting that tweak is a no-brainer.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And to be brutally honest, if you're so bothered by people saying or doing things that are literally too minor to be modded or to get mods in trouble, you might be too thin-skinned to be on the Internet anyway.

I mean, I tend to think that about the majority of people that use the ignore feature in the first place (at least the ones who announce that they're using it, which I recognize are a vocal minority that wants attention for using it and not necessarily representative of all users of the feature), but I recognize that some people find it improves their experience. I just don't think there's much need to exempt mods from it, outside of the rare exception of needing to specifically warn somebody that they're skating on thin ice (though even then, if they aren't able to see that warning because they chose to ignore it and end up getting modded as a result, that's 100% on them).

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Let's be honest, though. This site is coded by monkeys. Even when they introduce the simplest of features they wind up breaking three other things, and almost everything they do is wrong.

If they tried to do something that allowed mods to bypass ignore only under special circumstances, they'd probably break both the ignore feature and the moderation queue entirely.

This is very true.

BADoglick posted...

That seems kinda rude based off one off hand comment I made

To be fair, "my brain injuries didn't affect me the way it's suggested this guy was affected" does suggest that you don't necessarily understand that a history of concussions pretty frequently does lead to issues with anger management and violence. Toss in PO just being a very surly person in general, and you've got you being told off kinda rudely.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Arguably it shouldn't matter - if mods are posting things that are so terrible or annoying that they need to be ignored for it, you should be marking all those posts or complaining about them on Hellhole in an attempt to get them de-modded. If enough people complain (or mark) they'll probably become more of a headache than they're worth.

Arguably, but on the flip side, not wanting to see somebody's posts doesn't necessarily mean they're doing something moddable. If, say, I have a particular aversion to people using "literally" to mean "figuratively" to the point where I would prefer to ignore any users that make a habit of that, that's certainly not something that should warrant de-modding if a mod does it (and if I make a habit of marking it or complaining, I'm likely to end up losing my marking privileges or being modded for those complaints), but not being able to ignore them will impair my ability to enjoy the board. Where the whole point of ignoring users is to make the board more enjoyable, exempting some users from being ignored stands to undermine that.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The assumption is probably that mods can issue verbal warnings or announce things in a topic and therefore you need to be able to see what they're saying in case it's important. But in practice they don't really do that.

Even then, it's easy enough to work around that. Let mods see an indicator for which users have them ignored, then give them some kind of override option for that ignore that allows them to push a post through to the user if needed (with the caveat, of course, that abusing that for harassment purposes would result in de-modding). Alternatively, just make it so ignoring doesn't block mod PM's and use PM's to accomplish that.

BeerOnTap posted...

Or could it be that they simply dont want to participate in the internet the same way you do? Shouldnt they have that right?

They should (and do) have that right, but that right doesn't preclude them from being criticized or ridiculed for doing something that's objectively worse for everyone involved.

LinkPizza posted...

Both of those are actually super easy. You can change the insurance in the app And registering doesnt take long.

You're still looking at a paywall of several hundred dollars to wake the car up again (if it even wakes up, since if it's uninsured and unregistered it's not like you can make a habit of taking it out to charge the battery and shake off the rust), which might not be strictly inconvenient, but definitely makes the prospect less attractive.

LinkPizza posted...

Id rather hold onto it because you never know when thing will suddenly change And it would suck to buy a new car and have payments again (if you were already done with them)

If you sell the car, you can likely buy one in comparable condition for close to what you sold it for, or at least for less than what you'd spend on upkeep and administrative costs plus the sale price. I wouldn't expect anyone to sell a 5-year-old car that they'd finished payments on, then buy a brand new one a couple years later when they decide they need a car again (unless they'd already planned to buy a new car around then, in which case they've still come out on top by selling the old one while it was worth more and not paying to keep it).

LinkPizza posted...

They should already have better service. Maybe if they had somewhat better service, people who use them would fight for them more Maybe If I use a device because I had to, but it sucked, Im not sure how hard Id fight for it. Because maybe a better service will come along

It's the sort of service that kind of already needs people on board to be able to grow. If they've got NIMBYs trying to prevent them from parking in convenient places (which is a major issue) and most people already have their own cars and therefore have no interest in carshares, getting the fleet size and density needed to provide good service is really difficult. Most of America isn't at the point where carshares are going to be able to properly take hold. That point comes when people are able to get around for everyday activities (especially commuting) without a car, and therefore start questioning whether or not it's worthwhile to own and maintain a car just for occasional errands, because that's when carshare services can actually take the place of their cars by being more cost-efficient and convenient. Until then, they're going to struggle.

LinkPizza posted...

