I don’t even remember the last time Stephanie Sterling did anything like this, so it was just a weird blip. Not that she doesn’t goof a bunch. Still a great channel to stay up to date on the things that actually matter in the games industry instead of the usual hype machine shit. The only thing I don’t care for on the show is the wrestling stuff and when the editor does some schtick.

After Oblivion, I really wished I had the option to quick load my last save.

Need a fork of an app that replaces a Google app to get a fork of an app that replaces another Google app.

I would love a federated network of video platforms as long as they can all be searched collectively. Would be great if videos could even be migrated to other instances if storage becomes too limited on one of them. Yeah, it probably isn’t ideal that YouTube is all one platform, but it certainly makes it easy to find what you’re looking for most of the time.

I understand where you’re coming from. I’m not personally a Linux user despite a lot of what I value overlapping with the Linux community broadly. I do think much of the technology we use today can and should be replaced by open source alternatives and I’m optimistic about growing interest globally in that regard. I’m not at all suggesting we submit to the new corporate-controlled Internet or go back to a pre-2000s lifestyle.

But I think we’re talking about different things, so let me just bring it back to YouTube. A lot of what we can do is limited by inescapable expenses: server costs and labor. We can say labor is optional because a lot of open source projects are developed and maintained by volunteers. But people do need money to live, so this project becomes the side gig, not the full time job. YouTube’s already a mess with moderation. Imagine a video platform with no full time staff to review illegal uploaded content, DMCA requests, comments, etc. But the bigger issue is the scale of YouTube, trying to make billions of videos play seamlessly at all times all over the world and just work. I can’t fathom the infrastructure needed for that. It would cost far more than it would make in donations if that was all it was accepting. No ads means the budget is that much smaller. If the small percentage of users with YouTube Premium doesn’t bring in enough to keep things running, the open source version wouldn’t either. And fewer people would be willing to pay for it.

This is what I mean by services that are unsustainable. Yes, clearly the technology makes it possible. But there is a cost to it and I think we’re entering a time when we don’t get those things for free anymore.

History would suggest that, but I’m starting to believe we’re in a tech service bubble that’s ready to pop. I touched on this in my comment, but it’s becoming clearer than ever that the vast majority of the services we use today are not sustainable on a number of levels. Economically, they’re all a mess.

Food delivery services are bleeding money constantly in the hopes that one day they’ll find a way to profit. They won’t. It’s an insane business model. The actual cost of the service is many times the price of the food you’re buying. Uber/Lyft already isn’t keeping prices low enough to be a cheap option anymore because they’ve coasted too long on VC funding and it’s time for them to start making money. But they still aren’t and if they charged what it actually costs to operate, no one would use it. Many online platforms can’t sustain themselves despite being major social media hubs. Streaming services spend more on buying up movies, shows, IP rights, and other streaming services than their subscriptions bring in.

The endgame of all this means everything will become unaffordably expensive for almost everyone, the services utterly nosedive in quality as companies cut costs and fire staff, or they go bankrupt and collapse. I think we’ve already had it as good as it’s gonna get and we’re going to go through a period of corporations slowly pulling back everything they’ve pushed into our lives with investor funding over the past decade. It’s not just Lemmy’s favorite buzzword “enshitification.” I think a lot of what we expect from the Internet is not sustainable and it’s not going to stick around in any form we would want.

Please don’t leave me hanging.

It kind of is. YouTube has decades of history. Unfathomable amounts of video. No indie platform will ever come close to hosting more than a fraction of a percent of YouTube’s library and be as accessible and as fast. It would cost an unbelievable amount of money in servers and maintenance let alone moderation. The problem is this is a service, like many others that exist today, that does not bring in more money than it costs. YouTube exists because it’s a branch on a megacorporation tree, but even Google will eventually need to find a way to make it profitable. It is impossible to fund this for free or anywhere close to free.

Now that emulation is allowed on iOS, I would think this is the worst time for either of them to start selling ROMs for iPhones. If Nintendo launched a Virtual Console app years ago? Easy money, no question. Captive audience in a closed ecosystem. Now? If I open the app store and see an app that can play Pokemon Red/Blue for free right next to an app from Nintendo that charges me $5 - $10 for the same experience, why would I pay?

Regardless, Nintendo wouldn’t even try to sell you ROMs these days anyway. They’ll sell you a subscription service like they do on Switch. No thanks. I’m good with the emulation we have now.

I agree with much of what you’re saying, as well. With Israel holding all the cards, I just find it worrying that Gaza would be forced to give up its one and only leverage. We’ve already seen that Israel does not care if hostages are involved when attacking a location. It’s hard to imagine how much more aggressive they will be when the risk of Israeli collateral damage is removed from the equation.

It’s a misleading headline, whether deliberate or not. Read the context of the resolution. It was a highly conditional ceasefire proposal that would require Gaza to give up all hostages while Israel would be permitted to continue controlling the region. Not immediate and clearly untenable for Palestinians. The US submitted the proposal knowing it would not pass just so they can act like they’re trying to negotiate peace, only being shot down by the usual bad guys. It’s a propaganda tactic and it’s clearly working.

No, the US resolution was distinctly bullshit and did not call for an immediate ceasefire. The previous resolutions that the US vetoed did. Let’s not pretend the US proposed this version of a resolution out of humanitarian interest.

This is one of those ideas I’d love to agree with, but I know the reality of the situation would mean negative consequences for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, just like how current ID systems are now.

Yes, my entire personality formed when Hollowknight released. Why do you ask?

Can Joe Biden’s cabinet please get the fuck off of Lemmy and go back to sharing pictures of this war criminal holding puppies and ice cream to Boomers in Facebook?

Some of the funniest shit about modern day US politics is the constant fear mongering about foreign powers interfering with elections and riling up Americans to feel angry and disenfranchised with our own government. As if our own government wasn’t doing enough to piss us off so it must be the fucking Russians at it. Americans who pay attention have plenty of reasons to hate our country and the people and systems that govern it, and it’s getting harder and harder these days to avoid paying it attention. We don’t need help from foreign agents to get there. This country does it to itself.

Schools don’t use these balls anymore?!

I love the stuff. Wish good quality black licorice was cheaper. I guess you pay for being a niche customer base.

Socially unacceptable? Every person I’ve ever worked with does this or has done this regularly at some point in their lives. There’s a reason Starbucks is everywhere. No offense, but I wish this triggered more shame in people. Instead, it’s normal behavior.

Vending machines used to get vandalized at my school. How much tech are they putting in these things now?