I already played at least two :^) Thanks for reminding me

It’s dangerous to tell people “shit’s fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it” because they might believe you and do nothing.

Which is why I’m not doing that.

P.S. I’m not advocating for doom here, I just wish more people understood that Americans buying cheap Chinese electric cars won’t save the people living nearby the mine in Africa where the cobalt for those batteries was extracted.

I don’t think you disagree with the parts where I say people will suffer.

With respect, I think you’re projecting a discussion with a different person onto this article.

I don’t think so? My comment is generally aimed at “the situation is grim, but tech just got awesome, so let’s save the planet people!” optimism-filled pieces, much like this one. Forgive me if I come across as affronted when, as temperatures reach new and dangerous heights in certain regions, I am put out seeing someone say market forces are on the cusp of saving us.

For what it’s worth, I hope you’re right.

Thank you.

Whenever using this trick, I’d suggest using DDG instead of Bing if possible.

There’s a chance duckduckgo does something similar, but sadly I can’t check at the moment.

Leaving a comment so I remember to try it later—unless anyone reading is willing to do so.

Purely anecdotally from what I’ve been reading online, it seems most younger folks hate Threads.

Not necessarily because of privacy issues or social impact, mind you. They also think it just sucks to use, don’t like the UI, don’t like the content—which turned out to include a lot of people trying to build a personal brand and sell you things. Just like Instagram, where most users came from.

Excluding content details, Mastodon fails similarly. Requires learning, unsatisfactory UI, more difficult to find and engage with content you like.

I think I agree with the major point of the article, that many gaming journalists… don’t do a great job. At all. Many seem to outright hate the communities they serve, which can’t be healthy for either side.

But it certainly wasn’t this article that convinced me. It’s needlessly hostile, contains personal attacks and petty insults, and despite its many claims and assumptions about Deadlock, gaming companies, journalists and gamers, it has only 4 outgoing links—one of them, bizarrely, simply to x.com—and nothing else. Screenshots? More supporting evidence? Have a useless picture of Valve’s office, I guess.

One of the linked resources is a tweet:

bye Twitter Quoted tweet: “Where to find Verge staff on Mastodon https://theverge.com/23519135/mastodon…”

Why does the author think this is relevant?

Their Twitter account links to a Mastodon address, a throwback to when Elon Musk bought the website and the journos had a hissy fit because they could no longer backchannel to have accounts banned for telling them to “learn to code.”

Wow, that’s why you think people were complaining? Nothing else, no other possible undesirable consequence arising from Musk’s takeover of Twitter? Not even his influence in levels and management of hate speech and misinformation in the platform?

Indeed, the majority of his last month’s output on Twitter – now X.com – is whining about Musk and bizarrely saying “bye Twitter” despite The Verge still being very much active on the site. It’s all so tiresomely typical.

It’s actually quite common for organizations that give mastodon a chance to keep their Twitter account as well. It’s the sad reality that most people (many of their following) will stay on Twitter. See Mozilla for another example, they host their own instance, even, but that sadly doesn’t mean they can throw away Twitter.

So the journalist in question shows support for mastodon, both by mentioning their account and bringing attention to the fact that The Verge is also joining, and this is your reaction? If you know why this happens, it’s misleading, and if you don’t, then it’s a failure in reporting. Both are bad and make me hesitant to believe anything else you say.

By the way, I’m curious about your choice of platform. I wonder what factors led to you picking nazi central as your center of operations. I’m not claiming you’re a Nazi, it’s just… you’re sitting at the table with them, you know?

The answer is games journalism, maybe journalism in general, has become a largely self-serving practice where nothing matters except appearing smarter than the audience you’re supposed to serve.

Well said, Richard. Definitely got that feeling just now.

And to people thinking The Verge sucks completely: don’t generalize publishers like this, please! You should be critical, aware of their leanings and biases, but remember that they’re still an organization hosting multiple writers with different skills too. The Verge has some solid reporting, like when they showed how SEO ruined the web. They also have some utterly shameful moments, just like most other media.

Yeah, I thought about mentioning that. But the comparison goes both ways. Less than 1% of Chrome users switching to Firefox could still mean an increase in Firefox users of over 10%, if I remember my numbers correctly. That’d be a sweet boost for most products.

