tl;dr: I use a Note 20 Ultra with stock Samsung ROM because I’m not convinced there’s a good custom or stock ROM that well supports the stylus, but I’m open to suggestions if anyone has one.

My number 1 feature in a phone is having a built in/included stylus. I do a lot of programming stuff which I usually find is easier to plan out ideas for how I want to structure things by drawing it, it’s also easier for writing out math for some of said ideas, when an interesting question comes up, or when I want to show someone the math on how something’s done, and I’m currently learning Japanese so it’s helpful for working on my kana penmanship and learning kanji, especially learning kanji stroke order.

I’ve used other styli in the past and know that palm rejection is pretty much a must have feature. It’s incredibly annoying and cumbersome to hover over your phone to not engage the touchscreen, or have to specifically hold your phone in portrait mode so that your hand is naturally off to the side which doesn’t pair well with how we generally write horizontally. Because of this, I don’t consider dumb styli at all and only really consider powered styli that have an active connection to the phone.

The last time I was searching for a new phone, this requirement (and a few others like expandable storage via microSD card, 5G support, supported my network, etc) ruled out almost every phone on the market save 2. There was some Moto 5G discount model that for some reason had a smart stylus, then the Samsung Note 20 Ultra. I don’t recall the exact reason I didn’t go with the Moto 5G, but I believe it was something like issues with build quality (being a discount model) and the stylus wasn’t very good meaning it would defeat the entire point of getting the phone. So I went with my current Note 20 Ultra.

All of this is to say, I never really considered changing the ROM because I have doubts how well other ROMs would support the stylus. I’ll fully admit it’s not my most used feature on the phone, but there are hundreds of other phones that have a good screen, support fast charging, support Bluetooth, and have expandable storage. My first feature that would significantly rule out options unfortunately rules out almost all options, so I don’t trust that there are many ROMs out there that would even decently support the stylus.

That all being said, I’d be very happy to be proven wrong. I don’t like Samsung’s bloat and would love to move away from a lot of it. The only other Samsung device I own is their galaxy tag trackers which is currently the only reason I’ve logged into a Samsung account on my device otherwise I’d be happy to get rid of it and not give them more information.

There’s also Clone Hero

That’s survivorship bias tainting your nostalgia. We collectively remember the passion poured into games like this but forget all of the the movie tie in games, cereal box games, unplayable tier of poorly made games, and games that were so mediocre to not even fall into the previous categories. Some of them get remembered but often more because of how exceptionally bad they were, such as E.T., Superman 64, Pepsiman, Phillips CDi LoZ, etc.

It’s easy to remember years like 1998 for games like LoZ OoT, Half Life, Spyro, StarCraft, Final Fantasy 7, Goldeneye 007, and DDR. It’s harder to remember the other 158 major titles released that year. While I don’t doubt there were at least some passionate people on the team of most if not every one of those titles, I’d sooner believe many of those titles were just being pushed out the door closer to release than they were passionate works from a team of faithful devs able to fully realize their vision.

I will agree that I think there’s a larger volume of no-passion games today that companies are just churning out to try to make a quick buck, but I think that’s more because it’s easier to do today than it was back in the day. I don’t think it’s because the devs of days past were more passionate about their titles. I will also agree that because of the aforementioned churned out titles that it can be harder to find titles made by truly passionate teams.

Source for my number of games released in 1998, by my own count as I didn’t see one listed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_in_video_games

Maybe I’m missing years of video game discourse but I don’t know what you’re talking about being alone on this hill. I’ve been using VR since the Google Cardboard and as long as you temper your expectations it’s been plenty fine since even all the way back then. The experiences on the Vive and Index are a bit clunky but otherwise I have fun with them every time I use them.

The first generation Pokemon games all used significantly less power to maintain their RAM battery saves than Pokemon Gold, Silver, and Crystal by virtue of not having a real time clock constantly ticking the power away. RBY saves only needed to maintain the power for the save itself and did no additional work on top of that.

Original GSC cartridges would last about 10-15 years, whereas RBY could last 20-30 years. We’re currently in the span of time where many RBY cartridge batteries will be failing but it’s still possible to find ones with functional original saves on batteries just barely holding on.

Many people like to try using physically larger batteries when doing replacements, but most of them don’t realize the batteries aren’t losing charge at the end of those many years because they’re drained and out of power. RBY saves use so little power from the battery in the cartridge that they won’t fully drain it after 30 ish years. Instead the battery saves fail because the batteries themselves fail after 20-30 years. Picking the larger button cell batteries won’t help since they’ll still have the same total lifespan and will still lose charge at almost the same rate as the spare batteries that weren’t installed in your cartridge of choice.

