Welcome to the Internet, I guess?

If I could live forever on the premise of I never, ever, stop talking, I would spend all my time nitpicking every conservative point that is skewed to make it look like their opinion is right. However, I have a life to live, so I cannot go over it point by point. All I have to say here is that when I was looking over the study and its sources when I felt like posting, I could not take the data presented in good faith because it seems overtly clear that it is a biased study.

So as much as I would like to, I would just have to point you to the other comments here regarding Elsevier’s history of “scientific journals” and other peoples qualms about the study.

Well you would be wrong, this study is clearly a farce.

Dang this is pretty huge actually! Steam Deck has this capability through a plug-in, I imagine now it may be able to get further community development now that there’s an official method. And Steam Deck aside, this should be a pretty significant benefit to low-spec gamers or anyone who just wants less software to work with.

Quality over quantity.

1. Meta is so well known for having good moderating. (/s)

2. Meta is so well known for promoting posts that are active hate-speech. (For example, CW in Link: suggested “Threads” posts on Instagram have shown transphobic posts to me Which kind of goes back to point 1, terrible moderation. Btw, my partner is involved with Queer Activism on facebook and so it’s not like I am being targeted for hateful ads. This is just what they decided to promote, probably because it got a lot of comments and shares. Oh, why do we want Threads users who are actively sharing this rhetoric? Seems antithetical to the entire concept that the fediverse was founded on.

3. What happens to the rest of the fediverse when it’s overrun by millions of Threads users, hundreds of thousands of them promoting this sort of content? All defederated instances will now have to pick and choose - something we already do, but I would say we only need to look at Lemmy.World to see why this is a bad thing, as imagine Threads communities become the regularly used ones, so now any instances that defederate don’t have access to the most active community. In turn, this either kills the defederated communities by keeping these communities small, or actively encourages those new to the fediverse to just join Threads since it has “the most active” communities.

4. Now that there are millions of threads users, what happens to smaller instances that are now being overrun by traffic that their server couldn’t handle, or malicious users on Threads - with Lemmy’s moderation tools this can be a cumbersome and difficult process since, from my understanding, this becomes a case-by-case situation for the Instance Moderator, all while the Threads Moderating Team will likely do nothing and ignore the inflammatory users. From my understanding, you can have 1 Threads account per Instagram Profile, and users can have 5 Instagram Profiles. Obviously, this is also a Lemmy issue, but with Instance Admins having control over their users, Threads as an Instance Admin historically hasn’t seemed to be great.

5. The Fediverse is some ~1.5m users. Threads is already 100m. As mentioned about server load, there’s also just the entire idea of it being so big that it naturally becomes a vital resource. E1) Extend. As it becomes widely used, Meta starts taking an interest in the future of ActivityPub. E2) Embrace. And finally, now that it is established and smaller instances are either defederated or have some form of, effectively a shadowban, all that is realistically left is Threads content. E3) Extinguish.

Is the fediverse being more accessible a good thing? Absolutely, not many are arguing that. The idea is that Threads gets so big that ActivityPub either can’t exist without Threads, or Threads leeches the userbase from the rest of the Fediverse. Someone you like is on Threads but not the rest of the Fedi? Well, why have a Lemmy.ML account when you can just have your Threads account?

Before you know it, we’re back to only having one website again for all of our social media needs.

Commenting so I can come back to this later with the site, I can’t recall the name at the moment

Alrighty, it looks like the list has grown and I can’t remember what site I had used previously, so here are a couple options. It looks like they all roughly have the same format of: create account, fill out games from database, possibly account and app linking options.

In no particular order:

How long to beat: create an account, has a games library for your profile

Keep track of my games: create an account, “pay what you want”-ware (free), can import gaming accounts (Steam PSN etc) to fill out list.

Backloggd: Create an account, can fill out games to your library and has space for reviews and other user profiles

Grouvee: Create an accout - homepage is pretty minimal

Gametracker: Seems more “game team” oriented but it has a spot for filling out a games library

GameTrack: Has an IOS app as well, can link gaming accounts for achievements, can make lists to sort games

Playtracker: Create an account, looks like there is a software download for the computer

Stash: Has both Android and IOS apps,

Of all of these, the feature sets look basically the same, the main differences seem to be UI layouts and more niche options of sorting/filling out. All of them look to need an account (expected). Since I can’t recall which, if any of these, I had used in the past I will just say that the websites for Playtracker, Backloggd, and How Long To Beat looked the “best”.