I think some people overestimate how many will migrate to Firefox in the near future over this.

• High switching cost compared to finding another extension (e.g. uBO Lite), even if the resulting experience is worse.
• Just as many Firefox users like Firefox, lots of Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don’t want to lose that.
• The kind of tech-aware person who’d switch over this is much more likely to have seen the news months ago and taken action already.

As fun as it is to imagine an Adpocalypse shocking the masses and pushing them to try out alternatives to big tech, it’s also way too optimistic, I feel.

Putting their comments aside, I think it’s really impressive how they came up with the perfect four word combination to blue-screen my brain every time.

• DATA WING was short & sweet.
• Transmission is full of pretty and interesting puzzles
• Simon Tatham’s Puzzles is a godsend
• I found Mindustry through the play store

I don’t know, anon, I had fun.

Unrelated, but I just found out there’s a .youtube TLD. Not sure how to feel about this.

Some features of premium actually sound really interesting, but I find myself struggling to reconcile my interest in both those features and the general idea of an internet that isn’t built upon ads with my strong dislike of Google and a sincere wish to give them as little money as possible.

Just don’t let your partner put it in the car wash while you sleep.

Firefox + uBlock origin with the annoyances filter list enabled did the trick for me, I think. I assume reader mode works just fine too, but I’m not a fan.

We need to get our politicians to do a lot more, a lot faster.

So we’re still doomed, then? I’m sorry, I’m sure lots of this is meant to be incredibly uplifting, but it reads an awful lot like “green is cheaper, trust the market! Numbers go up, up, up!” when you consider that:

• Climate change is impacting countless people in horrible ways
• Climate change is still getting worse

The important thing to note here being that, even if a brighter future awaits beyond, the worst is yet to come. I’ll get back to this in a moment.

Yes, that the science to save the human race exists is nice. Really nice. There was a period in which I genuinely wondered if there was any chance humans wouldn’t extinct themselves. But that was years ago. I’ve since learned that “saving the human species” is a terrible, disgusting metric. The future of what I consider humanity remains grim.

Now, if the worst is yet to come, and we can’t yet even accurately predict how much worse the worst really will be, take a moment to reflect on this: which part of humanity is better prepared to weather the incoming changes, and which part is more likely to be labeled “climate change refugees?”

Humanity isn’t only the richest. It’s not merely the wealthiest and most developed nations. Humanity is also a lot of people who will suffer, people who I’m unconvinced will receive the aid and support they need and deserve.

Because the root cause of these issues, the systems that govern our society, have led us here and are unlikely to go away anytime soon. Because these systems have shown incredible prowess at protecting select groups of people from certain issues, while failing at completely fixing them, despite not struggling due to a lack of resources and continuous technological advances. If the pattern holds…

Then humans will survive. Many will live well.

Humanity is still pretty screwed.

TL;DR:

“The tools are here, we’ll be alright, just need political will!”

Who’s we? And if getting politicians to do what’s right was that simple, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

P.S. I’m not advocating for doom here, I just wish more people understood that Americans buying cheap Chinese electric cars won’t save the people living nearby the mine in Africa where the cobalt for those batteries was extracted.

I try my best to keep calm and judge things fairly and rationally but, truth is, you get kinda tired of seeing so many iffy-maybe-alright news about Mozilla.

Inline edit: not even a week later, Teixeira v. Moz. Why, Mozilla? Liking you shouldn’t be this complicated.

My fear is that by the time “something happens” to Firefox, it’ll be something that was entirely avoidable if only we had acted sooner. I’m always wondering if I’m at the point I should be acting.

• I’m still salty about their previous CEO, Mitchell Baker, I believe, getting bigger bonuses while Firefox market share fell (and layoffs happened, but we lack details to understand those properly).
• I’m unconvinced that, in a world where the percentage of people using an adblocker is rising, they’ll find a way to change people’s minds and look at ads, even if they are perfectly, technomagically privacy preserving.
• I’m unconvinced that owning Firefox, which puts uBlock as a front-and-center extension, and Anonym, an adtech company, will not create a conflict of interest—just like what happened to Google.

For the record, this is my first time commenting on this and I’m also deeply bothered by “reactionary nerds” (everyone switch to librewolf!!), but I understand the sentiment. Hope that added some perspective.