Quick Questions XIII: Answers Return

Last time I remember seeing this question, the consensus seemed to be that the more expressive character models in the console version are among the few qualities that make the game worth playing.

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I have a Zowie MP-AM in white. Beautiful mouse! My two critiques would be (in my opinion) the glossy finish feels weird on the palm and the durability is acceptable but not great. The right mouse button on mine lasted about two years (2014-2016). Several friends got Zowie mice when they saw mine and none of theirs are working any more either. My Logitech mice have all lasted 5+ years. (Also the click-latency on the Zowie is not so bad that you can’t adjust to it but it is noticeable. Maybe they’ve fixed that since then?) This was pre-BenQ buyout and I wouldn’t be surprised if BenQ cleaned up Zowie’s act.

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Hmu if you want my Monoprice-branded matte Zowie MP-AM. Switched to vertical mice and haven’t found someone who wants it yet.

the click latency on Zowie mice was cut in half after the BenQ buyout and my mouse is currently 4 years old and still doing fine; no durability faults

I used logitech mice before that and while they were fine it is such a relief to switch to something that doesn’t use those awful drivers

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I haven’t needed drivers for a mouse in, I think, 15 years

I haven’t used a non-Logitech mouse since about 1997, and I haven’t needed any drivers. My current mouse has four thumb buttons and I don’t even use them for anything but “back”.

After using Logitech’s switchable flywheel mouse wheel, I can never go back to those toy-feeling wheels the rest of mousekind has. The ones that feel like pushing a plastic toy car along a grill.

That’s good to hear. I’m ambidextrous and Zowie is maybe the most ambidextrous-friendly company so I am glad that they’ve fixed their QC problems and improved their firmware.

I enjoyed XV for a variety of reasons, in fact. I was really curious about playing a more streamlined, simplified version on switch.

But I just restarted XV on PS4 again bc I’m a dumb idiot who likes bad things

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nothing wrong with wanting to see my boys again

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honestly

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thanks for the mice recommendations
i was going to get a zowie but amazon had a logitech g203 on sale and it seems really nice so far? no drivers required (though even the razer one didn’t require them exactly, you could just set the dpi to something sane and uninstall them)

Overcooked and Overcooked 2 are both on sale for the switch. Is Overcooked 2 twice as good as the first or should I just get the cheaper one?

Overcooked 2 is both the difference between a good game and a great one and not so different that you’d probably want to get it after the first, so I would push you in that direction

Does Overcooked 1 even have online multiplayer?

Is Overcooked 2’s online multiplayer any good w/o friends on your couch?

I missed the conversation by a week but I’ll say that my wife’s nephews (I guess they’re my nephews? I don’t know) like to use the ipad to just watch youtube

and I guess as much as I think kids should be as weird as they want to be it also really troubles me that their parents don’t really seem to understand just how easy it is to get from any average youtube video to The Worst Shit

like they kind of just let them watch it without any supervision or engagement or anything? it bothers me but i don’t really know why

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I hear you. My sister is the same way with her kids. They watch youtube on their devices a lot and she doesn’t really keep track of what exactly they’re watching. I’m like hey what is he watching and she’s like I don’t know spongebob videos I think and I look and he’s watching spongebob videos where the dialog has been dubbed over so the characters are just shouting profanity at each other and stuff and I’m like uhhhh…

To be fair I think they use a kid-only version of the youtube app but like how kid-only is that really? I know she and I are of the generation of kids raised on television and that’s already bad but we shouldn’t let our kids be raised on the internet.

Particularly the internet according to YouTube algorithms, which are tuned to more or less always end up at either paraphilia or hate speech.

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My kids click through Youtube recommends and it doesn’t ever really seem to steer them wrong

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Are they using your account or a device that’s also associated with you? Or even the same IP? That’s going to cause your metadata to affect their recommendations. It’s not surprising that your kids are not getting recommended horrific things – yet. If you see what default YouTube recommendations are – use a clean browser, use a VPN – you’d be horrified. It’s also remarkably easy to tilt the algorithm towards reactionary hell, and remarkably hard to tilt it back. Did you listen to one music track with an “ironic” offensive name? Did you watch a Mortal Kombat Fatalities comp? Did you search for something in the news that’s a culture-wars flashpoint? Just a couple of those data points will swing your recommendations toward gentle alt-right on-boarding videos and then the path is clear.

I know I sound a little tinfoil-hatty here. I’ve just found that, even with my 12ish years of Not Looking At Horrible shit, my account gets recommended alt-righty things semi-often if I don’t clear specific unrelated things from my history (like Brutal DooM, which technically is related, but not for reasons that could be assumed, or could be discovered without digging), and when I’ve browsed anonymously, the default recommendations are oftentimes horrific (even from completely benign things like a Bjork song).

Maybe YouTube alters its recommendations based on VPN usage, or Tor usage, or on my Brooklyn IP when I’m browsing naked. Who knows! The fact that we’re all seeing “different internets” curated by completely opaque algorithms is a large part of what makes this discussion – and many other discussions – so difficult. Both of our points of reference are equally true, as far as we know, because we can’t evaluate what is affecting each of our experiences and what would affect the experience of your kids/my potential future kids.

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They just use my account. More specifically I just never sign out of my account because I’m too lazy. YT seems to understand what “universe” it’s in based on what is clicked. When we navigate to a kid video, it recommends other kid videos exclusively. Many are bad in a qualitative sense but not in a moral sense. On the other hand, any time I click on any of the shit I watch (LPs, HEMA, a couple of “fun” science/philosophy channels, lefty politics stuff) it will occasionally throw me some altright bullshit, even if it’s inapposite to what I’m watching. At least it knows enough to leave my kids alone!