“They’re not breasts, Doctor. They are highly sophisticated Dalek implants!”

Curse of the Fatal Death

If the truth is theyre barely afloat theyre not going to change anything by delaying the report.

Sure. Long term.

But I can’t help but wonder how much a motivated executive could embezzle using some additional time…

The rabbit hole goes deep on this one.

I found it surreally hard to find new dance game - until I discovered that much of the player community had (I guess?) moved to an open source game engine called StepMania.

I play StepMania happily enough, now. It is nice how many different songs I can now add with community contributed step configurations.

but running SteamOS instead of Android sounds amazing.

I have put Android and various flavors of Linux on a variety of weird hardware. And I’ve played a decent number of games that run on both Android and SteamOS.

I can confirm - running a game on SteamOS rather than Android typically makes a big performance improvement.

For the rumored price, I’d need to see more commitment from Valve and latest news right now are saying they aren’t developing a VR title.

Agreed. I feel the same.

But then I start to think about an Indie friendly VR platform might give us in six months. It could be very nice. (The price might look more okay in a year, if this thing incites a VR indie game boom.)

I’ve been saying for years that VR can get off my lawn until I can buy Linux native hardware. I guess I’m interested in VR, now.

“I may never financially recover from this.”

is well said.

I need to buy all of these.

This might have gotten me to buy a PS5 - a decade ago.

My prediction: Minecraft crossover DLC within a year of release.

Advertised with a chicken jockey riding on a covenant walker.

This feels sad for everyone involved.

There’s so many okay games that could be remastered into excellent ones.

If I didn’t have the Master Chief Collection, I would obtain my copy before Microsoft makes it have an “accident”.

Yes. Halo CE plus changes on a new engine sounds strictly worse.

Yes. And even investors are worse off, in the long run.

Analysts recognize that Amazon is worth substantially less than Amazon Books, Amazon Web Services, Amazon Fulfillment and Amazon Prime would be valued at as separate companies.

Investors would win big in a break up of Amazon.

This is actually a solved problem:

The credit union mplements (purchases from a competent vendor) their own custom branded standards compliant MFA solution.

This is what competent organizations already do.

Because the app is standards compliant, experts use Aegis instead of the branded app. Everyone else sticks with the branded app.

Also because the app is standards compliant, provided by a specialized vendor, and occasionally being used in unusual ways by expert users, serious security mistakes are much less likely to happen, and less likely to only be noticed by attackers.

I don’t expect my credit union to tell me to use Aegis - I expect them to use a credible MFA vendor that interoperates correctly when I do use Aegis.

If a bank isn’t able to implement a proper 2FA login there’s a ton of other security issues to worry about.

Exactly. Any organization whose MFA doesn’t work on Aegis, I take action to protect myself from their incompetence.

Lastly, I think by using their own implementation/app they prevent their customers from using compromised apps.

I’m sure they claim that. But I still recognize it as simple incompetence. They aren’t able or willing to hire someone with the Cybersecurity expertise to implement a relatively simple open specification.

Y’all are welcome to risk your money there. It’s probably insured anyway, right?

For me, that’s too much risk. Even if insurance makes me whole, getting robbed is a huge pain.

My favorite Android apps are developed by people like myself who just wanted that app, and don’t really care if anyone else uses them.

I assume we will all join the same BitTorrent link cloud thingy and swap APK files directly, if Google locks down Android.

I will also switch to a Linux phone that much sooner, I imagine.

Edit: Pro tip - if that world happens and you want stick with the crazy free range folks, look for updates in 2600 Magazine.

Dang. Y’all need to pick better credit unions. MFA rolling token is an open standard. Any single app can support all of my (correctly implemented) tokens. I prefer Aegis, but they (correctly implemented MFA apps) all work.

I don’t want to trust my money to someone who can’t implement standards compliant MFA.

That would scare the daylights out of me.

You thought EA was shit before?

Yes. I already gave up on EA games, so I guess all that is left is grabbing some popcorn to watch it get worse.🍿

f-droid might get closed as the userbase dwindles.

Nah. F-Droid is already federation-ready. https://f-droid.org/docs/Installing_the_Server_and_Repo_Tools/

I’ll run my own copy of the F-Droid servers, before I bend my knee to Google. So will others.

Edit: But yes, you are correct that Linux phone is the long term solution. Android is a pile of corporate Java. Linux is a lean sleek set of mature highly optimized tools. Once the big show-stoppers are cleared, my Linux phone will be the envy of all who see me use it.

Counterpoint: I use the McDonald’s app where it belongs - on a giant greasy ordering kiosk.

But seriously, banks have websites. Everyone and everything has a website.

I don’t need Android apps at the cost of my privacy or at the cost of control of my devices.

I use GrapheneOS as my only phone, and I have done so for years.

Whatever the topic, I don’t need an app for that.

Yes, it’ll usually be treated like a menial job, because so many of the folks who fell for AI code wholesale are assholes. Non-assholes often have a friend who tells them when they’re fucking up that badly.

