It’s pretty spot on.

Most nerds I know (including sysadms) started out on Android because of all the reasons you’d expect. Most of them now use iOS / iPadOS because, at home, they want things to Just Work - and have the available income to throw at the problem. Desktop-wise many of them have used Macs on and off, but it seems like lately they trend Windows and Linux again. Probably because macOS has become more hassle than it’s worth with the continued locking down, increased paranoia, lower flexibility and ridiculous storage prices. It used to be that you could work around the storage prices, but these days it’s practically impossible to run programs from somewhere other than Applications if you want your system to stay up to date. Macs just aren’t the great *nix alternative that they used to be, and while Windows is still pretty awful for my use, Linux as a desktop/gaming system is getting better every day. At least so far. I miss when macOS became more useful for every release. The big releases these days break more than they fix for me.

Good thing some clients will remain incompatible with the new features, then. On the other hand, IRC clients have always been some of the most configurable pieces of software with lots of options to choose from, so I am sure it will be possible to avoid most of the nonsense even in v3 clients.

No reactions, emojis, previews of images and videos? Sounds like heaven.

Discord is creepy if you examine the information they like to collect. On Android, for example, there are 11 unique data points. That’s not just an email.

Personally, if I see a software project on Discord, I nope out. I have made very few exceptions and every time I have come to the conclusion that it is not worth it. Discord isn’t really good for anything other than what it was designed for: Persistent IRC - plus a voice chat option. It’s perfectly fine to chat with a bunch of friends and play some games together. But that is about it.

It is terrible for tracking subjects, for finding information, for storing information, and for engaging in chats across more than one instance. It is unintuitive to navigate, and while they have made improvements, it is up to the user to make a server bearable to navigate by hiding the flood of channels that the average instance contains. Even so, Discord will still try to show you things you have explicitly disabled as a “suggestion”. Discord is bloody intolerable.

So yes, you may grow a community quickly because the people who already use Discord can jump on there. You will, however, lose a bunch of users wiling and able to use a better option who are, most likely, more experienced web users - and sick of the Discord bullshit. While this certainly includes me, I have seen the same sentiment again and again in my feeds. Power users tend to loathe Discord.

Thanks for the heads-up on this. I was entirely oblivious to the existence of custom content.

These stunts should be ignored by the media now. Stop giving the clowns the attention they seek. It is every single bloody time. I’m not even American and still I’m sick of hearing about the idiocy of this small group of extremists.

Stop repeating the inane and misunderstood.

It’s a shitty browser. Wouldn’t use it myself. That doesn’t mean that this isn’t an improvement on what was there before. The world isn’t black and white - and privacy conscious people stay away from Chrome.

See my other post in this thread for more nuance, but you sound like you shouldn’t be using Chrome in the first place (and maybe you don’t?) I feel the same way personally about browsing and use software accordingly. It is, however, still an improvement for the average Chrome user who is not tech savvy and won’t be using ad-blocking anyway (brrr - imagine using the web like that).

I don’t disagree as such, and I won’t use Chrome, but objectively it is better than what we had in Chrome. While many of us refuse/block ads/tracking completely, many users will now have better privacy with ads that are not micro-targeted on their individual but more broadly targeted with a generalised interest area that varies per visit and adjusts over time to keep it relevant.

IF a user doesn’t disable ads completely, this seems a decent way to make the ads somewhat relevant to the user without the horrible tracking methods in use today. Objectively that’s a better state than seeing ads for something completely irrelevant to the user. Again, this is not relevant for most of us in here, and I sincerely hope most of us don’t use a Chrome-based browser to begin with, but for the average internet user, for whom this is designed, I’d argue it’s a net positive.

It’s a little ridiculous how people misunderstand this issue. This is literally to do away with the extremely privacy-invasive tracking that has been done using cookies and telemetry for years. You will be tracked less in Chrome than you did before, because the browser will hand off less information to sites you visit and there will be a degree of randomisation. This is to get rid of cookies soon, and to randomise the information a site gets when you visit instead of the whole deal.

It is, of course, more personalised than blocking all cookies and randomising telemetry, but if you were doing that, I expect you weren’t using Chrome to begin with. Using a Chrome browser with Topics is inherently more privacy-forward than using Chrome as it has been so far. Honestly, I hope that the deprecation of cookies will even help *Fox users down the lines as they become irrelevant to a large part of the web users.

If you want a solid explanation of what is actually happening with Topics, Security Now episode 935 explains the details. The transcript dives into Topics on page 9, explains the technicalities on page 12 and if you just want the conclusion, you can skip to the penultimate page and read the last few paragraphs in here: https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-935-notes.pdf (you can listen as well if you’d rather.)

