Nearly three years after the initial launch of the PlayStation 5, Sony has revealed a redesign. Both the disc drive model and the digital model will be updated, but these two models aren't…
Unity might be facing the ire that comes with a near-universal condemnation of a new policy change, but at least things are looking up for two open-source game engines....
Fixit is dead! Long live Fixit 2 – the latest version of our open-source auto-fixing linter. Fixit 2 allows developers to efficiently build custom lint rules and perform auto-fixes for their codeba…
I’ve been using computers for about two decades. I still have some of my oldest files; the earliest I can definitively date are from 2003, but I’m sure they aren’t the first things I made on a…
Netflix has launched a mysterious new gaming controller app for iOS on the App Store, as reported by TechCrunch. The free app, simply called “Netflix Game Controller,” can be downloaded now and says you can “connect to your TV to play” but doesn’t yet have a listed compatible…
A cyberattack that began in August 2021 exposed the personal data of people in the United Kingdom who registered to vote between 2014 and 2022. The attack wasn’t detected until October…
Microsoft has shortened its $1 Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass trials to just 14 days instead of a month, just weeks before the release of Starfield. After running for years, the $1 trial for new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers stopped in March before returning last month after Microsoft adjusted its Xbox…
Mozilla has announced today that its read-it-later service Pocket will be retiring its Mac app this month. Users are encouraged to install the iOS app on their Mac or use the web going forward. Here’s when and why Mozilla is shutting it down.
I might have to look into it again. I’ve been primarily saving links using Obsidian synced to an S3 bucket. There’s a nice plugin that converts links to pretty markdown. I even made an iOS shortcut to automate the saving of pages. It’s nice and minimalist, but it does require Obsidian to view the pages (excluding just opening the bucket directly), so I can’t see my links on my work computer.
As the social media landscape ebbs and flows, the team at BBC Research & Development are researching social technologies and exploring possibilities for the BBC. One part of our work is to establish a BBC presence in the distributed collection of social networks known as the Fediverse, a collection of social media applications...
The BBC has launched its own “experimental” Mastodon server, marking one of the first major news outlets to establish an instance on the Twitter alternative. You can access the server at social.bbc, which encompasses posts from a handful of BBC accounts, including BBC Radio 4, BBC Taster, BBC Research & Development, and a...
With each PlayStation 5 system software release, we’ve introduced new features designed to enhance the many ways you can access your favorite content, navigate your console, or create new gaming memories with friends. Today, we’re thrilled to roll out a new PS5 system software beta that introduces new accessibility...
The fighting game genre has many notable franchises. One of the earliest to earn iconic status is Mortal Kombat. It punched its way onto the arcade scene in 1992 and quickly found its way to the home console market, wowing players with at-the-time realistic visuals and controversial over–the–top gore. That controversial...
There are people who would be okay if it were Sony making the acquisition, but I want to believe that most people who are against it feel that no large company should be allowed to buy another large company.
It’s like, does no one remember what Microsoft did in the 90s? They were literally forbidding PC manufacturers from not selling any systems that didn’t include windows.
This deal is bad. It rewards shitty individuals and shitty companies, and hurts consumers and employees. This deal will be a calendar marker of when the gaming industry started to fall. Like when Disney bought Marvel and LucasArts.
Its acquirer (Bending Spoons) has taken over operations. They’ve also hiked subscriptions prices and told customers they intend to use new revenues to pay for new features. How they intend to do that without any staff is something I would like to know about....
I used Joplin for a while but found that it was a bit too clunky. Also, yes it does store the notes locally, but they weren’t in a plain text format. My notes were fragmented across different files.
I switched to Obsidian after that and will never switch back. Yes, people make Obsidian complicated, but it’s honestly only as complex as you make it.
For me, all it does is text and sync. All the files are stored locally in complete markdown format. That way I can read them in any program that can process text. My personal workspace syncs to an S3 compatible service, while work synced to Google Drive.
I loved Joplin and felt so conflicted when I found Obsidian. But now I would recommend it over Joplin any day.
