The Smartphone Market is all the Proof You Need that Consolidation Stifles Innovation

On Friday, Extreme Tech reported that “Someone Found Essential’s Super-Skinny Canceled Android Phone on eBay”, and it reminded me of a conversation we had just had on the most recent episode of the Basement Radio Arcade Podcast. We were discussing market consolidation, and the difficulties in the notion of taking mainstream gaming…FPS’s, RTS’, JRPGs….and moving them big-time to phones and tablets or mobile devices in general. I mentioned, having been a smartphone and tablet reviewer for some number of years, how much the market had consolidated since the mid-2000-teens. Essential is one of those competitors that has gone by the wayside. I had an Essential Phone, the PH-1. It’s still around here I am pretty sure in the old smartphone box. Yeah, it was actually, interestingly enough, right on top.

It was such a great phone and represented an apex of time for the Android faithful. It was the time when the market allowed for the mid-priced flagship. A time that has since faded into nothing but memory, partially fueled by Google dropping the Nexus program and moving its own first-party phone up-market. It was a time when you could score a $500 phone with the latest specs…the latest Qualcomm SnapDragon flagship chip. Better RAM amounts than the stingy big corpos would give you with their carrier-branded and aligned phones. You might not get all of the software bells and whistles. The camera might not be the best at launch, because, ya know, those phones didn’t have to compete head-to-head with the iPhone and latest Samsung Galaxy.

The Essential was just such as phone. Circa 2017, the phone provided 128GB of RAM with no microSD card slot, a 5.71″ screen at 1312 X 2560 pixels, a 13MP 4K camera, and 4GB of RAM along with the Snapdragon 835 processor. Its 3040 mAh battery provided just north of 8 hours of battery life.

It was one of the first mainstream dual-antennae phones in the US, able to run on both AT&T and T-Mobile (GSM networks), as well as Sprint and Verizon (CDMA networks). The screen resolution and size combined for a 504ppi pixel density plastered on its IPS LCD screen. It already had a USB-C port for charging. And its fingerprint reader was located on the central backplane axis, about 1/4 of the way down the phone from the top edge.

The phone in many ways was ahead of its time, and launched at a price of $699 in the US off-contract. But that price was quickly discounted to $499 and could easily be found wide and often discounted even further. It was an amazing time when an Android user could afford to just buy a phone at full price rather than have it subsidized through the carrier. It’s sad day today when in the US we pretty much only have the iPhone and a few Galaxy variants to choose from. I fondly remember the HTC, Windows Phones, Blackberry, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Palm Treo 650 and Pre handsets…yes, I know those are a mix of manufacturers and OS’s. But even within Android, we have seen a drop-off in the availability of Asus flagship phones, Sony Xperia, ZTE, Huawei, and so forth. But the point remains that we used to have a bevy of choices in the US and the carriers have slowly squeezed that freedom out of the market. It used to be fun to be a phone reviewer. But these days it is quite honestly boring AF.

OK. Not all of it can be entirely attributed to the carriers. Some of it was natural market attrition. Some of it has been the enforcement of regulatory policies by government, backed by the allusion to threats to their national security. Some of it was Andy Rubin and Essential themselves.

But there is no question that the carriers and imperialist capitalism played their part in it. And unlike the Europeans and other peoples of the world, our carriers and our tariff regime do not support us getting a hold of Honor, Oppo, Poco, and Xiaomi phones.

There’s little for me to do other than lament this heyday as a time gone past. It was great. It was exciting. It was interesting. It allowed for a subject that could be dove into deep for the technically curious. Now it is not much more interesting than the next Lego set. It’s sad. And proof that consolidation does stifle innovation. Let’s hope this time comes back. And let’s hope we don’t allow it to happen in other spaces, such as video games.

