mrmaplebar

• Sonic 1, 2, 3 & Knuckles on the Sega Genesis.
• Sonic Generations
• Sonic Mania
• Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart (Fan Game)

Crazy how by simply rebranding “gambling” to “prediction markets”, it went from being something illegal to something where people can now bet on anything at any time.

I read all your comments in my previous post and one thing I realized I’m not qualified for this at all. This is too dangerous and puts my life and many of my friends at risk.

I think that protest, organization and resistance are inherently risky, especially in the context of an authoritarian regime where you don’t have adequate constitutional rights or legal protections for speech. The man and women protesting the government and morality laws in Iran are putting themselves at considerable risk, as are the people protesting against Putin in Russia, and people who make small acts of rebellion in places like North Korea. There’s probably no way around that, I’m afraid.

With that said, deepening your understanding of privacy and security technology puts you in a position to allow you do the kinds of things you want to do while limiting the personal risks to yourself. This means learning about things like Linux, encryption, containerization, VPNs, VPSs, TOR, cryptocurrency, etc., and understanding that tools exist to allow people to communicate anonymously. If you haven’t already, I would start first by improving your knowledge of cybersecurity.

Do you have an encrypted email provider like ProtonMail? Do you use encrypted messaging tools like Signal? Those are a good starting point.

Discord have all this but that’s not my preference at all. I know Reddit has private subs but I don’t like reddit like many of you guys.

Discord and Reddit are corporate, specifically American corporate. As such, neither of them are truly “private” or anonymous, and to some extent they are beholden to American corporate interests, and thus, American government interests. Much like TikTok’s relationship with the Chinese government, I think that platforms like Discord and Reddit can only be trusted to the degree that you trust America in general, if that makes sense…

With that said, Discord and Reddit are popular platforms, and it can be easy to create a reasonably protected space there if you can vouch for the people that you are allowing in the room. (Remember that every person who is allowed in the space is a potential vector for leaking of data out. And so, for example, if one of the members of the room was to be captured or coerced in some way, they could provide access to the room to people who you may not want to give access to.) “Security through obscurity” is not a great strategy on its own, but there is something to be said about getting lost in a crowd…

So, as much as I prefer the Fediverse as a key tool against corporate social media, I can see how Discord and Reddit could be useful tools. (Discord was absolutely instrumental in organizing very effective protests in Nepal just a few years ago!)

The best approach is probably something broad, where you use some combination of the fediverse and legacy social media together, but only after you’ve gained the appropriate knowledge and privacy/security tools needed to protect yourself.

The heavily touchpad based design was also just more radical than people were willing to accept. It forced you to adapt to a totally different control paradigm, and took a lot of time to get used to. I liked mine, but I can see why people may have bounced off of it pretty hard.

The new Steam Controller is kind of halfway between a traditional modern controller and the old SC, so it strikes a nice balance.

It’s more expensive than we all would hope, but not unreasonably so given the economic situation.

Yep, that’s slop alright.

One big tell to me is how highlights always get slightly brighter just before hitting the outline. It’s kind of a similar effect to when you turn the sharpness filter up on a TV, and it looks terrible. And yeah, there are a ton of strange noisy messy shape salad parts that are a defining characteristic of “AI” “art”.

That’s an insane thing to say, especially considering most people streaming and making videos about games are probably not using an Xbox to do it, let alone making any money doing it.

“We noticed it was some nazi shit but we did it anyway, except in Germany where it’s illegal.” Pretty wild defense.

Wasn’t this game about mythology? What am I looking at here?

I like this list, but I want to add Windjammers, Neo Turf Masters (golf), and League Bowling!

Yeah, I really missed the boat getting in on it when it was $0.00…

Now I’d better get it at $0.0 before it shoots up to $0 next year.

At this point I’m a real believer in the free and open source software model, so there’s very little Microsoft can do to bring me back to Windows other than turning Windows into an open source desktop environment running on top of Linux.

…and even then I probably wouldn’t use it over Gnome or Plasma.

It probably will, for some people, at least until Valve releases an ARM-powered Deck running full SteamOS.

I think Android is the weak link here. Who wants to use an increasingly locked down operating system?

I’m not mad because they go above and beyond to support Linux, which I prefer to use.

None of the other stores do even the bare minimum for Linux users, while Valve has helped make it easier to play almost every game.

I don’t have the Analogue 3D (N64), but I do have the Super NT (SNES), and while it is a pretty expensive way to play old games, it’s also one of the best in terms of accuracy and image quality. It’s basically the best SNES money can buy, so you have to really love the platform to spend that money over simply emulating on a PC.

The price is also not that bad compared to modding original hardware or buying decent upscalers. I don’t know what a HDMI modded n64 runs these days, but I remember seeing them at $600 back in the day!