I remember the first time I came in contact with DLC, coincidentally it was my first Steam game: Supreme Commander 2.
My first thought was: “What the fuck is this? Why isn’t this in the game?”. Later on, when DLC were getting more substantial, my thoughts changed to; ”Are they just rebranding Expansion Packs?”.
As other people noted, I don’t care about cosmetics. Even for Dota 2, which I’ve put over a thousand hours in and have played it 10 years, I just sell them on the marketplace to fund my next summer sale. The only time I buy stuff is when I want to support the game’s development.
My gaming time is too limited to worry about battle passes and shit like that. I just wanna click heads and farm creeps.
Edit: the one thing that does bum me out though is that back before item shops and shit, skins and unlocks used to mean something. Like, you’d see some dude in your Halo 3 lobby with a dope-ass helmet and you knew that he earned that from getting a Killtacular with only deagle headshots. Now it’s just, dude’s level 150. He must’ve swiped for the ultimate edition, XP boosters, or has too much free time.
The Biden administration is appealing a federal judge's ruling that ordered the government to halt a wide range of communications with social media companies. President Biden and the other federal defendants in the case "hereby appeal" the ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, according to a notice filed in US...
Ubisoft’s MouseTrap system for detecting cheaters in Rainbow Six Siege is already seeing results. Cheaters use devices like XIM to spoof controller inputs, and MouseTrap has now caused a “major reduction” of more than 70 percent in the amount of mouse and keyboard users on consoles....
European Union regulators have opened an official investigation into Amazon’s proposed $1.7 billion acquisition of iRobot, the company behind the popular Roomba lineup of robot vacuum cleaners....
Unrelated question, but how did you get kbin to embed a mastodon toot as an image? I’ve been trying to find the best way to cross-Fedi post stuff to kbin but haven’t found one yet.
There’s been a lot of speculation around what Threads will be and what it means for Mastodon. We’ve put together some of the most common questions and our responses based on what was launched today.
It’s because you can’t “kill” a the AP protocol. XMPP didn’t go away when Messenger and GChat removed support for it, it just went back to how it was before hand, a fraction of tech enthusiasts using it for private communication. It would probably be the same with AP. A separate collection of sites using it to federate information.
… even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.
Granted this leaves out how Google used it’s influence to control and stagnate the XMPP protocol, but that’s another can of worms.
Dude a federated SO would be a dream. Imagine actually be able to post something without it being flagged as a duplicate of a 10 year old outdated question.
A federal judge yesterday ordered the Biden administration to halt a wide range of communications with social media companies, siding with Missouri and Louisiana in a lawsuit that alleges Biden and his administration violated the First Amendment by colluding with social networks "to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and...
Finding a good recipe isn’t as simple as it should be. Photos can’t always be trusted and estimated cooking times can be a bit too optimistic for the everyda...
Stars are thought to form within enormous filaments of molecular gas. Regions where one or more of these filaments meet, known as hubs, are where massive stars form....
“I was raising my hand as if to say, ‘I’m about to die; someone save me,’” Tim “Fireball” Lawrence says. He was about to drown in a swimming pool. While wearing a Yoshi costume, no less....
Identity federation isn’t the main point of the Fediverse, though. Federation is just meant to distribute content and facilitate communication. So you can have a book blogger manage their reviews and bookshelf on BookWyrm, a vloger can upload a video on PeerTube, and a city government can share water outage updates on Mastodon, and someone can interact with that content from a single interface and account of their choice.
It’s using ActivityPub. It’s interesting because Bluesky (basically, former Twitter) explicitly stated that they didn’t think AP was robust enough and created their own shitty protocol. Facebook might be one of the first traditional SNS platforms to experiment with AP. I would’ve been happier if it were Tumblr, who said they were working on implementing AP last year.
I wonder how much of the recent Twitter drama has influenced Facebook’s decision to release Threads so soon after its announcement. It’s probably going to be shit quality and just try and monopolize on people leaving Twitter but not wanting to jump to Mastodon.
