Leon

I’d recommend a HDD enclosure with a virtual drive emulator. I personally use this one which I’ve had for about a decade at this point. Lovely device. At some point I think I’ll pop an SSD in it instead, mostly just for durability purposes.

Only if it’s for eating later.

I think the blood in the muscle itself is probably included but likely not the blood in the chambers.

I do laugh at this. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes and all that.

That’s the one.

If you can afford it. Might be a better option, or least send the devs some support while using repacks.

Honestly, I think this is a case-by-case basis. I don’t weep for EA losing money when people acquire The Sims for example. The people that did the heavy lifting already got paid, and the less money that’s going into the Trump Empire and Saudi Arabian pockets the better.

That’s almost besides the point, though. We’re living in a time where if you buy something you for the most part don’t own it. Buy an EV? Then the battery is rented. Buy an iPhone? You don’t get to choose what software or hardware to put in it, only Apple batteries are acceptable else your screen/camera/faceID array will magically stop working. Android phones are barking down the same route.

Buy an eBook/Audiobook from Amazon? Well they can edit and redact it whenever they please. A film from iTunes? DRMed, bound to die whenever Apple decides to no longer support your platform. Video game? You get a license to run the software, nothing more.

There are studios I feel happy supporting, ones that treat their customers and their workers right. Don’t think a single one of them is a AAA studio though. Like, why should I pay Bethesda when they don’t pay their musicians?

Given that her crime is essentially scamming rich people, I don’t think so. Rich people get special treatment after all.

Doesn’t mean that people don’t use it. Lots of people do.

Gods I wish Epiphany/Gnome Web was better. The Kagi people are working on bringing Orion to Linux, which I believe will be using WebKit there as well.

It’s kind of funny that we don’t have a solid WebKit browser on Linux, since WebKit has its roots in the KDE Projects KHTML engine for Konqueror.

I guess that kind of ties in to my anger at these massive tech companies profiting off of FOSS but doing almost fuck-all to contribute. Google opening LLM generated bug reports in FFMPEG when all of the streaming media giants are propped up by this one project is just one example. There should be some kind of tax for this, I feel. They’re benefitting greatly, and provide nothing in return.

I think the problem with Chromium isn’t so much that Blink or V8 is bad or anything, it’s that it’s entirely under the thumb of Google. We’re essentially being set up for another Internet Explorer scenario, only Google unlike Microsoft won’t just be sitting on their laurels. Google is an advertising company, their entire business model is the web. Google Search is the tool used to find things, and with Google Chrome being the go-to browser for a lot of people, Google essentially ends up in control of both how you access the web and what you access.

That sort of power is scary, which is why I personally avoid anything Chromium based as much as I am able to. Chromium itself is fantastic, but I don’t like the baggage it comes with.

Emissions. Economic problems. Goading several people into suicide.

Like, if you ship a food item with harmful bacteria in it, it gets recalled. If you have a fatal design flaw in a car, it gets recalled. If your LLM encourages people to separate from their loved ones and kill themselves, nothing fucking happens.

There is a Firefox Developer’s Edition so I don’t see why not? I personally don’t care to see them waste the time on AI features.

I am shocked that a Christian organisation wouldn’t play ball with the others. To be fair when I say “other countries” I’m obviously painting with a very broad brush. I’m sure that there are countries out there with good strong national unions, and I’d be surprised if that’s not fairly common here in the Nordics.

We love our folkrörelser here in Sweden, like we even have a tenants union, that each year, among other things, negotiate rent increases with the landlords and their unions. They’ll also offer legal counsel and even representation if you’re a member, which if you’re a tenant in Sweden you fucking should be.

That’s because other countries are doing it wrong. Small unions will not hold any power, they’re completely pointless.

You’re missing the point. Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Google aren’t people. They’re criminal corporations given free reign to poison the rest of us.

I’m not arguing that you shouldn’t try sustainability. I was brought up with the mindset. We sort our garbage, I mend and reuse as much as I can. It’s good not just for the environment and your wallet, but it’s also a protest against the consumerism pushed onto society.

That doesn’t mean that we should focus only on individual action (or inaction) and turning away from the actions of these massive corporations particularly not when they’re blatantly flaunting them right in front of us. What point is there in me criticising you for taking an aeroplane to visit your family once or twice a year when you have Donald, Musk, and Taylor Swift riding private jets on a weekly basis? Like it doesn’t even compare.

I don’t think Inzoi is going to be that big a competitor for many regular sims people. The usage of AI rubs some people the wrong way, they’ve had a shady creator’s programme, and their initial stance of “LGBTQ+ what’s that?” rubbed people the wrong way.

The unfortunate thing about this EA takeover is that The Sims, particularly in the past ~5 years or so has done great strides for representation and inclusivity. Like, the days of cauliflower afros are gone with EA bringing in black creators to the table, we have medical aids, there are various skin conditions, a pronoun and sexuality system. It’s far from the American-centric game it has traditionally been.

None of this seems likely with Trump and Saudi Arabia holding the reins however.

Are you a mermaid?

We don’t reticulate splines any more.

One I recall that rubbed me the wrong way was one of her videos on “is being trans a social fad?”

One the one side you have people claiming that it’s a socially contagious fad among the brainwashed woke who want to mutilate your innocent children. On the other side there are those saying that it’s saving the lives of minorities who’ve been forced to stay in the closet for too long. And then there are normal people, like you and I, who think both sides are crazy and could someone please summarise the facts in simple words, which is what I’m here for.

Not super fond of the “both sides are crazy” idea when one side is arguing “people should have equal access to medical care and be left to live in peace” and the other is trying to legislate the former people out of existence.

She further goes on to platform ideas like “rapid onset gender dysphoria” which is based on spurious data gathered on a “parents of trans children” forum. None of the actual studies on the subject have supported the idea at all. The science is against it, yet she’s presenting it like it’s some “other side of the coin” nuanced take, and not just utter nonsense. It’s a bit like lending credence to the idea that the Earth is flat because there’s a whole group of flat-earthers out there who believe it is.

Ultimately though, I think my main reason for avoiding her is that she just doesn’t post sources. They’re all hidden on her Patreon, and I just don’t think that’s how it should work. I know educational videos aren’t exactly scientific papers, but hiding your sources just strikes me as bad manners. If the goal is to educate and nurture an interest in a subject, why obscure the path you took to get it? It just doesn’t make sense to me, and most other channels like hers do publish their sources.

Because people use it. It’s taken the place of forums, and in some cases even fucking customer support. Ugh.