The TikTok ban used to be about trying to squash pro-Palestine sentiments and media. I guess this works too.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/israel-palestine-hawley-tiktok-war-hamas-ban-josh-rcna124013

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/business/tiktok-accusations-anti-israel-content.html

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/lawmakers-tiktok-ban-pro-palestinian-content-1235016101/

These big companies have it all backwards. We don’t need them; they need us. I don’t suddenly like slot machine video games just because their fucking bean counters say so. Ever since I bought a Steam Deck, I’ve played nothing but indie and old games, and I ain’t going back. You can keep your 3 bundles and your $70-110 price tags. I’ll play 500 hours of Vampire Survivors before I’ll buy another casino that they happened to build a game around.

In the wise words of the Soulsbourne community: GIT GUD (at not making shitty games).

Anyone that uses “woke” unironically is not someone I will ever take seriously. Criticizing someone for having awareness of reality is peak modern day anti-intellectualism.

Based and orcapilled.

Thanks! I’m never getting rid of this URL.

Any tool that calls itself “open source” and uses proprietary encryption that they refuse to let any neutral third party review, should absolutely not be trusted.

This is a good reminder that if you work in tech or in the video game industry, no amount of good work, overtime, creativity, awards, or anything of the sort, can save you from the chopping block. Capitalism will ruin everything you love.

Elon is a masterclass in the Dunning-Kruger effect.

This quote from the article is exactly why I absolutely won’t bother with OW2–“free” or not:

"I somehow purchased Overwatch 1 for $40, which Blizzard then deleted and created this predatory microtransaction simulator instead"

Lemmy is a massive collection of separate servers and communities run by people. Therefore no government has a hold on it. I’m a guy that pays money out of his own pocket monthly to run a Lemmy server. If the government is controlling it, that’s news to me, and my comment history is pretty damn anti-government.

The whole point of decentralization is to remove control from the corporations and governments, and put it back into the hands of the people.

Using high school as a marker for what to expect for the rest of life is such a terrible idea. Just throw that in the rubbish and go experience people for yourself. Wade through the assholes and you’ll find tons of nice folks just trying to live.

The MOVE bombing. The fact that the Philadelphia police dropped not one but TWO explosive devices on the roof of their house via helicopter is still nuts to me. What made it even worse was the fact that the fire department showed up and let it continue to burn, destroying 61 evacuated neighboring homes and leaving 250 people homeless.

Any time I tell someone about it that hasn’t heard the story, they’re skeptical.

Another one is the time I learned that I was under local surveillance for being an activist that was part of a local non-violent black liberation org. The police would send a unit weekly to check my whereabouts and movements. I learned through a friend of a friend that didn’t even know who I was, but knew my name and that I was on a surveillance list. Pretty sure they were checking in on everyone involved.

Edit: if this comment has taught me anything, it's that you're better off not engaging with pointless nitpickers and police apologists. Fuck me for having an opinion.

My favorite feature of GTA Online was when I’d get destroyed by someone with every weapon, only to respawn walking distance from them over and over and over. They’d kill me repeatedly before I even had a chance to do anything. The only way I could escape was to hope I found a car quick, or hope they got bored of spawn killing me.

This game is a fucking joke. Rockstar has been a shell of its former self for years.

What’s to stop every single corporation from leveraging third party contractor companies just to escape union bargaining? Cognizant seems like a company that basically exists for this reason. Both Amazon and Google play this game and it’s infuriating.

I will never defederate from y’all ❤️

And he’s still getting a $56b pay package.

Money isn’t real.

This is actually a thing. It's called "Model Collapse". You can read about it here.

A lot of people are on the Fediverse to escape these corporate data-hoarder apps. It’s so weird to still see people embracing the abusers. It’s like we’ve learned nothing.

“Well I’m sorry that you feel that way.”

That’s how this comes off. The ultimate non-apology. Fuck off, Unity.

Edit: something to consider is that Unity intentionally made this change as terrible as it is so that they could put out this apology, and roll things back to where their main goal was the entire time. It’s kind of like when you list your house for a high price so that it gets negotiated down to the price range you wanted from the outset. Don’t be shocked if Unity changes this a bit but keeps it essentially the same. It means they can then reflect on history and go “hey, remember that time we listened to the developers?” while still fucking them over.

They seem to think we’re all stupid.

I just installed Nobara today so I could finally rid myself of Windows hell and it’s been amazing.

The idea of "work vacations" only exists because capitalism demands the entirety of our lives. I’m not working on my vacation, period.

