horse

Whatever that is, it’s not loading for me.

Check out “Unwatched for YouTube” on iOS. It’s a bit janky, but it works. Certainly better than paying for premium.

Unwatched for YouTube on Apple devices.

As someone who is currently having to take away people’s local admin rights along with a ton of other privileges: it’s not like we do this for fun, we have compliance goals to reach that were agreed to by higher ups outside of the IT department in exchange for public funding (we’re a public institution).

Pulsar: Lost Colony

You play with up to 5 players to collaboratively fly a space ship. Each player has a role (Captain, Pilot, Weapons Officer, Scientist, Engineer) and runs around the inside of the space ship in first person, doing different tasks to keep everything working and you can also beam onto planets and do stuff there or board other ships. It’s clearly inspired by Star Trek. There is on foot and ship to ship combat. Basically you fly from sector to sector doing missions and collecting upgrades with the goal of eventually beating a final boss. Playthroughs take multiple game sessions and you need to communicate a lot, so it’s best played with friends. You don’t need a full crew of 5 to play, but I’d recommend at least 4 players so you can fill all the roles (the captain mainly makes decisions and can easily fill in for one of the other roles). I haven’t played in a while, but it’s good fun.

IMO tech sucks because it is full of turbo capitalist tech bros who idolise people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, especially in leadership positions. Workers realise they are creating nothing of value, or even actively harmful things, just so a line can go up and make some ghouls even richer. Of course the tech bros love to talk about how revolutionary the product that the workers slave over is and how passionate the company is about it, only to enshittify it the instant they think it would be more profitable to do so.

Meanwhile the higher ups don’t care about the workers and get a boner from gloating about how good the last quarter was and laying off half the company in the same townhall meeting. These days they don’t even care enough anymore to say the company is a big family and put a fruit bowl in the break room.

None of this is new to tech workers. The deal has always been, that the douchebag tech bros get to feel important and the workers get to enjoy the relatively good wages and a stable career (if they got downsized someone else was always hiring), while sarcastically joking about the situation and making fun of their idiot bosses with their colleagues. The only new thing about AI is that now those careers are no longer stable. Not because AI can actually replace them, but because the tech bros insultingly think that an LLM can do the work of actually skilled workers.

The French are incredibly based and the trope of them surrendering immediately is ridiculous. The French resistance during WW2 was fierce. And throughout history and in current times the French don’t take shit from their government. If the French government tried even a fraction of what our (German) government is pushing through at the moment Paris would be burned to the ground. Meanwhile we (Germans) just whine and do nothing.

There’s also this (GTA V mod that lets you connect an indoor cycling setup to ride a bike in the game): https://www.gtbikev.com/

How many drummers does it take to change a lightbulb?

Two: one to hold the bulb and one to drink until the room spins.

How many guitar players does it take to change a lightbulb?

Also two: one to change the bulb and one to say “I can do that too”.

I’ll add “People Make Games” to the list. They make excellent critical documentaries about games and the people who make them and focus heavily on exploitation (of workers and players), frequently speaking out in favour of unions and minority representation.

I kind of see it as there being people who play video games and “gamers”. The latter being people for whom gaming is a serious hobby they care about a lot. Then there is a subset of gamers (sometimes referred to as “Gamers” with a capital G) that are also shitty people who take it personally if there is any kind of minority representation in video games and are the people who call you slurs in multiplayer games either for not being good enough at the game or or being better at the game than them (depending on whether you are on their team or playing against them).

I will pick summer over winter any day. In summer there are a few days a year where it’s too hot do anything and the rest of the time I can go outside and enjoy my hobbies instead of sitting indoors all day.

In winter it’s cold non stop for months at a time. The moment I leave the house I start to suffer. And don’t say I need to wear more clothes. There’s a limit to how many clothes you can reasonably put on and when you’re skinny with low blood pressure, it’s just miserable.

I’m not sure how I feel about this.