That was for the other hypothetical. There were multiple different ones I was working with I was just saying you could have two that are the same size, with only one difference

And I'm not sure why you're bringing up this different hypothetical. It's just another example of what can be accomplished by moving away from car dependency (namely, getting more yard without needing to pay for a larger lot), so while it's a much more individualistic benefit than the others I'm bringing up (increased housing, more affordable housing, more construction jobs, more efficient infrastructure, more profitable land use), it's still supporting my point that suburbs that aren't designed around needing a car are beneficial.

LinkPizza posted...

Im not a developer, so Im not taking that risk

You take those risks whenever you choose where to live. Things may change that make living there worse. You don't necessarily stand to lose money on your investment the way a developer might (though it may cause your property value to go down and make selling and moving more difficult), but either way none of that is unique to transit-centric developments.

LinkPizza posted...

But if I used it and it was good. Id probably fight a little harder for it

This touches on a lot of the core issue. For many Americans, car-dependent city design is the only model they've ever known and they've never thought to question it, accepting the problems they do notice (like traffic congestion, poor roads, and life-threatening danger) as being unavoidable and believing that those deciding how to build cities have concluded that this is actually the best possible model. Recognizing that things can be so much better is entirely a hypothetical exercise for the many, many people that don't have the privilege of being able to travel to a variety of cities and experience a variety of strategies, so it's hard for them to view it through any lens other than "if I didn't have my car I'd be screwed." This is a major part of why I'm so invested in this argument, because without getting so invested it's impossible to share the details of just how profoundly flawed and objectively inferior the car-centric model is, and without getting people to understand that it's impossible to get the political will needed to effect the changes that need to happen. America (and Canada, which suffers from many of the same problems) doesn't have to be as dominated by the automobile as it is, and changing that would make things better for everyone that doesn't own a car company.

Psythik posted...

BotW is one of those "where the f*** do I go" games.

The main story objectives were clearly indicated on the map at all times, and you could very reliably find new shrines to go explore by climbing to a high place and looking around. It was more open-ended than most Zelda games, certainly, but it really wasn't hard to find stuff to do or figure out where you needed to go.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Yes, that fits, but what purpose does that serve? They make a certain number of copies and generate a certain amount of revenue. Or they could make more revenue by selling more copies. Instead they limit their own profits while increasing the profits of scalpers who make it so only those who will pay the most can get a copy. That inflated price doesn't benefit Nintendo.

It mostly serves to increase the likelihood that they sell 100% of the product they produce. Scarcity (real or perceived) drives up demand to the point where the items reliably sell out with no additional marketing or sales projections needed to ensure that. They choose to err on the side of under-producing and miss out on some potential revenue instead of wasting production resources on surplus products.

Now, saying that, not every shortage of Nintendo items is necessarily artificial scarcity. The Wii, for example, sold much, much better than just about anyone predicted and maxed out their production capacity for a long while. Similarly, thanks in no small part to Animal Crossing launching at exactly the right time, there was a huge spike in demand for Switches in early 2020 that was hard to satisfy because of global supply shortages. Their special editions, though? 100% artificial scarcity.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


As much as they might claim that, I find it very hard to believe that they never take down obvious violations that they come across before anyone's had a chance to mark them.

wpot posted...

The DLC was pretty good - it added some challenges that were notably lacking in the main game. Worth it in this instance I think.

The heros path thing in particular was also awesome to let you know which little parts of the world you hadnt looked at yet.

That's been my impression, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Typical backlog problems.

LinkPizza posted...

We dont have those here, nor do people seem to want them Like houses above stores We could have had them, but nobody seems to want that

Actually, they are outright illegal to build in much of the US and Canada. They exist here and there, mostly in older neighbourhoods (many of which actually were designed around transit and later retrofitted to accommodate the emerging obsession with cars), but in a lot of areas zoning laws simply don't allow that kind of medium-density housing/commercial development. It's either massive high-rises or single-family homes, with very little middle ground, which is a huge problem for many reasons (not least of which is the fact that townhouses and other higher-density housing are a lot more affordable than detached houses, which make it much easier for prospective first-time buyers to start building equity instead of pissing their money away on somebody else's mortgage).

LinkPizza posted...

Both registration and insurance are only needed if you are going to take it on the road

If you have to re-register and re-insure your car before taking it out, you've basically eliminated any of the convenience hanging on to the car can provide, and you're generally stuck paying for at least a year at a time when you do that. At that point, you might as well sell it, unless it's a situation like the Covid lockdown and you know your hiatus from driving is only going to be temporary.

LinkPizza posted...

