The thread is here, for those like me, who have closed and blocked twitter

I don't watch Linus' videos that often, and I don't know the names of the people working for him. But from what is stated on that series of tweets, seems to be straight up harassment / gender discrimination.

Anyway it's good that it's surfacing, but I hope that it doesn't escalate any more as a drama, because it seems like they have a fairly toxic community, and the one that's always being targeted are the ex-employees.

But Mastodon is built on a technology stack almost as old as Twitter’s, and has largely failed to achieve widespread adoption despite several mass-exoduses from Twitter. BlueSky is more promising, using a brand new protocol called AT which promises to let users not only create their own instances of the service, but filter their feeds with custom algorithms, instead of settling for one centrally-controlled “master algorithm” that prioritizes engagement above all else.

• A new protocol that's not a standard being adopted elsewhere, is not promising, it's just another protocol. AT protocol is MIT license, but it's not a standard, ActivityPub is W3C standard.
• Also isn't creating own instances, something that's common in fediverse, while, is there any other AT protocol instances that's not owned by Bluesky?
• And isn't Bluesky a spinoff from original Twitter? What does she mean by old technology stack? LAMP? Mastodon is built on React, Redux, Ruby on Rails, NodeJS, and Postgres. I can't find any info about BlueSky's server stack, but it seems like their frontend is using React, and maybe Go.

Am I fucking crazy, or do people just pluck information out of thin air, without any fact checking and call themselves senior journalists? Does she hold any investment in Bluesky?

I remember when Joe Rogan was getting giant paycheck from Spotify promoting antivax stuff, and people talked about moving to Apple Music, but it feels like many just stuck with Spotify.

I came across a post on instagram that says that Al Yankovic's 80 million stream on playlist only netted him enough money to buy a sandwich.

Also, Spotify underpaying artists, making fake playlists with cover artists to undermine artists, are not new. It feels like the mainstream crowd just doesn't care, which pushes me further into depression.

After 8 years of daily tweeting one of the loudest, most candid voices coming out of China has been deplatformed- absolutely no one gives a shit. I could be dead in a ditch- but we aren’t actually people, we’re just signs for people like you in the West to wave at each other in their ideological war. –Naomi Wu

Sadly this is what I've been feeling nowadays.

After Louis pinned and liked an anti masker comment under on of his videos and moving to Texas where the comment section on his video is starting to be filled by pro-gun right wingers and free speech absolutists, I stopped watching his content altogether.

That might not be his intention, but his libertarian views sure attracts certain crowds.

It's sad, because he's convincing and persuasive when it comes to talking about repair rights, anti-monopoly, etc. But I suppose that's the same sentiments experienced by people who listen to Jordan Peterson, before sliding down into the incel rabbithole.

I believe from what I read is that some of these driverless car companies in the US are releasing their fleet, flooding the street 24/7. Some of them will take up parking places, cause traffic jam, or just stall in the middle of the road.

Maybe it's different in the Europe, where there's stricter regulation, since from the comments here, many who are okay with driverless car are mostly from European countries. Unless if you own stock in those companies, then there's incentive caused bias.

Just like how drugs need to go on multiple clinical trials before going on the mass market, I believe that if you want driverless vehicles, a lot of testing is needed.

But this is not testing / gathering data phase, Cruise has 300 cars at night, 100 during the day in SF, while Waymo has around 250 cars. Again, this is not testing phase, there's no driver to safeguard in case things go wrong, these are actual driverless taxi that charges people.

The main rationale of these companies is not to bring a safer environment with driverless cars, the main rationale is how to get rid of gig workers that causes problems to Uber or Lyft, problems such as demanding living wage, proper employment status, unions, etc.

If you want to look at a better approach, maybe look at how Singapore is doing it

• it's operated by SMRT and SBS bus, which are regulated and owned by government
• it's self driving bus
• "drivers will remain essential to the operation of autonomous vehicles even when these do take off, although their job scope will change"

So if you wanna support, maybe don't support what Cruise is doing, but more of what Singapore is doing

• it's still highly regulated
• it's a bus, it's a public transportation, so it still helps in tackling climate issues.
• it's not being used to fire workers,
• there's still failsafe, the drivers are standby, in case the bus goes haywire

Wasn't he just got fired like yesterday?

