CerebralHawks

I read the article. They’re open sourcing the Windows and Linux versions, so the community can take over if they want to. So it will live or die based on what the community actually wants from it.

As a Mac user, it’s weird to see a company drop the other two in favour of maintaining the Mac version. I don’t use it, or Kagi, but I’m aware of both. It’s a good platform but we don’t have the users. Same with Linux, but it runs on more hardware, and bleeding the Windows market share benefits everyone, including Windows users.

As for iOS, there’s no winning the browser war there. It’s either Safari or compromise. I like Firefox, but it doesn’t/can’t do enough. DDG is good for YouTube because it blocks the ads. But mostly I just use Safari. On my Android phone, I use Firefox with uBlock Origin, naturally.

Newegg used to be good. I bought a lot from them, too. Even had a shirt. They haven’t been good for a while. I don’t know all the details.

Real ones — computer builders, I mean — would just use PCPartPicker and buy from whoever had the best prices. Even if you didn’t need their tools to tell you what was compatible with what, the site was fun and free and it saved you money. Used to be, Newegg had the best prices, but they started getting undercut by Amazon and others. But there was some other drama with them, too.

Trusting Newegg and Aliexpress is part of the problem.

Also, if the price is too good to be true, it probably is fake. Look up what you want. Sort by review. Look at what the top-reviewed ones cost. Focus on the ones that have very high ratings (like 4.7/5 or better). Amazon will tell you if “customers usually keep this item” or “customers usually return this item”. The lack thereof isn’t a red flag, but a highly rated product that customers usually keep that costs a bit more than other products… there’s probably a reason they’re willing to pay more.

We’ve had that tech for 16 years, but it’s implemented differently — and costs a lot more now.

OurGroceries is one of the first apps I’ve downloaded in 2010. It was $5 to remove the banner ad. We paid $15 for it. $5 for me on Android in 2010. $5 for my wife on Android in 2010. And $5 for me on iOS in 2016. They since made it so where if one person buys it, everyone who shares the lists with each other gets to use it for free. Only, now it’s $20.

So here’s how it works. It’s synced grocery lists. You can totally do this with Google Keep or any other shared note system — Apple Notes does it, too. But we did this in 2010 when we didn’t have access to those (iPhones did not even come to our area until 2014!). So my wife and I would make a list. She’d drop me off at one store and then go to another. We’d put Bluetooth earbuds in our ears and go shopping together, but at different stores. We’d go down the list and call out the price. Whoever could get it cheaper would put it in their cart. We’d both check out, and then she’d swing by and pick me up.

Not illegal. No stores have kicked us out for doing it. Now imagine if you have 3+ roommates and you’re on a party line.

Let’s be absolutely clear, they didn’t just kill third-party apps.

And to be fair, third party apps often bypassed their ads. So Reddit had a legitimate grievance there. The apps were contributing nothing, were collecting money from Reddit users, and the app I’m going to talk about, Apollo, actually had a recurring subscription if you weren’t one of the first ones to buy it.

So Apollo was kind of the big dog and so Reddit basically went after them primarily. After the conversation did not go well for Reddit, Reddit’s CEO started telling everyone that the Apollo dev tried to extort Reddit. The Apollo dev did make a joke about money changing hands, but he absolutely did not extort Reddit, and he brought the receipts. He transcribed the call… for those who didn’t have time to listen to the actual recording, which he also shared.

With a big pie in their face, Reddit reacted by killing third-party apps entirely. And it was mostly based on a lie.

Reddit is run by the Epstein class anyway. Heck, I was banned just for suggesting longer prison terms for people who prey upon children. I guess they took that as a threat against their leadership? And/or certain politicians who they support (or who support them)?

Depends on your definition of nudity. Plenty of people post “nude” or “naked” in the NSFW subs and they are wearing underwear.

There’s a certain definition that these people subscribe to that describes nudity as wearing less clothes than you’d be comfortable going out in public. That it’s a form of vulnerability. I always thought it meant completely nude, like not a thread on them. Others disagree.

Oof. I remember reading about it last week and got the names confused. You’re right.

False. The game came out in 2013. Page came out as trans in 2020. They were not sexualising a trans person.

Granted, it’s proper to say that a trans person was always trans. We don’t use his deadname to refer to his earlier work, nor do we use the gender identity assigned at birth. We say Elliot Page played a female character, and we can specify he is a trans man, but it’s not strictly necessary. While technically the trans community would say “he was always trans,” he didn’t make it known until 2020.

