Details on Google Stadia finally:
https://store.google.com/product/stadia_founders_edition
TL;DR - free version with 1080p, $10/month for 4K Pro subscription. You buy the games, but if you pay for the 4K subscription there are some free games you get (like PS Plus). You can get the founders edition controller for $129 that includes 3 months of Pro subscription. Launches in November.
You're the second person to mention it to me, so I'm going with "yes".
@LilAng said in Gaming - What's everyone playing / hosting / looking to play:
@Nic said in Gaming - What's everyone playing / hosting / looking to play:
Anyone else pick up Days Gone? I'm enjoying it a lot and think it's the best zombie survival game to date.
Dang, i hesitated on this game. Might get it tho...
I'll elaborate to hopefully give you more to go on. This game really nails the realism of zombies. You can fight off a few of them if you're skillful, but if more than 6 are coming at you then you have to get out of dodge. Which can be hard. You can only get a few shots off before having to reload and then they're on you and you have to switch to melee. The game requires a lot of planning, like using the environment, and parking your motorcycle pointed away from the action in case you need to make a quick getaway (which happens a lot). The stealth is well done, and the difficulty of the game forces you to use it. However you are not assured death if you fuck up your stealth, it's just harder to survive. The motorcycle riding is relatively realistic. For instance if you take jumps, your bike takes damage. It's caused me to be more careful when riding through trees and trails. At least in the early game, they've nailed the resource scarcity. You run out of ammo quick and have to scrounge for more. The melee weapons break over time and you get stuck with your knife which doesn't deal much damage. You have to think about how you approach every encounter and plan things out. So far I haven't run into any bad AI or easy ways to trick the zombies (or other humans) into being stupid.
Anyone else pick up Days Gone? I'm enjoying it a lot and think it's the best zombie survival game to date.
Borderlands 3 gameplay being streamed live right now:
https://www.twitch.tv/borderlands
@dyasny you'll still sometimes get billed because while the hospital is in network, the anesthesiologist isn't. There are some regulations to prevent this now, but it can still be a mess and a pain in the ass to deal with even if you do prevail. That's the problem with US healthcare. Even if you have insurance, and even if you do everything the right way, when you have a major medical emergency you are still going to:
a. get big bills (the 10% that is your share of the inflated bill they send to the insurance) and probably have to go bankrupt
b. spend the equivalent of a second part time job calling insurance companies and appealing decisions to avoid getting billed for shit you shouldn't have been.
I'm seriously considering just going off insurance and paying out of pocket for routine stuff. I suspect I'd save money paying the uninsured rate with doctors, if I didn't have premiums to pay.
Then for real catastrophes I'd either get simple catastrophic insurance, or just move back to Australia if I got cancer.
Basically medical insurance for routine stuff is like getting extended warranties at Best Buy. Best Buy always makes money on those and you always lose, in the long run. To conflate the two types of insurance (routine vs major medical emergency) is a bit silly and confuses the argument.
For example, if I get the flu and go to urgent care and pay a $50 copay, I'd bet that is the same amount that insurance has negotiated with the urgent care location. I think I'm getting a deal, but really I'm paying the full cost. All I'm paying the insurance for is them negotiating the price down to something reasonable.
But fundamentally the real reason US healthcare is too expensive is because the govt doesn't fix prices. If they did that, like the rest of the world does, even private insurance and medical care would be affordable.
There's a reason Breaking Bad exists.
Smokers do indeed save money over the long term by dying sooner:
https://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/news/20130604/smokers-cost-employers-thousands-more-than-nonsmokers
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2009-04-smokers-society-money.html
Vanderbilt University economist Kip Viscusi studied the net costs of smoking-related spending and savings and found that for every pack of cigarettes smoked, the country reaps a net cost savings of 32 cents.
@Dashrender said in Top Ten Happiest Places on Earth in 2019:
@Nic said in Top Ten Happiest Places on Earth in 2019:
Doesn't matter how much or how little you pay in taxes when a major medical problem will guarantee you go bankrupt in the US. All that money you saved on taxes goes out the window, plus your house, your truck, and your savings.
I know Scott believes in the public healthcare solution - I just have a hard time paying for everyone else's lack of giving a shit about their health that leads to huge health care costs. if we could hold people accountable for their expenses (not counting things like accidents against them) I think that would make me 'feel' better.
I see the value in some public services - law enforcement/roads/national defense, but I still have a hard time seeing public healthcare as a public good.
I suppose if there is proof that public healthcare raises the quality of life of it's citizens more than it costs those citizen, that would go a long way to convincing me.
I understand the reasoning, but in practice US pays more for worse health outcomes overall:
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-u-s-similar-public-spending-private-sector-spending-triple-comparable-countries
In practice the savings of getting rid of the bureaucracy and milking by execs is vastly more than the cost from people going to the doctor more.
@Mike-Davis he might be factoring in property tax and sales tax.
Doesn't matter how much or how little you pay in taxes when a major medical problem will guarantee you go bankrupt in the US. All that money you saved on taxes goes out the window, plus your house, your truck, and your savings.
@wirestyle22 reviews are good. What I've heard is that it's all based around parrying instead of dodging or blocking like the other SoulsBourne games, so that takes some getting used to.
Has it been 5 years already?? Time really does go faster when you get old.
@EddieJennings said in Connectwise Purchased:
Does Thoma Bravo own LogMeIn? If not, then this might not be terrible.
Here's the full list:
https://www.thomabravo.com/companies
They just bought LogRhythm, where I worked, this summer, and then did layoffs. I left as it wrecked the culture. I'm now at Ping Identity which is safely post-acquisition 
@scottalanmiller said in Gaming - What's everyone playing / hosting / looking to play:
Well that sucks, MS has been known to kill good products, like Fable. Would be sad if these studios got treated like Lionhead or Mojang.
If?
One more day until Red Dead Redemption 2!
Also, Spiderman on PS4 rocks. I'm going to be torn which to play starting tomorrow.
Still playing Dead Cells. It's become my Spelunky replacement. Speaking of, Spelunky is getting a sequel in 2019:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/new-spelunky-2-gameplay-trailer-reveals-online-mul/1100-6461474/
