Smoke
@Smoke@beehaw.org
- Comment on Facebook and Instagram to charge UK users £3.99 a month for ad-free version 2 weeks ago:
If Meta actually stopped collecting data on users who instead pay them in a straightforward money => experience transaction this would be a great improvement. Except, of course, you know they won’t.
- Comment on Microsoft revokes cloud services from Israel’s Unit 8200 2 weeks ago:
It added that Microsoft “is not in the business of facilitating the mass surveillance of civilians.”
Damn, first I’ve heard of it. The NSA must be running Linux.
- Comment on Nintendo now has a US patent on summoning characters and making them battle for you | VGC 4 weeks ago:
Even lawyers can’t get you out of trying to patent something that was clearly already in the market. Previously, Nintendo’s patent lawsuits had been for highly specific mechanics such as throwing a ball to capture npc animals.
- Comment on Nintendo now has a US patent on summoning characters and making them battle for you | VGC 4 weeks ago:
It sounds incredibly vulnerable to this exact argument. Patents aren’t valid if it’s been invented already.
- Comment on The Job Market Is Hell: Young people are using ChatGPT to write their applications; HR is using AI to read them; no one is getting hired. 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on Call of Duty: Ghosts – Power, Paranoia, and Orbital Tungsten Rods | Folding Ideas 1 month ago:
I thought him including video of a trump rally was too blunt, the audio was enough. I enjoyed the implication he was making about the game’s difference between the US and south american superweapons, which isn’t openly stated and doesn’t have to be.
- Comment on Australia’s attempt to join the space race lasts 14 seconds 2 months ago:
It’s a shame, because their launch site in Bowen is much closer to the Equator than the continental US. When/if they get it right, they’ll be able to need far less fuel than US launch sites.
- Comment on UK Users Need to Post Selfie or Photo ID to View Reddit's r/IsraelCrimes, r/UkraineWarFootage 2 months ago:
Remember how everyone was horrified when an authoritarian government like China forced everyone to disclose their identities to get online? You’re thinking of Korea, its government required every citizen to have a ten digit online ID until 2008.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
Yes, Settings -> Update & Security -> Activation will give you an offer to upgrade your edition of Windows or change your product key.
- Comment on Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash 3 months ago:
Wikipedia has in some ways become a byword for sober boringness, which is excellent.
This is both funny and also an excellent summary of why Wikipedia uniquely has an incentive not to jump on the AI bandwagon. Like a bank maintaining COBOL decades after everyone else moved on, its (goal of) reputation for reliability means that there’s a strong internal conservative faction opposed to introducing new disruptive features.
- Comment on Let's discuss: Assassin's Creed 9 months ago:
I played the first one, and found it to be extremely boring but with potential. Unfortunately, playing 3 and Syndicate afterwards showed me clearly that Ubisoft smothered the potential and cranked up the boring. The worlds they’ve created are certainly immersive, but they’re also devoid of energy. 3 has a half-Native American protage who spends five minutes in his home village and then goes off to the colonies with barely a thought spared for his home, so when it’s played for drama it falls flat because we haven’t seen his relationship to his family. And Syndicate’s characters had might as well be carved from soap with how crude and flat they are. There’s a transgendered gangster from New York who joins the Assassins’ gang, and he has absolutely nothing to add for the entire game. Characters with seeming potential come in, have one side quest, and that’s their lot.
- Comment on Facebook introduces another way to track you - Link History 1 year ago:
a firefox extension that does this automatically?? removing the redirect/tracking link and convert back into normal link)