IIRC, no, they don’t. They put the onus of proving the project is legit on the project maker and on the backers to be vigilant not falling for too good to be true projects.

Over the years kickstarter has become just another big marketing platform for big brands (for their niche) and pushing out smaller projects.

As a former serial backer, over the years I “only” have backed 40 or so (I don’t remember the exact number and don’t want to check now) and only 2 that failed to deliver. One, in hindsight, is blatantly a scam and kickstarter didn’t do anything about it. The other one that didn’t deliver is just mismanagement. At least it looked like it. Could still be a scam.

Them there’s also the problem the fast food corpos made themselves when they expand internationally, they have to downsize their portion sizes because the rest of the world doesn’t eat like fast food loving Americans.

I haven’t checked how big the ones that I still frequent there (like /r/manybaggers and /r/onebag) but they do still have organic real people posts. Anything news, tech, or politics, anything of that size, I just abandon any hope they’re not troll infested and LLM bots. Not to mention meme subs and themed artwork subs. Just full of vote farming bots. I need the art source, you dinguses!

On the bright side, /r/sbcgaming have a comms here and can also tie into retrogaming

As well as flashlights.

The other big one is Chinese fountain pens that clearly mimic more well known brands.

Patent on the Pilot Vanishing Point as far as I can tell has expired and that Majohn (Moonman) and Jinhao have made cheaper versions.

VPs are still bloody expensive for me and I don’t want to gamble and see if I like it for that much money (and try to sell i t off if I don’t like it).

Turns out I like retractable fountain pens but the jinhaos and majohn one I suppose isn’t as well made and dry out quickly. From a bunch of reviews I’ve consumed they could be as good at not drying out but for the cheap price it’s a QC issue.

So now what? Throw away perfectly fine cheap pens just to get the real one?

But on the flip side, I have tried a Lamy 2000 and I love it and I know there are blatant copies and homages from the Chinese brands and I won’t get them.

Hobbies are just weird.

But at the end of the day, I think the cheap brands should he celebrated even copies because it’s a good entryway to the hobby. If a pen hasn’t been produced for decades, then someone else made new copies or homages, then I don’t blame anyone wanting those instead of having to hunt for vintage pens and hoping to restore it (by themselves or sending it to someone).

I’m in the process of listening to the album. Mind you, that album is the same-ish age as me.

By Back Side of the Moon, I’m convinced this can be in the OG Deus Ex game. Or maybe System Shock.

Oh I’m just referring to Steam games. I’m a PC gamer just because I don’t buy consoles (because they’re expensive lol) and Steam just have great discounts compared to PlayStation, Xbox and Switch.

For full priced games, which used to be only $60 USD, now somehow $80-$90 — thanks Nintendo — is far too expensive for me. $45 too. $30 is starting to be okay. Oh and pardon me for not saying where I’m from but my country got cheaper regional pricing on Steam so I just use USD prices like tiers of pricing.

Thankfully demos are coming back. At least that’s the trend I see with indie titles

Thinking about it a bit more, some AAA publishers also are bringing demos back too

Whenever I checked the lenovo website for my country, they have always offered a cheaper price with ubuntu instead of windows. But last I checked was like 5 years ago or so, but I would be surprised if they stopped ordering that.

Dell I don’t remember, but honestly I would not be surprised if they do.

Dell and Lenovo are the least shitty to deal with in terms of warranty

So this news is not surprising to read, but still good to hear.

Glad to be wrong on that.

I’m waiting to see if they’ll make a smaller tablet, closer to the iPad mini size. Or actually just give me a A5 planner size. I’m obsessed with the paper ISO standard; I’m constantly mildly annoyed that they aren’t more appreciated and used in a lot more things other than paper based objects lol

From what I listen, only Nujabes’ Luv(sic) Hexalogy I consider a masterpiece. I have to listen to it start to end. Though personally I have to be in the correct headspace to fully appreciate it.

There aren’t a lot of other albums that I have to listen front to back that comes to mind. Although there are lots of songs that I listen to frequently. According to Spotify (before I canceled my sub earlier this year) I’m a Muse fan lol. Top artist I listened to for 5 years straight (I didn’t subscribe to Spotify that long) Almost always dominate my yearly Top 10.

Normies don’t even know what clipboard is. I was gobsmacked I don’t even know how to explain it as plainly as possible.

But also found out apparently MacOS doesn’t have a clipboard? At least when I was frantically searching online when someone said they copies something earlier and want to paste and give me to it

My first stepping stone was when nobody in my group wanted to ask for napkins when we were out eating. Which is silly, so I stepped up and ask for it because my mouth and fingers are messy. Ok the other thing is we were in a foreign country and our mastery of the language wasn’t great and everyone was shy.

That’s when I realize that random people thinking of me like some kind of weirdo doesn’t matter because it’s almost guaranteed I will never meet them again.

If I need to integrate with a group sooner or later, that’s when I lurk and just sit in with a few people, listen and add in anything

I realize that last part is hard for a lot of people and I really don’t have anything I can offer how to overcome the awkward feeling but I believe you can do it.

it gained renewed cult following due to rights-to-repair advocate New Yorker Louis Rossman said clippy only wanted to help (paraphrased, don’t quote me) compared to the privacy abomination copilot.

I agree. Music is as diverse as people. It’s a good thing that sometimes I can use music to relax, and sometimes it gets me to looking into myself for some introspective. It lets me process my emotions, problems, and try to come out with a solution or just for cope.

If you’re worried All might be too much, liberally use the community block function. There’s no shame on curating even All feed

Subscribed at Hot (scaled). If I want something “new” (I.e. i haven’t seen) I go All at Hot (scaled).

Angrily upvotes

I t4ied only Interstellar and settled on Summit. Back when piefed social was new I got on board fairly early and interstellar IIRC was one of the first to have piefed support. Then summit came with the support and I never left since. Sorry Interstellar, Summit just have the UX I prefer back when I used Sync for reddit. Sync for lemmy didn’t have piefed support back then.

Sync was borderline abadonware even as a reddit third party app before reddit closed the gates.