"So, we’ve all had a... time on Reddit lately," Go_JasonWaterfalls wrote. "And I’m here to recognize it, acknowledge that our relationship has been tested, and begin the 'now what?' conversation."

If I was part of the organization responsible for making unilateral changes that only benefitted itself, I'd be embarrassed to start a message this way.

"Now that I've slapped you around a little, let's talk about what YOU can do to repair our relationship" is what it sounds like to me.

I swear sometimes it feels like a superpower to have grown up in the 90s and learned the ground rules for multiple OSes, search tools, and file systems - the descendants of which are nearly all still in use today.

I defer of course to any oldheads who can still bang out a long .bat file or compile and configure Linux; I just mean it's a very useful quirk of the era that skills learned on windows 3.1 or OSX are still broadly applicable, even in fields where 'using the computer' is a minor task of one's workday.

I think anyone who was around, and online, before reddit/twitter/Facebook became the consolidated social media behemoths that they are, are willing to learn something new. The before-times were replete with smaller communities where your internet handle was the only real source of continuity (and even then, only if you wanted it to be).

But those whose ONLY experience of online discourse is the big 3? It's a lot to adjust to. I don't know if this is what will hit critical mass, but then, maybe that's setting the wrong goal to begin with. Can the communities connected here be self-sustaining for a time, regardless? Definitely.

For a moment there, it looked like predictors of twitters final demise were going to be proven wrong - or would at least have trouble making a clear distinction in light of how durable twitter has been. Instead Musk is about to toss brand loyalty in the trash and paint a clear line for before-musk, after-musk. No version that succeeds twitter will ever be the twitter that rose to success, but now even a layperson will know the difference . May as well be an obituary.

Wait, there's a company that owns the company that owns Ars?

Consolidation is a curse.

Witcher 3 doesnt need leveled enemies or loot. There is already a wide enough variety of monsters and equipment to convey player progression, and the leveling only exists to make sure that Geralt is as vulnerable to human enemies at the end of the game as the beginning. That's great! That's the kind of world it is. I just don't think you need constantly increasing hitpoints & a loot treadmill to keep it that way.

That's ok lol, it's just a phone! My goal is to treat it as a tool, vs just scenery and this is more configurable than the standard Android grid. I don't think anyone is being mean, but the extreme range of opinions is pretty funny!

For the moment it is still a massive repository of useful esoteric knowledge. I've stopped using it for anything active / current, but so long as it exists and is searchable I don't see that I'll be able to move away from accessing it entirely.

Twitter, however, is dead to me.

Smaller, narrower phones generally. Blackberry keyboards (and slideout keyboards) in particular.

Loved the various hardware oddities of the moto Z line: a rear fingerprint scanner that was easy to use while holding the phone, and of course the magnetic attachments. Used to carry two batteries that could hot-swap, and a game controller in my bag.

It's definitely not for everyone! I like being able to group functions by size and position, vs just a bunch of app bubbles, and the cubist look is oddly satisfying.

It's useful for me to get the whole picture, or whip open a productivity app, in one tap or swipe, so I can get back to whatever else is happening. So, on a 6.2in, everything is very readable.

Agreed - working as intended, and it's not just LDS. I'm in FL and churches here have been opposing publicly funded safety nets for my whole life, in favor of voluntary, often church-led, donations.

OK, sure, except that Netflix is incentivized to say as much, regardless of public sentiment.

I'm sure the hit they took to subscribers is worth it in terms of their balance sheets, else we would see a retraction, but there's no real way for them to know what the subscriber base would look like in the absence of anti-consumer policies (or their increasingly unsatisfying content production policies), based solely on historical subscriber data.

Users who got sick of it left, but we can only leave once, and Netflix wasn't going to try and retain us unless the exodus was unprecedented. I'd argue the real proof of customer dissatisfaction will be the piracy numbers on their various shows. Customers who want their content, but not their costs or policy restrictions, represent actual money left on the table.

As for their labor practices, well - like Adam Conover said, strikes are more effective than boycotts, and there are several ongoing. Won't do much for the user experience, but maybe the long term consequence is fewer, better shows with actual completed stories.