That’s pretty much what the controversy is about. People are, rightfully, afraid that Facebook will dominate AP and eventually destroy it (akin to Google and XMPP[1]). There are also those who, also rightfully, believe that this will help adoption of the AP protocol and bring innovation into the Fediverse (maybe like podcasting and Apple Podcasts have done for RSS). Both are valid, and we as members of the community and those who develop for this space should be cautious of corporate intrusion leading the innovation.
@pollodiabolo - this user is a karma whore of epic proportions and they have made a shit load (10-15+) accounts on kbin that boost and upvote each other while sometimes mass downvoting others that have posts trending towards the top - all to farm karma....
I know memory is fairly cheap but e.g. there are millions of new videos on youtube everyday, each probably few hundred MBs to few GBs. It all has to take enormous amount of space. Not to mention backups.
Yeah this seems false. SD cards are unreliable, hard to keep track of, and don’t actually store that much data for the price. I do think they use tapes though to store long term, low traffic data.
I’m a Reddit refugee who was on that platform for 10+ years. I saw not just a tremendous amount of controversies, but attempts at introducing alternatives to Reddit during all of them. The 2015 blackout saw a ton of alternatives suggested, and if you go back and look at them many have either not survived or never achieved...
That’s one trend I hope doesn’t spring up over here. I hated the fact that 95% of the subs on /r/all were literally the same thing. Like, what was the difference between MadeMeSmile, DamnThatsInteresting, NextFuckingLevel? Just all the same clickbait trash, and then, as you say, some “organic” marketing campaign for the latest Marvel movie.
Edit:
Mastodon handles this by not having an algorithm. In order for a toot to gain traction, it actually needs to be boosted around so that people can see it. A great example of how this prevented “organic” marketing was with @Raspberry_Pi.
When they first joined, their SNS team tried the same easy brand tactics that they used on Twitter, trying to force engagement. It had the opposite effect, and the community backlash was fierce. They have since changed their messaging and become more genuine.
Since link aggregators usually need some kind of algorithm for a “front page,” I think the most important thing is to have it be transparent and static. No changing it every 4 months to increase engagement.
Most importantly, the community should also have a shared opinion on what kind of stuff they are okay with, and this can be more localized per instance.
Reddit also had an aggressive recommendation system, where posts from your most recently interacted subs would show up more often. I would literally only open one sub via a post on the front page and the next time my /all would be filled with trash for that sub.
Sony Announces New Slim PlayStation 5 Models With Removable Disc Drives (www.gameinformer.com)
Nearly three years after the initial launch of the PlayStation 5, Sony has revealed a redesign. Both the disc drive model and the digital model will be updated, but these two models aren't…
Final Fantasy 14 is getting an official tabletop RPG (www.polygon.com)
The hit massively multiplayer online game Final Fantasy 14 is to be officially adapted into a tabletop role-playing game....
Terraria devs donate $200K to open-source engines in wake of Unity changes (www.polygon.com)
Unity might be facing the ire that comes with a near-universal condemnation of a new policy change, but at least things are looking up for two open-source game engines....
Running a Social Platform as Someone Who Dislikes Them - Kev Quirk (kevquirk.com)
As co-admin of one of the largest tech instances on the Fediverse, it's ironic that I struggle with social platforms so much.
Fixit 2: Meta’s next-generation auto-fixing linter (engineering.fb.com)
Fixit is dead! Long live Fixit 2 – the latest version of our open-source auto-fixing linter. Fixit 2 allows developers to efficiently build custom lint rules and perform auto-fixes for their codeba…
You should take more screenshots (alexwlchan.net)
I’ve been using computers for about two decades. I still have some of my oldest files; the earliest I can definitively date are from 2003, but I’m sure they aren’t the first things I made on a…
Netflix’s new virtual game controller iOS app hints at TV gaming (www.theverge.com)
Netflix has launched a mysterious new gaming controller app for iOS on the App Store, as reported by TechCrunch. The free app, simply called “Netflix Game Controller,” can be downloaded now and says you can “connect to your TV to play” but doesn’t yet have a listed compatible…
Hackers had access to UK voter data for over a year before anyone noticed (www.theverge.com)
A cyberattack that began in August 2021 exposed the personal data of people in the United Kingdom who registered to vote between 2014 and 2022. The attack wasn’t detected until October…
Microsoft shortens its Xbox Game Pass trials just before Starfield’s release (www.theverge.com)
Microsoft has shortened its $1 Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass trials to just 14 days instead of a month, just weeks before the release of Starfield. After running for years, the $1 trial for new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers stopped in March before returning last month after Microsoft adjusted its Xbox…
How a Blind Warrior Mastered Street Fighter Without Sight (www.youtube.com)
When cancer took away Blind Warrior Sven’s vision at age 6, he didn’t think he’d be able to play video games ever again....
