It’s a pretty different situation under closer examination. The DnD developers are ex-Nexon employees and they (allegedly) pitched the idea internally before deciding to leave and take the idea with them.

Nexon thought that they had a legal leg to stand on because of how IP laws work (i.e.: employee ideas on company time are company IP). Perhaps more importantly; they probably felt a need to retaliate in order to send a message to other employees who might want to try something similar.

Palworld, on the other hand, is made by a team with no ties whatsoever to GameFreak. If Pokemon were a younger franchise they might possibly have a patent case of some kind, but even the 3D games go back almost 24 years now.

Ah, yes, just over five attempts for every human alive. I assume they took the reply addresses at face value and have forwarded 45 billion cease & desist letters to Microsoft’s Redmond office?

Could have been MMANAA 😔

This is kind of The Economist’s MO. Their readership is very policy oriented (i.e.: “wonks”) so their editorials prioritize first and foremost how world events impact policy and trade. If you think I’m reaching here, then take a gander at their reader response column and have yourself a good laugh sometime.

With that being said, I really do think that they’re just that pedantic. Labels are important to them, but not for the reasons that they’re important to us (nor the average Palestinian, I think it goes without saying). The fact that taking umbridge here just so happens to reinforce safe and happy notions held by their editorial staff & their readership is without any doubt a contributing factor… but it’s probably something that was left mutually understood and otherwise unsaid within the walls of the writer’s room.

I’ve been collecting these, super hyped for February 🗣️🗣️🗣️💨💨💨🔥🔥🔥

• WE MAKING IT OUT OF TARTARUS WITH THIS ONE
• WE LANDING MARIN KARIN WITH THIS ONE
• WE DISTURBING THE PEACE WITH THIS ONE
• WE ENDING THE DARK HOUR WITH THIS ONE
• WE MEMENTO MORI WITH THIS ONE
• WE BURNING OUR DREAD WITH THIS ONE

Nothing quite like minimum wage to help you appreciate the affordability of an air sandwich. It costs zero hours of labor (after taxes!) to go hungry – great bargain – plus you can invest all of that saved lunch break time catching up on sleep in the smoking pavilion.

The above is absolutely not based on a terrible and completely wasted early adulthood wrought with minimum wage toil. I’m fine, that hypothetical experience has in no way permanently shaped my worldviews.

Male A to Male C is abolutely possible. It’s the Male A to Female C adapters which are evil. There is no pinout mapping that will turn an A host into a “real” C host and that’s exactly what a Male A to Female C adapter purports to do.

In any case, if you know what you’re doing then all bets are off the table. Hack away freely because at the end of the day it’s all just copper and bits anyway. With that being said, anyone who knows what they’re doing does not require my permission to… vague gesture know what they’re doing.

Like I said: in order to do it the non-evil way you need to cram in an onboard USB chip. Female USB-C from a Male USB-A plug-in is explicitly not possible to implement in a spec-compliant manner because of the pinouts.

You can brute-force a smaller passive adapter like those online but it’s a devil’s bargain. Nobody targets these janky adapters when designing products. USB-C things will just break without any rhyme or reason because you’re fundamentally breaking the hardware contract and “lying” about the capabilities of your port.

No, it’s because I read an expert opinion on the subject: https://old.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/m7rcu5/any_reliable_usbc_female_to_usba_male_adapters_yet/grducjr/

If you hate Amazon you can buy it on the CableCreation website instead.

EDIT: that monoprice adapter isn’t even active lol!

First thing’s first: all such adapters should be considered evil by default. The only way to make a compliant adapter is with active circuitry in the adapter essentially providing an entirely standalone USB controller interface.

With that being said, here’s an adapter which does exactly that. Back when I researched this topic in October I found that the linked adapter is essentially the only one of its kind on the market right now.

Good for them. No cyclical mass layoffs and any paycuts always happened in the c-suite first. The U.S. game industry could stand to learn a thing or two from their Japanese predecessors, I think it’s safe to say.

Alright, enough cheerleading for a faceless multinational megacorp… I just had to give credit where it was due so that I can still take myself seriously the next time I criticize the games industry for inevitably shitting its pants again.

