I think a lot of people on lemmy use lemmy/kbin/the threadiverse interchangeably. But yeah, I use kbin, too.
I definitely find myself being much, much more active on Discord since the whole reddit thing went down. It has its issues, and it’s not exactly a 1:1 substitution for thread-based forums, but I enjoy the greater sense of community that comes with Discord.
I’m definitely a little confused about Tango - I’m hoping we’ll at least get more details come out about why Microsoft shuttered them. I mean, Ghostwire Tokyo was… whatever, and I could understand Microsoft not wanting to have them working on that kind of scale again any time soon. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it was fairly expensive and perhaps didn’t do as well as they hoped. But I’m surprised they didn’t want to just downsize the studio and aim for another HI-FI Rush-esque game (or sequel).
But Arkane Austin being closed definitely makes sense. Not only was Redfall a disaster, but by the time Redfall released, 70% of the people who’d worked on Prey had left the studio. (Largely because the studio’s president had left the studio just after Prey, I believe, rather than because of the Microsoft acquisition of Bethesda.) All that was really left was the name.
I installed uBlock for someone recently. They complained about all the empty space where the ads used to be. So I removed the empty space by blocking that element with uBlock, which increased the width of the main body of the website, and they then complained that the website was too wide…
Some people are beyond help.
Those and reducing the requirements for the early blinds definitely stand out to me, yeah. Reducing the early blinds is a very good change - I think most of my early losses aren’t necessarily because I’ve played badly, but rather because it’s too early in the run to have found something to build around or to put any combos together. This change makes you less beholden to RNG in the early game, and also allows you to think a little more about your endgame strategy rather than focusing on surviving right now.
I don’t think the Steam Workshop is the issue here. I’m glad it exists, and direct downloads or snv links are still a reasonable alternative for mods that can’t be hosted on the Workshop for whatever reason.
It’s okay; I appreciate the apology! :)
I think it’s important to look for the nuance in situations and not treat everything as zero-sum. Both sides can have good points and be open to criticism at the same time (this isn’t an “enlightened centrist” take, I promise!). I think a lot of discussion online does tend to strip away nuance and take the position that if you show any empathy with one side then it means you must hate the other - I do my best to avoid that!
these people SHOULD be putting this negative pressure on them. It’s deserved
Was it not implied I agree with that when I said:
The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.
and;
- customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable
- people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable
I’m not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it’s obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I’ve not played it myself) and should be improved.
?
I don’t see why that would make my opinion stupid. Yes, the studio/publisher should be held to account for the crappy release. But a big part of holding them to account should be not giving them money for it in the first place; not just handing over money and then complaining afterwards. Complaining afterwards is reasonable for the people who did hand over money, but they should also hold themselves accountable for financially rewarding a company that puts out a crappy product - they’re part of the problem.
The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.
I’m not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it’s obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I’ve not played it myself) and should be improved. But I do think gamers could learn to be a little more responsible with their purchases and inform themselves before buying a game.
I’m pretty over the whole cycle of games coming out and not meeting expectations, people buying them anyway (through pre-orders or day-one purchases), people being unnecessarily rude/hostile/sending death threats to developers as if they were forced to buy the game as gunpoint. Yes, developers should try to do better, yes publishers should often give developers more time to polish up games rather than announcing the release date two years in advance and refusing to delay, but also consumers could really take some responsibility for what they decide to give money to.
It also left Game Pass somewhat recently, which could maybe contribute.
If a car can receive OTA updates from the manufacturer, then it can receive harmful OTA updates from an attacker who has compromised the car’s update mechanism or the manufacturer.
There’s potential for a very dystopian future where we see people assassinated, not via car bomb but via the their cars being hacked to remove braking functionality (or something similar). And then a constant game of security whack-a-mole like we see with anti-virus software. And then some brilliant entrepreneur will start selling firewalls for cars. And then it’ll be passed into law that it’s illegal to use a vehicle that doesn’t have an active firewall/anti-virus subscription.
It almost feels like the obvious path things will go down. Yay, capitalism…
I’m not totally opposed to software being used in cars (as long as it’s tested and can be trusted to the degree mechanical components are) but yeah, OTA updates just seem like a terrible idea just for a little convenience. I’d rather see updates delivered via plugging the car in (and not via the charging port - it would need to be a specific data transfer port for security reasons). Alert people when there’s an update, and even allow the car to “refuse to boot” if it detects it’s not on the latest version. But updates should absolutely be done manually and securely.
It’s the length of the combined total working lives of an entire football stadium full of people.
The reason it’s overwhelmingly called “climate change” instead of global warming now is because of language change pushed by billionaire foundations.
I do think “global warming” struggles to convince some more simple people anyway, unfortunately. Because while the average temperature of the globe is increasing and causing the changes in climate that we’re seeing, I’ve come across far too many comments from people saying things like “global warming must be a myth because it snows more than it used to” and things themselves smarter than all climate scientists combined for that observation.
Of course, those same people probably think global warming is good because they like their summer holidays so perhaps their opinions shouldn’t matter much either way!
“It’s absurd that we live in a society where people feel the urge to tell me to greet them with ‘sallam alleykum’”.
There’s already a huge difference between what happened and your example here. Your example is “people saying you must do X” . What happens when it comes to gender is people asking, “please do not do X”.
