Yeah, I know about Telegram’s limitations. Been using it for ages, just to chat with my wife since she uses Android and I’m on an iPhone, and I don’t do social media. It was the best way for us to message back and forth and we haven’t moved off of it.

I have Matrix, Signal, and Session as well. Nobody chats me up on them but I keep them as options because why not? My phone has 512GB. Most is music and video. Apps are nothing to me.

This is the future of game development. Games cost more to make, so they’re going to pass the costs on to the consumer.

Right now games basically go for $70. There is a push for $80 and some developers are getting it (e.g. Nintendo with Mario Kart World). However, DLC will invariably push the game’s cost closer to $100. To stick with MKW, it’s not hard to see that not all the racers are in the game, who were in the last one. So the thinking there is they will probably be sold down the road for around $20 to get that game up to $100 total.

For a lot of gamers, the extra cost isn’t that big of a deal. Gaming is still a cheap hobby, and all three console makers are seeing good numbers with their more expensive consoles. The PS5 and Xbox Series X weren’t even improved, they just had their prices jacked up 10-20%. The Switch 2 is arguably just a minor uptick from the first model (and partially a downgrade from the OLED model) but it’s something like 30-50% more? And it’s selling like hotcakes, proving that gamers can afford to pay more, and will pay more. Not enough people are willing to put their foot down and declare that enough is enough when it comes to corporate greed. And with the costs of everything going up, it’s not 100% greed driving the price increases. Developers gotta eat too.

I liked the Rockband model. You bought the base game for like $60 (or more like $200-250, whatever it was with the drums, guitar, and mic, but those were reasonable hardware costs) and then you bought the songs you wanted for $2 apiece. With the first two, the on-disc songs were mostly great. With the third one, it was more questionable, but since you could export the previous games’ songs, it wasn’t as bad. The fourth one’s soundtrack mostly stunk, but then they gave us the ability to hide songs from certain sources, and by then we had over 150 songs from the previous 3 games (plus whatever DLC). Fun fact: Rockband is partially why console mods exist. Rockband 3 was the pilot program on Xbox 360, and to this day, you can load custom songs in it. It was never the intention to be able to do it for free, but the developers never cared that people were doing it. You could get uncensored songs, and you could get songs from other countries — there’s a whole “J-Rockband” scene of people playing Japanese music on it — that the developers were never going to chart/sell. Not only were the developers all musicians, many of whom made customs for the paid market, but they have been “caught” playing the free customs as well. (The developer, Harmonix, is now part of Epic Games and is responsible for Fortnite Festival, which is free to play, but you can’t use instrument controllers, and it’s a revolving selection of songs.)

Also worth noting: the people they’re scamming don’t know a Galaxy from an iPhone, let alone a Galaxy from one photoshopped with a gold back and T1 on it.

I don’t think they care, either. If they know it’s a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and they’re being charged double for one but it has a Trump case and they think buying it will fund violence against dark skinned/LGBTQ+ people, they’re not really being scammed. They’re putting their money where their mouth is.

IANAP but it seems like it would be trivial for a client app to do. Look at the combined vote weight (e.g. -8 + 4 = -4) and if it’s below user inputted threshold, don’t display it.

That said, Lemmy isn’t Reddit. When I see a post with a negative score, I can sometimes see why it’s not popular, but it’s seldom straight up garbage, and I can still vote accordingly. Never used the feature on Reddit because I’ve been brigaded by entire communities for acknowledging that their favorite show’s latest season exists (it’s not Game of Thrones, but similar energy), and I don’t think people should have the right to censor others; I believe each person should have the right to choose what they see.

There isn’t a phone. They’re just photoshopping other phones into photoshops of gold cases.

There isn’t a phone. All there is, is a grift.

As someone who’s only used Telegram to chat with real people, this headline confuses me. I keep hearing about Telegram channels but all I find are scams.

It’s going to be plagiarism so yes, it is.

I’ve asked Copilot at work for word help. I’ll ask out something like, what’s a good word that sounds more professional than some other word? And it’ll give me a few choices and I’ll pick one. But that’s about it.

They’re useful, but I won’t let them do my work for me, or give them anything they can use (we have a corporate policy against that, and yet IT leaves Copilot installed/doesn’t switch to something like Linux).

What resistance? It seems to me that there is not one big organised resistance that is taking members.

Find a local event and network but be careful about it. The US had that “no kings” thing early in the summer (or before?). That was just a bunch of people against tyranny. No real organisation to it. So you’d go to something like that and just talk to people.

It helps if you have an anonymous way to chat. Something like Signal or Matrix or one of the others. Even Telegram would be better than using something public or corporate-backed, like SMS for the former or WhatsApp for the latter. But be careful with Telegram, read up on it, it’s not a solid recommendation but it’s better than nothing. Fortunately there are alternatives. Even if the other person isn’t tech savvy — you probably are by being on Lemmy. So, show them the way.

Occasionally contact them through anonymous chat, just see how they’re doing, and discuss future plans.

Also, aside from demonstrations, places where like minded people meet. For the authoritarians and conservatives, that’s church, the local BBQ spot, and other, more obvious groups. I feel like they feel they can operate more openly since the US president is one of them. Used to be, these guys wore masks and were hidden, joining them wasn’t about finding them, they’d find you, that kind of thing. Nowadays it’s all out in the open. But I think liberals and progressives have meeting places, too. In response to church, for example, you should know that The Satanic Temple is not about devil worship, they’re about resisting Christian imperialism. They’re the ones fighting churches trying to get the Ten Commandments posted in every classroom. I’m religiously neutral, so they do not interest me, but they’re certainly an option. For the anti-theist/“hard atheist,” they’re a good option.

