This year, we had the most kids we’ve had in years. I think the weather helped; a couple years ago we even had a few inches of snow on the ground while it’s been unseasonably warm this year.

By the way, I would have been over the moon to get jerky sticks for Halloween as a kid. Love that shit. Maybe I’m weird, but I didn’t even really like chocolate much until I got older.

Deep dish crust has been surprisingly easy to replicate at home, but for the life of me I can’t get the sauce and especially the sausage anywhere near where I want it. I swear Lou Malnati’s does some outright witchcraft with their sausage. It’s so good.

Plus, it’s amazing how hard it is to find whole milk mozzarella in some places.

This succinctly covers my view on it as well. I think it’ll be more of a problem a few years down the road as statist admin culture begins to influence the mods of more instances, but for now I treat it on an instance-by-instance, user-by-user basis. I wouldn’t be surprised if majority of community leaders and users in general went to lemmy.ml simply because it was one of the larger instances last year and didn’t think much more of it than that.

If I have a choice, though, I’ll still try to grow a community on one of the smaller instances simply because it’s still one of the largest ones, and that’s better for the health of the network.

All I can think about is how this bot is immediately a non-starter because this is the kind of attitude I can expect from the author when asking for support or collaboration. It’s not just in this post, either.

Even if the parent comment here was hostile–it’s borderline, at worst–I can’t possibly understand the mentality of being argumentative in a post trying to encourage the use of a service.

Something to keep in mind is that the top priority for the product that’s put in front of you isn’t what you want, it’s what the seller wants you to buy. It’s a high margin item, a vendor paid a premium for visibility, it needs to move so warehouse space can be cleared, etc. This goes back to the brick-and-mortar retailer days. If a product recommendation algorithm is a valuable service for you but ultimately isn’t more profitable for the retailer than putting their finger on the scale, it doesn’t make sense for them to play it straight. What they can do is determine you’re more interested in doodads than widgets, and show you more of the doodads. Which doodads get shown at the top isn’t 100% based on your preference.

Recommendations or reviews from writers/critics that have similar tastes and unpaid actors are how I find most products. This was one of the most valuable functions of Reddit, and it’s one of my primary motivations for helping to grow Lemmy.

The chopsticks one was a game changer for me. Helps with mindful eating/portion control, too (until you get good enough with the chopsticks, anyway).

With today’s news that a licensed song is being removed in a future update of Alan Wake, I’m reminded that television shows have also been getting similar “updates” for a little while now. The staggered release schedule of television shows makes it the only medium off the top of my head that does anything similar. Pilot shows were generally unpolished products, often followed up by recasting or other major changes. Abrupt cancellations also could mean unfinished stories (no, I’m not still bitter about Stargate Universe).

Game development is an iterative process, so as soon as I first started seeing open beta testing come about as a part of digital distribution decades ago, I figured it was only a matter of time before profiteering got us to where we are now.

That’s exactly the issue here. ChatGPT’s current training set ends right around the time the Meta Quest 3 came out. It’s not going to have any discussions in there of No Man’s Sky with tech that wasn’t out yet.

Newell also has overseen Valve as one of the pioneers of the most predatory monetization in the video game industry (lootboxes, etc.).

There are no saints at this level.

And I’d like to block users with consistent negative behaviours.

This is where I’m at it with it. Votes are already public to those who really want to see them and that cat’s not going back in the bag. Anyone that goes out of their way to inject it into the conversation is showing their ass and adding a (likely extra) level of toxicity that blocking would fix.

In the short term? Possibly.

In the long term, it opens up space for competition, which is better for end users, advertisers, small business, and more.

You can also read about Lina Khan, the current chair on the FTC side of antitrust.

Just spinning off Android would shake up map software. It’s how they get traffic and other data.

It still happens a lot here. And it’s no surprise considering how much time people are spending at work. A lot people just don’t have time for dating.

I was never much of an /r/all user, it’s always been niche communities for me. I feel like almost all of my niches have content here now (if not quite as much engagement as I’d like). !retrogaming@lemmy.world in particular has exploded with activity lately and arguably can now serve as a full replacement for its subreddit counterpart.

Thing is, when I try to bring people on Lemmy, it’s always “why?” and if I make it that far, “how?” With the how, I’ve been using the analogy of signing up for email, though it’s still not as smooth as it could be. Eyes glaze over when anyone starts asking me about how the Fediverse in general works.

The why is harder. I don’t know how much user bleed-over niche Reddit got from /r/all users but I’m guessing it wasn’t a trivial amount. I’m sure a lot of Reddit’s growth was owed to AMAs, so it’s possible Lemmy might need something flashy to draw in users who will then filter into communities waiting for them. Some sort of content unique to the platform. I do think before we get there we need a friendlier way to help new people find communities they may have interest in.

Not just talking about work colleagues, also client or customer relationships.

I’m out of the loop, what are the highly requested features?

Don’t know how old your father is, but at least among Gen X women, creepy men absolutely have been part of the discussion. It just wasn’t a public discussion until much more recently. Hell, the fake phone number thing goes back to landlines.

We’re still at a point of significant cultural change in gender relations, and until an equilibrium point is reached, there’s going to be apprehension about approaching others. To that end, it’s important that we keep small gaffes made in good faith as social misdemeanors (to allow for opportunities to correct behavior) and not career-ending incidents. It only takes a quick browse of social media discussing one of these incidents to see why said apprehension exists.

That said, I still don’t think we’re having enough conversations about consent around positions of authority and social hierarchy in general. Too many people don’t understand that being nice to someone when you’re on the clock isn’t implied consent for continued interaction with that person off the clock. That’s the light stuff; it can go all the way to gross stories about cops and women. It all stems back to authority and power imbalance. This might be more of an issue in the US than elsewhere; I think ideals of “equality” and “social mobility” are so ingrained in our culture that some Americans don’t have the social intelligence around the very real stratification that exists at the workplace and elsewhere.

Fear of rejection is a whole other problem that likely stems from everyone having more anxiety now. I was around a bunch of people in their late teens/early 20’s a lot more than usual the past couple years and holy crap. I thought my social anxiety was bad. I don’t know how these kids are going to function.

Got out, jogged, and did some outdoor work even though it’s the worst time of year for it. I’ll happily do my jogs/walks in winter unless it’s dangerously cold out but I have very little tolerance for hot weather.

If you haven’t looked at minor league baseball teams yet, it’s worth the dive. My personal favorite is the Rocket City Trash Pandas.