This is just pure speculation from my part, but with

• Trump bending over for Russia
• his multiple visits to Moscow was made happen by KGB
• his relations with Jeremy Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
• the rumor that Kremlin has an incriminating golden shower video tape on him that could be used to keep him obedient

And with

• Elon bending over for Russia
• his multiple visits to Moscow to buy rockets, in which there's no way Russian govt aren't involved
• the photograph of him with Ghislaine

I just can't help to speculate that Kremlin has something really incriminating against these two. But again this is just pure speculation without any proofs.

Journey still looks pretty pretty.

Not sure whether it's still enjoyable to play, since probably not many people are playing it these days.

https://petapixel.com/2024/01/03/court-docs-reveal-midjourney-wanted-to-copy-the-style-of-these-photographers/

What's stopping AI companies from paying royalties to artists they ripped off?

Also, lol at accounts created within few hours just to reply in this thread.

The moment their works are the one that got stolen by big companies and driven out of business, watch their tune change.

Edit: I remember when Reddit did that shitshow, and all the sudden a lot of sock / bot accounts appeared. I wasn't expecting it to happen here, but I guess election cycle is near.

Apparently Jeff Gerstmann received the review code quite a bit later than other publications. He said it's quite a ridiculous story that perhaps he would talk about it someday (his tone sounds like this is a story in the far future)

Jeff is ex (old) Gamespot, ex Giantbomb, and the guy who got fired from Gamespot due to external pressure from Eidos after he gave Kane and Lynch a 6 out of 10.

I've been using it for a week, and I've also been using Obsidian for a couple of months.

It's quite different from Obsidian.

Obsidian:

• is great in writing notes / markdown, very text heavy
• there are dataview that could tie relations between notes, but it's not user friendly to set it up. Also table creation is still not user friendly.
• has great community plugin support
• very keyboard friendly

Anytype:

• is great in creating relations between objects, you define objects and relations all the time, e.g. Movie object has a Director relation that ties to a Director object, etc.
• it's good for drag & drop / mouse heavy interactions, the keyboard navigation is still clunky (hard to select some sections just by using keyboard)
• no community plugins

I use Obsidian to write my language grammar notes, it's very fast, and I could do most stuff on keyboard without switching to mouse.

I use Anytype to setup kanban boards, information of my video games backlog, I use it for planning tasks that I wanna do later, set the status to in-progress, and watch it show up on the dashboard. It's very linkage heavy.

Anytype is probably more of a replacement of Notion, instead of Obsidian, albeit it's still in alpha, thus it doesn't have enough features to go against Notion yet. But I am enjoying it thoroughly, the UI is clean and not bloated, although it requires you to define Objects and Relations if you want to fully utilize it.

Is this César do Paço's wiki entry?

Apparently he donated ten of thousands euro to Portugal's right wing populist party Chega, and he really wanted to wipe that information out of existence

On 11 January 2021, Portuguese news channel SIC Notícias broadcast a story asserting that DePaço had donated over ten thousand euros to Portugal's Chega party, and highlighted connections of several of its leaders to the DePaço Foundation.[23][24][25] This was controversial in Cape Verde due to Chega's opposition to immigration.[26][27] The day after the SIC story was aired, Cape Verdean Foreign Minister, who had recently appointed DePaço as Honorary Consul of Cape Verde to Florida, resigned.[28][29] DePaço was subsequently dismissed,[30] At the time he was appointed, Cape Verde already had a consul in Florida.[31]

Also I just found out that Barbara Streisand's first name is spelled Barbra

I've seen quality drops of Duolingo, ever since their ... IPO, sadly.

Anyway, here's some ways you can milk the rest of the Duolingo before completely abandoning it.

• Use the web version, and type in all the answers if it's possible. Selecting words are good for introducing new words (and reminder in case you forgot), but by typing it on your own, it's faster to commit into memory.
• Use classroom mode to get unlimited hearts, create your own classroom and invite yourself in. I assume that Duolnigo will probably eventually stop this loophole
• Use search engine to search for the sentences you're unsure of. No, don't use machine translation, but search on the internet, and see if the sentence ever being used by the sites (news, academic, or personal homepage) using the target language.

I sadly still don't know what other comparable free alternatives to Duolingo. Anki is great, but it's largely flashcard for words, not sentences (unless you want to create your own deck). The others require subscription fee.

Other methods? Search for pdf of language grammar files, there are a lot out there. Some are godawful to read, especially those 'Comprehensive Grammar Guide' books. Some are amazing, e.g. Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese.