Carshare can be great If your city has them But many places dont And the ones that do dont sound great. Id recommend keeping the vehicle you have over them

Again, that's a combination of low demand due to higher car ownership and active efforts to suppress them. Without that active suppression and with lower car ownership, demand for the service will drive better service. The Not Just Bikes guy mentioned a couple times here did a video on car shares in Amsterdam, and there it's literally just a matter of opening an app, picking out a car that's almost always within a 5-minute walk (you might have to go 10-15 if you want a cargo van or other specialty vehicle), clean, and in good working order, and going on your way. There's no reason it can't be that easy everywhere, it's just a matter of demand for that level of service.

LinkPizza posted...

And it works a lot People buy bigger because they say its bigger sometimes. Even when you can tell how much bigger it actually is Its not that hard a sell Thats why developers use it often Because it works

Honestly, if anything, that'd probably work better on the house without the driveway, since not having a driveway will make the yard look larger. Either way, it's beside the point: developers will price the houses according to what the market will bear, and generally speaking having a larger lot isn't going to increase the sale price linearly.

LinkPizza posted...

You could just have the same size lot where one has a driveway, and one doesnt, though No need to make it bigger if they really want to keep the small lot One would have more yard, where the other had less or none And how much yard someone wants depends on them Having more yard isnt a benefit for everyone Some would actually like less

I'm really not even sure why you're bringing this up. The hypothetical is comparing one lot of a given size to a lot that has the same amount of house and yard, but has to be a bigger lot because of the driveway. A larger lot but has more yard because there's no driveway is entirely irrelevant to the hypothetical.

LinkPizza posted...

True. Im just saying not sure Id want to take that risk beforehand

You already have. It's not something you can ever really escape.

De1eted posted...

I'm not reading all this in detail but the pro-car argument always seems to boil down to "well people need cars because they need them!" and when presented with alternatives "I don't know, I just don't like the way it sounds!"

You've got the gist of it.

jsb0714 posted...
People are assholes. Why the fuck do I want to share a ride with them?

Because it's orders of magnitude safer and less stressful than sharing a road where those assholes are zooming around in a 2-ton metal box. Especially where an impossibly vast majority of other passengers on transit will just ignore you at all times unless you're trying to start trouble with them (in which case, they're probably not the asshole).

Though, for that matter, a non-trivial part of why people are assholes is because they don't share a ride with anyone. Developing a sense of community is hard when everyone spends so much of their lives in isolated metal boxes that keep almost killing each others' occupants. Even if you largely ignore other people as you go about a daily transit commute (as is pretty normal), the simple experience of being around actual people with faces you can see and voices you can hear tends to make it easier to subconsciously recognize people as fellow humans and treat them better than you do if all you see is faceless cars.

LinkPizza posted...

Either foot traffic diminishes or stays the same. But I dont see it growing if theres more public transit

People walk to and from transit stops (and when buses/trains show up frequently enough, you don't have to worry about being delayed by half an hour if you missed the next scheduled one by making a brief detour to shop). High-traffic thoroughfares are also a lot less pleasant to walk along than quieter streets, especially when the question of crossing to check out the other side comes up, and when streets are developed with mixed-use properties (the most common version of this most people think of is having a small shop on the ground floor and 2-5 floors of flats above it, which is a lot easier when you don't need parking somewhere nearby for all of those units) you get foot traffic from people that just live in the neighbourhood. Transit-centric planning promotes all of these things because you don't need to allocate nearly as much space to moving and storing cars.

LinkPizza posted...

I dont think most people will be looking to ditch them, even if they didnt need them all the time, as they could still be used when needed

Leaving a car parked in your driveway isn't free. Cars need regular upkeep and use to keep them in good working order, plus you'll continue to pay for insurance and registration even if you aren't using it. If you rarely use a car, you should very strongly consider getting rid of it in favour of using a carshare or rentals for the occasional time that you do actually need one. The exact calculus there will depend on one's specific situation, but it's well worth trying to do the math to figure out just how much that car you "might need now and then" is actually costing compared to what it would cost to employ a different solution.

LinkPizza posted...

That said, just because people want a house with a driveway doesnt mean theyd be able to get it For example, maybe the family looking at the two houses there could get approved for $400,000 for the no driveway house, but not the $500,000 for the house with one

Then they'd need to go somewhere else. Again, there isn't a version of this where the lot that's cheaper because it has no driveway and is therefore smaller has a driveway to accommodate people that can't afford the lot that is larger and has a driveway. Driveways take more land, and more land costs more money. That's inescapable no matter how much you want somebody car-dependent to be able to afford parking (which is actually a major part of why car-centric development is such a problem, since it means prospective home buyers need enough money to be able to afford lots large enough to accommodate driveways).

