This one never had lunch at a public school in the 80s/90s…

Also a common thing at mine, oranges cut to a size where you could put them in your mouth to wear like a boxing mouth guard. Called them orange smiles…

There is a separate thunderbird app from k-9 now, so apparently not just an update. Obnoxious though that the new app lists a bunch of collected data types while k-9 doesn’t list any. Maybe just a legacy thing since K-9 has been around forever and they didn’t list them originally, but still upsetting for the privacy minded.

TB:

K-9:

They claim $100 B in ‘losses’ to this kind of game. Unless they’re actually running red on their books what they really mean is ‘we think we should make at least $100 B more per year’.

I’m sure that the vast majority of that would go directly to the front of house employees they’re pinning this on too, definitely not to the execs and share holders…

This may be the most soft-slap low key form of war protest in history…

My single user Lemmy instance is targeted by Chinese scanning, as is pretty well every other IP on the web…

What is DLC vs an expansion has become somewhat blurry. There was StarCraft BroodWar that was really an entire separate game to the point of launching them separately at the menu. Now things like Rimworld (which I play far too much of) have these expansion/plugins that add new mechanics and features but don’t create a separate game in their own right.

I actually read an article recently about 20 years of Oblivion horse armor or some such. They made an interesting point that a lot of the acceptance of micro buys came from online games letting you show off your new gear to the masses.

As a fellow ancient of the game world, I would say 20ish years is not far off give or take. The Atari 2600 was around in the 70s and the original NES came out in 1985(?). The NES was really the beginning of the end for the arcade scene. True that a lot of the arcade ports where terrible, but the power just wasn’t there to do it in a small box yet. $1 rentals from the local video shop would let you play a game all night or longer depending on who it was from.

While the online game services from Xbox and co could be seen as returning to a pay-to-play situation, they where never a must have. You could still play with friends locally without a subscription and the mass push for DLC buys wasn’t there yet.

I would really put the return to money snatching along side the rise of mobile games. Buying addons and in game coins to get an advantage really picked up with the ease of always on connections and purchases with a simple swipe of the finger. Once that ‘just one more boost will do it’ addictive mechanic was made the norm it was all over for the concept of a game that you just bought as a complete thing. Now it’s a novel thing to see a game offered that you just buy and play as it is.

So pretty much one of those smart speaker things with a pin on it, for hundreds of $$$ and a subscription to boot? What a great idea…

I’ve never heard of this thing, is it supposed to do what the analyze this picture or ID the song playing features of my phone already could do, or is there something novel I’m missing?

Been a while since I used it, but what it does it does well. I wonder what the complexity is for a relatively mature app to have someone else pick up maintinance

Yeah, that’s the tough part. I would say base it on those who use both platforms but I suspect those who use multiple platforms tend to use a primary first and others if they can’t find it. Maybe a survey when you buy it asking why you chose this format could help?

Defiantly, GOG is the first choice here old or new even if it’s cheaper elsewhere just to support that model.

This is of course assuming they wouldn’t have had those extra 20% of sales if they went without.

Someone should try a comparison to release on one platform with the DRM and also on GOG with a discount for the amount the DRM would have otherwise added to the price and see which sells better.

My thinking with a lot of those games where you have the handful of over-the-top ‘spenders’ is that at least a few are employees of the company given a free pass to add to their accounts. It’s not like it costs them anything, but it sure incentivizes a bunch of others to buy to try and compete.

You mean there are people who LIKE pay-to-win?

Indeed, I don’t particularly even want it to auto fill unless I give it the OK to do so, even if that’s as simple as a PIN.

I’ve got things worked up with bitwarden to a point where I can put in a short pin to unlock it after a timeout (usually set to 15 minutes) and it will pretty well always work so long as the fields for where the user/pass go are found cleanly.

So you play as a pharmaceuticals CEO?

A vote is a vote, but that’s not the solution I spoke of. Rather than trying to push people to disengage or vote 3rd party, neither of which will make any meaningful difference to the situation (even in the million to one chance some 3rd party did get elected, they’re a politician and will do politician things), why not take the situation into your own hands and create the company run by someone who won’t behave like a capitalist?

Create the next Google, but you can be the one who really follows the “don’t be evil” mantra and in the process usurp the throne from the capitalists who have gone wrong. Once that is done you have the ability to simply hand the reigns over to anyone working there and walk away knowing the problem of that particular market is now solved.

The amusing thing about the people who complain that capitalists are the root of all problems, they don’t make an effort to correct it.

Take the situation of this story. If your ideals are pure and would have the popular support of a critical mass of people, there is absolutely not one thing preventing the establishment of a company, chartered as a public good corporation, and ran as a non-profit entity to provide these kind of material goods for people at cost, or if someone is willing to subsidise the production even less so if you like. You could even get the seed money from a crowd sourced campaign, or so called ‘angel investors’ no strings attached, no ownership stakes to distribute.

The things they promise to do like segmentation and 2FA should very well have been in place for the most part already. Sounds like a lot of ‘just try harder’ to me