OpenStars

OMG why does this remind me of this old video? :-P

It’s b/c 40 s in, the phrase: “Raw rhymes stronger than my jaw line when I spit a phrase”

Oh great, 2020 part 5, wonderful.

I mean, not directly no - we boiled it first - but you gotta drink something, sometime.

What worried me more is not when the screw-up is so easily detectable, but when it goes unnoticed, like the permanent damage done to the residents of Flint, MI, or all those toxic chemicals caused by the multiple train derailments, where the company men tried to pay/threaten/whatever people to say that they were not sick.

Company profits >>>> human health & safety.

Only if you like more mundane (yet accurate) explanations:-P.

This should make us all very very afraid of what that water is doing to US!

(Especially if/when it is colored - last year my water became orange and started giving everyone I knew that drank it mouth soreness, I only wish I was kidding, and ofc it was traced to a corporation found illegally dumping toxic chemicals into the water reclamation systems, thus exposing the entire city to those effects. No, they never faced any legal consequences beyond the slightest slap on the wrist iirc, why would they? That is what finally tipped the scales and helped me realize: the USA is not a first-world nation anymore.)

But the anti-romance dialogues were pretty fun too… (choose one person, then the others get mad at u:-P)

Kotor also encouraged replays with all options so that you could try the variety of romance situations:-).

Regexps are awesome! And also not at the same time:-P. 🎉 Congrats👏!:-)

Keep in mind that many math teachers are incompetent at their jobs - some of that may have had little to do with you.

Though you are correct that math does involve patience, a willingness to fail often until you eventually get it right, and a logical progression of steps where at each stage you keep track of the results of previous steps.

I’m saying that you can most likely do it! Though it may be frustrating, especially at first, while you sharpen those skills that math should have taught you but bc of cheapening out in education, you may have skipped over. It’s all up to you now though… my advice is that even if it takes you 10 to 100 times longer than someone else to do some little thing, so the fuck what, the important thing is that you can do it! (And if you practice, it gets a heck of a lot easier over time) I love this quote (from C.S. Lewis):

Don’t judge a man by where he is, because you don’t know how far he has come.

Coffee time’s the charm! :-D ☕

A study on astroturfing on Reddit, written in the style of Reddit by an astroturfer - oh the delicious irony? :-P

If you’re an OG iPhone or Mac user, then you might remember paid software updates. Over a decade ago, long before iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, major Apple OS updates used to cost users around $10 for iOS and $20 for macOS. By iOS 4, though, Apple switched to free software updates, allowing users to update their devices for as long as they’re supported without having to pay a fee.

Yeah, but nowadays it’s all “free” - as in you only pay for the hardware to enter their walled garden (but then no matter how much you pay, you can never really leave! at least not via normal, legal means, if you want to ever come back - Welcome to the Hotel California 🎶…!:-P).

Although ironically, the OS software itself is free to end users, as are future upgrades.

Google also sells hardware, e.g. in its Pixel line, and there too the OS software is “free”, as are future upgrades, up to a point.

Both sell listings in their respective stores.

These concepts are getting murkier over time.

Hey now, first second third fourth fifth time’s the charm! :-P

I hear that, but also…

Well, I was doing the same, but noticed that even in the niche subs, the conversations seemed to be getting more and more… juvenile? Like prior to the Snoopacolypse (as you called it, and I love it! The term not the event in case that needs any clarification:-P), it was a point of pride for me that I had never blocked anyone in my life - whereas now I don’t think twice before doing that bc who has time to waste on someone not engaging in good faith!? Especially if they lack enough self awareness to even realize that fact about themselves while they are doing it. (Tbf, possibly watching Innuendo Studios’ analysis of GamerGate that uses many tactics of the Alt Right in America had something to do with my changing views as well:-).

Ymmv ofc, bc different subs means entirely different people & thus experiences interacting with them, but I’m just saying that rather than stick with the subset of that community that remained after Rexit, I eventually just find myself going or even wanting to go there less and less, instead enjoying engaging here more, even at the expense of not being able to talk about those matters. I haven’t posted there for months, nor even commented for a month, and barely go once a week to read. Bc I use Kbin and the mobile browser experience here is so horrible to write a comment, I find myself not commenting here often either - but when I do I have much more fun doing so, not having to be anywhere near as defensive as that other place that shall not be named.

I hope you find something that works best for you as well, wherever that may be.

That’s a good point but I thought it was different servers, like one had “telemetry” directly in the name? Unfortunately I really don’t recall bc it’s been too long and I didn’t have time to finish delving in the first place, nor since. I don’t want to spread misinformation so let me know if you think I might be doing that. Mostly I’m saying that if Blockada chose to mark their checks home as “bad”, enough to block them upon a default installation of that app, then they surely had some reason to do so, even if ultimately it turns out to be harmless.

On a scale of 1 to 10 for severity, this might be just like a 1, but that’s still not 0, and some people just prefer to stay away from an app that has demonstrably chosen to ignore user consent. Even if they clearly state that they felt they had good reasons for doing so.

Chrono Trigger

The best game of all time, period.

I doubt it is just that - the sending of such info is enabled by default for one, and even after disabling it, for several years now Firefox has continued to connect to the server regardless. I have not personally delved into the source code to verify just how “friendly” such a check is, which has already been asked to be halted, but ad blocking software such as Blockada (Android) has decided to mark it as “bad”.

If this feature was opt-in only, and functioned respectfully, it would be an entirely different matter, but as it is, user consent seems to be at least partly ignored. I am sure that those stats are useful to the developers… but that is not and will never be the point, for many people.

I see: GET GLASSES (??)O THIS FU(???)ING IDIOT

Edit: oh yeah, (M)OTHER FU(CK)ING IDIOT as the other commenter said.

Fwiw, I believe that happened bc you dared to comment on a post that was since removed by a mod from a magazine hosted on another instance. Now, that whole post is “gone”, so Notifications cannot reach it, but it is “not gone” in the sense that Notifications cannot properly realize that it’s gone. And it has poisoned your whole notifications system, to the point that you cannot even read other notifications from other posts.

The good news is that it only affects one “page” of your Notifications, so as you continue to operate, it will eventually fall behind to page 2, and thereby still prevent you from seeing any Notification from that whole entire page, but from then on at least you will get new notifications from page 1. Until it happens again, ofc, and the cycle continues. I have ceased recommending anyone to come to KBin as a result of this extremely frustrating bug, along with the other highly frustrating ones like constantly logging you out, and barely being able to type out a comment on mobile. Hopefully it gets better.:-|