That's not to say that it couldn't be possible to put a driveway in to the smaller lot by sacrificing yard space as a post-purchase renovation, but if that's a popular enough option then the developer stands to make even more money by offering even smaller driveway-less lots, and we're back to square one. You're not going to find a way to make it "fair" to people who can't afford the extra land that a driveway requires.

LinkPizza posted...

Just because the only apparent difference is the driveway isnt always going to dissuade people. Chances are that most people arent even going to know that the extra 20% is only the driveway. Unless youre getting a birds eye view, all you know is it has more land and a driveway And the developer most likely isnt going to say that unless they asked. Hell probably say something like, It has a driveway, and 20% more land. Which is true and sounds appealing to many Even if in the end, the driveway is the 20% more land. But they may not say that unless we directly asked about it

It's still going to be a hard sell, especially when the yard doesn't look any bigger than the neighbours'. That's a lot of extra money for very little value.

LinkPizza posted...

Just because its transit-centric doesnt mean you would remove the land, though Many people like having yards Removing the driveway in one thing. Taking the land altogether is another

It's the same amount of yard either way. The only difference in the lot size is that needed to include a driveway, and the driveway takes up all of that difference. This is oversimplifying the geometry somewhat for the sake of an easier hypothetical, since in practice it's not exactly easy to increase a rectangle's size by 20% just by adding an extra rectangle to one corner of it, but the core point is that not needing a driveway enables lots to be smaller while providing the same amount of house and yard. Bringing in hypothetical scenarios where there's no driveway but the lot is the same size isn't really relevant, unless you're looking to provide another benefit of not needing a driveway (that is, that people can get more yard without needing a larger lot).

LinkPizza posted...

Idk. I just know things are sometimes going good, and then fall apart Or the funds end up being not enough Or it doesnt work as well as they thought Or it doesnt work as well as the buyers thought (which means the people building/developing/etc. knew how it would be, but the buyers didnt)

That's true of any model, really. There are a lot of factors that go into deciding where you want to live, and those factors can often change for reasons beyond your control.

Block is an obvious no, since they can't moderate your posts if they can't see them. I don't see why ignore shouldn't be possible, though, provided it doesn't interfere with your ability to see any dispute responses they send you.

LinkPizza posted...

So, if thats the case, I dont think anywhere has adequate coverage, & I also dont see how it would be possible in the places Ive been

And yet plenty of cities (mostly outside of North America) have pulled it off, with no greater population density than any American city.

LinkPizza posted...

The thing is I dont think it will ever work that way. Kind of like how when you tweak something one way, a bunch of stuff changes.

Like what? The problem you're proposing would really only come into play if a transit route runs through something that's expected to grow into a successful commercial distract, but the commercial district actually ends up growing a few blocks over for various other reasons (like a couple well-established businesses doing particularly well and making it more attractive to open similar or complementary businesses next to them than on the transit route). In that case, shifting the transit route a few blocks over to align with the growing district would bring it closer to the higher-demand area, help that area grow even better because it would be more accessible to people outside of cars (remember that it's substantially more likely for people walking past to stop in a shop and buy something than for people driving past), but that shift shouldn't trigger any changes that would prevent the neighbourhood from growing.

LinkPizza posted...

They would want to. But whether they could or not would be different

If they can't go without a car, then they'll need to buy a house with a driveway. The whole idea behind this discussion, though, is the value of designing a neighbourhood around transit such that most people moving there don't actually need cars. Some will, since even the best transit system can't cover absolutely everyone's needs, but if it's billed as being a neighbourhood where cars aren't necessary (and that prospect is becoming increasingly popular with the rise of armchair urbanism and increasing anti-oil sentiment) and where most houses don't have driveways as a result, a good chunk of the people interested in moving there won't have cars (or will be looking to ditch them).

LinkPizza posted...

And most will ask about the price. And the developer isnt going to just say the driveway. Hell most likely explain how it has a lot more land Then go into percentages if they ask. But they stay vague until someone wants specifics

"It has more land" when the only apparent difference is a driveway isn't going to convince many people to drop an extra 20%+ on a house. That's a very sizable amount of money, such that people will want to know just where the extra cost is coming from if there's a cheaper alternative with only one apparent difference.

LinkPizza posted...

More land is more expensive. But you can also have the same amount of land where one has a driveway and one doesnt where theyd be equal

Well, yes, but that's not the point. Having the same size of lot and just not paving 20% of it will save the paving costs for the developer and offer a bit of savings that way, but we're not talking about an identical size plot of land. We're talking about what can happen to a development if it's designed to be transit-centric instead of including parking in every lot, and that means the only change is to remove the land allocated to driveways.