Also, the shower scene did not contain nudity that members of the public could access. I read up on the scene. Someone with a PS3 dev kit was able to use custom camera angles enabled by the dev kit that a publicly available PS3 would not be able to do. So they really weren’t sexualising Page at all.

This kind of thing is fairly common in gaming. I stopped giving my Skyrim kids new outfits because, the way the game would handle it, the character would unequip their previous outfit and then equip the new one. On a fast PC, it happens instantly, or near enough that you would not notice. However, on the Xbox 360, or a potato PC, there are a couple of seconds where the character appears “nude” for a second or two.

To qualify the “nudity”, all Skyrim kids have the same body and face. There are hair types and they are gender-specific, and that’s how you get boys and girls. Both have painted-on underwear. “Panty” style with a tube-top “bra” for girls and “boxer briefs” style for boys. The child outfit comes in four colours (IIRC) and is also gendered. It’s a dress for girls and a shirt and pants for boys. In both cases, the top is coloured and the bottom is grey, IIRC.

A simple solution would have been for the “nude body” to include the outfit in white. But hey, what do I know? I am not a programmer.

Another solution would be to stop using the adoption system entirely. Nothing forces you to have kids in the game. Of course, we’re all still going to adopt off-brand Aerith, right? (If you don’t know, just keep an eye out for a girl in a red dress selling flowers. She’s in Windhelm, where the Stormcloaks operate out of.)

The issue is that Elliot Page had (likely still has) a no-nudity clause and they used him to model the character. They could have chosen to deal with an actor who did not have a no-nudity clause, but they wanted Page’s name in the credits. (To avoid confusion, Elliot Page is transgender. He appeared in this game with his previous, feminine name. Doesn’t change anything, but it might read as confusing that I am using male pronouns.)

Tapping the top to go up was great in Apollo, a Reddit client, but the guy took it a step further, tap again to go right back to where you were. Otherwise agree, it’s a good idea but it’s not explained (at all) and it can get in the way.

I got you beat though: by default, iPhone has a feature called “shake to undo”. It’s very sensitive. One of the first things I disabled. I mean you hit a speed bump (as a passenger) and everything you typed is just gone.

My wife has an S22. Literally the only problem is the lack of storage. Losing the memory card slot was a mistake. My S10 is her old one. I stuck a 256GB SD card in it and now it has whatever that plus 128GB is. It’s the second most spacious phone I’ve used after my 512GB iPhone.

Doesn’t mean anything currently running an A20 can run a desktop OS. Point still stands.

We’ll see what the next Neo runs and how when it releases. The A18 Pro in the Neo is what’s in my phone and it’s said to be between M1 and M2.

Mongo is appalled.

And yet, it can’t (be made to) run a full desktop OS or play AAA games. But you can personalise the Siri voice (older phones can do the conversational stuff)… maybe edit photos faster.

Apple went and made a phone you could use for ten years, but next year they’ll be telling you why their new phone is so much better than the last one. They don’t expect you to upgrade every year, but they expect you to want to, and after a couple of generations, they want you to think that you have to.

I have an iPhone 16 Pro Max (2024), and the 18 Pro/Max presentation definitely gave me a bit of phone envy. But I also have a Galaxy S10 (2019), and that does a few things better than the iPhone, even though it’s 5 years difference between them. Apple’s keyboard likes to hallucinate weird results (like changing out common words for names of people I don’t even have in contacts) and edit after the fact. Gboard just works. When it doesn’t, the mistake makes sense (if and of for example). Also, I’ve used the same wallpaper on both phones. It always looks better on the Samsung. Sharper colors and contrast. Hold both up and ask anyone which looks better, they’re gonna point to the Samsung, even if you turn the iPhone’s brightness up all the way.

Phone manufacturers are desperately trying to convince you that you need the latest and greatest. You don’t — unless you want to do AI stuff. And even then, they’re going to charge you for it. And they’re sure you’ll pay, because you’ve already shown your hand by opening your wallet again.

It’s fully autonomous? (I did not read TFA.) That’s… maybe impressive?

My favourite differently abled social media influencer person can do this. She lost both of her arms as a child, so, as a young child, she was made the face of a company called Open Bionics as they partnered with the makers of the video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution, in which people replace perfectly good limbs with mechanical ones, and the social fallout from that. So this adorable little five or six year old girl got these cool robotic arms that were black and gold, themed after the video game. Now she’s an adult, and the arms have gotten a bit more advanced. Such that she can detach the hand and control it remotely.

