Bleh. I’d love to get excited but it’s gonna be another live service game, or mtx online crap.

This does suck though. To start, a counter-offer-based model begs discrimination. You should be getting yearly raises commensurate with (at absolute bare minimum, not even necessarily accounting for inflation) the increase in productivity from year to year.

This is to say nothing of work environments. Unions could reduce or end crunch. Not just as hard blockers, but mandating the kind of project management that doesn’t require crunch.

There’s also a history of wage suppression.

https://www.inc.com/jeremy-quittner/silicon-valley-wage-collusion-class-action.html

They’ll only get better at it, especially as the market continues to turn and companies continue to consolidate.

Also good for cases where a website reads your active addons. Ublock users > users of privacy badger + ublock

I keep a lot of my TTRPG PDFs in my drive. I’m wary of Google generally, but I do have to admit it was pretty cool to see it pick out bits and bobs from my PDFs with not-very-much guidance on my part.

(edit: God I’m sorry about this big ass wall. I ranged and rambled. It’s too early to write this much lol. Tl;Dr 1: law enforcement. Police don’t need a warrant to buy your info. In the US, we have warrants for a reason. Constitution outlines restrictions on "unreasonable search and seizure. 2: Consent. Like, I should have the right to just say no. It’s my data, let me be part of the conversation. 3/4: Safety and equity. It’s still illegal to be gay in some parts of the world. An insurance company or an employer could check your race online if they wanted, whether or not you’ve made that available. )

The problem extends across a few metrics.

First, probably the most tangible. The police can and do use data purchased from civilian companies to bypass regulations. For example, you don’t need a warrant to check phone contacts if you can buy it. You might be saying you don’t do anything illegal to worry about. Have you ever been to a protest? Have your friends? If climate change bothers you, could you see yourself going to one?

Protests are frequently targeted by law enforcement. Even if you think that would only happen if the protest becomes a riot, you don’t control the crowd. If you’re there but not rioting, your phone location can be used as proof of participation. There is precedent, too. They used location data to arrest capitol rioters. IMO those were good arrests, but how many BLM protestors were arrested based on phone data?

Second, consent. Even if I change nothing else in your mind here, consider that we might simply value our personal data differently. I should have a right to be part of the conversation about me. Let me pay $20 to use a product without observation. Products should be up front about what is collected too (GDPR has helped lots with website tracking). Facebook is known to collect “shadow profiles”, where data is compiled on you even if you aren’t on the platform. I should be allowed to say no to that, for any reason, simply by virtue of it being my information.

Third and fourth go together some. Safety and equity. People are still killed for being gay. Legally. And the collection of data on people enables that. Just buy data off of Pornhub to identify who is browsing their gay section. And if someone is found in a country where it is illegal to be queer, all you need is a list of their contacts to find more. Maybe Apple refuses to unlock their phone for you, but that’s okay. Just buy their contacts off Meta.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory

But that’s the straightforward issue of equity. Consider someone who has gone to jail. They’ve done their time, they’ve reformed, and now they want to rejoin society. The judge even goes so far as to expunge their records. Well, a background checking company can buy that info still. And that’s just talking about criminal acts that should be reformed. Maybe you don’t care about that. What about crimes that just target BIPOC? In the US, weed is legalizing, slowly. People were still arrested for it, and that history is indelible, regardless of the official record. If even the US Justice System wants to wipe the slate, than the slate should be wiped.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_in_the_United_States_criminal_justice_system

Special mention to Google btw. Good and bad. They do a lot to tell you what and how they collect data, and how they anonymize it. Purportedly don’t sell your data, since they also own the ad network. Like you say, I’m not really worried about the ads, and a lot of their products really are good enough that I don’t mind making that trade. However, I do take umbrage with the idea that it’s fine still. A company does have analytics on their ad campaigns. John Oliver did a funny bit where they put an ad targeted towards Congress. He got a couple of hits too, with their location and had the power to fingerprint their browsers if he wanted. Once you click an ad, you’re in the care of whatever site put that ad out. That means they collect whatever they want on you. Additionally, theyll know what ad brought you in. So if you put an ad out targeting “pregnant people in Texas looking to make a trip”, you’ll have a list of people that Google thinks match.

This whole post misses a lot of nuance and context. It’s a social media post, ultimately. I’m not sure I have enough mental capacity right now to hunt down more links, and I’m about to start my work day. I don’t have any trouble with folks who don’t care – frankly I’m jealous. I’m annoyed that I can’t just use products like most people and not care. It’s just everywhere. Walking down the street I’m on someone’s TikTok, meaning Facebook, YT, Bytedance could get my location without me even interacting with them (shadow profiles from earlier). When I got a covid test recently, I had to download their stupid app to fill out a form. That app has the power to collect endless data points about my phone. Buying concert tickets means signing over my information to your favorite ticket vendor. It’s just endless and exhausting for me.

+1 Outward is actually my favorite game. It’s so so fun!