Unlike Web Integrity Protection this is a reasonable step in the right direction. Can it break down the line? Sure. But then we’re back at where we were. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to use Firefox and Safari and hope that this will eventually help stop the cookie banner nightmare on those browsers as well (even if the cookies do nothing.)

Getting Over It - the controls themselves are your enemy. A different take on the same concept: Octodad / Manual Samuel.

One game series that is not known for being especially humorous actually can be: The Halo games. More specifically the enemy grunts. If you sneak up on them and listen to their dialogue, their mix of faux bravado, cowardice and delusion of grandeur can be really funny. Especially because Master Chief is “The Demon” to them. A near-mythical monster. Just choosing the right time to reveal your presence to the grunts can result in comedy gold.

I know this will probably be unpopular, but that’s part of why I’m throwing it in here. Microsoft ToDo started out as a hot pile of garbage after they took over a great to-do app. These days it’s genuinely pretty great, though. Especially if part of what you do involves Outlook or Exchange. You can flag mails and have them show up in a to-do section, it will semi-intelligently suggest things to do next based on things in your to do-list, if you use planner or tasks at work, your things will show up in ToDo as well. I don’t use it for personal stuff, because having the option to quickly have Siri add something in Reminders is super convenient, but other than that it’s definitely a useful option - especially if you don’t use a voice assistant.

Oh, no. The Wii U connection was far, far more responsive.

It’s unified RAM on Xbox. And medium settings are 2165MB on PC.

Very funny. Just saying that textures don’t seem to be the issue. Any number of other things might be from rendering methods to whatever.

I went back and had a look. It’s between 2165MB and 3720 MB based on settings. Doesn’t really seem problematic on the low end.

There’s a difference between targeting 3-4 console SKUs and targeting 2. If you know what’s going to be your baseline from day 1, you test against that and scale up rather than the other way around. With a first party studio, this is a given.

Today’s Digital Foundry video suggests that this is far from the issue. Even the highest texture settings fit comfortably in 6 GB. IIRC it was around 4,5 - and consoles typically go for high rather than ultra settings.

Remember that one of the few positives the DMCA included was exceptions for interoperability. Also, these pieces of hardware are generally analyzed and reimplemented rather than copied - which steps outside of patents in general, as far as I know (IANAL). Many ship with roms and games included, though, which is generally not allowed in most countries.

You can still play cheaply on Xbox with Game Pass, though, if you want to dual wield Starfield.

My own limited testing was actually more positive than expected. The real limiting factor is games that never received a 64 bit update. It turns out that - at least among many of the games I gave a shot - many have received that 64 bit version and run just fine under Rosetta. I think many Mac porting houses / developers just don’t rush out in the same way app devs do to support the latest versions, but they tend to get around to it eventually if they still have the rights and are in business. I hope Mac will eventually see a compatibility layer, so games will stay functional while Apple monkeys around with system stuff.

You can use the client just fine. It’s just some games that won’t work. We’ll see what GamePortingToolkit makes in term of difference. Heroic Games Launcher has apparently made it fairly simple to add it on Mac ala Proton. (I haven’t had time to dig into it yet, so I’m just going from what I read in updates/release notes)

I don’t know anyone actually using WhatsApp - and considering who makes it, I’m not tempted to start on my own. Of course there are other, better alternatives, but you still have to convince others to use what you would like to use. That is an uphill battle - especially with tech illiterate users in your family.

Just use the fantastic Heroic Games Launcher.

Not sure what she gets from it, but my partner pays for Storygraph because of how bad Goodreads has become.

Check out their github to see how new this actually is. I’m blown away that it actually works most of the time and new major features arrive daily.

Check out their github to see how new this actually is. I’m blown away that it actually works most of the time and new major features arrive daily.

OK, thanks. Guess I must have overlooked it when I searched for it (because I started in Firefox). I still think it’s worth to be aware of in case people use some really specialized browsers with certain limitations.

One thing to be aware of is that it should probably be done with the original system browser, so Safari on iOS and Chrome / Samsung Internet on Android. At least I didn’t seem to get the option to add to home screen from Firefox on Android, and I’m also not sure every iOS browser will have add to home screen in the share sheet.

I have enjoyed Cloudpunk greatly. It is a low budget title, but the characters and anti-corp themes are great. Plus it has flying cars.

You could obviously also pick up Bladerunner. I think all the versions are back in order now after some initial chaos around a re-release.

Plus it is multiplatform. Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, web - and syncs between them.

PS5 did the same a while ago due to increased component costs.

I do subscribe to Pro. Not really because it’s necessary, because the free version is already pretty great, but it offers a bit more customisation - and it is cheap. I really just wanted to support the devs more than anything.

Niagara Launcher is the coolest thing I’ve seen happen for mobile interfaces since the first touch interface. It is so clean and well-designed, it makes everything else in iOS and Android look like a cluttery mess - all while adapting to what you need and offering quick access to everything on the phone.