LinkPizza posted...

chances are most developers are going to make houses with driveways since they may not know if a place is going to try to make things public transport friendly.

Generally speaking, transit-centric development happens alongside transit development, including establishing whatever routes or other transit infrastructure is needed usually before the developer even breaks ground on any houses. Really, though, that's no less true of car-centric developments. Those developments need roads, water, power, sewer, and communication lines run to them, which happens in collaboration with the city, and there's always a non-zero risk that somewhere down the line the city will be unable to maintain any of those pieces of infrastructure or something else will change to make living there less enjoyable (the most likely of which is that another car-centric development shows up that relies on the same highways to connect it to the city core, making traffic worse than when this first development was built).

LinkPizza posted...

The bus can get you wherever you need to go, though Its almost always going to be slower, though

Which means it's not adequate coverage.

LinkPizza posted...

The problem is what well-suited for phobic lines could change as some as you start changing stuff

So then you tweak the routes. For buses, that's easy. Less so for trains, but because trains are so permanent you tend not to get aberrations like that. By and large, being close to a useful transit route - regardless of where that route is - is enough to drive up the value of properties and make developing them into commercial/mixed use buildings an attractive prospect.

LinkPizza posted...

Its not the figures, but the percentages Like 20% more land will at the very least sell for 20% more money. Not 9%. And tbh, would probably try to get close to 25%

If you've got two houses next to each other, and one is selling for 400k without a driveway and the other is selling for 500k with one, people are going to want to make the 400k one work instead of spending and extra 100k to buy a driveway, especially if a car isn't strictly necessary. Sure, the developer might want to get more, but that's contingent on people wanting to pay it, and 100k more for just a driveway isn't exactly attractive (unless, again, that driveway is an inescapable necessity).

LinkPizza posted...

Also, some might not want to give up the car, but cant afford the more expensive one

Then they can't afford to live in that development and will need to find a place where they can afford to keep their car. There's no version of this where a property with enough space for a driveway isn't going to be more expensive than a property with an equivalent house and no driveway space. That's just a given. More land=more expensive, even if it doesn't scale perfectly linearly.

At the same time?

papercup posted...

I never actually played the BotW DLC

Nor did I. It crossed my mind that I should get it and replay BotW, since I haven't played it since I first beat it back when it came out and I would like to play the DLC, but with TotK so close and probably going to be a day one buy, I probably won't. More so where I've still got some of Nier Automata left that I would like to finish before starting anything else, I'm thoroughly re-addicted to Factorio, and if I'm replaying anything, it's going to be Xenoblade 3 in hopes of fitting a NG+ playthrough with DLC in before the final DLC comes out. A BotW playthrough isn't exactly high on the list, unfortunately.

Metalsonic66 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/5/1/AAFUswAAEX2L.jpg

I'm honestly not expecting a whole lot from the vehicle crafting as far as my actual gameplay experience goes, but I'm really looking forward to the shenanigans that will inevitably make their way to youtube. BotW already had more than its fair share of stupid videos like that, and I'm fully expecting this to dial them up to 11.

LinkPizza posted...

The thing is we have adequate cover, as well

Adequate coverage for an area (or pair of areas, really) means that somebody going from that area to the second area has an efficient route (meaning, one that's comparable to driving) available to them. it's a matter of covering as many people's needs as possible, not simply making sure *a* bus stops near as many people as possible.

LinkPizza posted...

Its not that easy. The ways those two work would be completely different

The execution is, yeah, but the core philosophy is the same. When retrofitting a city to be more transit-centric, you look for areas that are well-suited to having major lines running through them, run major lines through them, then adjust regulations to encourage development around that (tweak zoning, limit or remove through car traffic, etc.). Either way, you're going between asking "where can people get to easily and is there anything worth getting to there?", and "where are there things worth getting to and can people get there easily?", prioritizing transportation other than cars as the primary method of getting there.

LinkPizza posted...

I guess Seems to high to me still But I also dont like putting stuff off for a few days just to spend less Or what the errands are, or how many errands

It's generally not a bad idea to lump errands together as much as possible even if you are using your own car to do it. You can save a substantial amount of time and gas that way. Personally, it's usually not a matter of deliberately trying to do it that way, it's just a matter of not wanting to do errands after working all day on weekdays and preferring to keep one weekend day open for relaxing, which ends up meaning most things happen on Saturdays. It just gets even more important to plan like that when you're effectively renting a car (carshares being a streamlined form of car rental at their core, though generally a much better experience than trying to work with a rental company) to do it.

LinkPizza posted...

