My shelf is full of Ubisoft games. I’m playing one right now in fact, Farcry 2.

Thing is, I’ve bought a lot of them based of my love of the series, and the truth is, all the recent one’s have sucked. Farcry 2,3,5, primal, AC black flag, rocksmith 2014, anything splinter cell, ghost recon wildlands, all amazing games.

Farcry 6, AC anything after black flag, breakpoint, the new rocksmith, I hated them all. Not because I want to see a company fail, but because the games just don’t have the mechanics I enjoy.

I’ve spent a lot of money in good faith because ubisoft made some of my favorite titles, but I’m done. The only games I might buy at this point on faith are GTA6, Kingdom come Deliverance 2, and Subnautica 2.

I won’t buy anything ubisoft again until I’ve seen multiple reviews telling me exactly why I’m going to love this one.

No, I work in corporate AV, so I’m buying higher end digital signage for most applications at work.

NEC and Philip’s I’ve been using lately, but they are just the cost effective ones now. LG, Samsung, Sony, all make good displays.

Digital sign usually dont have any smart apps, and if they do you can fully disable them.

They also have all the advanced features you could want. Serial and TCP api, multiple ports of various formats, auto on with sync detect, etc.

For personal use, my last three have been Visio from Costco, and while it has the apps, I just never connect to the internet.

I have seen guides online to open up a display and disable the smart elements, but that seems overkill to me.

One thing to watch for, I’ve heard but haven’t witnessed that many displays are getting way more aggressive about auto connecting to wifi for sharing data and updates. If someone has unsecured wifi near by etc.

Yes and no. This is for parents, so ease of use is a huge factor.

The processors in smart TVs are often crap, plus who know what updates and monitoring they are pushing on you.

With a dedicated media device you only have one company to deal with. Personally, I use my playstation for everything, but for my mom a Sony bluray with the apps works fine.

At the end of the day, they’ll want netflix, amazon, youtube, hbo max, etc, and you get a way better experience with a media player vs smart tv. Sony is a known evil as it were, their hardware is good, and they generally don’t fuck up firmware updates.

If you want a true dumb TV, buy a commercial grade display made for digital signage. Bit more expensive, but designed for 24/7 operation and has none of the smart tv fat.

My advice is never use a smart tv of any kind.

Use a third party device like an apple tv or roku, hell even a bluray player with apps on it.

Then get what ever TV you like and never let it see the internet.

I personally like Visio, but any mid grade display is fine.

Yeah, but bland as the last one was, can you imagine Vance doing the right thing and certifying the election after the shit show on Jan 6th?

I may not be a Pence fan, but he earned a ton of respect from me that day.

Many cars have this with the touch screen, sport mode, eco mode, etc. Some will even learn from your driving behaviour and calibrate to that.

The change is functionally instant, and when the original post talked about mapping it’s really a bunch of graphs and curves that dictate behaviour over the full range of rpm of the engine. You can switch maps on the fly by loading different basically spread sheets into the computer. Factory cars are calibrated for general use and epa standards, but you could make all kinds of special settings for various conditions.

My knowledge of this is dated, haven’t been in the industry since 2000, but the basics haven’t changed.

Older Porsches had a physical button on the floor under the gas pedal that you’d trigger when you floored it, putting it in spaz mode.

The truth is, how you drive has a bigger impact on fuel efficiency than anything else, don’t accelerate aggressively, and stay below 65 mph. Wind drag above 50 mph is by far the greatest impact on fuel efficiency. Internal combustion engines are generally most efficient between 1800 and 2500 rpm, so if you keep your cruising speed there you’ll get the longest range on road trips, but obviously it’ll take that much longer.

It can’t do both at the same time.

By remapping I assume you mean changing the ECU (engine control unit) programming.

Depending on what all it controls, usually fuel injectors and ignition, and what it reads, air pressure, rpm, oxygen, throttle input, the mapping adjusts timing of ignition, and how much fuel is injected based on how fast the engine is spinning, and where the throttle is set.