I’m a PC Main. Will I Ever Play Mods? Unlikely

A lot of ado has been making the rounds about how a significant chunk of the CD Projekt Red’s dev team on CyberPunk 2 is made up of former mod makers. Developers who got their start diving deep into the underbelly of the tools and sometimes the code itself of their favorite loves in gaming. And discovered via that path a route into actually making games for a living. And despite all of the hallelujah’s that the PC platform curates for its flexibility in accommodating modifications of games…tailoring those experiences or in some cases expanding on them…I personally find mods uninteresting.

As much of a PC main as I am, people often assume that I am in on the mod culture. How could anyone who shouts the values of the PC regime, with its winning characteristic being choice and the power in that freedom that it grants to its users, possibly be uninterested in mods? Most people think that I am one of these gaming blacksmiths whose install of a given Bethesda or CD Projeckt Red title takes hours to install and configure b/c it is packed with dozens of mods. I see people living that gaming lifestyle and I put them in the same category as the people who can’t sleep at night without meticulously hiding every single cable in their case. Like the nuts who used to put sound-absorbing foam in their cases to reduce noise. All that stuff is way overly.

Don’t get me wrong. I render no judgement on those people who gain joy from aligning with that ilk. But it’s not in my interest-lane. One, I do not finish a lot of games. So I am unlikely to be so inclined to do a second run-through in the first place. That also makes it unlikely for me to expend the effort figuring out what the best mods are to incorporate into an install.

Regardless of the fact that it takes me forever when I do finish a game, I am insistent, in one of my vectors of OCD, to play it as originally intended by the creators. Much like I am always most enamored with a song the way it was recorded, not the way the artist performs it live with a variant arrangement order and riff. And how the movies I am in love with I fell in love with as the theatrical release, not the extended version. And not the one Lucas come back and put his fingers all back through the dough that had already been kneaded.

I do use ModStation on World of Warships. It is almost a necessity to bring the UI up from being anything less than barebones. For some legacy games, I have also used patches / mods that just made them playable and stable. I did that with Falcon 4.0 and the original Max Payne, once it had past on from prime time. I’ve never been enamored with UGC, either. I can’t be bothered to go out of my way and spelunk Forge maps in Halo the MCC or Infinite. I’m only going to play those maps because 343 inserts them directly into the Team Slayer playlist or some other mode. I guess when you consider packs made by other developers…such as aircraft and airports for Microsoft Flight Simulator…those things are on the menu. Mainly, I am just not one to spend a lot of time trying to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to UGC. It needs to be curated, and I am more prone to trust something I pay for.

Still, I am very happy that millions of gamers have come to love the mod lifestyle. And I’ll never say never. Eventually I’ll get down to playing fewer games. And eventually just a handful total. Maybe that will be the time to go beyond retail and what the original devs provide.

But until then, I’ll stick with stock mostly, with a small group of exceptions.

Drafted on an iPad 10th Generation 256GB w/Pages

GameWatch Update – S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

One of my most anticipated games from the XBox SGF Showcase, Stalker 2 looks fit to launch on September 5th, 2024. It’ll be a busy release slate that it pops its heads out for, being preceded by the Labor Day weekend release of Ubisoft’s Star Wars: Outlaws. Will it be enough to capture the limelight, or will Massive Entertainment’s game, supported by the breadth, width, and depth of the Star Wars license, still have the gaming market in a chokehold?

I’m not sure. Massive Entertainment is one of my top 5 favorite studios. But the Stalker IP and the history of GSC Game World holds a special place in my heart. I won’t go into that whole history, as I’ve written and podcasted about it multiple times over the past few years. If you need a refresher, one of the best articles written on the topic is Polygon’s bit from 2013 found here. So, with only 61 days left to (fingers crossed) the release date, let’s get caught up.