And radar.

They claim that they use photos from satellites and fixed-wing aircraft, but refuse to show the photos to both the owner and the news outlet. I can almost 100% guarantee the company is lying about how they obtained the photos and won’t show them because it would prove they did use a drone. Admitting to using a drone would open up a can of legal issues for them that they want to avoid.

There is no way they can legally enforce retroactively charging. How the fuck is that even possible or legal?

Companies use pirated content: line go up! 📈

Everyday people use pirated content: STRAIGHT TO JAIL!

The ones marching were primarily liberals and leftists. The conservatives and centrists were the ones this bingo card should be talking about.

My solution is to steer clear of Google products. They excel at producing disposable… everything.

It would make the Ally usable. Windows holds it back a ton because it’s a trash OS.

There’s still some hardware issues to contend with. Like the fact that it fries SD cards due to poor card slot placement… and the control stick bug…

Let’s just say my wife has one and we recently got her a Steam Deck instead. I had to replace one of the sticks on the Ally and still had problems. She also can’t use the SD card slot at all. It’s flawed hardware with potential (after a couple revisions).

For the widest device coverage, Plex is probably your best bet. I run a Plex server and can watch from anywhere on our network because they have apps on everything.

An alternative would be Jellyfin. I haven’t used it myself but have heard nothing but good things. I’m just not sure how device coverage is.

Facebook. I never willingly go on it, but my friends all use it for events and shit. It’s funny hanging out with them and having someone mention things from a group chat I’ve never even touched. I absolutely refuse to install that fucking malware they call Messenger.

Other than that, anything Google. Have to use it all for work.

Google search is horrendous now. Instead of showing you relevant search results, it’s become an advertising race to the top game. If they can find “sponsored” links or shopping results related to your search, those go to the very top space. It’s about to get way worse as the rise of AI continues to rot the brains of board room suits.

I use Ecosia and DDG. Ecosia on my personal laptop, and DDG on my phone browser.

My instance will most definitely not be federating with this. It’s Meta. Untrustworthy to the core. I didn’t spin up my own Lemmy server and pay out of pocket monthly just to loop bullshit social media companies back into it.

I guarantee 5-10 years from now, those same companies will be complaining that development is not happening fast enough, more developers will burn out, and this cycle will repeat again. Thus starts the new search for speeding things up yet again. The problem is that capitalism demands infinite growth and that translates to speed. So nothing will ever truly be fast enough to meet the demands of people that need their 5th vacation home.

I’m a programmer and I’ve been telling people this for a while now. You will never be fast enough. That’s not a jab or a criticism; it’s the reality of work demands under capitalism. It’s why when a manager constantly says we need to be faster, I start job searching again.

We are witnessing the stage of capitalism where innovation has peaked. That’s why we see ads permeating everything; why live services are in so many games; why data hoarding and required account login is in everything; why we have a seemingly never ending stream of remakes and reboots no one asked for. Capitalism has made it so that there is no time or space for truly new ideas and they instead milk what they can from what already exists.

Cops in the US are lazy and entitled as fuck. They also don’t represent or defend the working class; they exist to protect the rich and uphold the status quo. It also doesn’t help that the US still doesn’t take online harassment as serious as it should.

Had an old landlord keep my deposit when I moved out just because they could. We left the apartment absolutely spotless and never damaged anything. In fact, we added value by fixing a couple small things. Didn’t matter.

Fuck landlords.

I see we’ve teleported back into the 1990s during the violent video games scare among parents. Gotta make excuses instead of, you know, actually facing the real problems.

You shouldn’t anyway. Their vehicles are terrible.

I had a 2003 Ranger that was in tip top shape. I was the only owner and regularly took it in for oil changes and maintenance. Sitting at a stop sign one night on my way home from work and the engine starts knocking out of the blue. Piston fucked and the engine is completely shot. That was like 1-2 months after a full tune up.

My mom had a Ford Focus. As soon as it was out of warranty, everything on that car went south. The electronics, the transmission, everything. That car was a massive piece of shit.

tl;dr - Ford fucking sucks.

Etsy is now just as enshittified. Almost everything on there is dropshipped bullshit from AliExpress. You have to trudge through a massive amount of crap listings just to find anything handmade.

There have been a few times in my life where I pirated a game or album, and ended up liking them so much I legitimately purchased them.

The writer should maybe go and visit some nursing homes. They’ll find a fuckload of poor old people that are most definitely not wealthy.