Posts by Uncrowned Gaurd

  • I signed up for FreeCash

    I tried one of these before; I don't even recall the name, and it wasn't bad. A lot better payout than the survey stuff, and the games were not all too bad. I never stuck with it to get a payout, but it did seem like a reasonable side hustle for some spending money.

  • Time to boycott Sony!

    I really don’t understand how Sony thought this rollout would go any other way. Well… I do... they’re banking on the idea that players will get angry for a week, then move on, and the sad part is they’re probably right. GTA6 is going to break records no matter what, and that includes players on the PS5, and whatever the PS6 ends up being will almost certainly sell out on day one. That’s the part that makes this whole situation even more frustrating.

    But the moves leading up to this have been a masterclass in showing exactly why an all‑digital future is a terrible idea. They already removed over 500 digital movies from user libraries; content people paid for. They’re shutting down the PS3 and Vita stores in 2027, which means entire generations of games will be locked away unless you already own them. And now they’re planning to stop producing physical games entirely in 2028.

    You honestly couldn’t script a better scenario for gamers to finally push back. This is exactly the nightmare people warned about when digital‑only became the trend: content disappearing, purchases becoming temporary, and companies having total control over access.

    What makes it even more absurd is that Sony is acting like players won’t care, and maybe that’s the scariest part. Enough people will still buy the next console for GTA6 or whatever blockbuster comes next, and Sony knows it. That’s why they feel comfortable making moves like this.

    So yeah, I get the frustration. This isn’t just a bad decision; it’s a pattern. And it’s wild that after everything they’ve already done, they still dropped this on top of it. If there was ever a moment for gamers to actually push back, this is it. The worst part is: Xbox and Nintendo are surely watching to see how sales react, and if GTA6 blows up on PS5, that is all they need to just follow Sony's path.

  • DuckDuckGo

    Quote from Ravenfreak

    I need to start using Bing again then lol. I've used it in the past to get rewards points but I've stopped. Now I just get points from playing games for at least 15 minutes. Thank you for reminding me of Bing, and I didn't know that DDG uses Bing's backend either so that's cool!

    They did change the rewards program this year, and I haven't looked much into it. Odds are, it got worse.

  • DuckDuckGo

    I haven’t really used Google Search in years. I’ll check it once in a while just to see how my sites are showing up, but as an actual search engine, it’s become awful. Half the battle now is just trying to find the real results buried under ads, shopping blocks, and whatever AI hallucination they’ve decided to pin to the top that day.

    The AI summaries are almost always wrong, and the links underneath are usually ads that barely relate to what I searched for. It feels less like a search engine and more like a monetized guessing machine. At this point, if you want actual information, you have to scroll past everything Google wants you to click and dig for the organic results yourself.

    I actually use Bing search a lot as it is basically older Google. DuckDuckGo also uses Bing's backend and crawling, so they provide fairly similar results. DuckDuckGo does have a cleaner page, but Bing gives me rewards that I use to buy new Xbox stuff.

  • Uncrowned Addiction (Off-Topic/Tech Community)

    💬 New Debate of the Month: User Data Leaks — Have We Built a System Too Broken to Fix?

    Uncrowned Addiction just launched a new Debate of the Month, and it focuses on a problem so common that a lot of people barely react to it anymore:

    User data leaks.

    But instead of just asking whether breaches are bad, this debate goes deeper into the system behind them.

    We’re looking at things like:

    • whether private and public organizations collect far too much data in the first place
    • how new age verification and identity systems may create even bigger privacy risks
    • whether weak regulation has allowed this problem to become normal
    • if people have become desensitized to breaches because they feel powerless
    • and whether society should fight to preserve privacy, or accept that personal data is becoming functionally public

    The goal isn’t just outrage — it’s a real discussion about what should actually be done, how it should be done, and whether the current data-driven model of modern life is even sustainable.

    👉 Join the debate here:
    Uncrowned Addiction – Debate of the Month: User Data Leaks

    Curious to hear how others see it, especially with how much of modern life now depends on handing over more and more personal information just to access basic services.

  • My work is going to post our stats on a board for everyone in the office to see

    This actually seems like a reasonable idea to me too. As long as they build a scoring system that’s fair and accurate, which a lot of management teams struggle with, it could be a positive thing. When it’s done right, it’s nice for strong performers to see that their work is being noticed instead of everything happening behind closed doors.

    And the flower system is a smart touch. It keeps things anonymous enough that it doesn’t turn into a public shaming board, while still giving people a sense of where they stand. If the goal is motivation rather than embarrassment, this is probably one of the better ways to approach it. Although I'd have some doubts on how long things stay anonymous for as employees tend to figure things out pretty quickly when they put their minds to it.

  • Reviving The Forum Academy

    Sounds like a good idea to me. Even something as simple as figuring out how to upload or set an avatar can be a pain across different forum software. Every platform has its own sizing rules, file limits, and quirks, and newer users have no clue what any of that means. Having a basic tutorial that walks people through things like avatars, signatures, posting, and navigation would actually help lower the barrier for anyone who’s only used social media or Discord.

    It’s the kind of small detail seasoned forum users don’t think about anymore, but for someone brand new, it can make the difference between sticking around or giving up.

  • Digg is back!

    Their new plan feels really iffy to me. I checked the site just to see if it was even still active, and I got a pop‑up saying they want to make sure everything they rank is “ranked by humans.” But then you look at what they’re actually doing, and it’s all based on Twitter interactions. I’ve never seen anything that suggests social media engagement equals “human,” and honestly, it often feels like the opposite.

    If this is the direction they’re going, I don’t see how it’s going to solve the bot problem or make the platform meaningful again. It just comes across as another automated repost feed rather than anything resembling the old Digg experience.

  • Garage Sales

    Our neighboring town actually does a yearly yard‑sale day, but ours doesn’t. We’re only separated by a bridge, so we still see a bunch of individual yard sales pop up on the same day, but it’s definitely not an organized, town‑wide event.

    Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if our town did something more coordinated. Events like this seem to get a lot of participation and foot traffic, and it looks like your neighborhood really treats it as an annual thing. Maybe one day ours will catch up.

  • I'm probably the only one using a tv as a monitor on this forum now

    I definitely don’t miss those days. I used to run a lot of TVs as monitors too, and the experience could swing wildly depending on the model. If the TV had a proper PC or Game mode, it made a huge difference; suddenly, the cut‑off edges were gone, the weird processing was disabled, and everything actually felt usable.

    But on older TVs, half the “fun” was just the battle to get things to line up and look right. Overscan, blurry text, random sharpening you couldn’t turn off… it was always something. When you finally got it dialed in, it felt like a victory.

    Modern TVs are better, but I still appreciate how much smoother life is with an actual monitor.