Hopefully this helped and didn’t just give you more choice anxiety, lol.

From my understanding apps are able to have versions for their free and pro apps without having to keep them separate. The dev has stated that all of the trackers present in the app are google trackers for him to get revenue from ads and are stripped from the paid version. I only know this cause over the years on his reddit app it would come up from time to time, one memorable example when someone was complaining about getting NSFW ads in the app and how any self-respecting user would use an app that showed those ads… Turns out they had ad personalization turned on and their history shared some light about the sorts of sites they were searching for lol.

What, yeah, definitely points against having tracking. But also small time developers don’t have to follow FOSS when they just want to provide a good service for free with ads, and Google Play Store is the easiest way to make that happen for him. He made enough from Boost for Reddit monthly that it negatively impacted him during the API change. Maybe I’m a fool for having some trust here and there, but I also just don’t care too much.

But, I know others do so that’s why I always mention that as a possible shortcoming and let people decide from there.

No. I have a few fediverse accounts, Beehaw, Kbin, Leminal, SlrPnk, and 2 mastodon ones that I made cause I didn’t know what would stick.

Beehaw is by far my favorite. It looks like most of my issues are already covered here. Lemmy.world specifically is so awful, for every 1-3 normal, chill people looking for a reddit alternative there’s 5-10 powermods and powerusers who make it just unbearable. It’s the same for quite a few others too, that at this point I can’t even keep track.

In order of values based on curation, Beehaw, Kbin, Slpnk/Leminal. Beehaw needs no curation as it is curated, Kbin despite the issues lately has generally been great, a few users who act poorly but that’s just a widespread thing online. It’s really just been the spam accounts lately. Then… Instances that are federated with .world/etc like slrpnk and leminal, by default it’s just so awful to read. Browsing not logged in on places? Oh man. The perspectives, rhetoric, and visible mod abuse is just so bad right now thanks to the U.S. political year, in some ways worse than Reddit pre-extreme corpo takeover.

Because of all of this, I really appreciate how easy Beehaw is. You can talk philosophy and have differences of opinion and it’s not something that lingers. Beehaw, like a small community, has people you recognize and see around and I appreciate everyone I see here, and rarely have I disagreed. And I’m not coming from an echo-chamber perspective, but the way we carry ourselves. The snark here is minimal, humorous, and when it happens, seems warranted. When it isn’t, genuine apology occurs. That’s something that doesn’t happen often. People put effort into comments, there’s occasional one-liners which I’m guilty of myself when I’m just browsing or tired or it’s just something that doesn’t have much to go deep into.

So the way I see it, if someone wants something not closed off, it’s not that hard to make an account and have it bookmarked. Beehaw is different, but I have the same usernames on my other ones (Wolf Shadowheart). I keep coming back to Beehaw.

From what I understand they are removed from the paid version.

Boost for Lemmy, one of the most fully fledged apps IMO due to the long dev time put into Boost for Reddit. I also just like that it’s a solo dev from Portugal, don’t care that it’s not FOSS because of this.

Monkey’s Paw wish granted: The PS6 is a dedicated gaming PC that can only play Sony games.

I more meant in the case of someone whose life was cut short and didn’t have the time to put something like this together. I agree that ideally this is information you’d get to pass down, but life doesn’t always work out like that.

Also like you said about the AI powered app, it’s only a matter of time before Adobe Historical Life comes out and we’re paying $90 a month for gramma’s recipes (stories are an additional subscription).

Typical lack of direction

This makes me wonder, what is the difference in the environmental cost of uploading/downloading this data vs. shipping a USB.

I would guess that shipping emissions would be higher than digital ones, but I don’t have any basis for that theory. (I’m just curious, not trying to say or imply anything here)

Yeah contrary to all the negativity about this in this thread, I think there’s a lot of worthwhile reasons for this that aren’t centered on fawning over the loss of a love one. Think of how many family recipes could be preserved. Think of the stories that you can be retold in 10 years. Think of the little things that you’d easily forget as time passes. These are all ways of keeping someone with us without making their death the main focus.

Yes, death and moving on are a part of life, we also always say to keep people alive in our hearts. I think there are plenty of ways to keep people around us alive without having them present, I don’t think an AI version of someone is inherently keeping your spirit from continuing on, nor is it inherently keeping your loved one from living in the moment.

