♫ Imagine all the people sharin’ all the world ♪ ♪ Yoo, hoo, oo-oo ♫

I agree that it is creepy and subservient… but it is also entirely accurate. The dog is a pet. It is entirely reliant on the owner, and it is only allowed to do what the owner lets it do. It eats when the owner tells it to. It goes outside only when the owner says so. It probably even had its genitals removed at the request of the owner.

So yeah, ‘master’ is an appropriate word here.

I find it a bit uncomfortable too, which is why I don’t have a pet. But from what I can tell, dogs are generally fine with this arrangement. Most dogs seem to like it this way.

Charging for updates isn’t intrinsically bad. A good expansion pack at a fair price can be a good deal for both the players and the devs. But there is a modern trend of games trying to squeeze players for every dollar they can get; and when content is deliberately held back in the hopes of selling it for a bit more money later, it starts to become a bit perverse. The game itself can become an advertisement for selling more bits of the game in the future - and it just devalues the experience.

In the specific case of Stardew Valley, the game is a major hit - and it continues to sell well. So even though existing players are getting the new content for free, the developer is still going to get paid. Obviously he could get a lot more if he charged for it, but he has decided he doesn’t need that. He’d rather just make the game as good as he can make it.

Here’s a personal story of mine, about a different game: Several years ago I was selected to be a beta tester for a major game franchise. I was a very well known member of that community, know for making custom balance patches and bugfixes - and so they wanted me to test their new release. I was pretty excited to be a part of that. But when I got my first beta copy, I didn’t really play it much because the game barely worked. It crashed very frequently, and so my feedback was basically just “it crashes when I do this”. I figured it wasn’t worth trying to give balance ideas when the game was in that state. Anyway… time went on, and things didn’t improve much. There were some graphics changes and a bit of UI work… but it was still super unstable. The release date was getting pretty close. But before it was even possible to do a full playthrough without constant reloads to dodge game-ending bugs, there was detailed plans posted on the beta forums talking about the first 4 DLC packs that would be released after the game launched.

I stopped taking AAA games seriously after that. I was totally disillusioned. They were launching their AAA game in non-functional state, with the hope of fixing the worst bugs in a day 1 patch. Very little useful playtesting was done, and so the features of the game were a bit slap-dash, but yet somehow they were dividing up content for as many DLCs packs as possible. They didn’t even have a functional game and yet they were talking about how to sell more stuff. It was a real eye-opening experience for me; and it really colours the way I see other games that launch in a buggy state, where pretty much the only thing that works is the in-game store.

So yeah, I can appreciate the view that maybe charging for updates is a slippy slope that Concerned Ape doesn’t want to step onto; even if he does have very solid footing for if he wanted to tread that ground a bit.

You don’t really have to do anything special to make the most of life. Different people like different things; and whatever you choose to do is likely to be valuable to you. Just be mindful that that you don’t sleep-walk through it all. Make the most of it by being conscious of it.

The angle is so bad that I was wondering if it was a joke about them falling asleep right at the start of their movie-marathon, before even eating their pizza.

Poor and middle-income people earn money. Rich people just take it from the people who earn it.

I don’t see that comment. I searched for “whole thing was fake”, and your comment is the only hit.

I see lots of posts on lemmy complaining about people like that, but I never seem to actually see the people myself. I’m honestly not sure why that is. Maybe it’s just the kinds of threads I read?

(Scrolling and in this thread; there are a few deleted comments; maybe that’s whats going on. And there are also a few comments that seem a bit defensive - so I suppose those could be examples of the people the thread is about.)

If this post is the worst take you’ve ever seen, I can only assume that this is your first day on the internet. Welcome! I hope you find something that you like. And try to be nice to people.

In this thread we’re talking about the recent problem with CrowdStrike on Windows that brought down various services around the world. So I don’t know who’s bubble you think you’re bursting by talking about something else.

The way I see it, the companies value our privacy in the sense that they want to take it - to extract that value.

We value your privacy. So if you don’t value it, then give to away to someone who does. In fact, just lets us take it anyway regardless.

Calling someone cis basically just mean that they are not trans. Generally speaking a straight white male may or may not be cis.

A bit like Frodo et al.

When writing my previous post I had started writing a list of suggested strategies; but I changed my mind about posting that. I’m not a member of Mozilla. I don’t know what particular challenges they face, and my expertise are not in not-for-profit fundraising. So although I do have ideas, I don’t really want to get into a trap of trying to defend my half-arse ideas against people picking them apart. It’s beside the point. The point is just that it is achievable, as evidenced by other organisations achieving it.

I will say though that they could at least just mention on the Firefox ‘successful update’ page that Firefox is supported by donations, and give a link. A lot of people really like Firefox; and I think that if Firefox asked for donations, they would get more donations.

Supporting ad networks is not a ‘necessary’ evil. There are many not-for-profit organisations that do not use ads for revenue raising.

Yeah, plastering parking lots over prime agricultural land was definitely a mistake. And it’s hard to wind that back. We just need to make sure new infrastructure and planning reduces car dependency rather than further entrenching it.

Is the ‘dystopia-sphere’ trying to compete with the torment nexus or something?

A one-off time ‘investment’ of switching to Linux will save you from all future cases of searching for how to wrestle with the latest Windows crapware. If you switch, you’ll be in time-debt for a few months, and after that you’ll be ahead - and you’ll stay ahead indefinitely. You’ll also have the piece of mind that you are not being spied on and monetised by your OS.

No only that, but people think about the products, and talk about them with others as a result of the ads. So even if an ad doesn’t lead to a direct purchase (or even a click), it still leads to an advantage over competing products and ideas.

Heck, we sometimes even see ads posted and talked about here on lemmy - because people sometimes think they are interesting, or annoying, or controversial, or whatever other reason. In any case, the idea gets spread around - which is the goal of the advertise.

The fumbles are similar to what people have been upset about in the debate. Probably there are more important things to focus on, such as policy and competency.

That definitely is not what I was saying. What I’m saying is that mocking and taunting people does not help social cohesion. It can cause reluctance and spite. We just don’t need that.