These problems had been solved for a long time before publishers decided to needlessly kill self-hosted multiplayer. Don't let them gaslight you into believing that the online requirements are about anything else but their greed.
Also, I'm pretty sure players still know each other's IP addresses these days. I don't have any insider knowledge about this, but I'd be very surprised if today's multiplayer games took the latency hit of funneling actual game state through their servers, rather than just using them for matchmaking.
There's also the problem of cheating which creates a reputational issue for the game and frustrates players. Many multiplayer games suffer from cheating.
Interesting. Different strokes I suppose. I loved this show but in the beginning they put too much emphasis on Lee Pace's character for my taste. Just kind of "ooooh, what will the brooding. mysterious maverick in a suit with a dark past do next? So unpredictable" and it didn't really resonate with me like the later seasons did.
In the same way that the beginning of Parks and Rec feels like they were setting out to make a version of The Office before it really became its own thing, the first season of HaCF felt like "what if we had a Don Draper type but instead it was Texas in the 80s?"
Seasons 3 and 4 did a really good job of capturing what it was like being in the industry and in SFBA in the mid/late 1990s, better than anything I've seen. I worked at McAfee (then NETA) at the time and the MCAF-ish stuff was uncanny; the last gasp of cubicle culture in the software product industry.
I liked the storytelling in it, but, like I said earlier, it's pretty Six Feet Under-ish, in that as it progresses it is less and less about the original concept of the show and more about the relationships between characters built up over years of episodes. Whether that's a good or bad thing for you depends in part on how much fan service you want; it's why I find Mr. Robot completely unwatchable.
Except that Mr Robot was always planned that way, you can go back and see references to what's revealed in the final episodes as early as the pilot. Things are revealed at the end of S1 that make you have to re-evaluate what you've seen so far. The same is probably even more true for S4.
Maybe that's a challenge for the audience to stay with it, but it's definitely worth it for the payoff.
And those s04 episode titles matching http error codes? That might be the most masterful thing I've ever seen pulled off from a TV show.
I really love season 1, because of its specific technical detail.
But the other seasons were great in their own ways too. Random PC revolution personalities showing up in dotcom startups was both disjointed and inspired.
When you simply have cartels and monopolies across all sectors of the economy, there is no incentives to hire more people to pursue and compete, and and no avenues for new companies to enter the market and compete.
Instead, these companies simply optimize their costs. Which ultimately will be labor. And then rent extract as much as possible from the economy. And then rent extract as much as possible from the economy
All of that rent extraction goes to the super rich
Interest rates are normal or even low. The situation of interest around 0% for years was an extreme anomaly never seen before. Since 1973 interest rates were almost always above 5%, and the only moments they fell under 3% they created the 2008 boom and bust.
Taking pictures of, let’s face it, mostly plants is pretty low impact compared to other things that are much more widely accepted. For example having a cat. Let’s maybe stop keeping apex predators as pets that decimate the local ecosystem first and then we can talk about people outside on their phones taking pictures.
Open source has many altruistic and smart people that like to learn and build while benefiting others.
But then you also have high ego people motivated by building a personal brand, prestige and status... and open source is just means to that end. While their contributions are valuable, conflicts of interest arise.
