Community Post-it Wall

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Apple revealed its new services today. Launching in May is Apple TV Channels which will be a lot like Amazon Prime Channels, where you can subscribe to and watch a number of video streaming services under one app and billing. It's unclear if it will have a fee on top of it like Prime does but it does seem it will offer discounts on some services. It will be available on a number of smart TV platforms, as well as Fire TV and Roku. No Android support though. Also no Hulu, Amazon or Netflix. Though I do believe Hulu offers some integration, just not billing or viewing.

Launching in the Fall is Apple TV+. Which will be a subscription-based streaming service offering original programming from Apple. They've signed up some big names but their budget is also noticeably smaller than others, so I'm not sure what all they are gonna do here to justify a sub fee.

I don't really care for either but if the first one is free, I could see it being useful in some cases. The second one I don't really understand at all. I'm not sure how Apple is gonna get the value needed to make it worthwhile and the reported Billion they've invested in content sounds like it a lot but it's small potatoes compared to Hulu, Netflix and Amazon. Guess it never hurts to have more options though... especially if the focus is on new original content.

Also wanna mention Apple announced a new service called Apple Arcade. It'll be a subscription service that gives you access to a curated selection of over 100 games on iOS, Apple TV and Mac. Kinda like Xbox Game Pass but for mobile.

 

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This is the longest time in a while I've been pretty much exclusively in a Linux distro. Checked Windows once because my SD card reader was slow but turns out it was just slow. Haven't had many issues, an all of them were fixed pretty easily. Things have just been working and thus far have been able to complete every task I needed. Some tasks have even been easier than in Windows. Still, I can't say I'd recommend it to most people and even though it's vastly improved, gaming is still a real issue.

That all said, Linux is pretty amazing for what it is. A huge community project that's come so far and offered for free. It's nice to have a free, open-source computing option.

 

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Anthem is apparently getting worse patch by patch. I've not been keeping up with the numbers but the outrage seems pretty consistent. Kinda concerning for BioWare's future. This was supposed to be the game that turned things around and it seems players are largely always unhappy with it. Lot's of key people have left BioWare over the last 5 or so years, with all these failures gotta wonder if BioWare is even still BioWare anymore. It's a real shame too, BioWare has made some of the greatest RPGs ever released.

 

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Jason Schreier of Kotaku and say what you want about Kotaku as a whole but Jason Schreier's reporting is usually very accurate. He dropped a new article basically painting BioWare as a studio that was in turmoil throughout most of the 6-year Anthem development. Depression and Anxiety were apparently common. They had huge issues with Frostbite the in-house EA engine that all EA studios use. They also struggled a lot with direction and design.

Not gonna go through it all here but wow, it sounds like a real mess and apparently Dragon Age 4 will be using the same codebase. Which may or may not be a good thing... I guess it'll be very important to see how much they can clean up Anthem for an indication of how Dragon Age 4 could go.

I think worse though is BioWare chose not to directly comment and instead put out a PR statement regarding "a recent article". In it, they really didn't deny anything, which gives it all the more credibility. Hopefully, those left can figure out how to fix the environment and get back to making good games so they don't face the axe from EA, I don't think BioWare can survive another bad game at this point.

 

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Having issues with the Amazon Delivery driver dropping packages off at my house. Its now happened over 10 times and it's very annoying because they take a picture for proof of delivery and once someone has shown up asking for their package. I mean fair play, I'd want my package too but I don't want people showing up to my house asking for there packages, nor do I wanna be responsible for other peoples stuff.

I've contacted them a few times now and they "assured me" it'd be fixed, thus far it has not. Tried again today and was a lot more forceful so we'll see. Surprisingly Amazon offered no compensation either, not to sound entitled, just Amazon tends to hand out credits and free prime months for nothing but apparently getting a bunch of packages that aren't yours (we didn't keep any of them), talking to them about it multiple times and even complaining someone showed up at your house? Not a problem.

Dunno what I'm gonna do if it happens again. I pushed really hard this last time in hopes they'd understand the situation but I'm not holding my breath given previous track record. I like the idea Amazon had to take a picture of the delivery as proof but this concept has a huge flaw in showing people where to go when it's misdelivered. In a perfect world it'd be fine, sure but I really really don't want people showing up at my house asking for their package, what if it got stolen off my step? Then what? Maybe they assume I am lying, get angry etc. Also, am I responsible for the package because there is proof it was on my step? Seems like a problem waiting to happen with the wrong person.

I don't like this at all. Amazon needs to rethink this.

 

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Some new supposed leaks have appeared which support Persona 5 Switch. One of them appeared to be the game showing up Best Buy's system. Though it could very well be doctored or even just a mistake, it has happened in the past with other titles. Anyways, a lot of speculation stems from the very real announcement of Persona 5 S, unfortunately, that is literally all we know about Persona 5 S. They said more information will be announced on April 25th, so we'll likely find out then.

 

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Spent the last couple of days with horrible internet issues. Not fun. The tech was surprisingly very good, though he said the issue is part of a larger problem they are working on and I could run into issues again but it does sound like they are very aware and have been working on it all weekend + today. I can't complain too much, my ISP has been very solid for years and years, big issues like these are not common at all in my area.

A new rumour suggests the next Nintendo Direct will be April 11th. I think Reggie's last week is soon so maybe it ties into that... or maybe that is the reasoning someone used to make up the rumour... who knows. It would be nice though. I'm still waiting for more Animal Crossing info.

 

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Respawn's Star Wars game Jedi Fallen Order will be revealed in a stream this Saturday at 2:30 pm Eastern. The stream will be on EA's star wars twitch channel here:

Twitch

Respawn is the developer of Titanfall and the recent hit battle royale, Apex Legends. EA itself describes the game as "a single-player, action-adventure game that tells a new story set shortly after the events of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith." Beyond that, not much is known and as far as I know, no gameplay has leaked either. I'm cautiously optimistic, on one hand, all the EA Star Wars games have pretty much flopped, on the other hand, Respawn is very talented and EA is under pressure from Disney to put out a good game. Should be interesting.

 

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Sadly no Direct tomorrow

Pistons have now secured a playoff spot in the very last game of the season and it's the absolute worst one. RIP. I wish I could be more optimistic but the best player is also very injured. Was an interesting season with lots of ups and downs, definitely wasn't what I hoped and honestly pretty disappointing overall. Still, at least they made it.