Here she is on Good Morning Britain, a year ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXbqqeUU7js

Agree 100%. I’ve been in some tough conversations with fellow LGBTQ+ allies over my participation, however minor, in the Harry Potter fandom. I’m seeing a lot of “it’s fine if you liked it before we learned JKR was a bigot” but I’m also seeing a lot of people with the same story as mine — discovered the franchise back then, enjoyed it, but do not like what JKR is doing to the trans community — but also criticising me for the same. Like it’s “fine” (to some extent?) if you’re trans and JKR betrayed you, but if you’re not trans, you’re held to a higher standard as an ally. I dunno. It’s confusing. I will not, however, back down from my claim that I enjoyed the first four (+HBP) books and the first four films before I learned she was crazy… and that this year I rewatched Philosopher’s Stone in 4K (and yes, it holds up).

All that being said, the fears and concerns in the trans and LGBTQ+ community are valid. They may be jerks about it online, but as an ally, I can only ever strive to be a better one. I can’t change what I liked in the past and I will not deny it, even to history revisers. But I can change what I do in the present, and I can always strive to Do Better.

I don’t like the new Harry Potter series because of why it exists. JKR was disappointed the stars of the film series did not share her transphobic views, so she immediately made a point to recast Hermione and to make her completely different from Emma Watson’s portrayal, as Watson was her most outspoken critic. She didn’t make Hermione a Black girl to be inclusive, she did it to distance Watson from the character because Watson isn’t transphobic. JKR further muddied the waters by saying that Dumbledore was gay and always had been (though no evidence of this is in the books — he’s essentially treated as ace, as in, asexual, as in, his sexuality is undetermined and probably doesn’t exist, which is fitting as the entirety of his character’s relevance is mentorship to an adolescent boy). When the rest of the cast basically stood against her, she set out to recast all of them.

The new Harry Potter series looks like it might be fun, but I cannot in good conscience watch the new series. There are so many more things out there to see. Watching it with infinite time would be one thing, but I haven’t got that, have I? I was fully grown when Philosopher’s Stone came out, and I had no intention of seeing it. A coworker slipped me a bootleg copy (while it was still in cinemas!) and I watched it… twice. Then I went and saw it in cinema. I then collected the books and read them, and watched the movies, though I didn’t like it after the fourth one. It stopped being fun. I’m currently reading Dungeon Crawler Carl, and by that I mean, of course, I’m listening to the audiobooks. I’m in the second to most current book, the seventh one, and it’s still fun. It’s gotten serious, but it’s still fun. And, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, Matt Dinniman (the author) and Jeff Hays (the audiobook narrator) are not bigots. That’s the magical adventure series I’m looking forward to.

I saw someone discreetly advertising it up here the other day and now I’m a bit skeeved out by it.

But also, I don’t use “social media”, per se. I like forums. The Reddit formula was fine until it wasn’t. Lemmy is about as social network as I get.

For those curious… use a burner email, and tread carefully.

I got no sympathy for people who sell pirated games, though. Selling mod chips or selling modded Switches is one thing. It’s a service many people can’t do. A Switch has to be opened and soldered, though IIRC the OG was easier to do, but has since been patched. Compare this with the 3DS that anyone can jailbreak in minutes. But selling pirated Switch ROM dumps that they probably didn’t even dump themselves? Or even if they did. If I’m gonna pay, my money’s going to go to the people who made the game… not a bloody Reddit moderator.

Both platforms will be discless for their next generation. PS6 and Helix will both be digital only.

The problem is, PlayStation does not have the infrastructure in place to implement a proper disc to digital system like Xbox has. Xbox’s still half-arsed though as it only covers XB1 and Series games. Like PlayStation games, Xbox and 360 games are not individually license-coded. So they both need a mail-in programme where you can mail in your discs and get a code to redeem the game on digital.

The only real issue I have with that, aside from the possibility they can take your game from you, is that at this point, we don’t need a next-gen console. GTA VI is the big release this year (though I personally don’t care about it) and IMO it doesn’t look better than Cyberpunk 2077 from nearly 7 years ago. Okay, the faces look better, but the world? Hell no. I just got Pragmata and it in no way pushes the envelope of what XSX/PS5 can do. Hell, the 360/PS3 era games are still peak, IMO. I don’t need PS6 or Helix.