I think the Switch 2 is great for certain types of gamers. Some reasons I really enjoy the Switch 2:

• I enjoy Nintendo’s first party games
• I often play in short bursts and the Switch is easy to pick up and play. Also many games on Switch cater to that kind of gaming
• It’s less expensive than a gaming PC or more powerful consoles and if you don’t care about playing every major AAA release there are more than enough games to play that run great on the hardware
• The big AAA games that do release on Switch 2 still run surprisingly well. Usually with worse graphics than on other platforms and at lower framerates (eg. 30fps instead of 60fps), but if you’re not the kind of gamer that is really invested in such things they generally run plenty good enough to be enjoyable
• Lots of family friendly games and lots of couch co-op games that anyone can pick up and play
• Games are expensive and I don’t want to excuse that, but Nintendo’s first party releases tend to be of a high quality, release in a good state and don’t lock content behind microtransactions or battle passes (releasing 20€ DLC a few months after a 70€ game is pretty whack though). Personally I don’t mind paying a premium for that and would rather pay 80€ for a game that is complete, than 60€ for a game where I’m missing out on content because I didn’t buy the 80€ premium version and then still have progression balanced around pushing people towards spending even more via microtransactions

But that’s enough glazing Nintendo for one post. If you value similar things then maybe Switch 2 is a good choice. If you care about having the best graphics and the best performance possible and don’t care about the exclusives or have a massive library on another platform, then maybe not so much.

Personally I feel the whole concept of the man proposing with a ring is outdated. The decision to get married was a joint decision between my wife and me. We talked about it, agreed we both wanted it and then decided together when we wanted to get married. There was no engagement ring and we didn’t spend a lot on our wedding rings either (I can’t remember how much, but it was relatively speaking very cheap). The wedding itself was also rather small and not that expensive (again, relatively). We had a lovely day and never regretted not spending more, even if we could have afforded to.

But getting married is one of these things where the right way is your way. Everyone wants something different and nobody can tell you what’s best for you and your partner.

It comes on the cartridge. Afaik so far all first party games have been actual physical releases, except Pokopia (which I think is only published by Nintendo and not developed by them).

Not that I agree with Nintendo charging $80 for Mario Kart, but at least Nintendo had decency to give people an actual physical copy, not lock content behind an additional $20 upgrade and not fire the people who made the game for unionising.

Edit: Not to mention that GTA6 will 100% have pay to win microtransactions on top of the base purchase.

I’ve done a lot of psychedelics in my life. Mainly LSD (including stupid doses), but also plenty of DMT, shrooms a few times and various research chemicals… It seemed like a big deal at the time, but in retrospect there wasn’t really anything profound about it.

Psychedelics are great fun and I don’t doubt they have great potential as medicine, but in my opinion most of the expectations people have when they take them expecting some kind of life changing spiritual experience is just hippie nonsense.

I used to drink and smoke weed daily. The combination of a few beers and lots of weed would numb my brain and take the edge off reality. I did this every single day for years on end, during which time the amount of both drugs crept up on me. When I lost a friend to suicide, the brakes came of entirely and no more fucks were given. I drank before and during work several days a week, and even more after work. Binge drinking also became more frequent. The last time I drank I got completely fucked up, blacked out, lost half my things, ended up with a court date for threatening to punch two ticket inspectors and a broken nose (unrelated to the incident with the ticket inspectors).

That’s when I decided things had to change and I made the decision to quit and I haven’t had a drop of alcohol since. My life improved drastically, practically over night, from that decision and improved further when I quit weed a few years later. I went from being miserable alone in front of the computer every night wasting my life getting drunk and high to a married man who will be a dad in a few months.

The moral of the story? I guess that drinking is fine until it isn’t and you don’t know if you’ll be one of the ones where it’s not until it happens. I really didn’t drink that much at first and it was already a big problem before my friend died, so it wasn’t that that caused it. I would recommend everyone who drinks any amount of alcohol to regularly evaluate the reasons they are drinking and if their habits are becoming problematic. But even then the hard part isn’t realising you have a problem, it’s actually finding the will do change that’s hard.

The article actually supports that: the boards are the same but not identical. Like somebody used the same plans, not the same factory.

The article literally says:

Digging deeper into the phone reveals more of the same. As in the same component shapes, the same component placement, the same screw placements, and even the same anti-tamper sticker placements. Do you know what else is likely to be the same? The factories that made these parts. The biggest clue? The mainboard itself.