Was just about to post it haha. Thanks for taking care of it this week!

Double Fine on Bluesky: "😅"

https://bsky.app/...

Strands #835
“For here or to go?”
🟡🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵🔵🔵

This Bluesky post sums it up:

We got all the hits:

• purchased by private equity firm
• hid a bunch of layoffs
• invested a bunch of money in AI
• tried to make that money back by ruining the best product it now owned

Meet Wen the pizza thief.

This adorable goofball grew up on the streets where she lost an eye, lost a bit of movement in one of her hind legs and was shot twice before being patched up by an animal hospital and adopted by my housemate.

To the person that shot her twice, I wish you stub your toe.

And die.

The Linux thing I don't find egregious. Replace Linus with a sizeable majority of the population and they would have done the same thing. I probably would have as well.

If you want to move people from Windows to Linux, Discord to Matrix, Whatsapp to Signal or even Reddit to Lemmy, it needs to be as painless as possible.

Everything that GN points out though is pretty damning.

I found Reddit Gold and Discord Nitro's gifting systems to be smart ways of monetization.

There are people who, despite what you try, cannot or will not pay you. Gifting allows you to keep the people that positively contribute on your platform while still earning money from elsewhere.

Amazing how swiftly they're progressing with their enshittification. Makes me re-think all those 9 years spent there.

I got some clarifications from Unity regarding their plan to charge developers per game install (after clearing thresholds)

• If a player deletes a game and re-installs it, that's 2 installs, 2 charges
• Same if they install on 2 devices
• Charity games/bundles exempted from fees

Regarding this being abused by bad actors:

Unity says it will use fraud detection tools and allow developers to report possible instances of fraud to a compliance team

- @stephentotilo

“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,”

“If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”

Source

It's tempting to opt for telematics/black box insurance because of the initial cheaper prices but the privacy violations and potential downsides make it not worth it.

You can be the best defensive driver in the world but sometimes you're just going to have to brake hard to avoid an object that may jump on you, dinging your driving score and raising your premiums.

Contrary to what this post's image says, I'm reading online that these apps aren't perfect at differentiating between who's a driver and who's a passenger.

Have fun fighting with your insurance to get them to remove anything from your record.

Last week a squirrel decided it didn't want to live anymore and jumped into my way while I was driving. It was on an empty slow street at night so I was safely able brake hard to avoid killing the poor thing. If I had spyware insurance they would've dinged me for it.

I don't mind paying $10/mo for access to millions of songs on demand, even if the caveat is that I don't own anything at the end of my subscription.

I understand costs have gone up, so I can accept a $1 increase in subscription. The problem is that Spotify wants to do a bunch of side projects at my expense. I have no interest in podcasts or audiobooks yet I must fork up the extra money to fund it. I have no say in what my money is being used for and I hate that.

It's why I moved from it to Tidal and then to Apple Music (even though I'm on Android). Both have their own issues but at least they're focused on music.

Didn't even have to see the category.

Visited a CeX store.

Their locked, employee-only Wi-Fi: Protected CeX

Their open public WiFi: Unprotected CeX

*Account for PlayStation Network is required.

Last I checked, this was a singleplayer game. Why is Sony so adamant on an account?

Closing in on 10 years of Sync (Reddit/Lemmy). I'm too used to it to switch things around. The only time I'm using the mobile website is when I need to use spoilers.

On desktop, I switch between default, Photon and Alexandrite.

$80/yr subscription to play online

30% cut from all sales

Ads on homescreen

Lackluster game library, busy remastering perfectly good games

Single purpose device

PS5 will be my last ever console. I don't see the value proposition in consoles anymore with the rise of PC handhelds.

I could understand if Reddit's own search was somewhat competent, but it remains terrible.

Lemmy's search is far more flexible, it's just buggy/broken right now – at least for me.

The Wild Robot in theaters. Not a sequel or a remake. It is based off of a novel though.

2024 was apparently the first year where all the top-10 highest grossing movies were sequels. List doesn't include Moana 2 and Gladiator 2 which are expected to make a lot of money as well.

If you were willing to play the game, Spirit was an effective way to fly cheap. I have a backpack that's the maximum size permitted for "personal item", never carried luggage to check in and brought my own snacks and drinks.

The leg space was atrocious but I'd get their emails to bid on exit row seats, bid the lowest amount ($5-$15) and often win.

I had enough points for a free one-way flight, but alas.