After adjusting my TV settings again and tweaking the in-game options, I have Expedition 33 looking okay. I still think there are a ton of issues with the colours and lighting, for example it's sometimes impossible to read the subtitles because of the white text on a bright background, but we're back in it.
I Am An AI Hater ↗
The machine is disgusting and we should break it. The people who build it are vapid shit-eating cannibals glorifying ignorance. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.
The bloom and lighting effects in Expedition 33 make the game almost unplayable for me, even with the settings dialled down. Everything is either too bright or too dark, and there’s just too much visual noise. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to get much further.
Doubting Your Favorite Web Search Engine ↗
To preserve the richness and diversity of the web, we must support alternatives that empower communities, foster independent content, and keep the small web alive; Not proprietary platforms that extract value from it to sell it for a monthly subscription.
You putting art out into the world is so much more important than worrying about whether it’s fucking good enough or not.
Slack’s half-baked AI summaries have lead to some of the most unintentionally funny things I've ever read.
i really wish people used all that anger they so freely use against their equals (online or not) and instead aimed it at people with power
I think software should be good
Fuck OpenAI. Fuck ChatGPT. Fuck the industry that’s speed-running this horror to line their pockets.
The Crying Of Lot 55: The Unsolved Mysteries And Alternate Realities Of Andrew W.K. ↗
Who is Andrew W.K.? Is Andrew W.K. real? Who is the real Andrew W.K.?
I’m confused why a bigger deal wasn't made out of PlayStation putting Helldivers 2 on Xbox. We never hear the end of Microsoft releasing stuff on Sony hardware.
I will almost certainly not be able to finish Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It's nothing against the game, I just don't know that I have the attention span for another 15 hours of methodical sword fights between sessions of riding around the countryside on horseback.
I will buy an iPhone 17 for the fabric case alone.
Personally I find it really annoying that pushing myself to do things that are out of my comfort zone leads to a lot of personal growth and brings a lot of joy to my life
you should have to play 1000 hours of MSX, PC-88, or DOS games to get your "gamer's license"
A couple of weeks on Android reminded me how dependent on iMessage and FaceTime my family and I are. I was legitimately upset that I couldn't send my kid a message or jump on a video call when he's visiting my parents without him having to download multiple new apps.
Refusing to Choose Is a Choice ↗
It’s a choice in favor of the people who prey on others and who refuse to acknowledge the humanity of those they hate.
Zuckerberg's Huge AI Push Is Already Crumbling Into Chaos ↗
As the New York Times reports based on insider sources, Meta has announced internally that it will be splitting its AI division into four separate groups: one focused on research, one on so-called "superintelligence," one on products, and another on infrastructure.
The vast majority of the new games that got announced yesterday look so boring and similar. They're all bloody, gross, Souls-like action games or shooters. Seeing them without titles, you'd have a tough time telling them apart.
The internet isn’t fun anymore, and it’s everyone's fault ↗
It’s incredible how, nowadays, the natural response to engaging with other people’s “content” online is to look for that sinister angle that must be there to create engagement, conversions, or sales. And I completely understand it, because that’s exactly the level to which we’ve ruined the internet, and it feels like there’s no way back.
Meta hasn't built anything new in over 20 years. They've bought and copied their way to continued relevance. Complete chaos, disorganization, and failure is exactly what people should expect whenever Zuck announces the company's new focus.
The Thing | The story behind Drew Struzan’s iconic poster ↗
Arguably the most striking artwork Struzan created that year, though, doesn’t feature any actors at all. Depicting a human, parka-clad figure framed by an icy landscape, Struzan’s poster for John Carpenter’s The Thing is minimal, surreal, and filled with menace. Its brilliance is all the more surprising given that Struzan managed to paint it in a matter of hours rather than days.
Who's a blog for? ↗
A blog is for the person writing it. It's for the person who built it, who's hosting it, who's spending hours tweaking it until it looks just right (and spending countless more hours redoing the whole thing again and again).
I'm especially annoyed when it isn't crystal clear before they launch how apps plan on asking you for money. Case in point, I was excited to use Macrowave but only just found out that there's a subscription required to use broadcaster features.
I ended up replacing our TRMNL with a Raspberry Pi running MagicMirror connected to an official Pi display. For $30 less than the TRMNL X, I got a bigger colour display, complete control (and privacy) over what shows on the screen, and the satisfaction of knowing I'm not giving money to a homophobe.
One interesting side effect in switching to Android is that, because there are no numerical counts on red badges for app notifications, my overall anxiety is lower when I'm using my device. When I inevitably switch back to iPhone, it'll be one of the first things I turn off.
IndieWeb is Metal ↗
I’m happy to announce you can now buy the unofficial IndieWeb heavy metal shirt or tote bag from CottonBureau.com. The sales of these print-on-demand products ($2 from each shirt and tote) will make their way to a donation to IndieWeb.org’s Open Collective.
I set a modest reading goal of 100 books this year and I’ve blown past that. I know there's plenty more to read out there but I'm at the point where I'm struggling to find new manga series that stick with me for more than a volume or two.
Blueberry Hill ↗
I don’t think you get to have it both ways. That is, you don’t get to, as it were, borrow charisma from all the hype and then disavow every failure to live up to it as someone else’s naive mistake for believing the hype.
Google Gemini struggles to write code, calls itself “a disgrace to my species” ↗
"I am going to have a complete and total mental breakdown. I am going to be institutionalized. They are going to put me in a padded room and I am going to write... code on the walls with my own feces," it said.
Original Tesla Cofounder Roasts Cybertruck for Looking "Like a Dumpster" ↗
Martin Eberhard, one of the original cofounders of Tesla — who actually started the company and didn't retroactively bestow himself a title giving that impression, unlike a certain billionaire — isn't too pleased with his baby's newest crowning jewel: the Cybertruck.
It's still wild to me that Google shut down their dedicated podcasts app and told people to use YouTube Music instead. The app is beyond terrible.
Kids these days will never know the pain of having to rewatch the same 40-50 episodes of Dragon Ball Z over and over while waiting for them to translate more.
I dug out my Pebble Time only to find that the battery is cooked. So bummed.
People Are Becoming "Sloppers" Who Have to Ask AI Before They Do Anything ↗
"A friend of mine has coined the word 'Sloppers' for people who are using ChatGPT to do everything for them," TikTok user intrnetbf said in a recent video, which went viral on the platform. "That's incredible verbiage. Slopper? That's incredible verbiage."
Inside The Mass Call Campaign To Stop Video Game Censorship ↗
Following censorship of adult games on Steam and Itch, people are calling Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Stripe 'round the clock.
Itch Hides Almost All NSFW Content Following 'Scrutiny From Our Payment Processors' ↗
All of which sounds incredibly dystopian; the idea that faceless, unaccountable payment processors--which enjoy vast monopolies over the world's commerce, and by extension its marketplaces--can wield their power so swiftly, as they've increasingly been doing now for years, is downright terrifying.
The New York Times Will Never Learn ↗
This newspaper sucks, man. It doesn’t suck because it posted something dumb that betrays the paper’s poor commitment to video gaming’s wider place in our culture and artistic landscape. It sucks because it’s doing to games, and AI, what it seems to be doing to every other important beat of the 2020s: taking the worst people at face value.
I’ve had it with Microsoft ↗
I just want to be clear here: the price of my plan did not change. Instead, Microsoft moved me to a new plan that contained generative AI features I never asked for; a plan that cost a lot more than I was already paying. Then it lied to me, claiming my existing plan had increased in price and that there was no version of a plan without generative AI — until I tried to stop paying them altogether.