Mozilla shutting down Pocket app for Mac, recommends installing iOS app — 9to5Mac (apple.news)
Mozilla has announced today that its read-it-later service Pocket will be retiring its Mac app this month. Users are encouraged to install the iOS app on their Mac or use the web going forward. Here’s when and why Mozilla is shutting it down.
The BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decentralised social media (www.bbc.co.uk)
As the social media landscape ebbs and flows, the team at BBC Research & Development are researching social technologies and exploring possibilities for the BBC. One part of our work is to establish a BBC presence in the distributed collection of social networks known as the Fediverse, a collection of social media applications...
BBC launches an “experimental” Mastodon server (www.theverge.com)
The BBC has launched its own “experimental” Mastodon server, marking one of the first major news outlets to establish an instance on the Twitter alternative. You can access the server at social.bbc, which encompasses posts from a handful of BBC accounts, including BBC Radio 4, BBC Taster, BBC Research & Development, and a...
How Dreams Tren update was inspired by a childhood spent playing with trains – live today (blog.playstation.com)
Media Molecule Creative Director John Beech talks about making a very personal project in Dreams, available with PlayStation Plus.
PS5 beta rolls out today with new accessibility and audio options, social features, and UI enhancements (blog.playstation.com)
With each PlayStation 5 system software release, we’ve introduced new features designed to enhance the many ways you can access your favorite content, navigate your console, or create new gaming memories with friends. Today, we’re thrilled to roll out a new PS5 system software beta that introduces new accessibility...
The evolution of the Mortal Kombat series (blog.playstation.com)
The fighting game genre has many notable franchises. One of the earliest to earn iconic status is Mortal Kombat. It punched its way onto the arcade scene in 1992 and quickly found its way to the home console market, wowing players with at-the-time realistic visuals and controversial over–the–top gore. That controversial...
Former Riot, Blizzard Devs Reveal Teaser For Competitive Shooter Inspired By Anime And Comics (www.gameinformer.com)
Mountaintop Studios has released the first teaser for its in-development competitive shooter inspired by anime, manga, and comics....
Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard (www.theverge.com)
Microsoft can now go ahead and close its giant deal.
First details on Helldivers 2 co-op and combat gameplay (blog.playstation.com)
Stratagems return with bigger and badder weapons and gear than ever before, plus new trailer.
Rainbow Six Siege cheater sentenced for swatting Ubisoft Montreal offices (www.polygon.com)
French gamer gets three years of community service from Paris court...
Sonic The Hedgehog Co-Creator Yuji Naka Gets Suspended Prison Sentence For Insider Trading (www.gameinformer.com)
Sonic the Hedgehog co-creator Yuji Naka has been given a suspended prison sentence for insider trading....
Beyond Good And Evil 2 Creative Director Emile Morel Dies At 40 (www.gameinformer.com)
Emile Morel, the creative director of Ubisoft's in-development Beyond Good and Evil 2, died yesterday at 40, it's been confirmed....
Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off | Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com)
Its acquirer (Bending Spoons) has taken over operations. They’ve also hiked subscriptions prices and told customers they intend to use new revenues to pay for new features. How they intend to do that without any staff is something I would like to know about....
For those who grew up without DLCs and microtransactions and games went unchanged after launch. How has the adjustment been to current day monetization and game updates? (kbin.social)
Has there been changes to what games you choose to buy and play?