But the pay tends to be very good, anyway, because assholes are usually desperate for any help they can still get.

It is ridiculous. We need to develop one universal Linux that covers everyone’s use cases. (Relevant XKCD on Standards)

Ubuntu Touch is really nice. But I’m not aware of many phones that support it.

…and after doing my own homework…

Huh. PinePhone for $199

Big disclaimer: beta software for Linux experts.

Edit: I guess it is the year of the Linux Phone

wonder if my phone carrier would be ok if i show up with a phone with a new OS they haven’t heard about

For what one data point is worth, I do it to my phone carrier all the time.

The Windows team has been looking for ways to remove the deeper hooks ever since the CrowdStrike outage last year.

Here’s Creating a bootable Linux USB stick

And

Debian guide to Surface Laptop

Once more, for accessibility, should we have low to no horror settings in horror games? Low to no puzzle options in puzzle games? Etc.

The way you have phrased the question indicates there’s much you can still learn about modern accessibility approaches.

Horror games can provide toggles for particular kinds of elements.

Puzzle games can have more hints.

Great developers know this, and use these approaches.

I am not saying every developer must implement accessibility options.

I am saying I won’t listen to them brag about their skills, if they do not.

Um, Actually, I am a developer.

I agree with you that it’s not always enough. But you’re making an all or nothing argument. I find it disingenuous.

Developers with more experience throw in some accessibility features.

It is a hard problem, but that’s no reason not to make an effort.

I find the whole “purity of artistic vision” argument privileged and ableist.

Software can do better than other art mediums. Accessibility is worth striving for.

Developers who don’t add accessibility aren’t some high minded artists, they just haven’t fully mastered their craft, yet.

Story centric games should have low-story varients for those who still want to play?

This one made me laugh, thanks. That said, we do have entire comedy genres making fun of “Unskippable” cut scenes.

A skip button feels like a basic courtesy, but what I really want is a pause button. Life happens, and I can’t count the number of games that I’ve just stopped playing because the only option when my dog was throwing up was to skip the cutscene.

VCRs were invented a long time ago. I find it wild that game developers haven’t figured out how welcome pause, rewind, restart, and skip ahead would be. I’m not dropping quarters into most games to play, anymore.

Do we argue horror games should have options for low horror so we can enjoy it without the horror?

Yes! A huge number of games have toggles that allow people with specific phobias to enjoy the rest of the game. The most common example is a spider toggle. Since up to 6% of everyone copes with arachnophobia.

Slowing the game down and reducing the damage done by bosses isn’t rocket science. It’s like ten lines of code, which have been written so many times an AI can probably provide them.

Different people have different capacities to engage with a game. The world is a better place with some simple accessibility concessions.

We don’t need to make excuses for game developers who don’t even do the minimum, unless it’s their first game.

Edit: To me, the “Watch a playthrough” argument misses something fundamental about why people choose games over movies.

I haven’t seen the Lego games mentioned here. (Lego Indian Jones, Lego Batman, etc.)

They tend to be story driven, and have excellent amounts of play-testing, resulting in an enjoyable playthrough that I’ve always been able to finish.

(Except Lego Dimensions, which was developed separately, and not to the same play-testing standards.)

I may have missed it, but Dave the Diver deserves a mention here.

Boss battles are very rare, and slow paced enough that I have not run into the dreaded “I understand the pattern but I lack the dexterity”. (I often have this problem with other games.)

you’re likely to be misled for no fucking reason and to juice up a few executives quarterly bonuses, because Google faces no real competition, because existing anti-trust laws haven’t been meaningfully enforced anywhere in the world for the entire time that Google has existed.

Probably doesn’t count, but I bet that Anti-cheat will be next, if it works.

I imagine that a crowd of people are asking Microsoft what made this idea strike their fancy…

That’s the official reason, yes.

It has also been the official reason for every illegal merger in the last 50 years.

And somehow almost every merged organization ran into tough financial times about 5 years later (or less), and had to reduce staff, disperse the previous competition’s staff, while filing away the dangerous intellectual property safely out of sight.

But sure, we could assume that Microsoft meant to do the right thing, and that it just went wrong this time.

Honestly maybe the last Xbox will be the last one I buy.

Yes. I also stopped buying XBoxes with the Series…G. (I’m lying. I have no idea what my Xboxes are called. Is the 360 still new? Was there a G? It felt like we were doing letters for awhile.)

Even if they put out another one what’s even the point anymore?

I agree. But I gave up when I had to do research to figure out which one was the new one.

That’s a relief. I was starting to worry about them, with all these breakout indie game successes.

Maybe the indie developers will start buying the AAA CEOs a coffee once in awhile.

(This is intended as surrealist humor.)

Advance Wars, of course.

I haven’t seen any mention of “Steamworld: Heist”, yet. It’s a very different sort of game engine, but scratches the same itch.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, above all else.

Yes. The day is full of moments. (Relevant Penny Arcade)

That’s the one! We can also bully him with snowballs in the opening scene, if we want to.