Am I the only one that wishes these video posts had some text explaination for those of us at work and unable to watch videos in the middle of the office?
How was the original comment condescending? If you take offense to “Have you considered wearing headphones? You can pop an airpod in and listen to the audio without even having the video on your monitor. Or enable captions and just read the video like an article.” then you’re a bigger snowflake than any liberal. Now I’m being condescending on purpose, because every reply I’ve gotten has been idiotic and a waste of my time to read. OP said I can’t watch the video because I’m at work so I offered 2 solutions. I’m so sorry I tried to help! I’ll make sure to ignore anyone asking for help for the rest of my life. Thanks Doug!
Some of us here didn’t grow up in the YouTube generation, where what could be a one minute read has to be turned into a ten minute ad-riddled video with over the top voice acting, “artistic” shots, and useless transitions.
tl;dw A debt trap that’s such a bad deal that you’d be better off financing it with a payday loan. They lie about their terms and their PC specs. They advertise no contracts but absolutely have contracts, and the terms are awful.
A debt trap that’s such a bad deal that you’d be better off financing it with a payday loan
Literally a lower monthly payment, lower total paid and you end up owning a computer if you finance your computer with a predatory payday loan than with this rental program (per GN’s math)
Edit: at $259/mo that’s already $3108/year or 2-3x the cost of a good midrange DIY PC. Also at an incredible 36% interest rate because this hypothetical individual purchased a $3000 computer on a credit card and only pays a bit more than the minimum towards it, that’s only $177/mo on a 24 month loan. Or if you just got a $1500 computer (a pretty dang good computer!) on a 12% APR personal loan (pretty common from banks) you only pay $133/mo for 12 month, own the computer and only pay a total of $1600
The only way to make this rental program look at all good is if you are literally using the computer to make money but have very littlemoney upfront for a decent enough computer to do the same job (basically the “rent it for 1 month and win a fortnite tournament” fantasy one paid promoter suggested) except, oh look, you can buy a laptop from Dell for $520 or less than two months rental cost if you really don’t have the budget and then use that to make your money to fuel your future baller PC purchase. And I can assure you, that business laptop can run Fortnite if that’s your concern, because Fortnite will run on any potato PC if you turn the prettiness down enough.
Edit 2: Also I just found a similar laptop in 1 minute on ebay for $255 to further kill that “spend your allowance to rent a computer for a month to win a fortnite tournament” fantasy
I glanced at their site earlier (but after posting this comment) and it starts at $59/mo for a budget system with a 10th gen i5 and an RTX3050 so probably a $500ish PC when DIYed. And they have about a half dozen tiers above that up to the top $259/mo which is probably a $3000 PC if the parts were current. It’s still a bad deal no matter how you slice it though
And they are using paid influencers to promote said debt trap to those that don’t know any better, particularly children.
Probably the most insidious part of this to me. Seeing those clips of “influencers” pushing the idea of convincing your parents to get you a rental PC. Disgusting.
They’re still pretty good at least here in Asia. The horror stories I hear of Asus support in the US is a might and day difference from what I experienced. Their Taiwan HQ needs to smash some sense into the US office and clean house.
I’d be happy with DRM-free video purchases, but they don’t exist like they do for video games, and even video games aren’t available DRM-free across the board.
It’s not necessarily cheap or convenient, but building a physical collection of Blu-Rays (or DVDs if quality isn’t priority) is something that can’t be taken away.
Add on a compatible Blu-Ray drive to your computer and you can even rip the digital files yourself. It’s taken me a few years, but now I never have to worry if my favorite movie is available when I want to show a friend. It also makes them easy to loan.
I’d very much prefer to not even have them take up shelf space, but it’s the only way that exists to actually own a copy of a movie or TV show. I have ripped a number of them, but if someone made the GOG for movies, I’d move all of my purchases over there.
Unskippable ads, required downloaded updates, region restrictions…
Nah, I’m downloading that fucking car, I’m done giving movie studios chances to be reasonable.
They were good for a bit, but they are a slave to stock value and their finance bros will take every opportunity to squeeze you for revenue, ruining every experience.