Most cars from the factory have a very simple mapping based around what most drivers do.

A fancy prototype CRX I had back in the 90s had very custom mapping that meant when I drove mellow, it got about 45 mpg, but had very slow acceleration. If I pushed the throttle past a certian point, it spun up like a bat out of hell, but the fuel economy would plummet.

What you can do with custom mapping is change the way the engine behaves under various conditions and based on the inputs. There is no magic get more out of the engine. Want more power? Eat more fuel and lose economy, and likely not burn off all the fuel so more dirty exhaust. Want more range? Limit power and lose acceleration.

Well, it’s not like RDR2 had a short story, so I’m ok with that.

I suspect they want enough of a solo game to not piss off us old guys, then will quickly pivot to GTA6 online for the cash cow.

If the world and AI are good, I’ll have endless hours causing chaos and jumping motorcycles.

Have had my S8 galaxy since release, and now various apps won’t work on the OS. I’m being forced into buying a new phone at this point.

I’ve gotten it in two flavors.

One is people who are so convinced that life has no meaning without children they feel like they are saving you by pressuring you to have kids.

The other, and far more angry, seem to have had kids because they thought they had too, or had a “happy accident”, and aren’t actually happy about. They see you as the life they could have had.

I have a few times in life, but I’ve always found a new one.

Each time I’d get deep enough into something, tech advancements always made that thing functionally obsolete.

Once again I’m watching my skill set being phased out, but am working on my big last hurrah project right now that I’ve dreamed of for years. Having a great time doing it, but have already started the process of replacing it over the next 18 months.

The one plus side now is that the company I’m with has already invested in my training for the next big thing. I’ve been through it enough times that I don’t feel like I’m losing something or wasted my time.

20 years ago at a trade show, a new module based visual coding tool was introduced in my field which claimed “You’ll never need another programmer”.

Oddly enough, I still have a job.

The tools have gotten better, but I still write code every day because procedural programming is still the best way to do things.

It is just now reaching the point that we can do some small to medium scale projects with plug and play systems, but only with very specific equipment and configurations.

Yeah, I’m in a very niche industry, so moving some place with literally one job in a 100 mile radius had me very nervous.

Cost of living is higher in a large city, but at least I have options.

I have had a much better time w Skyrim mods than FO4 on the PS4 as far as stability goes.

I only have it on PS4, and yes there are lots of mods in the workshop. There are obviously limitations.

Every few months I try installing various mods to make what I want out of it, darker nights, flashlight mod, weapon and armour changes for a more hard core experience, etc, and end up with 15 or so mods installed.

Start a new hardcore mode, get just about past diamond city, and the game invariably starts crashing.

No idea which one or ones are causing the issue, and in the end I get annoyed and go play something else.

This is all fine and good till it’s a conflict between two specific mods. Damn you FO4 on PS4, why you gotta be like that?

Got a job offer that would have required me to move cross country. After a couple months of negotiations and a trip to meet the new team and brain dump on them, the offer came in 15% below the low end of the already wide salary range.

This was a dream job, but the difference between what I expected to get based on my experience and what they offered was like 40%.

Wasn’t in good place financially, and turning down it down was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

Luckily I found something local that is an even better fit at my expected salary a few months later, right as covid hit. I often think about how different my life would be if I’d just taken the job as almost everyone I knew said I should.

Ubisoft made splinter cell, farcry 2, ghost recon, and rocksmith. They did a lot of good things over the years. Problem is, they’ve changed.

Demons souls through Dark Souls 3 I bought, tried, and quickly ended up on my shelf.

Knew they were amazing games, but I just couldn’t figure it out. Always played with a shield, was slow and methodical, and just didn’t get anywhere.

Then I read a post about someone who was having trouble so summoned another player. The summon showed up “Naked with a katana and charged in like a Jedi”.

So I said screw it, and tried a light no shield build. Didnt care how far I got, I just started grinding the early enemies and leveling up. Then it all just sort of clicked.

Got my girlfriend into the games, and we’ve played through them all together, just now finishing on bloodborne.