Also I can’t help but think of the Star Trek computer but with this. When I was young I had a close gaming friend who we lost too soon, he was very much an announcer personality. He would have been perfect for being my voice assistant, and would have thought it to be hilarious.

Anyway, I definitely see plenty of downsides, don’t get me wrong. The potential for someone to wallow with this is high. I also think there’s quite a few upsides as mentioned – they aren’t ephemeral, but I think it’s somewhat fair to pick and choose good memories to pass down to remember. Quite a few old philosophical advents coming to fruition with tech these days.

This is true for stone and fossils, would this also be the case for crystal? I’m under the impression that their chain is pretty much set in stone (pun not intended), to the point where longevity would mostly be risked by cracking damage. Similar to how we see the striations of lightning strikes.

Could also definitely be survivorship though!

I really do wonder why it’s taking so long for stone-striation storage to be a thing. We have proof that data will surpass 150m years through fossils, so why the heck did we think that flash storage was a good idea!

It’s a phone service and business communications. I have to use it for work

You people are paying for Windows licenses?

If you are going by titles, GTA 6 is expected to have a reasonably deep single player storyline filled with cultural references.

The more recent trailer just seemed like them recreating events that happened in real life, and less being a mockery to create commentary on events of real life.

IMO this is the distinguishing difference I noticed from trailers of previous titles and this current one. Of course it was literally only a minute and 15 seconds of trailer, but it does just seem a little odd to me. Of course, when I wrote a small essay the only comments were “bro piss off it’s GTA” and “it’s GTA you’re reading too much into it.”

Most just don’t care. And many more have not played the earlier titles which were a little more brazen in their commentary due to the world these characters are living in – CJ as the experience of living in a poorer urban area surrounded by a wider richer city, where you have the dichotomy of what is happening in the story alongside the events on the radio (mostly the hosts reactions), or Niko as an immigrant in New York which brings a different perspective but keeps that thematic class separation while having some pretty decent social commentary.

GTA5 just doesn’t hit those marks IMO. Yes, there’s active class divide what with Trevor and Michael, but the storyline and the events of all 3 characters definitely have some emotional moments, IMO it just doesn’t hit the same points. Part of this I think is due to each of these characters almost acting as a sort of archetype, not necessarily of character but of game play. Michael is very much set for success, so you can easily progress. Franklin isn’t, and thus has to work for his status. And Trevor is the maniac who just blows shit up.

In terms of social commentary, there isn’t much that the game actually tries to say, IMO as a byproduct of their overemphasis of the heavily conservative and hyper-capitalist radio, which further is failed by Trevor and Michael being the most average Americans who are part of the problem. And while I like Franklin and his story, it’s ultimately just another story of someone in a bad spot trying to do better, and falling victim to how hard it is to get out. Which, yeah, that’s a decent and very real message, but it’s undermined by it all working out for him and owning a business – don’t worry y’all, crime pays as long as it’s with the right friends!

So, for me to see the trailer of GTA6 just literally recreating the events that happened in the real world, I sort of feel like the creative insanity where GTA allows us to see whacky shit that could never actually exist is highly diminished as a result of that. Again, it was under 2 minutes of footage and of course there’s plenty more.

I also personally think RDR2 is not fun and the hype around it is pretty much entirely manufactured as “it’s so good because it’s R* and the ultimate realism!”. Well, that “realism” made for shit gameplay for horses and boring fetch quests. It’s a beautiful game, it’s got a great story, it is not a good game because of that. That’s not to say it is terrible through and through and never has fun moments, I just personally was more frustrated with the game than I was enthralled with it for a majority of my time playing it. Shooting is nice though.

I must also say, I’ve never been a particularly die-hard fan of GTA or R*. I grew up playing their games at friends houses, so they’re really nostalgic to me. RDR and RD1 were great for their time, Revolver still holds up pretty well today through emulation. Slow for sure, but it holds up. GTAIV was my first real experience at open-world sandbox games, and while I enjoyed my time with it, it definitely is not my sort of game for long-term enjoyment. I can only play the story so many times and then get bored just driving around like a maniac. The best part of IV’s replayability is the physics, which seemed to have been drastically scaled back for GTA 5.

And I haven’t even gotten into what GTA:O has done, so I don’t have high expectations. I think your assumption of the developer output perspective is likely very apt. GTA5 came out in 2013, 11 years ago. It will likely be on 4 generations of consoles, unless they choose to only sell GTA6 for the PS6 and Xbox1920.

There is no way that their focus is on a long term single player experience. There’s just no way.