Maybe its because I dont trust certain people, but I dont see the developer selling for that low Or, at least, I dont see him starting at those lower prices

The exact numbers are easy enough to tweak, given their colonic origins, but they're plausible enough for a hypothetical scenario and would scale up pretty evenly if you wanted to deal with bigger figures. Whatever the specifics, the larger lot is going to sell for more, but the fact that literally the only difference is a driveway means that the price difference can't be so large as to cover the entirety of the profit that could be turned from building another 1/5 of a house. Again, this is in a hypothetical scenario where cars aren't needed in the suburb in question, so it's purely a matter of personal preference whether a buyer wants to spend an extra 30, or 40, or 100k just to have a place to park instead of going for something cheaper. That's not a small amount of money, after all, and many would look at the potential savings and - predicated on a culture of recognizing the viability of transit over personal car use - make the choice to give up their car.

Now, such hypothetical suburbs generally aren't a thing in America (which is the problem), so that's a moot point in the real world of home buying. The vast majority of new developments will just automatically have the driveways for every property and place the same, higher price on everything (if anything, getting away with even higher prices because there isn't a driveway-less version that can offer savings).

LinkPizza posted...

Plus, it that case, it goes back to the buyer being screw getting less land for the same price (or more) or house with more land My problem was that it ends up screwing someone (more than it already does, at least) In this case, the developer makes out, and the buyers are screwed

They end up paying more per unit area, but the land that they're missing out on (and would have to pay tens of thousands more for) is literally just the driveway, which in this case they don't actually want (hence they chose not to buy it), so that's not really a problem. At the other extreme, a buyer could buy the whole 120-acre plot and have just one house built on it, and they'd end up paying much less per unit area (10.2 million for the lot, or $85k per acre), but unless they're actually planning to do something with those 120 acres that per-unit bargain isn't particularly helpful.

Think of it like buying bulk food: You could order 500 pounds of rice from a food supply company for substantially less than 250 times what you'd pay for a 2-pound bag at the grocery store, but that's more than you are likely to use any time soon, storing all of that until you did eventually use it would be a pain, and there's a solid chance that a sizable chunk of it would go bad before you could use it. Saving money per unit by buying larger quantities is only really helpful if you can actually use enough of the extra amount to justify the extra total cost. You're not being screwed over by paying more per unit unless the extra amount is useful.

papercup posted...

If your horse was like Torrent in Elden Ring where you can just call it wherever whenever I would ride horses way more.

For that matter, if it were like Epona in OoT, so it's not like there's no precedent for magical horse-calling in the series.

I'm realizing I screwed up something with my math, because 41-30 is not 7. I thought selling 20% more homes at 17% each should be more money, but 1.2*0.83 is actually 0.996, or 0.4% less revenue, and on top of that, the profit margin has to involve looking at the cost per house. Under option A, the cost of each house and its land is $283.3k, while for option B it's $300k, which is only 6% higher than option A. Charging 17% more for something that only costs 6% more is indeed going to yield more profit. Realistically, charging an extra $60k for a driveway and no other changes isn't likely to fly, and the 5-10k to build the driveway should also probably be included in the construction costs, so let's make up some new, slightly more plausible ass-numbers:

• The developer has bought 120 acres of land for $10 million
• Regardless of the lot size, the house built will be identical and cost $200,000, or $205,000 including the cost of a driveway
• Option A: Build 1-acre properties that have no driveway and sell them for $350,000
• Option B: Build 1.2-acre properties that use those extra 0.2 acres to have a driveway and sell them for $380,000 (20% more land for 9% more money)
• We'll ignore the fact that roads will take up some of this space, under the reasoning that the space requirements and cost for roads and other infrastructure will be near-identical either way

Under option A, 120 houses will be built at a cost of $24 million, for a total cost of $34 million for homes and land. These will be sold for a total of $42 million, for a profit of $8 million.

Under option B, 100 houses will be built at a cost of $20.5 million, for a total cost of $30.5 million for homes and land. These will be sold for a total of $38 million, for a profit of $7.5 million.

Now the developer makes an extra half million, plus all those other benefits and the point about building some of each to give people more freedom to choose still stands.

Ogurisama posted...

People should check out the youtube channel not just bikes
That guy does a good job explaining what makes car depend cities a bad idea

He really does. I've been cycling regularly for years and resenting how much I have to work against the design of the city to do so, as well as resenting the car traffic I routinely have to deal with while driving, and he's done an excellent job of putting into words exactly what it is I haven't liked, why the handful of improvements to cycling infrastructure haven't helped (though it's pretty obvious that a handful of 2-3-block bike lanes sprinkled around the city with no semblance of an interconnected network aren't going to be overly useful), and presenting data-backed alternatives that would solve those issues. It helps that he's originally from London, Ontario, and I spent 2 years living there and hating pretty much everything he brings up as a problem with it (rampant stroads, a downtown that's crumbled due to prioritizing through traffic and parking over foot traffic, useless buses... though I don't think I've seen him touch on the level rail crossings that routinely carry kilometres-long freight trains across multiple major traffic arteries in the city's core during rush hour, which nobody likes), so I'm already coming from a very similar perspective.

