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.
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.
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!
Guys, don’t fall for this propaganda video about the game, it’s actually much better than he’s making it look - Skeleton Bones Ghoulie just has a bone to pick with Will Smith.
“He who controls the spice(y content) controls the universe” - Baron Harkonnen in Frank Herbert’s Dune
There are definitely technical reasons why saving mid-run is a lot more complicated. With Pacific Drive, right now when you save, it’ll save:
It makes for a fairly simple, small save file. Being able to save mid-run would add a lot of complexity because it’d need to save a complete map state, including:
And so on. Not only does it massively increase the complexity, it would also increase the size of save files a lot and make saving and loading a lot more cumbersome. And that’s just a simplified breakdown; there are definitely other factors that can make it much, much more complicated.
There are definitely some games where “easy mode” save systems could be implemented without much changing on a technical level, but I don’t think Pacific Drive is one of them.
Ahh, that’s the same path Facebook went down a decade ago then. Yay, capitalism…
What’s changed about Instagram? I’m not familiar enough to know, but I don’t feel like I’ve heard anything all that controversial about it outside of Meta’s general “pay to remove ads” thing. I certainly haven’t heard anything about systemic enshittification like I have with Twitter, Reddit and TikTok; have I missed anything?
I’m not cheering for the layoffs, of course, nor am I necessarily in favour of monopolies and the consolidation of the gaming industry (although, in this instance, I think it’s probably a positive thing for fans of Blizzard IPs). But layoffs during this kind of merger/buyout are expected. Microsoft has its own legal departments, payroll departments, marketing departments, etc, and while they might need expanding slightly as the company grows/absorbs new companies, they don’t need an entire second company’s worth of those departments.
These layoffs were about cutting redundancy rather than just chasing short-term profits. It sucks for the people who were laid off either way, but I think it’s good to be realistic about why they happened.
Yes, as long as they’re also white and middle/upper class!
I’m kind of surprised Apple is willing to fragment things so much just to avoid these consumer-friendly rulings as much as they can. Obviously it’s profit-driven - I get that - but it seems to go against their branding a little, where the Apple ecosystem is typically very simple to use and has parity across devices.
I don’t think all adverts are propaganda. For instance, someone in my village has a sign outside their house that says “EGGS FOR SALE” - that is 100% an advert, but I’m not sure you could convince me it’s propaganda.
I agree that there’s a lot of overlap between advertising and corporate propaganda, but they’re definitely different things.
You’re right about osu! Although it’s probably one of the few competitive games where there’s no gameplay interaction between players - if another player is cheating, it hurts the overall competitiveness, of course, but it doesn’t directly affect your gameplay experience.
It’s not like playing a shooter where someone has an aimbot and wallhacks, or a racing game where someone can ram you off the track without slowing themselves down - those things directly ruin your gameplay experience as well as obviously hurting the competitive integrity. I don’t think those kinds of games would work at all if they were open-source and without anti-cheat unless there was strict moderation and likely whitelisting in place for servers.
Is open-source compatible with competitive games? As much as I love open-source in general, I feel like cheating would be a serious problem if the source code is available for everyone. That’s not really an issue in single-player or co-operative games (outside of cheating leaderboard positions) but it would absolutely cause problems in a PvP game.
Yeah, I don’t get it. I guess I can see the appeal of some “Internet Of Things” connected appliances, like smart fridges suggesting recipes and keeping track of stock and auto-populating shopping lists for you. I don’t need that personally, but I can see why it could appeal to some people.
But things like washing machines and dishwashers? You need to be there in person to fill them up just before they’re ready to go on, and to empty them when they’re done. And when they’re not turned on, they’re sat there doing nothing. What “smart” functions can they even offer?
Yep. LLMs are great for bouncing ideas off, and for getting “soft answers”, but no-one should ever be looking for factual answers from them.