There have been playable builds of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl both at Gamescom last year and again at Summer Game Fest this year. Reports from those hands-on sessions with the game have been positive. You can catch one of the two trailers released by GSC Game World from last month below:

The game is being built on Unreal Engine 5, which has been the basis for games that have experienced highs and lows in their critical reception. But Digital Foundry thinks that the tech and game industry developers’ handling of it may be starting to hit it’s stride

GSC Game World, despite the adversity it has been experiencing in working throughout the War on Ukraine, also managed to port S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy to both gen 8 and gen 9 XBox and PlayStation consoles this March. The collection, which features S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (the titles are also sold separately) , was released on March 6th, and sells in both stores for $40 currently. It marks the first time those titles have come to console. And it is no small feat that the studio pulled this off while working on the new title.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has experienced an amazing number of controversies and multiple weird-doms have surrounded GSC Game World itself. This includes the studio in its original incarnation being shuttered by its owner with no notice and no explanation in 2011, the exodus of the studio devs to multiple points of expatriation around the industry, former devs trying to pull a scam on Kickstarter based on the Stalker pedigree, and the aforementioned war itself. The name of the new game (as well as various points of reference in the port of the legacy collection) has been changed to reflect the Ukrainian spelling, vice the Russian. An additional shaking of the fist in that direction and an assertion of ownership over the studio’s identity.

While the game is launching on XBox Game Pass, and is an XBox console exclusive (it is also releasing on PC), that exclusivity is timed, as revealed in court documents from 2021 in the Epic vs Apple hearing. Those deals showed a three-month exclusivity window.

While I would not get my hopes up about the game landing on the PlayStation 5, and not at all about it being on PS4 (it is only coming to gen 9 Xbox consoles), it is something to consider as a possibility.

GSC Game World had about 400 developers as of 5 months ago. But it’s unclear to me if they were all relocated to Prague; 170 of them were still left in Ukraine when the rest evacuated, and some have been killed. It is nothing less than a feat of amazing will, determination, and perseverance that this game will complete its development. It will be enough for me to see it land on XBox and PC. After that, this team deserves a rest.

While multiplayer was announced to come in a post-launch update, that was back in 2021, when the game was still targeting a 2022 release. I have not see any further updates since then, and believe at a minimum it would be much later, if ever. For now, here’s a second trailer that was also released as an update from last month:

Gamer’s Log, Gamerdate 77963.3

Day one of the summer vacation. Admittedly, one that should have started in earnest much sooner, but a sports injury had me laid up and on lock down for the bulk of what summer there has been so far. 

But it’s been a good amount of time to get some earnest hard-work done on gaming. A good chunk of that has been spent in Vanilla Software’s Unicorn Overlord. It is first and foremost a game that has caught me by surprise in its JRPG roots not causing me to do an immediate nope. But further than that, I have also been pleasantly surprised that it has proven to be a capable and intelligent strategy game. I was at first skeptical of its auto-battler nature, and was ready to walk right the eff away based on that. But the depth of the game…it is not anything if not a game of strategic theatre maneuvere. It evokes images of kings and generals and nobility pushing statuettes around on room-sized strategic maps on the floor of a castle. The game starts basic and scales quite well, neither overwhelming the player but also not letting them get a pass by routinely employing the same strategies on maps over and over. The gameplay lends itself well to taking various strategic approaches….chokepoint management, rear-echelon defense, covering a unit’s retreat, amassing overwhelming force…the battle maps are truly your playground. And while, yes, I would prefer a keyboard and mouse, I cannot find much fault with how well Vanillaware has done with implementing game controller input.

In and amongst these sessions, I have also been playing World of Warships and War Thunder. I won’t go into detail tonight. But I will say that I was very anxious in expecting during this playlist that I would forget things I had learned or re-learned (in War Thunder I am playing Naval Battles) and have to knock cobwebs off each time I left one for a couple of days and then came back. I have been away from World of Warships for a while, but have 137 hours in that game. I have like 1.5 hours in War Thunder, and did not originally onboard in Naval Battles; I was trying the aircraft the one time I’d checked into the game. That all being said, I acclimated quickly and have been having a blast going back and forth between the two.

I watched Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. That DC Animated 75th Anniversary Collection continues to never disappoint. Finally bit the bullet and started my round of upgrading my tablets. Started at the low end by picking up the iPad 10th Gen 256GB since Apple dropped the price in the last round of iPad announcements.