Health insurance is largely a benefit. It’s largely cost-prohibitive to do otherwise, and I believe coverage can often be better from your employer than what’s available on the open market.

You still pay for employer-provided coverage, but with your employer covering some portion of the cost. I think my out-of-pocket insurance is ~$300/mo as well, but most insurances will also come with a low-deductable plan that is sometimes, but not always, cheaper depending on how you use your insurance. Insurance only covers some part of a medical bill, and the lower price covers less. There’s a ton of caveats on all of that though.

If you’re unemployed, there are options. You can just go to the hospital without coverage, and apply for income-based relief once you have the bill. You can’t apply before you go though, and you may or may not have your costs covered. Not paying at all of course impacts your credit, but like 90% (number pulled from my ass) of the US has medical debt, and I’ve had landlords for instance straight up tell me that ignore medical debt on the credit report.

There’s some kinda public insurance available. I think it’s largely for retired folks? Idk, I’ve never heard of anyone actually able to use it. You also keep your employers coverage for about a year after you leave, but you have to pay for it still.

US software devs are generally paid a lot more than other countries. Keep in mind we still have to pay for our own health insurance/medical bills, but I don’t know how Germany handles their healthcare and the bills won’t matter for everyone.

Bro you gotta watch better streamers holy shit

Not to be contrarian, but b) could well be a full decade of work and numerous individual projects

looks at steam library

Yup, this last month-ish has been wild for my backlog. Remnant 2, BG3 (Which I honestly expected to bounce off of), AC, Starfield next week.

Honestly I’m just skipping Armored Core until I can give it some actual time.

Obvious Beehaw bias but I don’t get the whole weirdness about defed. Like maybe it’s a hammer where some problems are screws, but elegant solutions are for people with VC funding.

This is good and bad to me. I like the idea of a series of little neighborhoods. You know your home well, and have a place of comfort if you don’t feel like dealing with the wider world, but it’s all still very accessible (or ideally very accessible. Discovery is an ongoing issue without for you algos). Forums were nice, but it was always annoying if you were on more than one proboards (or what have you) and you were switching sites to see your variety of friends. Discord solves the same problems, but I also don’t trust that company at all.

Reddit gave you that comfort zone for certain topics, but only if it’s not a popular or contentious one. And like it’s nice to be able to have my comfort zone be more diverse than my 5 favorite topics.

Ssl will hide the contents but not the metadata. It’s easy enough to build a profile on you just by understanding what sites you visit.

For positivity:

I love team building. The interplay of abilities, the hard choices with limited slots and opportunity cost. Finding unintentional synergies, or even stumbling on them. Its all a dream, and it’s part of why I love ttrpgs so much.

I can sometimes get so bogged down (positive) with team building I never make it amywhere in the game itself.

Also love me a good physics engine. God knows how many hours I spent building stupid shit in Garry’s Mod. I learned to code before I played that game, so it was delightful to put those skills to use with wiremod as a little kid. LoZ: ToTK I have like 1000 hrs logged just fucking around in the builder spot at the base of Tarry Town.

I hate anything that stops me from playing the game. Stun mechanics, usually, but I also include quick time events.

The one that sticks in my mind was those dumb water mages in genshin impact. They trap you in a bubble and hold you there for a few seconds. If it’s an intense enough fight, a few seconds is an incredibly long time, and you’re just sitting there watching the game happen and you’ve lost your agency. It’s worse for me because I had built shields and healing into my team to shore up my shortcomings with dodging. It felt clever, but them the game sends in this mechanic which invalidates my solution.

With quick time events, I just get annoyed at the genre switch. Don’t get me wrong, there are cool enough cinematics out there… It’s just… Like usually I’m watching these and thinking, “wow, that would’ve been fun to do, you know, myself.”

Nevermind that I’m too ADHD. Like I have cats and a partner and a phone. If I get a buzz or whatever else, I might miss the prompt. Or if I ignore the buzz, whatever that might have been can sometimes get discarded in my brain.

Not that it contradicts your comment, but it’s worth noting those ads could well have been inserted by the platform or the podcast publisher.

Clive is so great. He’s just a little guy who wants to be an edgy loner so bad, but he cant help it. He just wants everyone to be safe and happy. Not counting 14, I’ve only ever played the 7 remake, and Clive is a nice contrast to Cloud.

Don’t get me wrong, Cloud has a similar vibe. But like Clive talks, and smiles, and he gets a little awkward when people flirt with him. He compliments people who do good things, and his dialog during side quests shows he’s genuinely concerned with the well-being of people around him.

It’s just nice to have a Clive to play. Like I’ve done lots of Zelda lately, and Link’s personality was never the draw. D:OS and Baldur’s Gate 3 both have protagonists that like to veer into “hard person for a hard world”. Elden Ring is Elden Ring.

Give me the protagonist who is human enough to be affected by the world, but also actually nice and stuff.

Microsoft tried to kill borrowing and lending, and this just seems like ankther attempt. Someone with a real presence on other sites (and is good at social media) should stir up a backlash.

I hate digital-only media. :/