343 has never been good at managing a Halo game. Not sure what OP is referring to specifically but 343 has made tons of awful decisions with the franchise.

Agreed 100%. Halo 4 was the beginning of the end for Halo, imo. I thought Reach was fun, but I was never a big fan of the sprinting, armor classes and weapon bloom. It still felt like Halo overall, though. I remember playing Halo 4 on launch day and immediately being disappointed. I still probably put 100+ hours into it at the time, but I remember thinking it didn’t truly feel like Halo — at least not like its predecessors.

I think specifically in the case of Halo, the surprise is because it was such a powerhouse of a franchise in the 2000s into early 2010s. Halo was the Fortnite and Apex Legends before Fortnite and Apex Legends in terms of player retention.

Halo 2 and 3 had thriving playerbases for years after release. Infinite came out just over 1.5 years ago and has already lost almost all of its players. The Master Chief Collection currently has more players than Infinite with 5,200 to Infinite’s 3,000 on Steam.

I spent countless hours in high school playing Halo 3, and even a few years after release, you’d have hundreds of thousands of players online. Two years after release in October 2009, Halo 3 had close to 759,000 players online in the span of 24 hours, plus about 129,000 playing ODST, which had just come out a month prior.

I’m not a fan of gaming as a service, but it clearly can be a successful business model for sustained success, so you’d think that one of the most iconic gaming franchises of all time would be able to harness that.

Ah, that’s interesting — and makes a lot of sense.

That’s awesome! They’ve been so convenient to use. I just recently tried out these as well, and they’ve been nice for cleaning ash catchers. Rather than soaking them in a bag of iso and salt, I filled the ash catcher, used the plugs on either end and just shook it.

This is the exact type of resentment members of the GOP are trying to sow among marginally different income brackets to promote infighting rather than pointing the finger at the actual “elite” class. You shouldn’t have to be saddled with massive amounts of debt to simply get an education. Adjusted for inflation, college tuition has increased nearly 750% since 1963. Source.

Why not tax the rich to pay for programs to support the lower and middle classes? Or subsidize education?

a university graduate will make $720,000 more over a 20 year period than a non-university graduate

That $720,000 difference over 20 years is less than a one-year salary for thousands of CEOs. Based on this list, there are 2,721 CEOs who earned more than $720,000 in 2021 (you have to scroll all the way down to page 137 to find a CEO earning less than $720,000).

It’s a drop in the bucket.

spend four years out of the labour force not paying taxes and then will also have a higher life expectancy drawing from the public pension longer.

If university grads earn more, wouldn’t their higher tax contributions quickly make up for the four non-tax-paying years compared to someone earning less without a degree? Not to mention it isn’t uncommon for students to also work while in college.

Regarding life expectancy, this is the same blame-game criticism. What impact would affordable healthcare have on life expectancy? Or a higher minimum wage?

Tell me why it’s reasonable for people who didn’t go to university to help foot the bill for people who did?

You could make the same argument for any type of program that distributes tax dollars to others. “Why should my hard-earned money go to someone sitting at home on welfare?”

The federal government clearly has no problem throwing obscene amounts of money at corporations, whether they need it or not, so why not divert some of that aid to the people?

When I took out my student loans, I knew what I was signing up for, and I never expected — or wanted – the government to step in and waive them. After seeing the massive amounts of money the government handed out in the form of PPP funds, including potentially $200 billion fraudulently (source), my view changed. If billionaires were getting PPP loans for millions of dollars, why shouldn’t a bunch of college graduates get $20,000 each?

Would you rather your tax money go to reducing student debt or $2 million to $5 million to Kanye West’s Yeezys? Or Tom Brady’s TB12 getting nearly $1 million?

It’s obviously not an actual either-or question, but ultimately, if the government is bailing out billionaires, banks, etc., then yeah, fuck it, help your middle class college graduates.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think the 25-year import rule in the US has anything to do with what side drive the car is. It was a law passed in the 80s to shut down gray market imported cars. Importers would buy cars from countries where they sold for much cheaper than the US and then resell them for way less than official dealerships.

The law would’ve been targeting left-hand-drive vehicles, so the right-hand-drive stuff is just a byproduct of it. I mean, the US government had all of its postal service trucks built to be right hand drive.

To add on to the OP, if you’re cleaning any kind of bong or bigger bubbler, these are great. You fill the piece up with a good amount of salt and 91%+ isopropyl alcohol, use the caps to seal it and shake the shit out of it. Prior to ordering a few packs of those, I had always just taken some saran wrap, layered it a few times over the openings and rubber banded it in place to avoid any leaks when shaking.

I think I’m just going to hang onto the app as a keepsake. I can spare the 75mb or so of storage space haha.

I think so, too. The comment sections remind me a lot of Reddit’s when I first joined in early 2013 — more thoughtful comments and less shitposting to get the most upvotes.

It seems like the biggest hurdle is going to be getting the more niche communities going on Lemmy.

Granted I used Sync and not RiF (though I initially used RiF from like 2013-2015), but it looks so weird seeing the green Liftoff logo on my home screen, which has been largely unchanged for the past 8 years since I started using Sync.

$125,000 seemed like a pretty fair cutoff for the loan forgiveness. If $124,999 is the maximum you could’ve earned to still be eligible, I feel like you’re generally living pretty comfortably, but still not “elite.” I mean, I make half that with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, so I was thrilled my remaining $20k in loans could’ve been waived.

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This quote from Pence is so unbelievably infuriating.

Joe Biden’s massive trillion-dollar student loan bailout subsidizes the education of elites on the backs of hardworking Americans

Good to know all of the millennial and gen z college graduates earning less than $125,000 per year and struggling in an awful economy are “elites” and not “hardworking Americans.”

Since I’m now apparently an elite, do I get a membership card in the mail?

I feel the same way. My job was exempt during the 2020 shutdowns, so I actually tried to resume my monthly payments. If I recall, I tried re-enabling automatic payments 3x, and they kept getting paused again. After manually making payments for a few months, I just gave up and decided to see how everything would pan out.

This is going to be a game changer. I’ve been using Sync Pro since 2015 and can’t see myself using anything else for mobile browsing. Thanks for the awesome app!