[written on the Apple iPad 10th Gen]

GameWatch Update – Steel Seed

Steel Seed caught a lot of people’s eyes from the 2024 PC Gaming Show due to its traversal and combat mechanics, which remind many of a mix between Jedi Fallen Order/Survivor and Uncharted. But what got my attention was the level design. Clips we have seen have protagonist Zoe traversing through a hulking steamworks facility that features a parkour gamer’s playground of slides, wall climbs, runs…it all comes off as a bit reminiscent of TitanFall in fact.

You can check out the trailer shown during the June 9th event, which aired after the XBox showcase, below

Ad copy from the Epic Games Store (EGS) and Steam let us know much of what there is on the street about the title:

“Steel Seed is a single-player stealth-action adventure game set in a dark sci-fi world. Join Zoe and her flying drone companion, Koby, as they navigate a hostile underground facility run by AIs. Experience the immersive narrative, agile parkour movements, and stealth-based techniques inspired by games like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Steel Seed is developed by Storm in a Teacup and published by ESDigital Games, set to release in 2024. Discover the key to humanity’s survival in this gripping adventure!”

and

“Developer Storm in a Teacup’s Steel Seed blends stealth and action, and the new PC Gaming Show trailer gave us a good look at its bleak sci-fi setting. The game stars Zoe and her flying drone KOBY, as they explore an underground facility overrun by troublesome robots. The blend of action and stealth allows Zoe to engage directly or avoid some fights altogether as she explores deeper and saves humanity—while hopefully retaining her own.”

The script was worked on and edited by BAFTA-winning writer Martin Korda, although he is not credited as the original writer. He has worked on the FIFA game campaign stories, Destiny 2 and Destiny: the Taken King, as well as Need for Speed: Rivals, and No Man’s Sky, and his work helped The Movies, the business simulation game from Peter Molyneaux and Lionhead Studios, win a BAFTA.

There is a demo for the game that appears to still be available via EGS. While it is spoken about on the main Steam listing for the game, the demo did not still appear to be available for download there, although I may have missed it. The game is slated to launch this year on Steam, Epic, PS5, and XBox Series X|S, although nothing tighter for a release date has been given other than 2024. I did not get to play the demo, but there is video of the gameplay posted here:

The game’s development studio, Storm in a Teacup, or STC, was founded in 2013 by its current CEO, Carlo Ivo Alimo Bianchi. Bianchi is a former CG Artist and Lighting Lead at Ubisoft and IO Interactive and has worked on Crysis 3 and Batman: Arkham Origins. The team works out of an old Roman Villa, called Stormville, near the western coast of Rome.

Most of STCs earlier games were only met with lukewarm reception, but their latest, Close to the Sun, has slightly better but still mixed results across the landscape, with a 66 overall Metascore, but 75% on Steam from a small pool of players.

Based on information I could find, my guess is that the team may be about 20 – 25 developers.

    GameWatch Update – Starship Troopers: Extermination

    I added Starship Troopers: Extermination (commonly referred to by its players as STE) to my watchlist after seeing the presentation for the 0.8.0 update during the Future Games Show. The Future Games Show was Saturday evening (eastern time) after the main Summer Game Fest (SGF) keynote of Friday, June 7th. I had a total of 8 games that made my list out of the show. STE was number 7 and it came up for revisit and check-in today. You can peep the highlights here in the YouTube cut-out of that part of FGS

    It just so happens that the 0.8.0 update goes live tomorrow, 10PM PT / 1PM ET. The game, which launched into Early Access on Steam on May 17, 2023, currently has mixed reviews from the Steam user community (51%). The main culprit behind this is apparently the team’s decision to migrate from UE4 to UE5 sometime last fall. Prior to that the game enjoyed much better reception, with overall Steam Community reviews sitting at Very Positive (86%). The game remains in Early Access, which was originally projected to only last for a year. While we have crept past that, the development studio, Offworld Games, did announce at SGF/FGS that STE was leaving Early Access and launching on multiple platforms (PC via Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S) on October 11, 2024. The game is also available in Early Access on the Epic Games Store (EGS). I would assume it will leave early access there in October, too, but I do not see mention of that on the EGS store page, and I have not found it corroborated in writing at any reputable outlet.