I don't know if it fits all the prereqs of a FOSS, but there's mycroft and there's also jasper

But I have no idea how advanced they are, or how good their 3rd party integrations are.

IGN had a writeup about the condition of working in Bungie in 2021

IGN has spoken to 26 current and former employees that have worked at Bungie within the last decade. Their accounts of the studio's work culture encompass a wide range of experiences. They span overt sexism, boys' club culture, crunch, and HR protection of abusers, as well as more complex stories of microaggressions, systemic inequalities, and difficulties in being heard. However, interviewees also include a number of more recent employees who, despite their own hurts, truly believe the studio is slowly but steadily improving, are candid about the immense challenge of trying to turn such a massive ship in a better direction, and whose accounts of change line up with statements made to IGN by Parsons in response to this piece.

... When people objected to his demeanor, he told them they needed thicker skins, and to learn how to take criticism. He called one woman on the team an "unmanageable bitch." Another source said he was "literally the worst person I've ever worked for."

He was eventually let go, but was replaced by what our sources say were similarly antagonizing men. One lead frequently made sexist remarks, but also complained about "reverse sexism" and on at least one occasion made homophobic remarks to a queer colleague. He would openly mock his team members’ ideas in meetings then play his mockery off like a joke, and would frequently take credit for work others had done. ...

It seems like the company genuinely tried to change, but some of the old guards, the old employees (not only the execs) are still racists / transphobes / misogynists. While the PR touts that it's diverse and a safe workplace is not in line with the actual things happening. It reeks like a boys club. That was in 2021, probably going to take more time for the company to change and remove those festering toxic people.

Japan's first successful hostile takeover only happened in June 2019

Many companies in Japan have keiretsu style cross shareholding,

• vertical keiretsu: with manufacturing industry largely comprises of parent company holding shares of their suppliers, distributors, etc, and in return those suppliers / distributors / sub companies hold some amount of shares of the parent company. These sort of shield them from market fluctuations.
• horizontal keiretsu: when the relationships between companies are more horizontally sliced, e.g. you often see Mitsubishi UFJ, Mitsubishi Electronics, Mitsubishi Materials, etc.

These cross shareholding systems create a resistance towards hostile takeover, which have both its up and down sides, but at least it has resisted the likes of corporate raiders, e.g. Carl Icahn, where they acquire companies for asset stripping. Corporate raiders don't create values for society, it's to fatten payouts.

Sorry for the long reply, it's just for other users to get a glimpse on why hostile takeover is extremely rare in Japan, and probably doubly so when it comes to foreign hostile takeover.

65% of Americans support tech companies moderating false information online

aren't those tech companies the one who kept boosting false information on the first place to get ad revenue? FB did it, YouTube did it, Twitter did it, Google did it.

How about breaking them up into smaller companies first?

I thought the labels on potential COVID or election disinformation were pretty good, until companies stopped doing so.

Why not do that again? Those who are gonna claim that it's censorship, will always do so. But, what's needed to be done is to prevent those who are not well informed to fall into antivax / far-right rabbit hole.

Also, force content creators / websites to prominently show who are funding / paying them.

Wait, there's a split screen on Baldur's Gate III? Normally I'd expect split screen games are for games with shorter gameplay loop, e.g. FPS, racing.

It's kinda interesting that there's a split screen couch co-op for a long sprawling RPG. Also doesn't that make all the UIs and texts even more busy / cramped?

I just read that some people are trying out split screen. on steam deck, that's wild.

With game size becoming very huge, I sometimes hope that digital storefronts or devs would give us an option to download the game / assets depending on the configuration that we want to play under.

I still don't own a 4K monitor and have a relatively slow download speed, it'd be great if customers could choose a 1080p option to save time and space.

I remember vaguely about smart download system, announced during Xbox's stage show, a couple of years ago, but I can't remember whether it's for deciding between Xbox Series S and X, or it's for something else.

• Sealed room murder mystery, with no quirky characters. And with puzzles that require you to wiki stuff.
• RPG that takes place outside of western European / American / Japanese setting. I wanna see games that take place in Korea, India, Africa
• RPG that takes place in a small city where you can interact with most people, a small open world like Kamurocho (maybe larger), but allows interaction with most people, instead of just handful of quest givers.
• Igavania but with modern sci-fi settings. Shadow Complex exists, but that's more metroidvania (no leveling up or equipment drops from enemies)
• Flight simulator but for road trip. Truck simulator but with real world map data
• Flight simulator but for underwater exploration, with real world data.
• PS3 Africa, but expanded to more regions, more animals.
• God of War, but other mythologies, e.g. Egyptian, Chinese, South East Asians, Africans, Polynesians, etc.