Blizzard Releases Episode 1 Of Genesis, A New Overwatch 2 Anime Series (www.gameinformer.com)
Blizzard has released the first episode of its new Overwatch 2 miniseries, Genesis....
State Dept. cancels election meetings with Facebook after “free speech” ruling (arstechnica.com)
The Biden administration is appealing a federal judge's ruling that ordered the government to halt a wide range of communications with social media companies. President Biden and the other federal defendants in the case "hereby appeal" the ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, according to a notice filed in US...
Ubisoft’s XIM detection sees “major reduction” in Rainbow Six Siege cheaters (www.theverge.com)
Ubisoft’s MouseTrap system for detecting cheaters in Rainbow Six Siege is already seeing results. Cheaters use devices like XIM to spoof controller inputs, and MouseTrap has now caused a “major reduction” of more than 70 percent in the amount of mouse and keyboard users on consoles....
Amazon’s iRobot Roomba acquisition under formal EU investigation (www.theverge.com)
European Union regulators have opened an official investigation into Amazon’s proposed $1.7 billion acquisition of iRobot, the company behind the popular Roomba lineup of robot vacuum cleaners....
Twitter is threatening to sue Meta over Threads | Semafor (www.semafor.com)
The threat suggests that Threads is the most serious rival yet to Elon Musk’s chaotic social platform.
Clavier belge (functional.cafe)
From the CEO of Mastodon: What to know about Threads (blog.joinmastodon.org)
There’s been a lot of speculation around what Threads will be and what it means for Mastodon. We’ve put together some of the most common questions and our responses based on what was launched today.
Judge rules White House pressured social networks to “suppress free speech” (arstechnica.com)
A federal judge yesterday ordered the Biden administration to halt a wide range of communications with social media companies, siding with Missouri and Louisiana in a lawsuit that alleges Biden and his administration violated the First Amendment by colluding with social networks "to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and...
This London Bookstore Lets You Try the Recipes Before You Buy (www.youtube.com)
Finding a good recipe isn’t as simple as it should be. Photos can’t always be trusted and estimated cooking times can be a bit too optimistic for the everyda...
Our Solar System possibly survived a supernova because of how the Sun formed (arstechnica.com)
Stars are thought to form within enormous filaments of molecular gas. Regions where one or more of these filaments meet, known as hubs, are where massive stars form....
Behind The Dangerous Stunts Of Nintendo’s Iconic Mario Commercials (www.gameinformer.com)
“I was raising my hand as if to say, ‘I’m about to die; someone save me,’” Tim “Fireball” Lawrence says. He was about to drown in a swimming pool. While wearing a Yoshi costume, no less....
Using my kbin.social account to login into other fediverse apps (kbin.social)
I was under the assumption that I can use one fediverse account across all ther fediverse apps, but this doesn't seem to be the case....
YSK that Kbin can subscribe not only to magazines and communities, but entire instances. (kbin.social)
This may be useful for folks looking to expand their feed. I discovered this on accident and it completely revolutionized my experience on Kbin....
iOS AppStore privacy preview for Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-based app Threads (media.kbin.social)
Call out post for a particular karma farmer on kbin.social (kbin.social)
@pollodiabolo - this user is a karma whore of epic proportions and they have made a shit load (10-15+) accounts on kbin that boost and upvote each other while sometimes mass downvoting others that have posts trending towards the top - all to farm karma....
How do social media companies like twitter or youtube not run out of space for posts?
I know memory is fairly cheap but e.g. there are millions of new videos on youtube everyday, each probably few hundred MBs to few GBs. It all has to take enormous amount of space. Not to mention backups.
What I think kbin needs to do to survive, and why I think it has a better chance than any other Reddit alternative I've seen yet. (kbin.social)
I’m a Reddit refugee who was on that platform for 10+ years. I saw not just a tremendous amount of controversies, but attempts at introducing alternatives to Reddit during all of them. The 2015 blackout saw a ton of alternatives suggested, and if you go back and look at them many have either not survived or never achieved...