I mostly avoid major world news now for the most part. I prefer to read hobby-specific news and local news, such as my municipality.

Forgive me for the pessimism, but I sincerely doubt that they honour any opt-outs. Meta has shown time and time again that they’d rather just pay fines as business expenses instead of abiding by law(s).

This. Numerous industries in the US make use of forced prison labour.

Eat them to absorb their powers.

Goddamn, I wish we could act like our own independent country for once instead of just puppeting whatever the US does.

Appeasing shareholders and investors.

Microsoft has so many spinning plates up in the air right now and they have no idea how to handle them all. Eventually they’re all going to come crashing down and smash on the floor and it’s not going to be pretty.

Most of the beloved Arkane team had left long before the closure.

This is a big problem with all sorts of disposal methods. It’s the reason I see so much stuff thrown out when it should be recycled or dumped in bushes or forests. If you want someone to do the right thing then you can’t make them drive across a damn city and/or charge them a disposal fee when they attempt to get rid of it. It sucks seeing mattresses dumped on the side of the road or on quiet hiking trails, but I know the reason they’re there is because getting rid of one properly is like $50-$75 which is goddamn absurd.

I do not have hope that this developer will make another good game let alone one that respects the TES IP or in any way lives up to expectations.

Which is exactly why they want people wearing smartwatches to sleep.

I don’t know if this is hilarious or pathetically sad. AI has become the current “must have” craze in the tech world and it’s baffling watching every company try and find a way to shoehorn some form of it into their products and then try and justify its existence.

Cerence Chat Pro from technology partner Cerence Inc. is the foundation of the new function, which offers a uniquely intelligent, *automotive-grade *ChatGPT integration.

Why the hell would I want this?

Cool. I’ll just piss along the exterior wall of your building then or on the fence at the back of your parking lot.

It really needs to be more socially acceptable to name and shame people that allow their cats to roam free outdoors. I’d also like to see some changes to pet ownership laws to prohibit/discourage it as well. A cat found outside a home (and not on a leash or in an enclosed cage) should immediately bring considerable financial repercussions down on the owner as well as removal of the cat from their “care”. If I get caught killing wild animals with my own hands (especially protected ones) then I am legally in deep shit, yet cat owners can get away with it with impunity. They’re basically letting a super predator roam free to slaughter wildlife while also putting it in incredible danger from other predators or cars.

People that let their cats roam outdoors are absolutely fucking atrocious pet owners and should be treated as such.

The title made me think they were responding to users that needed customer support, but no. This:

Meanwhile, when another user lamented the amount of loading screens, the support team replied imploring the reviewer to “consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in under three seconds”.

is just pathetic. This is nothing more than low-effort damage control. Which, funnily enough, is rather fitting for Starfield in general. It’s not a terrible game but it absolutely fell flat on its face on its biggest selling points. Procedural exploration will always have drawbacks but No Man’s Sky absolutely smashes Starfield in this department and it came out nearly 8 years ago and made by a team a fraction of the size. And I don’t expect Bethesda to put in the same effort as Hello did and make Starfield live up to its promises

This gets asked every time Tumblr is mentioned online. It’s still around and has a large, thriving userbase. It’s one of the last slices of old-school internet that exists today and, because of that, is very resistant to modern monetisation tactics and enshittification which makes shareholders cry in their sleep.

They’re cheap. That’s as far as some people think about it.

I feel like

Yes. Especially when it’s only like 2 or 3 years after first release. It’s just double dipping at that point.

Negative emotions are very easy to exploit, unfortunately, and the companies behind these platforms have figured that out. It’s why things like rage-baiting and hate-clicking are things. It gets even worse when you add in things like global user scores that basically pit your users against each other and encourage users to say things they normally wouldn’t just to get upvotes.