and the government would have to explain precisely why they decided to ban all Google services over a song about freedom.

They wouldn’t explain shit. This is an authoritarian government we’re talking about; they have near total control of what information gets to their populace.

More likely they’d just accuse Google of supporting terrorism, and make a show of raiding their offices and jailing their local executives.

I don’t think the people in charge would last long if that happened, considering how integral Google’s services are to many people’s lives.

This is China we’re talking about. Chinese equivalents to nearly every big tech service are more than present and accounted for, even often preferred by the local populace. Hong Kong is a little different, but the CCP still exerts near total control there.

It is literally either follow this law or cease operations here. Both would end in the song being blocked anyway.

Mind you, I wish we were that level of strict when it came to our data privacy laws.

Until they make the wrong call and it bites them on the ass.

Yeah but they’re called talent for a reason. The senior talent are generally better than the juniors at what they do.

This company wasn’t exactly targeted. It could have happened to literally anyone.

As someone very hesitant about AI I’m comfortable with it. It’s a streaming service, not my email inbox.

Yep! The security guard is also given a bunch of rules to follow such as “don’t let anyone outside of our neighbourhood (aka your local network) contact door 22”, which will also determine whether messages get delivered or not

Imagine your computer is a big block of flats and your applications are all people who live in the building.

Mail sent to the building address alone isn’t going to reach the intended recipient, because the postman doesn’t know what flat to post it to. So they need additional information such as ‘Flat 2C’

That’s the basic concept of ports. It’s basically additional addressing information to allow your computer to direct internet traffic to the correct applications.

When an application is actively listening on a port, it means that they are keeping an eye out for messages addressed to them, as designated by the port number. While an application is sending or receiving messages using a given port number, that port number is considered ‘open’.

Now, all sorts of applications do all sorts of things. Some are for the public to use and there are some that are useful within trusted circles, but can be abused by malicious people if anyone in the world can send messages to it. Thus, we have a firewall, which acts as a gatekeeper. A firewall can ‘block’ a port, denying access to a given group of people, or ‘unblock’ it, allowing access.

VPNs are a totally different thing. They are literally middlemen for your internet traffic. Instead of directly posting a message to somewhere and receiving a direct reply back, imagine you flew out to Italy to use a post box there and receive replies from there.

Android’s Do Not Disturb feature is also like this. You only get notifications from calls, alarms and apps you specifically allow.

“oh damn, you guys didn’t know? I feel bad for you but it’s probably too late for you now. Guess you’ll find out soon enough.”

Then: complete radio silence.

Then give them a URL link to a good instance.

Do you really expect Threads to provide a fair, uncompromised experience of the Fediverse when it’s actively against their interests to do so?

Right now, sure. Will that always be the case?

It ain’t about people they don’t like, it’s about a powerful corporation known to be abusive, psychologically manipulative and unafraid to break laws so long as it benefits them.

You wouldn’t want such an entity under your roof either

I don’t see why we can’t take a look at it now. No one cares about GG anymore, and IGN has practically become the punching bag of the industry for their… interesting choices

The only thing we can do is live the lives we have.

For as long as I’ve been alive we’ve always been on the brink of one thing or another. Worrying about the bits that you cannot change will only do you harm.

Here’s the thing though, KIA was only created after the banwaves and mass-deletions that happened across all social media (even 4chan). KiA was created long after everything started kicking off.

Not really. It was initially called the Quinnspiracy, after Zoe Quinn, author of Depression Quest, an e-choose-your-own-adventure-book that got some coverage in videogame journals.

Shit blew up when her ex made massive accusations about sleeping with the journalists in question. Then some actor coined the term Gamergate, and their targets expanded to then-journalist Anita Sarkeesian (I think she works more as a DEI advisor now) and indie game developer Brianna Wu.

Make no mistake, the games journalism industry was not spotless, far from it. But the rampant misogyny in Gamergate cannot be ignored.

I call them id-style shooters myself, but there is a bit of word play I like in the term ‘boomer shooter’. On top of referencing the age of the audience when they first arrived (albeit incorrectly), it is also a reference to the fact that the optimal strategy for these games is simply to blow things the fuck up. There is very little tactical play beyond what weapons to use for a given situation, and these games really love their explosive barrels and rocket launchers.

Remember that we see this scene through Snape’s memories - something wizards are able to distort to varying degrees.

It may well be that we aren’t seeing the full story. It is revealed later that tit-for-tat behaviour was quite common to the both of them.

Rebooting a franchise successfully needs a lot more thought than what they put into new Frasier.