I'm reading Michael Crichton's The Sphere. It's an odd one - Crichton rarely spends a lot of time on character, but Sphere in particular is barely interested in the people at all. It's situations and implications, a sense of mystery and dread, that the author is interested in, and he whips from one dilemma to the next so quickly its a little disorienting. that can sound like praise, but I'm not sure it is. This is an early work, and it feels rough now and then. Without strong characters, the only voice you really hear is Crichton's, and his tech-terror-explainer 'tone' can be a little tough to swallow in large amounts. all the same, I'm desperate to see where it goes, even as I suspect it will all be over much faster than most of his later novels.

Sure! It's by u/jmlan on reddit, they also have an Etsy.

If it helps, I'm left-handed, so it's grouped in a sort of arc from the bottom left corner - apps for quick one-handed use are inside the arc, and the rest is either informational or the start point for a more involved activity like web browsing. It looks 'cluttered' because I didn't really lay it out as a generic or intuitive interface, but specifically to match my needs and habits. I think a home screen should be utilitarian - 'pretty' is for lock screens. Hope I didn't send you down too deep a rabbit hole - Although sometimes that can be fun, so good luck!

Wanted to clarify that, while colors and spacing are customizable, I didn't create or extensively modify the launcher apps, only the layout. It's not rainmeter levels of remixing or anything. In particular, I don't have as much control of the widgets as I'd like, and would probably tone down the calendar or picture gallery if I could.

Though its not to diminish your read of it, I'm happy to explain my particular choices! You're right that this layout is not visitor-friendly, but like you said, it's a phone. Not really for sharing. That said, there IS a hierarchy of sorts, just not an obvious one - I'm left-handed, so anything I use with quick, one-handed input is in an arc from the bottom left (calculator, macronutrient tracker, checkbook). From there, apps in frequent or varied use, or with inline notifications, are larger. This way I can read a summary of a message or alert without opening the app or Notification Shade. From there, web browsing and social media is at the bottom for lots of thumb typing, while the morning routine (news, weather, traffic) is at the top for use on a desk.

With a UI for general use, having to explain in such detail would be a sign of failure - I would indeed settle on a simpler rubric if it was a company tablet. But I love the little eccentric choices I can make with this launcher to make it just for me. Hope that proves interesting!

An interesting time to be reading Forward.... Was that because of the TV series? Are you reading them in sequence?

I've found a new reason to use the subscribed page - it shows more videos per screen than the home screen, now that YouTube on Android TV has massively increased the preview panel to an absurd degree. There's barely any room for identifiers, just two or three video previews taking up the entire screen, like I've blown up a phone app on my TV. Wtf YouTube?

The sequels trend towards fewer, longer stories with a bit more characterization as compared to Foundation, but it never really stops being a series about moments in a larger history. I'd say give either prelude to foundation or Foundation and Empire a try, but odds are if those don't grab you, none of them will.

(importantly for those who don't know already, the publishing dates vary widely across the series - with Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation released in the 50s, and the surrounding prequels and sequels arriving decades later. This can manifest as a jarring shift in writing style if you read them in chronological order instead of publishing order.)

Moto x rocked. Last phone I ever really liked owning. My galaxy phone is just a tool, comparatively.

Unfortunately the Brandenburg test ("imminent lawless action") isn't too far from that. His actual speech was unethical and selfish, but unlikely to be deemed illegal.

I have a 10 year old CPU and I think Baldur's Gate 3 has better performance than Battletech sometimes.

Same. I even self-host it now, no getting caught up in massive data breaches for me!

Swapped to SmartTubeNext. Has all the expected features plus better browsing and an 'auto-skip sponsors' mode.

This was super handy, but these days you have to carefully prune your notification permissions, or it would go off all the time

Indeed. I'm glad to see a headline pouring cold water on the "no really THIS time a spoiler candidate matters!" Frenzy, but this far out from elections, I'm not sure it's worth participating in the horse race coverage by clicking it.