Count_Drachma posted...

And even if you could convince people to live in cramped, inhumane spaces,

This may surprise you, but there is some middle ground between sprawling suburban estates and 100 square foot soviet block apartments, the vast, vast majority of which doesn't even come close to qualifying as "inhumane" unless you're a prissy little princess who needs to gaze across a giant, useless lawn every day to feel happy (in which case, violins don't come small enough to respond appropriately).

Count_Drachma posted...

you're potentially putting them in dangerous environments where a collapse, accident, or terrorist attack would instantly kill a larger number of people. (Whereas a more dispersed population tends to be safer.)

In 2019, the US had ~686 pedestrian fatalities per million. In 2021, that yielded a total of almost 7500 deaths, or more than double the body count of 9/11. By comparison, in 2019, the Netherlands had 23 pedestrian deaths per million, more than 30 times lower and roughly the same traffic fatality rate as they see for cyclists and drivers (all three of which are lower than the fatality rate for US drivers, let alone other modes). That's not that Dutch people are magically better drivers, because in 1970 (before the Netherlands started making a concerted effort to move away from car-centric city design), the US figure was 257/million and the Dutch was 245. That's a product of Dutch efforts to fix that problem by designing cities around people instead of cars. That "dispersed population" that supposedly keeps everyone safe from terrorists kills more Americans every year than the total number that have died to terrorist attacks in the last three decades (including 9/11, which is an obvious outlier).

(Sources: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-26/u-s-lessons-from-the-dutch-traffic-safety-revolution
https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotlight-Full-Report22)

Designing cities around cars makes them more dangerous for everyone. It just does. There are decades upon decades of evidence supporting this, which people like you handwave away because you've only ever known an America that deep throated GM's propaganda about "the American dream of freedom on wheels." Stahp. Car-centric design doesn't work. It's unsustainable, it's dangerous, it's environmentally damaging, and it doesn't actually help anyone get around cities faster because induced demand just means traffic gets indefinitely worse no matter how many valuable destinations you bulldoze to try fixing it. Creating viable alternatives and designing cities to minimize the need for cars is the only way to improve traffic, and carries with it countless other benefits to health, safety, and the economy. This doesn't mean cars have to go away entirely, just that designing everything around the assumption that everyone will be driving is a terrible idea.

LinkPizza posted...

I disagree. Because of routes, I dont see how it could be faster in most cases, even with bus lanes

It's entirely possible. Countless cities have done exactly that with a combination of buses, trains, and streetcars. You just need routes that are designed properly and zoning that reduces the likelihood that anyone will be living somewhere with inadequate transit coverage.

LinkPizza posted...

I thought we were talking about cities already built.

It works both ways. Ideally, designing around transit from the start works a whole lot better because you then just need to tweak things here and there instead of rebuilding, but you can apply the same principles to new developments as the city grows and try to work them into any redesign opportunities you may have. The core philosophy is the same either way, it's just a difference in execution.

LinkPizza posted...

Carshares seem more expensive (depending on what someone pays for their car) than driving based on what Ive seen online (I think it said $10 an hour plus distance, and $50 for a day) And the ones I always hear about are never good That said, that was a couple years ago, so maybe theyve gotten better From the stuff I heard, many said they werent cleaned enough, or just werent there in som cases Many people were talking about their gripes with them. And trying to figure out which was the best to use But they were apparently all bad Some were good, but only in certain areas, from the sounds of it

Carshares have generally struggled to get a foothold in America. Between most people already having their own cars (which drives down demand significantly and makes it harder for the model to be sustainable) and legislation preventing them from operating to their full potential (because the car lobby likes forcing everyone to own their own car), they haven't been able to take off like they have elsewhere.

Even saying that, though, consider how that cost plays out: If you're only using your car once a week to run a couple errands on the weekend (not unusual if you don't drive to work), that $10/hour turns into ~$20-30 per week, or about $80-120 per month. That's all-inclusive: Gas, maintenance, registration, insurance, and any roadside assistance needs. I spend more than that on insurance alone (part of which is because my girlfriend is still a relatively new driver and that will drop in the next year or two, but that still puts it in perspective). The cost is prohibitively high if you're considering booking one every day to commute, but not if you're just using a car occasionally, which is why it's a viable (even preferable) option for those that don't use a car to commute.

