While I agree with this sentiment on the surface, using a privacy focused application that was built by folks who yield to cops as part of their identity doesn’t inspire long term viability in that space.

It’s the same reason I moved away from Proton when their CEO told us all where his values lie. It’s not outright backtracking on privacy promises but with so many comparable alternatives in this space, why chance it with the bootlickers?

Absolutely. Definitely not recommending chancing something like that haha. Just saying you might never change your mind and that’s ok. But also if a kid came into your life somehow, don’t panic! It might be ok

As someone who didn’t want kids and then had them later in life, your mind doesn’t really change until after you have them. That’s when I was like Oh

At least that’s what it was like for me. Plenty of people’s minds never change even after kids sadly.

Same. Just hold it against the inside of the bowl and flush. Badabingbadaboom

Baba Yetu

Whipping out my Oregon

Your comment made me realized that Fuck Trump is a homonym for Fucked Rump

Elon take the wheel

I mean if you want to dig into it, Apple is a company that makes most of its from money from selling tech. They spend a lot on highly effective advertising, but they pay actual advertising companies to do that. So I don’t think that qualifies them as an advertising company unless you’re just trying to be dismissive. You make your money from making and selling tech, you’re a tech company first.

Google and Meta make the vast majority of their money by selling ads and selling user data to other advertising companies so they can create their own targeted ads. That by definition makes them ads companies more than tech companies.

Microsoft sells mostly software/services to enterprise clients, they’re a B2B software company. Amazon too with AWS, etc. I read the other day that with how big NYT’s word games have gotten they’re more of a gaming company that also sells newspapers these days.

Anyway, yeah you can call Apple an advertising company or a fashion company or whatever but the fact is they’re more of a tech company than most of the other companies you probably think of as tech companies. Apple-produced tech is regularly compared to the likes of Nvidia, Intel, and AMD. You can’t say the same for the other top “tech” companies.

Only when paired with fava beans and a nice chianti

The FTC Bukkakes Microsoft Over Activision Blizzard layoffs

Yep. Gog is probably where we should all be getting our games tbf. Being mad that a game is available on one drm store instead of another drm store is kind of silly. In either case we’re only buying the license and not actually owning anything.

I love bringing up the hunting aspect when people use the “but my ancestors ate meat” line. Like yeah they ate it after tracking it for a week with the strongest members of their community and killing it in a life or death struggle that tested the limits of their endurance. And even then they ate it sparingly so as to not have to go on another life threatening hunt for as long as possible. Not exactly the same as skulling bacon wrapped baconator burgers every night while binging Netflix from your couch.

I came into this expecting a thread full of Stanley Cup champion, elite athlete at the highest level, and prime example of perfected male physique, Phil Kessel, but haven’t seen a single mention of him. So I’ll start it.

Whoa TIL. Thanks for the info, I stand corrected.

Not saying you’re wrong. There certainly could have been mental degradation over the years. Or he could have gotten investors lined up by being a really rich kid from a rich family. Money can do a lot of heavy lifting for a piece of shit.

I think it’s a bit of both. To me the coolest thing he ever did was make Tesla tech open source. I have a hard time seeing that Musk in this dude anymore. I used to think he did it altruistically but lately I’m thinking it was probably an ego thing after all. And now that all his ventures are starting to sink he probably regrets the move.

I wonder how much the cost is worth the extra value though. A single PC part (the most important one for gaming) can cost double what an entire console costs. PCs are useful for more than games but is it worth it at that much of a price difference? If you’re not doing heavy video editing or running a dozen VMs, a console + cheap laptop is probably a more sensible setup for most people.

But for me it’s the infinite backwards compatibility and emulation possibilities when the console makers drop the ball in that regard. Got burned pretty hard when none of my massive PS3, 2, or 1 library worked on my PS4. That’s when I started investing in PC gaming. I spent a small fortune for that and it’s hard to say right now if it was worth it, but the peace of mind from knowing that the games I buy for it aren’t going to be useless coasters in 10 years is what made me go this route.

It was what now?

I don’t think it’s so much that they’re out of ideas but that they’re too scared to risk new ideas. These games are so expensive to make now so they squeeze out as much as they can with MTX and season passes to stuff their pockets as much as possible. The longer they can keep you playing, the more money they can make off of you with minimal additional effort. Wrapping up that plan with a nice widely-recognized Call of Duty logo makes them a lot of guaranteed upfront cash.

Doing the same thing for a new unknown property won’t have that guaranteed audience, will require a lot more marketing effort, and possibly years of underperforming results before it starts becoming worthwhile. And even then it’ll be impossible to catch up to the behemoth of the biggest shooter franchise in gaming history. So it just makes financial sense to keep remaking and rebooting the tried and true. Their CEOs and shareholders demand it and their audience (for now) is happy enough to keep it that way with their wallet votes.

tl;dr With development costs growing exponentially, publishers looking for the easiest path to the most profit, and gamers already primed to keep buying the next installment no matter what, sticking to old ideas is what makes the most sense. Goes for movies too.

I would have guessed it stood for chocolate