I don’t know anything about this Ratchet & Clank game, but as far as old mobile tie-ins to existing console franchises go, I remember 2006’s Daxter being really good.

No offence, but accusations like that add exactly nothing to the conversation if they’re correct, and are a fucking shitty thing to do to a person if they’re not. Unless you’ve got really solid receipts, and there’s some important outcome that it would actually affect if true, just don’t fucking do it.

There is no movie in Ba Sing Se.

I understand the argument in favour of dangling commas, but oh gods I hate it. Aesthetically it’s just so awful.

Googling that, it doesn’t look like it. The first one I mentioned was completely rectangular, not an odd shape. It’s the Bandai Digimon toy.

The second one I think may have been Scannerz, which I’m guessing used the same connector as the Digimon toy just because it was what was available. But it’s possible (at an outside chance) that I’m misremembering and it was the D-Scanner, a Digimon-branded equivalent to Scannerz. No useful data was being transferred when connecting the two together, just power.

A third possibility is that there was some third toy I’m forgetting about which is what I was able to connect to the Digimon toy to power it.

I never had a Tamagotchi, but the little rectangular Digimon versions of them were all the rage when I was like 8. I kinda miss those things.

And I recall a year or two later getting another toy…may or may not have been Digimon branded…that had the same connector on the top, but was more rounded in shape. I remember after my battery on one died, holding the two together to try and keep it alive through the power the other one was sending it. Of course it only worked as long as I was physically holding them, and would then reset.

Not even auto-update. Just auto detect updates. Then you go and download it yourself manually.

Auto-update-detection meant that the software was calling out to a remote server, so they updated the TOS to reflect that, and people got upset.

From what I could tell when I looked into it after a comment someone left on [email protected], some people were very upset at the privacy implications of Audacity adding an update detection mechanism (which can be turned off, and which is not included at all in the default build if you build it yourself).

Watched last weekend.

On Nebula? [email protected] if you’re interested.

I recently had cause to use my phone as a clinometer to measure the gradient of a path at various points. Camera bumps made the task take twice as long as it otherwise would have, because I had to record it camera forward, then camera backward, and average the two, just to negate the effect it has on how the phone sits…

I don’t know what I expected when I read “they blew a stop sign”, but this was definitely not it.

I was once playing in a classical concert. In one piece that my instrument wasn’t needed for, I was given the job of controlling the volume knob on the amplifier we used to connect to the keyboard (with organ sounds), so the organist could play a range of dynamics.

I had not turned off my phone.

I got a text during the middle of the concert. Sitting right next to the amplifier.

Same on Dvorak.

Though the custom coder’s Dvorak I use while programming has a dedicated ! key. Shift still needed for : though.

My point was that the dates can stay the same regardless of where you go, even if the stereotypes change.

What it seems like you were saying is that the dates themselves become irrelevant if you leave America. If that’s not what you meant, your comment lacked clarity.

not every Western country was on the same side of WW2, and not all of them had the fighting happen in their territory, which means not all of them were levelled. And not all of them were Marshall planned after.

This isn’t actually relevant to my point. They didn’t have the same experience as other Boomers (or whichever generation) in other countries, but did have a notably different experience from Xers (or whatever) in their own country. Because it may not have been in identical ways, but yes, every western country was affected by WWII in some ways. Even those like my own that never saw conflict at home. So the experience of being born in the immediate aftermath of the war is a handy generation-defining experience, even if what that experience translates into is different for a German compared to a Brit, or to an Australian.

Of course, it’s also fair to say that there’s a much bigger difference between a German born in 1946 and one born in 1963 than there is between two Germans born in 1963 and 1965, even though one case has two “boomers” and the other a boomer and gen X. And in either case, the experience of someone in West Berlin is probably extremely different from someone from Hamburg, from someone born in the small town of Deesdorf. And for someone born to wealthy parents or poor. Generations help categorise, and the rough boundaries we use are roughly useful, but that’s a lot of rough.

You’re a little younger than me (young millennial), and a little older than my sister (old Z). And yeah, there’s definitely a fuzzy border. We grew up with technology, which sounds like a gen Z experience, but that technology was not pervasive and everywhere, it was more like appointment viewing. We had the experience of really noticing the technology improving, which is more millennial. I relate to some of the typical millennial children’s shows, like early Pokemon, Batman TOS, X-Men, and I’m familiar with many more even if I didn’t like them myself (like Rugrats, Hey Arthur, Doug). But the shows that made up more of my core viewing are a little too recent to be called millennial, like Avatar, Kim Possible, and Lilo & Stich the series.

Also, while you had a millennial parent, I did not. Heck, I didn’t even have gen X parents. My old folks are both younger boomers. Which I’m sure introduces its own variable to the equation.

I don’t think the names are particularly relevant, but the idea that people born in those years have done shared experience notably different from other times is—to the extent it can ever be true for any specified dates (which is a very low extent)—fairly consistent across at least western countries and their colonies.

There was a lot left to explain in that dimensional prison

Agree.

using it as a finale to neatly wrap a lot of different plot threads was great

Sort of?

IMO it felt very hamfisted in the way it tried to wrap those plot threads. And it felt like it should have been the culmination of a large number of episodes scattered across multiple seasons. Not a follow-up to a single episode earlier this same season. But if they had spent more time laying the groundwork to explain how the gorn Alien impregnation relates to the Great Cosmic Evil (and why the Great Cosmic Evil is even a relevant theme to explore in this world), then choosing to wrap that all up in a dramatic finale could perhaps have been awesome.

there’s two massive red lasers with the same power as a star beaming in through the balcony and none of the natives there were bothered by it enough to get out of their seats

All the scenes on the planet gave me that sense. It really felt obvious they were acting in front of the Volume. When the main characters just walk up and assault the portal guards, nobody reacts. When they discuss what to do next right there, nobody reacts. When the giant lasers shoot down, nobody reacts.

The planet design was really cool

Agree! I wish we could have explored more about them and their culture, and how it links to the culture of the previous planet the Great Cosmic Evil was on.

It’s interesting that the planet has no warp travel but still makes contact with alien races

I got the sense (sadly, the episode wasn’t interested in exploring these aspects at all) that it’s because they were contacted by the Orions, who don’t follow the Prime Directive.

I’ve gotta be honest, I’m not completely sure what actually happened here. What was actually happening to allow that time-skipping future? It felt like a cross between The Inner Light and All Good Things, but in both of those the cause was pretty clear. Here, it felt like just something that they wanted to insert, so they did.

Which, tbh, is how the whole premise of the episode felt. Why is Batel suddenly magically connected to this Cosmic Evil? The last episode we had with them didn’t really feel like she was especially key to it. Not to mention that using what seemed like a one-off villain to return in the season finale in a way that felt like it would be more appropriate for an established recurring big bad really dragged the episode down.

Pelia’s Dr Who joke was funny, I’ll grant her that. But I really don’t like the idea that Dr Who and Star Trek could be in the same universe. Both have explored far too much of space for me to accept that, for example, The Federation has never encountered the Daleks, and Dr Who himself has never before encountered the Borg. The fact that the joke came from the most insanely irritating character the franchise has ever introduced (and I already hated Neelix enough that I would have thought nobody could take that role off him) certainly didn’t help there. Seriously, wtf are the writers and actor even doing with that character? She might have been ok as a one-off comic guest appearance…which is what she seemed like when she first showed up. Then they just…made her a member of the core cast?

Neither is Australia, and yet…