Fun thing, even a DVD or Blu-ray is technically licensed by them, and they claim they have the right to revoke it whenever they want. In the case of Blu-ray they have tried to do this via “updates” to the Blu-ray players
I remember complaining on Amazon about the price of digital books when they were still relatively new. They wanted me to pay the same price for a digital book as a physical book. Back then, Amazon still had pretty decent customer service and wrote me back saying that the price for the book wasn’t for literal pages but for the work in making the book, etc. etc.
I told them I understood that but I don’t get the same rights with the digital book as I did with the physical, namely the right to sell the book.
Books, board games, etc. any physical media is technically a license, yes. BUT the copyright holder cannot bar you from doing whatever you want with the physical copy, within the limits of copyright law. Those same rights simply do not exist with your digital copies and, in fact, is often codified within your terms of service that you don’t fucking own anything and they can pull your license at any time.
DVD is next to impossible to revoke while Blu-ray is not. But you can’t revoke Blu-ray licenses to specific people but to regions. I haven’t heard of this happening but if it did, you could, in theory, still play your Blu-ray disks on players that aren’t connected to the internet to receive those updates. That said, I’m like 80% sure that Blu-ray keys have been leaked and you can rip them like DVDs today.
I’m not saying they would or they wouldn’t, but if they would, and I’m not saying they would, they would distribute the keys to the Blu-ray players online so other people could use their rightfully purchased discs in any way they pleased on their own hardware.
I’m not saying you you should or shouldn’t, but if you did, I’ve heard it’s possible to access a backup of the original even if you don’t have an original disc.
I am not saying you can or you can’t, but if you could, and I’m not saying you can, download basically any ebook or audiobook you want from “mouse torrent site”. It’s a private tracker, so you do have to apply for membership, but it’s the best place on the net for books.
I grab audiobooks from there, then pipe them straight from qBittorrent into an Audiobookshelf server so me, my family, and my friends can stream them to any device.
Sony owns Blu Ray tech but not DVD. DVD was industry consortium to prevent a repeat of the VHS and betamax war. Only lasted a generation unfortunately.
Thankfully modders have made good progress of coming closer to emulating servers for it so people can play it offline.
Bad part is Ubisoft actually removed The Crew from some people’s Ubisoft account. Steam versions were safe ironically to be able to download the game to make use of it when Crew community made fix is out.
Is it stealing though? Theft, as it is legally defined, requires depriving the original owner of the thing you are stealing. Stealing a car for example, means the owner cannot drive the car since you have it.
If you could take someone else’s car, but they still have access to their car as if it was never taken, is that really stealing?
You speak of copyright infringement. Some people call it IP theft but in reality it has nothing to do with stealing in the traditional sense of the word (such as stealing a bicycle). You can’t actually steal something that’s still there after you “take it.”
Yeah, some folks don’t want to tinker and do like to play games with DRM that won’t work on Linux. It’s also a little more powerful than the Deck.
I love my deck so much that I broke my tinkering with computers outside of work hours rule in order to set up some Steam remote play boxes (HoloISO based) on mini PCs scattered throughout the house so I don’t have to be next to my gaming rig to play. I don’t really play anything online that has the Windows only DRM so Linux is great for me. But I get it when people have things they want to do and don’t have the time, know how, or desire to fuck with their systems.
What’s the advantage of the mini PCs over a relatively cheap Android TV with the Steam Link app or even an old Steam Link hardware?
What’s the hardware you’re using?
I have been doing local streaming from my gaming PC to devices around tbe house (using mostly Steam and Moonlight) for nearly a decade.
I just find the steam stuff maddeningly buggy (setups that worked a month ago suddenly start having some new issue, usually Steam Input or otherwise controller-related). But when things work, it’s fantastic. Especially for living room gaming with friends (or my kid)
I’ve had exactly one problem using the built in remote play with Steam, and that was a bad update that was put out just a few months ago. I’ve got a few Bee Links with the 680m iGPU (I’m not home to check the model right now) so they were a few hundred bucks apiece which is a huge con for some folks. But that also allows me to play a variety of emulated games and games that aren’t graphically intensive locally if someone is streaming from another room.
So if I have a friend with kids over, we can play BG3 couch co-op in the bedroom or garage while the kids play Mario Kart or Hollow Knight in the living room. That’s worth it for me.