LinkPizza posted...

The Six Flags they built seems to bring in a lot of people on its own

Oh, I can see it working out despite those concerns. I just also understand the concerns.

LinkPizza posted...

Would the developer have to pay more?

Yes, but they make more money in return. Let's look at some numbers, which I will pull out of my ass because ass-numbers are the best kind:

• The developer has bought 120 acres of land for $10 million
• Regardless of the lot size, the house built will be identical and cost $200,000
• Option A: Build 1-acre properties that have no driveway and sell them for $350,000
• Option B: Build 1.2-acre properties that use those extra 0.2 acres to have a driveway and sell them for $410,000 (20% more land for 17% more money)
• We'll ignore the fact that roads will take up some of this space, under the reasoning that the space requirements and cost for roads and other infrastructure will be near-identical either way

Under option A, 120 houses will be built at a cost of $24 million, for a total cost of $34 million for homes and land. These will be sold for a total of $42 million, for a profit of $8 million.

Under option B, 100 houses will be built at a cost of $20 million, for a total cost of $30 million for homes and land. These will be sold for a total of $41 million, for a profit of $7 million.

Option A makes an extra $1 million for the developer, an extra $4 million in construction jobs, and houses an extra 20 families than option B. The loss is in what the buyer pays per acre: $350k per acre in option A and $341.7k in option B, but if they don't need the driveway then the extra $60k they'd have to spend for it is worthless anyway.

In practice, the ideal (for single-family suburbs, which isn't an ideal housing model in the first place, but we'll ignore that for the sake of simplifying the comparison) is a mix of both options, providing larger lots with driveways for those that want it enough to pay for more land, while also providing cheaper homes without a driveway for those that don't need it and would like to save a few bucks. In a car-centric world, however, you can't do that and every property needs that extra 20% more land for a driveway, so all buyers are stuck paying that extra $60k. This means you service fewer houses with the same amount of infrastructure without a commensurate increase in property tax revenue because home value (and therefore property tax) doesn't scale linearly with the amount of land, so the overall infrastructure deficit to house the same number of people goes up.

potdnewb posted...

dont know but violence is violence regardless of what tool is used

Violence that results in dead people is quite notably different from violence that doesn't result in dead people, and there's a pretty strong correlation between the likelihood of dead people and the tools used.

Metalsonic66 posted...

Jen was right TBH

100%.

potdnewb posted...

"An estimated 8 million Australians (41%) have experienced violence (physical and/or sexual) since the age of 15, including: 31% of women and 42% of men who have experienced physical violence. 22% of women and 6.1% of men who have experienced sexual violence."

Not having Australia's age demographics immediately to hand to confirm, I have absolutely no difficulty believing that a majority of living Australians were over 15 in 1990 (meaning they're currently 47+), meaning a substantial portion of that statistic incorporates violence from before gun control was introduced. Not exactly the most useful figure for the point you're trying to make.

LinkPizza posted...

Did one pair shrink?

That's my thought. If they are in fact identical size, style, and colour (I haven't conclusively determined anything, but I find that the same size/style in a different colour sometimes fits differently, especially after I've had them for a while, which likely relates to the prewashing process and how much they shrink after that), you probably just shrunk one.

Not surprising that they were ready ages ago. Artbooks are usually full of concept art, which happens very early in development, and the special edition console's design is pretty much just the logo.

pionear posted...

Was it something Jen said? Didn't get a chance to see it.

She quoted the "it's believed he had mental health issues" line from the article and responded with "he must have been white." Presumably, somebody particularly fragile marked it for being racist, as opposed to being very obvious commentary on how the narrative around mass shooting tends to blame broad demographics when the shooter belongs to a minority (see: the transphobia surrounding that one in Nashville), but infer "mental health issues" or "troubled individuals" when it's a white dude.

potdnewb posted...

mental health is completely separate from gun control

The problem is mentally ill people with guns (at least as pertains to mass shootings). You're never going to be able to fix all the mental illness, so part of addressing this problem has to be controlling people's access to guns on the basis of their mental health. There also needs to be better mental health care, which I think goes without saying, but this idea that there's no point in addressing access to guns while working toward that goal is obviously nonsense.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Presumably the fact that the other major cleaning solution smell is "pine" is related, because pine needles are acidic. So someone somewhere probably figured out if you mix pine needles in water it makes a stronger cleaning fluid as well.

Also pine has natural disinfectant properties. A little while back, a whole bunch of Pine-sol products had to be recalled due to bacterial contamination, but the stuff that was actually made of pine wasn't included in that because bacteria can't grow in it.