It’s funny. When I saw this last night, I was in such disbelief that I was watching the real trailer that I was nitpicking all the way going “Nah, this looks bad, R* wouldn’t do that. That looks too good for a GTA game” etc until I double-and-triple-checked the links and went “oh”.

Now I’ve had a few hours to digest:

• The buildings and environments look absolutely beautiful
• It seems to be running at 60FPS? Thank goodness
• The characters look… waxy… I will say that black characters look absolutely phenomenal - much better than previous entries
• This whole game sort of feels like “GTA V+”, which makes sense. Unfortunately, I’ve overhyped myself to a level that R* could never achieve. Not really R*'s problem, but still a bummer.
• Looking at some of the social media/news freeze frames, it seems a lot of the satire’s edginess has been toned down a lot. Honestly? Thank goodness. GTA V was nauseating in how much it was trying to be a shock-jockey. However, I hope R* will still have its political leaning. Even if I don’t agree with R*, it (usually) is something of substance and is usually somewhat grown up (with exception of GTA V)
• I would bet money that GTA VI will be delayed to 2026.
• It will be interesting to see how the writing will be now that Dan Houser has left. It seems OK so far.
• Everyone’s faces look so expressive except for the two main characters. They just look kind of robotic

EDIT: One massive thing I forgot - the marketing for this was so stupid. R* kept saying “Upcoming Grand Theft Auto title” as if it wasn’t going to be called “Grand Theft Auto VI” like they called GTA5 “Grand Theft Auto V” and the one before with roman numerals. Like, for goodness sakes guys, get over yourselves. We know it’s going to be called Grand Theft Auto VI.

I don’t think folks realise how much effort and investment Valve has put into making Linux a viable gaming alternative for modern-ish games.

Most distributors use Windows because it is easy to install and setup for gaming. Is it perfect? No. But any vendor can pay Microsoft and get a viable OS for gaming.

Linux will need a lot of custom graphics card drivers and a lot of tweaking (think power as well as graphical features, memory, CPU etc) to get the optimum performance. Most OSes out of the box have OKish performance for gaming, which is OK for any hobbyist but would be a disaster for a consumer product.

And before Valve came along, Proton wasn’t even a thing. Proton is now a thing, and the way Steam utilises it makes it effortless, but it will need a fair bit of custom args to get it working well.

Each of these things separately can be quite painful in its own right, but altogether it would be a headache for any company not well versed in Linux. Not only that, but having to provide customer support for a Linux OS would put the fear in most companies.

I would imagine most vendors would just slap Windows on their machine and be like “you know what to do with this” and let them go nuts.

Backpack: maybe not, but as long as it doesn’t wear off. For example, I got myself an anti-theft laptop backpack (didn’t even realise it was anti-theft when I bought it lol) and it was £25. I’m not going to pretend it has the utmost premium of materials woven into the backpack or anything, but honestly? It’s not absolute crap either and it’s still going one year later. All my other bags have been the same - not the most premium materials (prob. pretty simple stuff) but it does the job and sticks around forever.

Screwdrivers: So I found a ratchetng screwdriver for £21 - which comes with the bits (unlike from what I can see in LTT store, they seem to be sold separately!!!).

As for “professional grade”, I have searched and searched online for an exact definition for what this could even mean for a screwdriver (because the implication is that other screwdrivers are Fischer Price plastic screwdrivers or something, which is absolutely hilarious to me and I kind of wish it was true) and I get wildly varying definitions (and that’s from the ones I could even find. The most I can work out is that it had more random bits - which I think my example provides (with torx etc). If it has something to do with the “materials” of the screwdriver, then I will say I cannot remember a single time in my life when a screwdriver has broke on me. Generally I buy them (no matter how cheap) and I have it for life.

And yes, just because something is cheaper, doesn’t make it better. But just because something is expensive, doesn’t mean it is naturally better too. Clothing and quite frankly the backpack is incredibly subjective, so I can appreciate we don’t see eye-to-eye on it. But the screwdriver? The LTT screwdriver is such blatant markup on standard screwdrivers that it boggles my mind how anyone could defend it. If they were something along the lines of $30-$40, i would think “yeah, they’re expensive, but it’s clear LTT has got to eat and the people who buy it are clearly supporting the channel” but at $70 it’s practically robbery as an artform.

Fun fact: When I was trying to find the words “professional grade” (hint: couldn’t find it) on the screwdriver page for the LTT store, I noticed this disclaimer text in the product description:

NOTE: Bits are a consumable item and will wear or break down over time. Visual wear to the black phosphate coating is normal and expected.

Now, to be fair, this is true with my cheap-o screwdrivers with the interchangeable bits too. However, I didn’t fork out lots of money for the privilege.

I thought you were joking about the screwdriver until I had a check.

Christ alive. I saw the other items you mentioned as well. I’m impressed how they’ve managed to extort their fanbase for generic items.

For what it’s worth, I can get a set of 8 screwdrivers in the UK for £5 (set of 42 for £21), a laptop backpack for £30, and hoodies for ~£30.

About damn time

I was using unhook to do the same thing! Thanks, Google!

I’m pretty sure it started with Lil B “Thank You Based God”.

Lil B was an underground rapper with… varying levels of quality (at least at the time). His thing was calling himself “Based God” as people were calling him “based” as a negative (presumably to mean he was dumb), but thanks to his music and understanding internet culture and turning it in his favour, he managed to turn “based” from something that was negative to a positive.

Then 4chan got ahold of it for Donald Trump’s election and that word has never recovered.

No worries. I’m genuinely relieved you were joking too!!

It’s a joke.

Guys, I’m starting to think this Elon guy isn’t as smart as he claims…

Your avatar gets cat ears (more like extra triangles like cat ears on your avatar)

That’s actually a really good point. I think, ui wise, skype and slack served a different audience. I think skype was about 1-2-1 messages and calls, whereas Slack was about chatting amongst team members.

Teams as a product feels like a really direct competitor to Slack in a way that Skype could never do (at least in the last iteration I used it in).

As for Teams, same here. In my last job I had slack and it was quite pleasant to use. Now at my new(ish) job and we are all forced to use Teams as part of the license. And I guess that is the reason behind EUs decision right there.

I think you got it the other way round - EU are upset that Microsoft used its massive customer base with Office to ship a video conferencing product like Teams for free in order to dominate that market.

I assure you, very few people would actively seek an individual Teams license. I’m very sure companies force their employees to use Teams as it’s part of the license.

Teams, especially when compared to Slack, is incredibly slow and bloated while being entirely lacklustre. Slack is lean and efficient at what it sets out to do (while being pretty expensive).