Planning on not buying it, that being said I was likely never going to even if this controversy didn’t happen. I’m apparently part of 3% of Subnautica players on steam who really didn’t care for the game. Gave it a decent chance (7 hours playtime) and talked with several people who adore the game but found many aspects of the game to be overrated, poorly designed, or frustrating. Just about the only thing I can remember honestly enjoying about the game was the aesthetic, which even then was held back by some sometimes downright bad graphics.

Make it a legally binding contract, otherwise don’t bother promising.

Don’t know the second one, but first is 100% Ascendance of a Bookworm. Absolutely love the books and would highly recommend them if you can’t wait for more of the anime.

Took wayyyyy too much scrolling to find a Reigen quote from MP100

Hell yeah, love me some Nichijou! I oughta give it another rewatch with some friends one of these days

I’ve been banned off of Line for the crime of doing literally nothing. I created an account before a trip to Japan so I could add Japanese people I already knew or might meet while there.

I made the account without any significant issues, got the QR code to add a friend then got an unspecified error any time I tried to add them. I tried adding an official account with the same error. I looked it up and saw some suggestions about waiting a few days to try again so I did just that with the same results for any official account or my friends account. My brother made an account and tried to add our friend with the same results, then found that when using my QR code it said the account didn’t exist.

After digging more into it and trying to figure out what was up with Line’s support directly all I could find was an FAQ that said if you got an unspecified error when adding someone then it means your account violated Terms of Service for sending illegal messages, harassing people, etc that type of stuff. Still have yet to figure out how exactly either of us did any of those things before we could send a single message, but I’m sure it’s a very good and logical reason which would surely also explain why Line doesn’t answer my tickets or emails. Surely.

The other thing is that there was simply fewer games back then so you either continue to play the good games you own or you don’t play games. I loved Ocarina of Time, but I’m not going to pretend it was God’s gift to mankind just because I played it tons in my youth. I played it tons in my youth because it was one of the best games that I owned, and even then I had plenty more options than I’m sure this person had on the Atari for good games

Currently playing through Rainworld for the first time, and “where the fuck do I go” has definitely crossed my mind more than a few times.

I will say I’ve mostly been enjoying just exploring, but it has been frustrating at times trying to figure out what to do or where to go when my little in-game helper suddenly decides to play coy at another crossroads.

Tbh I’m in the opposite position. Don’t recall why or how, but I had BoF4 despite not being familiar with the rest of the series and still adore it. I recall once having tried out BoF3 but I didn’t get very far, likely had something else grab my attention so I just dropped BoF3 before giving it a proper chance.

Seeing several of these comments saying several people preferred it over 4 is making me think about giving it another shot.

Better Call Saul. I liked Saul in Breaking Bad and learning more about him and his past was great, but I hated knowing how low he has to be by the end for Breaking Bad to make sense. The higher he climbed in the show, the more of a tragedy it became. Just had to put it down some time near the end of Part 2 when he started doing stuff to his brother.

On the one hand I do still want to know what happens to his brother, but on the other hand I hate watching a car crash I know is about to happen before its shown the first signs of drifting into the wrong lane and (mentally) shouting at the screen to stop making stupid decisions.

Worth mentioning that although I acknowledge Breaking Bad would not really happen at all if not for Walter and his pride, but I still despise how much he lets his pride destroy him over and over again. As such I also don’t particularly care for the later seasons of Breaking Bad, but at least with those I didn’t really know the end so I didn’t know how much it was going to keep going downhill beforehand. Oddly enough for this reason I feel like I may have enjoyed Better Call Saul more before having watched Breaking Bad.

I had heard previously the tariff would be 145% so I guess this is referring to a total price of 245%.

To some extent I can understand since they’re expecting a certain ROI on the console which would include American sales, and therefore if American sales drop because of tariffs they need another way to make up that lost revenue.

That being said I feel like it would be a mistake to make that up by increasing the price of the console for other markets too. In my opinion if American sales drop then they should pivot their focus to other markets until American leadership stabilizes, i.e. stops being an active detriment to the American economy and all the international companies involved in it. Which likely won’t happen until trump/his administration is out of office.

I have a trip to Japan coming up very shortly that I’m looking forward to. Made a few Cafe reservations a little while ago, I’ll be riding with a drift instructor around a few tracks at Ebisu Circuit, planning on visiting Nara to see the deer, going to a few PokeCenters, and visiting a bunch of second hand stores for books, games, and merch.