They’re not saying you must refer to them as, for instance, she/her, but rather asking that you do not refer to them as he/him/they/them/whatever. You’re free to just not use pronouns to refer to them at all if that suits you better - you can refer to them by name instead. You’re left with plenty of options and only a handful of restrictions.
Your example, on the other hand, is completely restrictive; you must take this single course of action, and there are no alternatives.
For what it’s worth, I do think we’re in a fairly transitional stage (ha) of how we as society deal with transgenderism. I think people being made to change their pronouns in order to feel comfortable is silly. Not because those people are silly - they’re just doing what they can to feel comfortable with the restrictions society has placed on them - but because society and language are silly.
Why do we refer to people by gender at times when it’s completely irrelevant? Someone having a penis, or male hormones, or whatever other “masculine qualities”, is irrelevant 99% of the time when I refer to them as he/him. If I say, “Donald Trump? Yeah, he’s a corrupt idiot,” then why does him having a penis have any bearing on the language I use there?
And why do we have such gendered roles in society? Why can’t men just wear dresses and make-up and link the colour pink and still identify as men? Why can’t women cut their hair short and wear baggy clothes and like engineering projects and lifting weights at the gym and still identify as women? I guarantee that if we could remove all those kinds of gender associations, you’d see a lot less trans people.
People transition because who they are and what they like, and what society says they have to be (based on their gender) are at odds with each other, and it’s literally easier for them to change gender in order to be allowed to be themselves than to change society. Being trans isn’t some kind of personal failing; it’s a failure of society to accommodate people who deviate even slightly from its rigid roles and expectations.
The ideal future, such as I see it, is for there to be no trans people because no-one feels a need to transition - they can just feel comfortable and accepted as they are. But until then, you need to recognise that there’s a societal issue and stop being a part of it. It takes such a small amount of effort on your part to use the pronouns someone requests, or to avoid using pronouns at all, and it makes such a huge difference to them to be gendered properly. So just be a decent, respectful person and accommodate their wishes and stop making their life worse.
An analogue would be: petrol stations stop being a thing as the world transitions to electric/hydrogen/whatever cars. You start working on a way to modify your car in some way to account for this - perhaps you plan on making your own biofuel, or manually converting it to a electric/hydrogen/whatever car. The manufacturer of your car hears about this, comes along to your house and repossesses your car and takes it to be crushed, despite it being something you own and that they should have no say in any more.
And if you’re getting a game 48 hours prior to release, you’re at least getting a finished game.
True. But, personally, I think it has all the downsides of pre-ordering but at extra cost. The game could be an absolute disaster (Suicide Squad, anyone?) and there’s no way for anyone to know that. Not waiting to be able to properly inform yourself about what you’re spending money on is so stupid.
I’m honestly reaching the point where I think pre-ordering games should be legislated against. Sure, it’s only stupid people being parted from their money, but it’s clear some consumers need protecting from themselves and it’s only really the corporations that would lose out.
I dislike reddit as much as the next scorned ex-redditor, but I can’t really blame them here, regardless of what state reddit is in. if things are going downhill, obviously selling while they can makes sense. And if things are looking good, why not sell now anyway and have some actual money to spend, rather than just holding onto the Monopoly money in case it’s worth more later? It’s still more than enough money for them to be able to live comfortably for the rest of their lives.
So as per @Kierunkowy74’s reply to me, limiting (basically what I described) is a feature on Mastodon already. It basically just sets things to follower-only mode on a per-instance basis. I’m not sure how well that would translate to the threadiverse, but I do think some level of opt-in integration would be best.
To go on a slight tangent: I’ve never used Imgur as anything other than a image hosting site, but I’m aware it has people that use it as a social network in its own right. Whenever I’ve hosted anything on Imgur in the past - even images that don’t need any context - I’ve noticed it always ended up downvoted and sometimes with some negative comments, while the reception on reddit was generally far better. It doesn’t bother me - like I said, I just used it as an image host - but it’s clear Imgur has its own culture. Threads could be the same, and trying to merge its culture with ours could prove difficult.
I don’t know what full-on federation with Threads would look like, but federating vote counts could definitely lead to Threads culture overwhelming threadiverse culture. But I assume that’s also something that can be done on a per-instance basis; I know kbin (which I use) already doesn’t federate downvotes from other instances, for example.
I’m not sure I have a fully-formed opinion on it all yet, unfortunately. I don’t like the idea of cutting Threads off completely unless they do something to earn defederation. I think finding a way to smoothly federate with Threads could give the fediverse a boost in users that could be significant for more niche communities that haven’t managed to find a large enough audience yet (because yes, I’m still missing some of the smaller communities from reddit). But I do also think there are very valid concerns about both the long-term and immediate impacts Threads could have on the fediverse.
That sounds like a good solution. I don’t want to need an account on a different platform to see Threads, but I also don’t want the feeds to just be overrun by Threads users, and that seems to achieve that.
I guess the ideal situation as far as I’m concerned would be for users to be able to choose that setting on an individual basis. Obviously anyone can set up their own instance and achieve that, but being able to do it without being an instance admin would be the best.
Personally, I would like to be able to follow individual Threads users if I so desire but not have Threads content showing up in my All feed. I don’t know if that’s possible with how federation/individual blocking currently works, but it would be the ideal, I think.
I don’t disagree, but gaming laptops are always overpriced. You’re paying a premium for the small form factor. (And I assume they also have the much less powerful RTX 4070 Mobile, which makes the value proposition even worse for laptops.)