However, cheap Android TV devices work for a lot of people and I’ll never knock them.
It’s got better specs on paper but in practice, my Steam Deck just just about everything without issue, even new games and most games that are “unsupported” (at least as far as I’ve tried).
Some people might also like the layout better or just be fond of Asus as a company from the good old days when they were actually decent.
Ease of use - Ally Graphical capabilities - Ally Battery usage - Steam Deck (because less graphical capabilities) Gaming platforms/launcher availability - Ally Customization and layout - Steam Deck, and it ain’t even close.
I love my Ally and my wife loves my Steam Deck. But the Ally is better in all the ways above. I will say the Steam deck is easier to open up for repairs, but not by much
I was just refuting the bit that it’s not better off the paper. By all the measures above, it’s not “meh” better. The steamdeck could drastically improve by taking some notes in what the Ally does well.
I agree though that Asus isn’t a company I choose to do business with first, they just had the best product for what I was looking for.
Yeah, those two are debatable at best, but the other points sure make a lot of sense, and definitely have value. I say this as a SteamDeck user who never even considered the Ally for myself.
To be fair, that’s the low power Ally with a pretty significant 20% off sale.
I’m not well educated on the power difference, but a quick google search shows the cheaper Ally gets about 60% the benchmarked performance of the more expensive Ally when plugged in. There’s also a significant drop when not plugged in, but less severe (only about a 20% drop in fps). Source
I suppose the real question is how does it compare to a Steam Deck at that price, and if the drop in power is worth the price difference.
They’ve been a shit company for over a decade at least.
I got a laptop for my wife back when we were in college. It developed a problem with the monitor where the screen would look all corrupt after using it for a little bit. My wife, while reciting the prayer of percussive maintenance, would whack it and the problem would go away for a while. So I figured the connection had come loose. No biggie, just reseat it or replace it. The warranty had expired, so I cracked it open to see what was wrong. I reseated the cables in it and it worked… for a bit. Then the problem came back. Eventually we got fed up and bought another one, same model, figuring it was a fluke… It developed the same issue. Come to find out, Asus cheaped out in the ribbon cable for the monitor and installed ones that were too short for the laptop. Looking online, there were a bunch of people complaining about the same thing.
Around the same time as I had gotten her the new laptop, I’d also bought an Asus ZenPad for her to read on. We’ll, that suddenly developed a screen issue too! Almost exactly the same as the laptops! My wife, ever eager to apply kinetic reinforcement, found that twisting the tablet a little bit also fixed the issue. I went online and, sure enough, Asus used cheap cables again! They would last just long enough for the warranty to expire before they’d detach.
I swore to myself I’ll never buy another Asus product as long as I live. If I ever have kids, I’ll disown them if they do too… Fuck these scammers.
I highly doubt they used those cables maliciously knowing they’d go out right when the warranty expired. It was probably a cost thing, and they later realized (too late to fix it) during production sometime that the cables were a warranty issue.
Engineers don’t do thing maliciously with their designs. They pick things based on cost, and probably even raised the cable length as a risk/concern during the design and testing phase, and were overruled by the bean counters.
Even in your defense, you point out that someone at the company made the explict choice to sell devices with defective cabling. At no point did he blame the engineers who designed it for that choice.
That’s a shit company that doesnt deserve anyone’s support, regardless if it was “engineers” or “bean counters” that opted to continue to sell what they knew was a defective product.
The fact that it happened over and over with multiple devices means it’s a culture issue with the company, not a one off mistake.
I’m fine not having this conversation anymore. I just gave a perspective from an engineer. No need to continue shitting on me. I’m not even defending the practice.
I haven’t shit on you at all. Re- read my comments and point out one negative thing I’e said about you or engineers.
Ive only talked about buisness ethics, and the pervasive negatives that come from misleading customers. If you feel that’s a dig on you, some self reflection might be warranted.
People like to claim any big ticket game that doesn’t get like 8/10 or higher is being review bombed. Seems as if people have legit criticisms of the game and it’s pretty fairly reviewed.
