That won’t work. How are you supposed to draw the line between what is/isn’t spyware? Inevitably, MS would say, “we don’t consider this to be telemetry/spyware/etc.” and users will disagree, and MS will tell them to shove it.

Besides, Google has all of the shit that’s mentioned and gamers/developers don’t care, so I doubt it would make any difference at all. The fact is, Windows is a garbage system to develop for. Linux is the best system to use for deployments, Windows will never come close, and that’s ultimately what’s going to decide where developers go. And gamers are too niche for MS to care. The dominoes will really start falling when business customers start switching to Linux en masse.

And this is inevitable. When it comes to business use, open systems always win in the end.

Yeah, this should definitely not be allowed. Google should not be allowed to dictate which operating systems people are allowed to use. And no doubt that this is harmful to many European companies and prevents competition in the space of mobile operating systems.

That said, it remains to be seen if anything will get done about it.

I managed to beat 4BC and decided I wasn’t having fun anymore. Once you get to 4BC or 5BC, it feels more like taking a driving test or a calculus exam, and I’d rather play a game that’s a little more forgiving of making mistakes because I like to try silly new things.

Fortunately, custom mode is available, so I would play on 5BC with refillable health potions and enemy damage turned down to the lowest amount possible, and I found it a lot more fun.

And side note: all games need a custom mode like Dead Cells has, it’s impossible to tune a game to a single difficulty that’s fun for everybody!

Dota 2 is the most I have logged at around 3000 hours, but I don’t have any friends to play with and don’t want to deal with randoms, so almost all of it is against bots. Even though the bots are garbage, there’s still so many creative, silly ways to play that game and ridiculous builds that are fun to try and see if they work.

Super Smash Brothers (64 and melee) is probably the most of all time though. Any time I pick up a new 2D game, I find myself comparing it to SSB in terms of mechanics. The way you control your characters in that series is the most innovative and compelling concept I have ever seen in a game. If I ever have the time to make a game myself, I would probably heavily model it based on that control scheme.

I also have to give a shoutout to Streets of Rogue, which is a fairly obscure rogue-like that deserves a lot more attention IMO. Another very replayable game with many fascinating play styles and ways to complete missions. It’s on Steam and it’s fantastic, I would highly recommend it.

Enter the Gungeon is another game I have high playtime on. It took about 40 hours before it started becoming fun, but man, it’s awesome once you finally figure out how to properly dodge enemies and make the most of your weapons and items.

If you go back a few decades, you would see how companies would produce technological innovations with the mindset of, “If we design the best, most useful device possible, customers will come to us and buy our product”.

Today, that has flipped into a mindset of, “We will create this technology, force users into adoption, and exploit them as hard as possible once we have them under our control.”

The technology has become a means to control users, not to enable them.

At least it’s good to see that people are catching on though.

As a bit of an aside, I learned recently why Mozilla has the weird Corporate/Foundation structure that it does: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47701441

Basically the IRS is highly skeptical of the idea that free software development fits the legal definition of a 501©(3), and tends to reject such applications [1][2]. That is why Mozilla Foundation cannot use donations for Firefox development, and instead uses them for activism.

Someone claiming to be the CEO of one of these foundations appears to confirm it. Just thought people might be interested to know since this comes up in pretty much every thread about Mozilla.

The only way to fend off far-right parties is to elect governments that will actually take action to make people’s lives better. I mean dramatic, even drastic actions to improvements in quality of life for real people, not billionaires.

Centrists and even some center-left parties don’t seem to get this, or they do but they don’t care. It seems like leftist parties are the only ones that are willing to step up. They need our support more than ever.

Big congratulations to the people of Hungary. Hopefully this is the start of a much better chapter in their country’s history.

Damn! Matchmaking is definitely really hard at high MMR levels, and I remember back when I read reddit about how many people would post angrily about matchmaking - there’s no easy solution to that problem at that point. I remember watching a twitch stream after TI9 where Ana was fountain farming an opposing team until they got an abandon. (The deserved it for being asses in the allchat to be honest, but the skill gap was still obscene.)

But at the same time, your experience is exactly how I figured things would go if I ever tried to play Dota seriously. When I played football in my teenage years, I realized that eventually, you reach a point where getting better stops being fun because everyone else is equally talented and trying their hardest to get to the next level too. At that point, I realized that I just wanted to have fun and stopped competing. Still played recreationally in my regional league though. We had terrible results, but losing on a bad team was a lot more fun than winning on a good one.

Glad to hear that Dota helped you kick all your bad habits. It’s always good to find a silver lining, no matter how crappy the situation is.

In my case, it’s age. I only have so much free time during a day, and ruining it on a shitty Dota2 pub match just makes me feel like trash for weeks later. Even today, I cringe when I think back on some of the stupid things I did in that game.

The last thing I need is more embarrassing memories running through my brain when I’m trying to sleep at night.

I got to about the same level of ascension in Slay the Spire. Eventually, I realized that dying 10 times in a row before getting the dream deck for finishing a high ascension level just… wasn’t that entertaining. When a game has too much RNG, it becomes about as much fun as flipping a coin and trying to get heads 5 times in a row. Oh and also, when you do get that perfect deck, it becomes even more stressful making sure that you don’t screw it up and have to start from the beginning all over again!

Now I just play with ascension off entirely. The A20 achievement is the only one I don’t have, and probably never will.

I feel this. I can’t even play a game of chess online without feeling stressed out. I love playing against friends, but against anonymous strangers, I just can’t do it. It’s a damn shame - I sank about 3000 hours into Dota 2, and about 98% of it was against bots.

I do enjoy co-op games these days though, but again, it’s still better with friends.

It’s hard to be a contrarian in these kinds of positions (I’ve been there, and it didn’t end well), so I wouldn’t be too outspoken, but at the same time, try to innocently point out the issues with approaches like this. I would just try to point out the flaws in this approach, the same that we would for any other kind of programming fad - without making it seem like it’s an agenda, of course.

For example, any time teams are looking for feedback - code review, retrospectives, etc. - just point out the flaws on why vibe coding is a bad idea and bring it up casually when the time comes. It doesn’t hurt to be honest as long as you don’t come off as being an ass about it.

“I don’t have time to read through that much bullshit.”

Maybe phrase it a little more kindly, but that’s what I’d try at the very least. “I have other priorities at the moment” could work too.

Super Metroid. It’s supposed to be a classic but I can’t stand it. I just hate the way the physics feels so slow. Jumping and left/right acceleration just made the game feel terrible to play.

The Metroid prime series were great though.

I don’t know much about Sun, but they seemed like a cool company - Java, Solaris, Sparc. A lot of people sounded pretty upset when they got acquired.

So far! Don’t worry, Silicon Valley will think of another new, even bigger scam in no time!

The user is able to install new certificates.

That’s true today, but there’s no guarantee it will be true in the future. Google is already pushing for all software running on Android to be cryptographically verified and they (Google) are the only ones that control the signing keys. This means that they intend to kill off F-droid and all other software delivered outside the Google store.

If Google is able to pull it off on Android, everyone else will try to do it on desktop OSes too - Linux included.

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I just don’t want see the garbage that is the Android Play Store where apps refuse to run because we run an OS that isn’t profitable to Google.

I think the possibility that this could happen is dangerously high.

Everything starts with good intentions. Everything ultimately leads to locking end users out of their personal freedoms.