All the mainline games are not interconnected at all, they are pretty much very separate in terms of story / settings / characters. So you can jump into any one of the games. Also, their turn-based systems, aka Active Time Battle, aren't anything interesting, compared to say Shin Megami Tensei's Press Turn system. All FF games have very linear / streamlined experience compared to other games, i.e. choices don't matter much, you don't choose the stats, equipments are streamlined.

Here's some overview:

• First 6 games were 2D games, the best of those bunches are Final Fantasy 6. Great story, great villain, great music

• original FF7 is the one popularized the JRPG genre, and probably broke the base between older 2D fans and newcomers. It has memorable characters, music, story about eco-terrorism. The gameplay revolves around materia system, it's like logic system where say if you connect Fire magic with All-effect and 2x-effect, you can casts double Fire magic that hits every enemies, etc. FF7 Crisis Core is one of the best FF spinoffs out there, while FF7 Remake is a 'remake'. It's advised that you finished the original FF7 before playing those two.

• FF8 also broke the base. The game is more romance-centric in some way, but still sci-fi. The gameplay revolves around junction / draw system, where you draw magic from enemies to junction it to your stats.

• FF9 is kinda back to original game. It's more high-fantasy setting, and was released during the end of PS1. It wasn't as popular as FF7 or FF8, but there are definitely fans. I had hard time getting into it, because the animation is kinda slow, but maybe I should replay the HD version

• FFX is very well received, it's a sci-fi romance story that takes place in south east Asian-like tropical islands. The first FF game on PS2. FFX has a sequel, FFX-2, which is also well received

• FF11 is MMO, I don't play MMO, so I have no idea about it.

• FF12 is great, it's more political than usual FF games, because it's written by Matsuno, who made Tactics Ogre and FF Tactics. The gameplay is bit weird, bit MMO like.

• FF13 was not well received, the only mainline FF game on PS3. It spawned two other games FFX-2 and FFX Lightning Returns. The main complaint about FF13 was that the story was incomprehensible, the game is very linear, and the battle mechanics is very confusing. I think what happened is that

  • they used tons of opaque in-game terms (Fal' Cie, La' Cie), that's barely explained until very late in the game.
  • the game also opens up very late, there's a one large wide region for you to roam around and engage in enemy encounters, but they only give it to you very late in the game
  • the combat wasn't explained clearly, the paradigm shift system is actually fun, and a step up from ATB
  • annoying characters, they focused too much on Hope and Snow. Hope is a whiny child, but he's a child, so it's ok. Snow on the other hand, is just an annoying character who likes to talk about himself.

• FF14 is another MMO, I don't touch MMO

• FF15 is kind of a mess, it was in development hell. I like the roadtrip story, where you just drive around. The open world is bit sparse and serves mostly for enemy encounters. One of the main issue is that some of the stories are gated behind DLCs. The gameplay is bit more weirder than normal ATBs. I like this game, but not as much as others.

• FF16 is great. Devil May Cry combat, very streamlined and nicely paced story, those huge spectacle Asura's Wrath-esque battles, etc. This game is my current GOTY.

There are other spinoff games, e.g. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, World of Final Fantasy, but they are mostly spinoffs, mostly for fans who want more after playing the mainline.

But there's one that I want to recommend, and that's Final Fantasy Tactics. It's a strategy RPG and it's amazing. There's an updated version released on PSP, called Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, which is probably the one you should play.

There are rumor swirling around about FF9 and FF Tactics remakes, but can't say anything until we see it.

Yeah, this is frustrating.

I can handle absurd sentences like "The dog is cooking the dinner", and actually finds them beneficial because it prevents me from guessing the whole sentence.

But this is a sign that not enough human efforts are poured into create permutation of the answers.

Normally I'd say it's a greedy cash grab, but it's $10 upgrade path for existing owner, instead of reselling it for $50 - $70? Also there's a new rouge-like / souls-like mode? Maybe branding this release as 'remaster' is not doing them any favor, it'd probably better for them to market it as free PS5 upgrade and a survival mode expansion for $10.

