What!? Apple took another companies idea and used slick marketing to convince consumers they invented it?!

I’m shocked…dismayed…appalled…all of those things.

My world has been rightly shooketh.

On second thought, no shit…it’s Apple. That’s kind of their schtick.

Thanks for proving my third statement.

Never found a free one that works as well at blocking ads and trackers.

I worked in the cellular space for about 20 years off and on before moving to other pastures. I guarantee you that maybe one in a thousand think like you.

BY FAR the average buyer that Apple targets come in two flavors.

First, the “I’m cool and all my friends are doing it” and second is the “I’m the father, I don’t personally give a shit but my daughter/son wants us all to be on iMessage.”

It’s cheaper for me to just bump up my Adguard DNS subscription on my home router. Though I’ve only done limited testing to see how efficient it handles YT ads. (so far seems to work).

Honestly, the $3 CAD I spend on Adguard DNS through my router has been incredible. I’m flabbergasted when I connect to someone else’s Wi-Fi and see what the Internet looks like outside my door walls.

The fact that people care about whether their messages are blue or green is so absolutely ridiculous.

I’ve known people who literally refuse to message anyone who doesn’t use iMessage (and by extension has an iPhone).

Every one of them turned out to be a twat in every other facet of their personality as well.

Razer Kishi controller for an old Android Phone running various emulators.

It’s not a terrible game. I still inexplicably have hundreds of hours put into it. (according to Xbox achievements I’m one of only 6% to bother reaching level 50)

Their comment about being a different experience each time is disingenuous, though. The only major questline that “feels” any different is The crimson Fleet storyline, which I loved and legitimately had a tough decision about which way to go.

But Vanguard, Rangers, etc… are all variations on the same missions with a different faction slapped on them. It’s all pretty generic stuff with the occasional cool mission tossed in. (Ryujin, for example was far to easy and uncreative until the very last mission, which was legitimately fun)

Settlements and outposts are entirely pointless. You can ignore them completely. And you never have to visit a random mining/civilian/science outpost if you don’t want to. Which to me seems like a negative. If a major feature of your game can safely be ignored, you haven’t integrated it properly into the larger narrative.

But yet somehow I still have just about 250 hours into it. I don’t know why. Probably the ship building, which is fun as hell.

I’ve always felt like the magic systems and cultures of the Patryns and Sartans were deserving of their own expanded universe. I was desperate to learn more about them and was sad that they were only ever in that one series.

I remember the versions I read had a sort of encyclopedia at the back of every book in the series dealing with some aspect of another of the world and I devoured those obsessively

Currently rereading the Belgariad and will likely go straight into the Mallorean. Probably my favourite “traditional” fantasy series.

But my all time favourite fantasy series is The Death Gate Cycle by Weiss and Hickman. But is very much not your traditional fantasy setup. It’s got wizards, dragons, elves, etc… but in very very non-traditional worlds. Can’t recommend it enough.

Defeating Hamas?

A war against Hamas that targets civilians is just going to create more Hamas.

You kill 100 civilians for every 4 Hamas fighters, all you end up with is 10 new Hamas fighters from the relatives of the civilian dead.

He’s delusional.

I think “The Establishment” is less of a thing and more of a concept.

It’s a catch-all term for the status quo. How things are and have been for a very long time. When you’re fighting to change things, you’re fighting “The Establishment”, the traditional order of things. Whether that’s corporate greed or political corruption or unfair labour practices, etc… etc…

And yet an onscreen keyboard for linux apps is still “on the roadmap”…

Sync by a country mile

Like swishing an expensive scotch before swallowing…

The phrase “breathing it indirectly” is breaking my brain a little, ngl.

“Where’s my little Pavel and why are there so many windows in this room?”

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that making him a “general” was a negotiation chip used to get Han to stick around.

I don’t thinks that’s written anywhere. But that’s my head canon based on the characters as we know them at that point in the story.

Yes it is. It’s backed by the US’s economic power on the world stage. That’s how economies function.

Crypto can be created or of thin air by literally any tech bro with a GPU. By definition that is literally worthless

untrue.

Real currency is backed by assets. that used to be the “gold standard”, but has become more ephemeral since the end of the first world war.

A government issued currency is backed by that government’s infrastructure, taxes, tariffs, etc… basically how powerful that government is on the world stage.

in contrast, crypto is backed by nothing more than how persuasive the creator is because the creator doesn’t need any assets to create a crypto currency in the first place.

Heck, in one case, some techbro created a crypto currency, and convinced a bunch of people that it would be stable because he was backing it with ANOTHER crypto currency he literally created for that only purpose.

And people FELL FOR IT!

When something can be created out of thin air with no assets needed but a GPU, it’s inherently worthless.

It’s utter insanity.