That actually looks pretty neat. I still prefer Ring-Fit, but it’s of course getting very samey very quickly. This seems like a neat change of pace.

Sure, but as you cannot know the future, it’s a bit tricky to pick a successor you want to support based on that, instead of absolutely right-now-essential things such as “Where people actually are”.

It’s also important to keep in mind how long Twitter’s run was: It was originally founded 18 years ago. I’d be okay if every 10-15 years I have to get a new Twitter, tbh. I buy a new phone every 4-5 years, a new car every 15-20, I’m alright. It’s cheap to go onto a new Twitter, I’m far less resistant to change with that.

That is to say: Sure, maaaybe (again, can’t truly know) Mastodon is superior on a technical level. But not only is that absolutely not how social media operates, and second it really doesn’t matter if a sucessor also goes down in 10+ years. People won’t be able to care any less if a successor lasts that long, and considering how quickly Mastodon has turned into a semi-ghost-town once Bluesky got big, I kinda know what I’d put my money onto.

Of course all of this ignores a central problem with the entire category of services: They don’t conduct conversations well, even stuff like Misskey or Mastodon.

Same. It overly corrects sometimes and can be a bit laggy, but in mixed language sentences it’s unmatched by a wide margin IMO.

Trump will close his own shit down again or rebrand it to Truth X? 🤣

Caveat: Neither do most web pages.

It’s possible to criticize both Mastodon and Bluesky for their respective issues

Sure, they’re both Twitter-like and hence inherently unsuited to having a discussion for starters.

I mean, as long as Twitter goes down, who exactly gets to do the killing blow among all the individual blows doesn’t truly matter now, does it?

Yeah a friend of mine was a logistics warehouse worker for multiple companies, and she said Amazon was by-far the best. Yeah it’s not a good job, but it beats the alternatives by a mile where she lives.

👋 One of the few places where I can order where:

1. You actually get all the items you order.
2. They do refunds/replacements without endless harassment.
3. I can actually get someone on the phone if I have a more complicated problem.

I’ve seen criticism about these laws holding back AI companies’ development

These laws can’t do anything these grifter-companies full of misguided attempts to mis-use LLMs and LAMs aren’t doing to themselves already, tbh.

It’s all just a huge bubble of C-suites blowing hot smoke up each other’s arses.

Of course, but good luck getting those 5% of users that actually produce nearly 100% of the content to move over if their business model cannot work. And once those move, you know where all the people following them move.

Exactly. The design, the sign-up process, the colors, the formatting, it’s all very pre-Musk-Twitter.

Even the icon is reminiscent!

It’s as smooth a transition as you can make it, so no wonder people do it effortlessly.

Meanwhile in camp Mastodon: “Please pick a server” -> tab closed already

Because the mastodon evangelists are horrible.

Yeah that’s another thing, Mastodon is kinda nice, except for its userbase. :P

Because people I want to follow are on Bluesky?

(I mean, duh? Did you really need people to state that?!)

Porn doesn’t wreck your mind if you’re a sensible person?

What are we talking about here? Easily impressionable people with no frame of reference? They’re susceptible to everything. Well-adjusted people with prior information? They’re susceptible to neither.

I would agree, but I’m still frantically thinking whether I actually agree and whether I should be expressing that publicly!

Oh yeah definitely. The expansion was such a cool thing, and the limited scope really helps it rather than hurting it.

one of the greatest stories in this medium

I mean admittedly I don’t read cyberpunk as a genre, but as an avid reader I find that hard to believe. My two standout sub-stories are the intro heist and the expansion’s main story, and while those are awesome, they’re not exactly literary masterpieces. The rest of the game’s story is… amateurish? But not in a bad way? Like, it’s servicable as the thin motivational veneer you expect from an open world game, and doesn’t stand out either way, which is more or less what you want from your open world story: To not get in the way. The last few parts are quite bad though and show how much the story must have been cut apart and pieced together to fit a release date.

Is it really outstandingly good comparing other cyberpunk works?

Difficult.

I gave up on it initially, annoyed by it’s deluge of bugs coupled with the overall tepid and empty-feeling design.

I gave it a serious go a year ago after also getting the expansion. I wanted to not use any mods but ended up having to use one anyways, as CDPR still couldn’t be arsed to fix some keys being hardcoded so changing your keyboard layout is annoying as stuff gets in the way. Luckily, fans fixed that issue and made all keys rebindable. <3

I will say… I enjoyed it. It’s nothing superb to me, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable romp. It’s big upside were the visual design, in particular during the expansion and its high points like the top floor of the tower or the sequence at the space port, the great voicework and Songbird in particular and when you meet her. I also liked the expansion and the tutorial stories a lot.
It’s weak points to me were the open world itself which feels pointless and a thin, lifeless, facade plus the main story itself. Character progression was also super broken back in the days but by the time I played felt a lot better, so I’m not really holding it against the game. That being said, there were still quite a lot of bugs and glitches. Nothing major a reload here or there could not fix, but still considering how long the game has been out.

So yeah, solid 7/10 for me. The expansion is fantastic, wish the whole game were like that!

Difficult to say as that’s really not a common case at all. Might just lack evidence for how to understand this.