    STE is developed by Offworld, more formally incorporated as Offworld Industries. The company has been involved in some controversy for its role in defense contracting, investment money from Tencent, and ousting its CEO to be replaced by someone with extensive monetization experience in the mobile industry. Take that for what you will. You can take a look at their roadmap here.

    There was a more recent update posted, that seems to have since been taken down, so what might be in the air since they decided to go with a multiplatform release this fall I am not sure. But General Rico himself has been enlisted to lead the troops in the single-player campaign which is set to be part of the 1.0 release this fall. That mode will offer 25 missions, and will have some PvE missions to-boot, which I guess means co-op is planned as a feature. It will eventually gain expanded DLC in the single-player campaign after the initial release.

    The game is currently unsupported on Steam Deck, but maybe at least the single-player campaign will eventually be playable on it sometime after the 1.0 launch. Update 0.7.1 went live on May 6th, 2024. Update 0.8.0 introduces:

    • Weak Points – where most bugs will have a weak point, they will all have an armor rating, and parts of their body where there is no armor and they are vulnerable. All weapons will have an Armor Penetration rating. All of this with the intent to add depth to the shooting mechanics of the game
    • Introduces a new planet, Planet X-11 – “set in the Tibannis system within an Arachnid Quarantine Zone”
    • Adds FMJ and Hollow Point ammo types
    • Adds the Carnage system, where bug bodies do not die and therefore dead bugs can be used to climb on top of. But, also, the enemy can use those same dead bug bodies to surmount obstacles and get over base walls

    Gamer’s Log, Gamerdate 77808.7

    Recorded the latest episode of TAG (Talking About Games) last Friday. Episode #10 covered the recent departure of Horizon Call of the Mountain’s Game Director, and I covered the lineage of Firesprite and their relationship with Sony Interactive Entertainment. Additional topics included a Star Wars competitive multiplayer title that has been flying under the radar but is supposedly due to release this summer. The show rounded out with a discussion about XBox’ upcoming summer showcase, and the beginnings of a multi-part thread where I cover the report card of all of the games Ubisoft put on the stage last year at their summer show as part of the prep for this year’s event. My hopes and plans are to now make TAG a more regular thing, targeting a show every four days. So the next episode will be this coming Tuesday morning, 07 May.

    I’ve posted on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III Season 3 Let’s Play and have one other recorded that I need to post. My slate has a total of nine sessions that I want to do over the next 3 weeks. Two down, seven to go. These sessions are being recorded on the 377 stack, my build running an Alder lake Core i7-12700KF, an MSI RTX 4070 Super, and 64GB of RAM. And using the Elgato Wave 3 mic, Elgato Wave Arm, Elgato Pop Filter & Shock Mount, and Stream Deck XL.

    And that’s also pretty much all I’ve been playing. Most nights this past week I’ve gotten started so late gaming that the only thing I had the energy for was CoD. As I turned the corner into the weekend, though, I did get some time to get back to Final Fantasy VII Remake on the PS5. It just isn’t my kind of game, but I feel it is important enough of a title for my to grit my teeth and bear it to trudge through more of it. The combat is interesting enough for me; let’s call it a 78%. Occasionally I find it hits, usually when I am fighting the regular troops and I feel like I have a chance to pull off some neat maneuvers that reward you with applicable eye-candy. Boss battles are largely an exercise in frustration that I feel like I survive but don’t necessarily enjoy. But I guess this is what I have to get through to also play Rebirth.

