• 5 Posts
  • 248 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • then you lose half the users and perhaps half the communities

    As a thought, do you really lose them?

    For example the “Television” community previously existed on the lemm.ee instance. The lemm.ee instance is scheduled for shutdown. The “Television” community is now hosted on the piefed.social instance.

    It has the same users and has the same topics of discussion. Were the users really lost? Did the community really go away?

    Let’s pretend Reddit decided it would no longer allow discussion on “Television”. What if BlueSky no longer allowed discussion on “Television”. You’d have to leave those platforms completely. You really would lose those communities. Those users (at least in part) really would be gone.

    Is Lemmy.World a big instance? Sure. Would the users and communities really be lost if it went away? I don’t think so.


  • I’m not surprised, but I agree with the hot take, so maybe it’s only warm.

    I think they keep interest in ActivityPub in order to keep regulators concerned with Antitrust at bay. The Fediverse isn’t a real threat in Meta’s view and keeping an engineer or two on it in order to stay invested is worth the cost.

    Threads can say they are making an honest effort to work with the larger open source community and open federated internet. As an added bonus, it isn’t actually a lie. Now the effort they’re putting in is the absolute minimum, but it’s there.

    Now I still do think this is a positive. While most people on Threads will probably never leave, it does introduce them to the wider Fediverse. It makes the Fediverse a less scary thing.




  • Search also sucks because people suck.

    If I post a picture of a flower with the caption “Look what grew in my garden!”, that’s a terrible post from a search point of view.

    Later on someone will search for “flower” but I didn’t use the word “flower” so now search sucks.

    Of course a much more common post is someone posting a picture of text, from Twitter, Tumblr, etc. with, once again, a vague caption. You remember the picture, but not what the poster actually said.

    Searching comments will sometimes help, but that depends on the comments being related.


  • I just tried a bunch of apps that I swear used to have it, it all of them just say “Open in the real app” now. I wonder if low usage here also means developers stopped using them.

    Basically what would happen is you’d click a link to Instagram, and instead of opening a web page, it would open the Instagram “app” instantly. If you then tried to do anything more advanced in the app (advanced decided by the developer) it would prompt you to install the app.



  • I suppose the reason I’m so forgiving of the online features, is that I don’t use them. They’re a nice little addition for sure, but I do not see them as core to the game.

    I think it’s embarrassing that they’re sooooo far behind. Definitely if they’re a thing you’re expecting, it’s going to sour your view of the game.

    Performance is a personal thing.You’re not alone, it’s a common complaint, I won’t deny that. I’ve played all three of those games, Kirby, Zelda & Mario but never remember having an issue. I’m sure I did, but it never stuck with me. I remember Arceus looking like an GameCube game. But I also remember completing the Pokedex 100%.

    I was burned by Super Mario Party, so that franchise is dead to me. Maybe others will burn me too.

    I think the Switch 2 launching with just Mario Kart was a huge mistake. No Mario. No Zelda. I can’t remember the last time that happened. Donkey Kong is coming soon, and it’s supposedly similar to Oddessy… But we’ll have to see. There are great DK games, but he’s no Mario and it’s been a while.


  • My favorite part,

    Trump administration officials have suggested that the card will replace the EB-5 immigrant investor visa programme, which grants permanent residency to immigrants who invest at least $1.05m in the US, or $800,000 in designated economically distressed areas.

    So since the 90s anyone with $1 million has been able to buy/invest their way in.

    This “new gold card” costs $5 million.

    So it costs five times as much, it’s just a bribe and not an investment. I’m guessing putting together a business plan costs less than $4 million.

    So the obvious question becomes… What type of person is willing to spend $5 million, but not $1 million. (And I’m guessing less oversight.)


  • Oh I absolutely agree there are plenty of criticisms about the company itself and their other offerings, but the games are absolutely top tier.

    Their online is miles behind, games from Smash Bros to Mario Maker to Mario Kart could all be improving with better online, but since they were terrible at online I never used them, but those games were still excellent.

    A lower powered system or poorly optimized game has some frame rate dips or stuttering, but never in a way that gameplay was affected. I know people will disagree but I’ve never had an issue with it.

    Yes, joycon drift is a real problem. But that’s a hardware problem. We should absolutely give Nintendo shit for hardware problems.

    Suing fan projects or being aggressive about YouTube/Twitch take down, all fair. Fuck Nintendo for all that.

    But all of that is different from their games being solid. I don’t blame people who choose to emulate their games, they’re awesome games.

    I’ll give you that Sony might be competitive, I don’t see Xbox/Microsoft anywhere close. I think Valve and the SteamDeck are probably 4th in the race, but Valve has to actually make a game. They made great games and should continue to do so.


  • Nintendo gets away with it because their games rarely have a discount. An $80 game today will be $80 in a year. After several years you sometimes get a limited discount for their best selling games. A bundle or a voucher can be a small loss leader, usually if you buy one of something you buy another.

    The other thing of course is that Nintendo makes absolutely top tier games. The fan base is earned. You can buy a Mario or Zelda game, knowing nothing about it, and it’s going to be good. Pokemon is the obvious exception here, the mainline games are fine, but would be nothing without the brand. (I also won’t forgive them for Super Mario Party, that was a $30 game, not $60.)

    I don’t expect $80 games to go away, because as long as someone will pay it, it’s free money. But if sales slump too much in the long run I do see quick discounts, possibly even for Nintendo games.






  • You’re not affected if (and only if)

    You always used the Brave browser or the DuckDuckGo search engine on mobile

    I found that odd, but reading the more technical write up (linked in the article) it seems Brave blocks localhost communication.

    The Chrome proposal references a single use case. I’ve never seen a website that sets up my local devices, but is this a new thing?

    Why did localhost not get blocked earlier? This seems like a huge hole browsers have ignored for years.


    Also the DuckDuckGo exception doesn’t make sense to me. Does DuckDuckGo have Facebook trackers on it to begin with? Whatever site DuckDuckGo sends you to, if they have the trackers, you’ll get tracked.