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Really, the optimal wish is to be perfectly satisfied with your remaining wishes.

I don't always write news about random facts I learned on Twitter, but sometimes those facts are too good not to share as part of my job. Also, now that I've learned that Billie Eilish's mom played a major character in Mass Effect, I'm not going to be able to focus on anything else until I talk about it.

Eilish's mom is actor Maggie Baird, who portrayed the Asari Justicar Samara in Mass Effect 2 and 3. That's her most recognisable game role, though she also voiced minor characters in everything from Everquest 2 to the early Saints Row games and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. Her career outside games is extensive, too, but that's the kind of thing Wikipedia is for.

Funnily enough, Samara's loyalty mission in Mass Effect 2 has you tracking down her daughter, Morinth, who could certainly be described as a bad guy. You know, a bad type. Definitely a might-seduce-your-dad type. Morinth can join your party if things go bad with Samara, and now you're never going to stop me from believing alien Billie Eilish is part of my Renegade Mass Effect playthroughs.

A new subscription service called Scroll is offering ad-free access to hundreds of websites — not by blocking the ads, but by working with an expanding group of publishers to take the ads down in exchange for a slice of the subscription fee.

Scroll launches today with support for a number of major websites and networks, including The Atlantic, BuzzFeed News, G/O Media (which includes websites like Gizmodo and Kotaku), and Vox Media, which — important disclosure here — includes The Verge.

Once you sign up for Scroll, those websites should all be free of advertisements when you load them. For the most part, you don’t need to use a special app or install an extension. Scroll works by placing a...

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SAN JOSE, Calif. — At a recent Parkside Hall tech conference, several VR industry leaders announced that all hotly anticipated VR developments will occur eventually, just not within your short and miserable lifetime.

“Our current roadmap puts full-scale augmented reality experiences at about, say, half a decade after your death and the deaths of your friends,” announced Windows Mixed Reality presenter Rowan Frank. “If we hit those targets and wind up ahead of schedule, it’ll come out around the time you’re too feeble and weak-kneed to make use of it anyway, so it’s really not even worth stressing over.”

“See that kid over there?” Valve CEO and Valve Index development head Gabe Newell asked the audience during a later presentation, gesturing to a child in front-row seating. “About seven years old, parents with twice your income, wiping a booger on his lollipop? That kid’s going to be jacked in full-immersion, slaughtering Russian super-soldiers in Call Of Duty 2K71, while you’re in a vase on someone’s mantelpiece.”

“If I were you, I’d get used to strapping your phone to a View-Master and playing goddamn Fruit Ninja at the bus stop, because that’s the closest you’ll ever get to living in the future.”

Several industry experts were able to back up this development timeline, and reacted to the news with youthful enthusiasm.

“I met with the guys at Oculus this morning,” said tech expert and LinusTechTips host Linus Sebastian at press time, “and they jacked me into a full-scale cyber-orgy with flawless haptic feedback that they’ve been working on, some real Ready Player One business. You should have seen the pixels. I’m so glad I have the spritely youth and sponsorship income to experience it when it comes out in thirty-some years.”

Sebastian also explained that any VR tech that arrives in your lifetime would still be behind an economic barrier you could never hope to overcome.

“You already can’t afford VR,” he explained. “Even if you were still alive, what makes you think you could be able to afford it when it’s good? Gonna get a fourth job?”

The tech conference concluded with the introduction of several dozen affluent, able-bodied young people, playing a VR game that involved throwing rotten fruit at a JPEG of a man in his thirties.

Check out the newest episode of the Hard Drive podcast where we watch and discuss every episode of 1989’s The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

The post Experts Say VR Will Reach Its Full Potential Exactly Five Years After You Die appeared first on The Hard Times.