Metacritic’s user rating system is just shit. You see the game rated higher than deserved and you can either
give it an honest rating resulting in the total score dropping by 0.01
give it a zero rating and have the score drop by 0.1
Of course most people chose to rate it in a way that has more impact on the total score, so it’s no wonder we see 0/10 and 10/10 more than anything else.
This phenomenon will be even more exaggerated if critics ratings are undeservedly high, as is the case with Starfield.
The reason it’s lower on metacritic is mainly due to the fact that the critics rating is too high, imo. This leads to disappointed players leaving extra bad scores (i.e. 0/10) to offset the total score. In a way that’s review bombing, but only as a reaction to the inflated critics’ reviews (which I often suspect to be bought or bribed).
Usually the Steam reviews are a lot more reliable. As I said, metacritic’s system is shit and encourages rating manipulation.
Because my initial comment was about metacritic and my argument is that metacritic is a bad indicator of review bombing because it actually encourages it
So my question repeats: why mention it as if I’m defending it when I merely correctly stated its a review bomb. Like why are you trying to make that a discussion when it’s not…
I’m not even making it a discussion. You mentioned metacritic in your (now edited) comment and I explained why metacritic’s system actively encourages review bombing. So it’s no wonder you’ll see a decent amount of review bombing there.
I can’t overstate how nice it is having a tiny little Linux gaming PC in your backpack. It can run the majority of games I throw at it, from Cyberpunk 2077 to Stardew Valley. I replaced SteamOS with Bazzite, which is a little better IMO. And for the games I can’t get good performance with, it’s seamless to stream them from my Linux gaming rig. It also obviously works great for ROMs, and while some Switch games are glitchy, most run very well. You don’t have to limit yourself to games on Steam either, since it’s pretty easy these days to run any Windows, MacOS, or Android apps or games on Linux, and Heroic gives you 1-click installs for GOG and Epic game stores.
Battery life is around two and a half hours for a game like Cyberpunk 2077, and as much as 7-8 for something like Stardew Valley.
You could install that, yes. But keep in mind that distros made for the Deck include the game mode for the Deck, as well as Steam Input, which is one of the greatest things Valve has made, allowing you to make complex macros and rebind every part of the Deck, from the buttons to the trackpads or even the gyro, in almost any way you want. Without those things, the Deck is just a PC with a very small screen. Steam Input is what makes many games, even ones that were never meant to be played with a controller, viable on the Deck.
No, game mode is a specific mode made for the Steam Deck and other portables. I believe people have also gotten it to work on the ROG Ally. It replaces the desktop entirely while active, and only Steam games, and games that are added as a shortcut to Steam can be launched. It is not something that is launched from Steam like Big Picture mode, and while it is active, there is no desktop, and no other way to interact with the Deck. Using the desktop normally requires exiting game mode entirely.
I don't have the expertise to check the API, myself, but I've noticed a ton of innocent comments lately all having -1. Mbin shows the upvote and downvote counts separately, so I can see that entire threads are all receiving a single downvote, presumably from a single user. Seems like somebody's being a gremlin and just downvoting everything they see.
I’ve been noticing that ever since I joined Lemmy over a year ago. Feels like people are way more trigger happy with downvotes here. It’s not a big deal though.
I say dumb shit from time to time, especially while drunk, and I’ve noticed after that I tend to have several comments in a row downvoted pretty quickly no matter the subject or thread. Things that are completely unrelated.
I’m not saying that’s what happened here, it’s just a trend I’ve noticed.
I mod for a community that doesn’t align with the interests of a ‘typical’ lemmy user and a lot of our posts get a negative vote or two early in their lifespan. I just assume that the fedi is full of haters lol
I went to your profile expecting to see you modding and commenting on a community about how great it is to subjugate others or something. I forget that some folks hate sports so much that they also don’t want others to enjoy sports.
I stopped playing dota after thousands of hours because I got fed up with the community. I only have a certain amount of time I can game now and it’s frustrating to waste that little bit of time with super toxic and raging teammates. Does it happen in every game? No but it happened enough that I don’t want to risk it.
It looks like they finally are working to fix that, however I transitioned over to a new game - Path of Exile. It’s great, the only person I can blame for mistakes now is myself 😀.
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