Jordan Middler from VGC heard that this might be a project for new hires

Ian Stokes (@IanVanCheese) from Twitter posted that "If I was Sony, I would maybe let my S-tier studio that excels at making new IPs and interesting games actually make new games, instead of forcing them to photocopy their previous A+ report card for eternity"

to which Jordan Middler from VGC (@JordanMiddler) replied "From what I was told from one person, this was more of a project for new hires to get them in the game. Druckmann's team is full steam ahead on original. One doesn't takeaway from the other afaik"

I really hope that Naughty Dog would move on to do something more cheerful than TLOU, the mood is just too oppressive and taxing, especially in TLOU2 where the game is very long.

Subscription only makes sense if there's an ongoing service, e.g. processing in the cloud, cloud data storage, etc.

Apps that don't need to be subscription:

• Camera apps like Halide or Filmic Pro, wtf
• Any todo / habit apps, the 'cloud' part is usually iCloud / Google Drive
• Notetaking apps, e.g. GoodNotes, wtf
• Duolingo, mainly because the contents of some lessons are outdated (missing audio, etc).

I do, especially when someone's profiting from it, while my license is strictly for non commercial.

why did I misread that as AutoCreamPie?

That's bit harsh to say that all his great works are not his.

I do share the sentiment that Kojima's writing has been in downhill for quite sometime and he really in need of a good editor. I actually think that his stories are more coherent or at least entertaining in his earlier works, e.g.

• Snatcher
• Policenauts
• MGS 1
• Some like MGS 2, but I think the boring oil rig setting broke me, and the constant chatter with 'Colonel' didn't help
• MGS 3
• Peacewalker
• MGS Rising

What I actually like is his obsessive attention to details that barely matters when it comes to gameplay, e.g. melting ice cubes, aiming at enemy's crotch to get dog tags, etc.

Kojima games started clicking for me when he introduced the 'R&D system' in Peacewalker, where it's actually a RPG progression system but the rewards are absurd equipments. As the matter of fact, I like the 'walking and R&D' parts of Death Stranding a lot, but really dislike the enemy encounters and the story in that game.

And it's okay, not every games are for everyone, I'm glad that someone is giving him blank cheques for his absurd ideas that are not the norms.

I read that military used Xbox controller because it was more intuitive than traditional method.

But I do hope that they update / change their gamepad regularly, because thumbstick drift is a thing.

Americans (and others) who like to tout free speech, watch them turn 180 instantaneously if you ask them whether the first amendment is applicable to ISIS, or any other groups that they don't like.

There's a difference between being able to criticize government and people in power, to straight up inciting hate and racism.

Dave the Diver shouldn't be categorized as an indie game

Dave the Diver is developed by Mintrocket. Mintrocket is not an indie company, it is not acquired by Nexon, it's actually a sub-brand / division by Nexon. It is a sub-division of a giant company.

There are many indie devs that rely on being nominated to Indie category awards, for exposure, for the ability to stay afloat in business. What Dave the Diver is doing, is to take over a slot that might be the make / break event for smaller indie companies.

Think about the reason why there are specialized bundles for indie games, why people retweet / share info for indie exposure.

• If Ubisoft were to spin-off a sub division to make Child of Light, would we have labeled Child of Light as indie (not some weird AAA indie game)?
• If ALDI came into United States and spun off smaller mom-and-pop / bodega looking shops to compete with local mom-and-pop stores, do you still consider this spinoff as a local shop that need local support?
• If your government creates a grant to fund small local companies, and a giant MNC spun off its brand to compete for the grant, are we even still in this discussion?

Dave the Diver should be competing in other categories, just not in indies.

Also Nexon is scummy kinda like EA of Korea, shutting down games abruptly, fined for loot box exploitations, they have market cap of $17B.

Excerpt from an interview with the devs: https://www.gameple.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=207557

Q. '데이브 더 다이버'가 순수하게 개발로만 흥행한 것인지에 대해 의문이 있다. 한 인디 개발자들은 넥슨이 인디 시장까지 침범하는 것이 맞는가? 하는 목소리도 있다. 그에 대한 짧은 소감을 부탁한다.

Q. There are questions as to whether ‘Dave the Diver’ was a success purely due to development. One indie developer said, “Is it true that Nexon is invading the indie market?” There are also voices saying: Please give your brief thoughts about it.

황재호: 딱 잘라 말하면 우리 게임은 인디 게임이 아니다. 인디는 우리보다 더 적은 리소스에서 더 힘들게 개발하는 개발자들을 존경한다. 해외에서 GJA 인디게임 후보에 올라간 것이 있다. 해외에서 보는 정의가 조금 다른 것 같다. 넥슨의 압도적인 지원을 받는 것과는 다르게, 우리에게 자율권을 준 것이다.