    I also hit a trigger to make sure I am playing my physical games, and pulled out F1 22 for the PS5. I setup the Thrustmaster T300RS Gran Turismo Edition, and let me tell you. Sublime. The mark of a game or, in this case, a series, that has woven itself into my DNA, is one that you can take a long layoff from, and after coming back, with some minimal amount of dialing in settings and tweaking the cfg, fits like a glove. Apparently, I bought this installment in the series, started my season, and then put the disc in a box. SO I picked up with Round 1, practice session 2 at Bahrain International Circuit. Ran into the wall the first time out of the paddock. Spun the car out the 2nd time after restarting the session. Ran with the Maximum Top Speed setup, in PS2, then the Balanced in PS3, and kept the Balanced for Qualifying. Got on Pole. Then went on to place 2nd, after getting into Leclerc and damaging my front left endplate in lap 3. Too early to pit, I stayed on track until my designating pitting +1 lap (I had race length set for 14 laps). I was longer in the pits than planned after punching my turn-in too early. Got back on in 15th, but then moved up to tenth when the other half of the field pitted the next lap. From there I fought back to 4th, where I had to out-fight Lewis Hamilton to get to 3rd and then pulled a heroic outbreaking of Sainz to come in behind Verstappen. It was a great first outing with the new team.

    I changed up livery colors after investing in the marketing department before I proceeded on to Round 2 at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Can’t wait for the next session.

    Gamer’s Log, Gamerdate 77788.3

    Planned out the next few weeks of Let’s Play videos to shoot. The plan is super-simple, but gives me a production outlook for the next three weeks. Designated studio hardware for that setup. I’ll be over on Battlestation 2; the box that I built in early 2022, powered by an Intel Alder Lake Core i7. The GPU has recently been upgraded to an MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Super. Still working through deploying the studio gear, but I’ve figured out how to rig the Sony Alpha a6000 Mirrorless ICL camera to the Elgato Prompter, and deployed and connected the camera to the Blackmagic ATEM Mini Pro.

    I put in the extra hour sesh of CoD I couldn’t stay up last night to finish. Played the Small Maps Mosh Pit and finished max-levelling the Fennec SMG. Had some great matches, including one where I was tops in TDM. Got a lot of work done on the 9mm handgun, too. After that, it was over to the XBox to play some Assetto Corsa Competizione. I’ve got a lot of work to put in on that one to “git gud”. But today was a good day and lots of improvements were made. That McLaren is squirrelly AF. With that done, I folded away the Thrustmaster TMX and Diwingus fixed stand and stowed them for another day. With that arc complete, I plan to pull Warframe (PC) and Resident Evil 5 Remake (PS5) into the running rotation.

    Got two episodes of Doom Patrol, Season 4 in too. Not a bad day of nerdery.

    Gamer’s Log – Gamerdate 77758.3

    Gamer anxiety and guilt kicked in once again. And so once again, I changed up the algorithm that drives what I play each day and night. I won’t get into its complexity. The aforementioned personality defects combined with OCD lead to a quite overly-complicated ruleset. Let’s skate by that and discuss what went down. I continued my journey through Granblue Fantasy: Relink. And while there is a lot I like about this JRPG (this coming from someone for which just a short time ago, that genre was one of my “nopes”), it suffers from a similar affliction as the Ace Combat series. Battles that last too long; overstay their welcome. Parts one and two of the fight I engaged in tonight combined for a total of 50 minutes; 20 for the first part, 30 for the boss battle. In between, there’s nowhere to make a manual save. And both this game and Unicorn Overlord also have long interstitial periods between campaign chapters. I normally want to get through that and pre-stage everything before my last save so I am done with any reading and it’s just off to the next chapter when I come back for the next gaming session. Makes it a bit of a chore to wrap things up.

    I also got about an hour-and-a-half of CoD: MWIII in, also on PC. Had some decent matches, I’d call it an above average night. I’ve almost max-leveled the 5.56 assault rifle that is like the FAMAS. I’ll look the name up later. LoL.

    I should loop back to say that GranBlue Fantasy: Relink looks gorgeous on a 27″ IPS display. Planning on getting back into CyberPunk 2077 tomorrow. I need to burn-down some of the new games I bought last year.