Might be niche, but I was reading the manga for The Promised Neverland and said they should get Erica Mendez for the voice of Emma based on her performance as Konno Yuuki from Sword Art Online II. Lo and behold they cast her!

Also when Fallout 3 or maybe New Vegas was the newest Fallout, I said they should add a settlement system. I said after the main story the existing settlements should face ongoing assault from raiders, ghouls, and other enemies and you should be able to shore up the walls, add turrets, hire more guards, and outfit them with better weapons and armor. A lot of people said that would be too complicated. Then Fallout 4 came out and they did just that.

About a 5. It’s close to 50/50. I don’t like talking to people who steal energy. Maybe you know what I mean. I have no problem striking up a conversation with a stranger and maintaining it if it’s interesting. I sometimes have a problem dipping out when it stops bringing me joy.

Continue to not use Facebook/Instagram.

I switched to Lemmy when Reddit came out in support of people who abuse children. I don’t even mean Trump, I just mean in general. I suggested abusers in general should face harsher penalties. They banned me for it. I said “holy shit you just did me a huge favor, apparently I was on the wrong site because our values are 100% incompatible.”

I mean, there isn’t even a debate. I’m not talking about people who find themselves attracted to kids. I’m talking about people who actually went out and hurt a real child facing longer, more meaningful sentences and they said nah, those people are people and need to be protected.

I’ve moved social networks on account of incompatible values and I think others will, too. Maybe not the majority but I think some others will. Especially as things get worse. There are networks for people who hate (like Truth Social), and networks for people who don’t care (like Facebook/Insta/Whatsapp), but I think as things change, more people will care and will look elsewhere. Not everyone but some people.

Yes it does.

Sometimes I miss the shooting. The best gun in the game is locked behind the pirate quest line, but that’s buggy AF. From getting the guards shooting at you for silently KO’ing the guy you’re after on the luxury cruise ship to the three beacons you have to protect (pirate side) or destroy (navy side) just not showing up… and the developers having people report these issues on a dedicated issues channel on their Discord and just not caring enough about their game to fix their shit… it sucks. Now I can’t even remember what it’s called. I just remember pointing at something in my way and clicking or maybe double clicking and it getting erased. Oh yeah. Revenant. Something like that.

Oh yeah, or how the hot Asian pirate chick has this stupidly convoluted maze of a ship and her Captain’s Locker always has like 25k credits in it and she does not care if you take it. That was funny to me.

Game absolutely sucks. And it’s worse because the developers do not care.

“Love the sinner, hate the sin” is the boilerplate answer, and fundamentally it’s correct, but also never forget that Jesus himself kicked over tables and brandished a whip at these people.

Like, you always think of Jesus as this soft-spoken, kind-hearted individual who always tried to help people. But when he came back to the temple and saw people were using it to try to peddle their wares under the guise and protection of religion, he called that out and threatened violence. And he was right to.

The true Christian response would be that Trump will be judged in the afterlife but that they still support what he’s doing in government… which is making things harder for people with darker skin and/or who are LGBTQ+. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” and all that.

Ask them if they would allow their preteen daughter to stay the night with Trump and you’ll see where their feelings truly lie. Many of them would! Many of them would happily traffick their child to him hoping that she might be his fourth wife and their family would benefit. A few would tell you that the accusations against him are inventions of the liberals, but those people are never mentally sound.

I call myself rich, but if I don’t go to work I don’t get paid, and if I don’t get paid I can’t pay the rent… and out the door I went go.

People can call themselves Christians, but unless they actually follow the teachings of Christ, it doesn’t mean anything.

For what it’s worth — and keeping fully in mind this is a meme and therefore not serious — Starfield (crappy Xbox/PC game from the people who made Skyrim) did this. A particle accelerator experiment (albeit involving an alien artefact) caused reality to split apart. So I’m gonna say, it’s possible!

From back then? The Lonesome Jubilee by John Cougar Mellencamp.

These days I just use Apple Music. Costs less than Spotify, pays artists more, and doesn’t finance the alt right. (Well except for that dumb participation trophy Tim Cook gave Trump.) Anyway, I pay for music because I love music, and I neither smoke nor drink, so it’s like, my vice, I suppose. That and coffee.

Anyway, I have access to all the music I had back then and since on the handheld Mac phone I carry in my pocket.

We didn’t think about the absence of things we’re didn’t have. It’s easy to look back and say “I could have gotten away with so much” but we didn’t think about it.

Your whole life being recorded was a thing for my generation (X)… if you were rich. Rich families had video cameras and they did record all kinds of things. Birthday parties, holidays, vacations, and so on. We saw cameras. We either tried to avoid them, or tried to flip them off — so the cameras avoided us. They didn’t wanna see the poors anyway. And for the most part, they were, and mostly did their filming, in places you couldn’t go if you/your parents worked for a living.

GenX here. Before computers… that’s a lie, my father always had computers, long before computers were cool. What we didn’t have was the Internet. Before the Internet, I read books. My father had a couple encyclopedia sets. One was more for kids and had colorful bindings. The other was the Encyclopedia Brittanica. So yeah, books were our Wikipedia. (Wikipedia is based on the encyclopedia concept. It’s right in the name!)

I don’t have a religion, but I get ya. (Doesn’t mean I don’t know some of what the Bible says, mostly for the sake of argument.)