Jaeho Hwang: To put it simply, our game is not an indie game. Indie respects developers who work harder and with fewer resources than we do. There is a GJA indie game candidate from overseas. It seems that the definition seen overseas is a little different. Unlike receiving overwhelming support from Nexon, they gave us autonomy.

I remember watching Batman Begins, and Christian Bale dropped an awful line in Mandarin but pronounced some words like Cantonese (he butchered "I'm not a criminal" into "I'm not a rice wheel / cloud"). I'm always amazed that how much are the actors getting paid, yet can't afford to hire a language coach or just some random person from Chinatown to be on set and help them rehearse just one line of sentence that has 5 words in it (我不是犯人)

I'm reminded of this because, I was watching season 2 of Fringe yesterday, in one episode, Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) claimed that he could speak some Cantonese, and he indeed spoke a couple of okay Cantonese lines in that episode, he didn't sound like native, but it's believable enough as a character who needed to learn the language to do some shady dealings in the past. The lines were not butchered or sounded exaggerated, and I don't think Joshua Jackson himself was getting paid in millions while filming Fringe.

It's even more jarring when Hollywood hires Asian actors to do lines in Asian languages that are not their native languages. I've heard this quite often, when they hire a Korean actors to speak Mandarin / Cantonese, and they sounded awful.

Also, in Japanese shows, I have no idea why they kept making the actors who can't speak English, speak English. In Shin Godzilla, Satomi Ishihara's character is supposed to be a special envoy for US President (IIRC the character grew up in the US), and her deliveries totally broke the immersion. The funny thing is that the other Japanese native characters who didn't grew up in the US, delivered more convincing English lines than hers. Japanese directors, you don't need to speak English to look cool, it's okay for the characters to speak Japanese in Japan.

Hire a language coach, they have already been hiring dialect coaches for decades, why not hire a language coach for a few days? (of course not, the money needs to get into Zaslav's pocket)

East Asian in Asia here. I don't think there's any problem with that.

I have never heard that in any negative connotations at all.

Normally the rule is to not mistaken Korean / Chinese with Japanese, but Taiwan is a different case considering how close their ties is with Japan.

Games wise, very likely. There are way too many 2023 games that I bought (that's on sale) that I haven't even touched yet, and still more heavy hitters that I'm waiting for a bigger discount (e.g. Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Yakuza Gaiden, Spider-Man 2, etc). It's not only newer IPs, there are many games based on older IPs that are well received, e.g. Dead Space, FF16, RE4, Armored Core 6, etc.

Game devs wise, it's probably one of the worse. There'a already more than 9000 layoffs, with many studios shuttered. Half of them probably came from Embracer Group. We are probably gonna be seeing a rapidly shrinking number of mid-size games within the next 5 years.

I remember reading about Cruise flooding cities with their robotaxis like 3-4 months ago, and their cars breakdown / creating traffic jams

I really hope there's stricter regulation about it.

Thanks, I wanted to do quote, but somehow it breaks the newline. I'll edit my post to use yours instead, thank you!

Maybe dull or boring?

I've also stopped using the word 'dumb' when referring to 'stupid'. Nowadays I only use the word dumb for muteness, and I rarely even use that word anymore, mostly mute.

Indeed, Prince Andrew is still roaming around Pizza Express in Woking.

I'm expecting this weakening of encryption / surveillance is to protect rich people by preemptively punishing dissidents who are organizing against them. It's the step that authoritarian countries like China, Saudi, etc have been using against their own people, either with sweeping regulations, or just straight up buying pegasus spyware.

Awful year.

Jean Knight, Lance Reddick, Wayne Shorter passed away this year too.

We all could see that Unity's layoff was coming, that pricing backlash not only drove away many developers, also probably was driven by troubling financial within the organization.

Twitch is sort of unexpected, but when I see the number of impromptu rules they rolled out and rolled back last year, whether from restricting multi-streaming, to limiting showing brands logo on stream, to restricting / unrestricting female streamers from showing too much skin, etc. I assume that means that even with all those intrusive ads, Twitch is still losing money.

I guess from now on, when a tech company starts to arbitrarily change their T&C / rules to either protect their revenue / market share, and maybe rolling back from backlashes, then it's a sign that there's trouble brewing (if you work at those companies, beware)