    Gotta put some gray matter on planning my next GPU upgrade. I need to get rid of this last Zotac card so I do not have that brand in any boxes. It’s a 3070Ti, but that box only has a 750W power supply, so I need to plan around what it can support. Good news is that during the last tweak, which was a cooling system refit and forklifting that build into a new case, I did get some custome power cables for it and ran two discrete lines for the 8-pin PCIe connectors. So, with a harness, I’ll be fine if the new GPU requires a +12VHPWR connector

    Gamer’s Log – Gamerdate 77748.3

    I bought Unicorn Overlord on PS5 this week and started playing it. I like it. Don’t love it. Yet. Like, I don’t not love it due to any negative. It just doesn’t have me all warm down in me nibblets just yet. It might get there. Figuring out it was an Auto-Battler was a bit of a system-shock. But again, it just means it’s something that does not get me AS excited right from jump as a traditional RTS or a Strategy RTS (like Rome: Total War), or a traditional 4X game like Age of Wonders (I need to get back to those, BTW).

    I captured some content (I have not broken out my Hauppage HD PVR Pro 60 for stand-alone recording on my consoles in ages. I still need to get it over to Creative Cloud to process it and get a clip posted. Hoping to do that today. Hoping to also work on a Twitter Op-Ed today; which I am moving to making news, history, finance, and software/tech oriented and less about whatever the Twitter community nonsense is that week. I’ve decided it just does not make sense nor is it good use of my time to engage in or entertain arguments from people about finance or software development, or to campaign for more level-headed news coverage and discussion. The contamination has spread too far. The  great conceipt of The Walking Dead is that they were all infected.

    Speaking of which, that has been my binge this week. Watching it on my Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 128GB (needs to be upgraded) and my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra 256GB (I’ve uninstalled my work apps on this device and am just using it as a personal phone, I mean, since I pay for it, although I still use it for my two work numbers for voice calls and texts), along with the Cowin E7 Bluetooth headphones. My only bother is that somewhere I’ve apparently already downloaded Season 1 to 5 devices and so could not download it locally to my S23 Ultra, although I also cannot administrate that from the Google TV app itself. Bit of a pain-in-the-ass.

    I’ve continued to grind on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III Season 3. I hit up a small map session last night as I worked SMG unlocks; Sniper rifles earlier in the week. So glad the technical problems I was having at the launch of S3 have settled out. The main monitor on my RTX4080 rig (an LG 27″) has been blinking out, but only when I am in dual-monitor mode (I kill the 2nd monitor when gaming) and never while actually playing a game. Watching it with the side-eye for now. I would have normally knee-jerked and done something about it, but I just bought that display in January. Gonna let that marinate for a bit.

    Minor spoilers for anyone who has not played Spider-Man 2 (but I think most have): Went back to Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 last night, also. What an amazing game. Ran it in performance mode (1440p), and played through the Negative Man fight; that part where Miles has been captured by Kraven. What a pain that fight was. Kept me up until 230AM. Not a fan. Mind-boggld my all the graphical options Insomniac has put in that game’s menu to allow the user to tailor the graphical experience for themselves, while the industry continues to make AAA flagship exclusives that only permit one or two options, one of which is often 4K30,

    Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago on a podcast if we (the general consumer market) still buy MP3 players. I have a drawer full (not saying that the answer to his question was yes). I’d stopped using them while on remote assignment b/c I was always in a rush to make the 7 hour commute and it became just easier to rotate a pair of BT headphones and use my phones. Now that I’m back, I’ve been wanting to get back to using them. I merged my old music archive with my new. I still need to load it onto all mobile devices and my MP3 payers. For now, I’ve just broken out the Apple iPod Classic 160GB and the Astell & Kearn Super Junior x AK Jr. I do love using dedicated MP3 players and once I kind of resurge them back into my workflow, I’ll be looking to the ones that need to be upgraded. I lost an iPhone and an iPod Touch on that assignment, so there are some slots, but a couple of them are also probably ready to be retired.

    Drafted on my Samsung Galaxy Tab S7