Eh depends how many factories or even just lines in the factory they’re using to produce them. Cheaper to retool some of the lines than all of them.

Should they have made them all with replaceable batteries in the first place? Yeah.

I doubt they were blindsided by these regulations. Maybe they were hoping to somehow get an exemption?

Either way, fuck them and everyone else making devices with non-replaceable batteries.

Does….does it go back together?

Because petro companies pay off politicians and use a couple unfortunate and totally preventable incidents to make nuclear power a boogeyman even though annual deaths related to petroleum power far outweigh all deaths related to nuclear power?

Okay so I spent some time driving around, and replayed some missions. The actual drifting dynamics feel how I remember, which is to say intuitive and responsive, though a little too forgiving imo. More on the “arcade” side of “simcade”. So overall good. Though I think they re-tuned the grip? Lower hp and generally unmodified cars feel way easier to initiate and hold in a drift. In low hp cars the handbrake used to rob too much of your speed and make your engine bog when you got back on power, so clutch kicking was the move. Now you really don’t need to clutch kick at all except in the super low power cars, and even then it’s usually optional. Also they gave the tofu delivery car way more steering angle, which is a positive imo.

Grip driving is definitely not this games forte. Even when a car is set up for grip, it feels like it wants to be a drift car. I can’t quite get the steering setup to make it not feel like a drift car. Every steering input when gripped feels more like trying to initiate a drift than actually turn.

So making the beginner cars easier to drift does reduce some of the progression that I really enjoyed. Still, I think it’s fun, and I’m going to do some of the new missions that have been added.

I remember there being a major change to the handling like a month after release that was a big improvement, but I haven’t played in several months, so not sure if it’s changed further. But I can play some tomorrow and report back

I miss racing games that had real progression and plot lines. Are there any more recent big games that deliver on this? I had high hopes for the new Assetto Corsa, but sounds like they abandoned a progression system.

JDM: Japanese Drift Master does in a lot of ways, but you can burn through the story pretty fast, though I did still thoroughly enjoy it. The grip driving is kinda jank, and is pretty much unplayable with my wheel. But is a lot of fun to just drift around Japan with a controller in some heavily modified jdm legends

Very strange this doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack. That’s one of the main reasons I daily carry a handheld (psp) these days. It’s as valuable to me as a mp3 player as it is a gaming device.

Yeah they all either look like a scam or cost more than they did new…

If they don’t rerelease it, I’ll probably pick up a used 5800x(t). Still a big upgrade from my 1700

3-5 was pretty normal for a long time, in general and for myself. But I’m sitting at 7 years now, and idk if I’ll build a new one until there’s some kind of crash in prices. Might upgrade the cpu to a 5700x3d though if AMD does actually make more of those

I also picked up a working NES from the curb, on top of a trash can. I assume they left it on top in case anyone wanted it, but still, that thing was an hour away from going to landfill.

We used Kelvin for some stuff when I was an intern in a lab

DQ11 was incredible, excited to see what they do next

Does anyone use rankine outside of university?

Framework catching strays with that thumbnail

Unless they’re super aggressively pro-ai and I just haven’t heard that.

I used to work in IT. At one point we ordered like 100 laptops from Dell, and they pretty much just said lol no. Apparently one of the business teams needed to renegotiate our contract with them or something. It was 3 months before we got any computers from Dell. Warranty replacements or otherwise. We had people with 6 figure salaries sharing laptops. We were stealing desktops from engineering to replace production systems. And no, we couldn’t get the green light to just go to Best Buy and buy some computers or anything like that.

Gotta love corporate efficiency.

I could only imagine BOM getting political if tea, biscuits, or funk were being banned

So that’s what the bay leaf does

Not that I know of. But Brave blocks YouTube ads on iOS. I know brave is somewhat problematic, but options on iOS are limited

Setting looks sick, if it has actually has some rpg elements again I might be in for the first time since 3.

That said, their dlc schemes have been horrific in the past, and I’m sure they’ll be just as bad now. Also I’d be surprised if they can make the racing feel like it matters. I know it’s a simcade kind of game, but the racing is a lame joke compared to LMU, AC, etc.

Tangentially related, shout out to Japanese Drift Master, a drifting simcade. Way lower budget and kinda jank, but I had a lot of fun with it. Super engaging drifting, you actually have to work for upgrades and better cars, the visuals and map are surprisingly sweet for a pretty low budget game, and the story is actually good

Clown core is definitely an experience. But pretty much anything Louis Cole is a part of is fantastic