This was my thought as well. A lot of these games are never made, even when the ads do very well (as evidenced by the ad continuing for years). Someone actually made the bait game for real, in recognition of the fact that the games have been advertised for many years and never made.

Even if OP’s explanation is sometimes correct, it doesn’t seem typically correct. In fact, it seems like a rare edge case, at best.

I agree, but just to clarify a minor point: small rural towns are actually some of the most walkable and bikable because they were built before cars. If you’re staying within a rural town, you don’t need a car.

One of the common definitions of “regularly” is “frequently”. E.g. “We used to meet regularly, but less and less as time went on.” This is also why frequent customers are called “regulars”.

edit: “Happening or doing something often” is even the first definition of the Cambridge English dictionary. Misinterpreting OP’s use of “regular” just feels like Stack Overflow level pedantry.

Why is Consumer Reports considered a rag?

I dunno. “Don’t attribute to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by stupidity.” I can totally believe that the average police officer has not thought this through. “5 hours of footage! We don’t have 5 hours to look for one bike.”

Yes, Obsidian is great. The app itself is proprietary but the files are portable plain text. I feel like that makes it pretty future proof. If it ever shuts down or enshittifies, there will be alternatives.

I actually can’t understand how most people live without a password manager.

Thank you for the response. Alas, the monetization question is key to enshittification. I’m left unassuaged.

Let’s take a concrete example. There are a bunch of neo-nazis inciting real violence on Blue Sky. People will die. Does anyone have the power to do anything about them? Or can the neo-nazis " mix and match services and switch quickly" to escape any consequences? It’s a dilemma either way. On one fork, BS has no control, which means bad actors run free. On the other fork, BS does have control, which suggests they’re not as enshittification resistant as it may seem.

I know and am happy with how Activity Pub (Lemmy/Mastodon) deals with both forks, as imperfect as the system is. What about Blue Sky?

It’s more robust against enshittification than your average Mastodon server

I’m very skeptical of that. What makes Mastodon so robust against enshittification is that it’s hard for a single or small set of players to have so much control that they can act as gatekeeper to extract money from the user base.

Blue Sky is a for-profit corporation. How do they plan to make money? Who controls access to the network? These are genuine questions.

Yes, French sea salt especially for desserts! Put that sucker on some decadent butter cookies.

Black Diamond salt for me, which is what a lot of restaurants use. Worth the extra cost, especially given how potent a small bit of salt is.

That assessment sounds right. I think we just need to stay vigilant as consumers. We have defeasible reason to trust Apple right now. But we’ve seen, especially recently, what happens when we let corporations take advantage of that hard earned trust for short term gain.

I think that decision makes sense.

What you said got me worried, so I looked into the claim that it is “tracking all your behavior for advertising purposes and whatever else Apple decides”. That’s a convincing concern, and you’ve changed my mind on this. I don’t see any evidence that they’re doing anything close to this level of tracking — the main thing they seem to track is your Mac App Store usage — but they may have the potential to do so in the enshittified future. That gives me pause.

I agree with that. I think there are cheaper laptops, where you can spend less to get less. Not everyone needs a metal body and all day battery life.

I didn’t claim that Apple is doing anything to be “generous”. That seems like it’s moving the goal posts. Say, are other PC manufacturers doing things out of generosity? Which ones?

Even the M2 and M3 Macs are a good value if you want the things they’re good at. For just a few hundred more, no other machine has the thermal management or battery life. Very few have the same build quality or displays. If you’re using it for real professional work, even just hours of typing and reading, paying a few extra hundred over the course of years for these features is hardly a “scam”.

You didn’t elaborate on your “spyware” claim. Was that a lie? And now you claim it’s “known” that Apple limits hardware and software. Can you elaborate?

That’s too simplistic. For example, the entry level M1 MacBook Air is hands down one of the best value laptops. It’s very hard to find anything nearly as good for the price.

On the high end, yeah you can save $250-400 buying a similarly specced HP Envy or Acer Swift or something. These are totally respectable with more ports, but they have 2/3rd the battery life, worse displays, and tons of bloatware. Does that make them “not a scam”?

(I’m actually not sure what “spyware” you’re referring to, especially compared to Windows and Chromebooks.)

Donating to charities might be a better idea. I’ll look into this. I think people nowadays underestimate the effectiveness of charities. Some aren’t efficient, but some have been highly effective.

Hmm, that does seem like a perverse financial incentive. I otherwise like some of the content on Wendover Productions, but I remain skeptical about this one.

I would like to see someone post some actual unbiased journalism or scientific studies that support specific carbon offset programs.

I am not against easing one’s conscience, so long as that’s not the only thing people do. It’s a perverse turn in our culture that we’ve started to shame people for trying to act morally. We have a conscience for a reason: to motivate good behaviour. This reminds me of the right’s claim that everything is “virtue signalling”, as if moral action itself is undesirable. It coheres with a hyper individualistic and self-interested worldview.

My question is precisely whether “in fact it is exactly as bad”. That is an empirical claim, not one that you can declare with a serene wave of the hand. That John Oliver reporting is useful in that regards, whereas your comment, devoid of argument or evidence, is not.

Good to know. Link for the lazy.

I wish there were some effective way to invest in fighting climate change. God knows there’s plenty of money invested in the opposite direction.