When will it end? The streets run red with figurine paint

You are ready. Watch JoJo

No, I am not contradicting myself. Let me say it again with the ambiguity removed:

1. Cox Media isn’t an advertiser, they sell a dressed-up analytics service. Think spreadsheets (that’s literally the service they’re selling in this copy, a monthly report spreadsheet).
2. The “technology partner” selling this data to Cox is accessing it by bypassing the normal and correct operation of the device using malware.
3. What does not “exist” is a shadowy cabal of smartphone manufacturers scheming to hide listening devices in the pockets of their consumers.

I’m sure you still believe this is a load of apologia and frankly you can think what you want, but you should probably know that I’d already read about the Cox story when it first broke and specifically chose my words with that knowledge in mind.

Read the document:

The growing ability to access microphone data on devices like smartphones and tablets enables our technology partner to aggregate and analyze voice data during pre-purchase conversations.

Key word is “technology partner”. They’re buying voice transcripts ripped from someone else’s spyware and selling the service of scraping it for keywords and maybe somehow tying that back to an individual by cross-referencing the hit against data from traditional above-board ad platforms.

Google isn’t buying transcripts, Facebook isn’t buying transcripts. It’s Cox Media buying shady recordings stolen from spyware-compromised devices and then trying to whitewash it into something sellable with their (unverifiable) cross-analytics middleware.

we still have people that do not believe that the phones are always listening when seemingly any website or app you use gives you advertisements about what you were just talking about in the other room with the phone locked.

Oh come on. Don’t bring this into conspiracy territory. Yes, eavesdropping does happen, but it’s not something an uncompromised Android phone will do when locked. Even when it does happen in the case of spyware, the people doing it aren’t selling your transcriptions to advertisers.

People should still opt out of as many of GAPS’s spyware-like features as possible, as you suggest, but not because it’s a special anti-listening-device warding spell.

A fellow Xbox gamepass User IT seems.

Nope, I’m just someone who waits for sales and has a bit of an indie streak.

This was after my First playthrough. Now, with George putting out his video, im back in. My god, its marvellous.

I see we follow similar creators! I only just picked Pentiment up last week – Jacob Geller’s recent 2023 video is what originally put Pentiment on my radar and then George’s video gave me that final push into playing it for myself. I’m extremely glad for having done so because Pentiment has quickly become quite special to me. I already look forward to making subsequent playthroughs despite still working on the first.

Hifi Rush was great, but felt too formulaic for me, so i abandoned it after the first or second Boss. Too much running arpund, No real banger music between Bosses.

I can see where you’re coming from. From a macro perspective, the game’s essentially just a series of battle arenas stitched together by corridors and platforming challenges… nothing incredible there. What makes Hi-Fi Rush special for me is the novel fusion of rythm mechanics and spectacle fighter mechanics – they complement each other extremely well. (Forgive me for explaining at you like this. I just can’t help myself when it comes to talking about this game)

Normally, I can’t stand DMC-likes because of the requisite rote memorization. HFR flips this dynamic on its head by making the memorization incidental – it happens naturally as you practice playing the combo on-rythm. Perhaps even more importantly; just as mastery of a combo string comes within reach, the underlying musical qualities all suddenly spring into focus and turn the sequence into a musical phrase. It clicks together in a very intrinsically satisfying way IMO. Naturally, this all compounds in on itself and gets double-fun once you start improvising your own “melodies” during real combat. You like Jazz? Because it’s like Jazz if Jazz killed people.

Now, obviously this isn’t going to hit the same way for everyone (nor should it!)… but if you’ve not yet buckled down in training mode and truly mastered a string or two for yourself, then I would very emphatically encourage you to give the game a second try. I actually had to do the exact same thing myself before I really “got” the game and my mindset shifted. Hi-Fi Rush truly is the Dark Souls of 3rd-Person Action videogames

When it comes to Deep Rock/co-op I think my issues are more associated with the underlying gameloop design. I find it hard to perform well when the “tension” ramps up and these games are kind of tailor-made to create high-tension situations. When a round ends I’m left feeling tired/deflated rather than joyful. I had the same issue with Left 4 Dead, but oddly not so for Payday 2.

In any case, I’m right there with you when it comes to TF2 community servers. I sorely wish that more games emphasized these sorts of digital “3rd places”. I have TF2 servers where I can go anytime and just… belong for as long as I please. Games should have more permanent places like that, where play and community come before any imposed win/lose dichotomy. People would be happier.

More importantly: did you know the “monopoly man” does not in fact wear a monocle? We live in trying times.

Yup, that about sums it up: fun, but shallow. Nevertheless I think it’s worthy of a recommendation because it has a great honeymoon period before falling off.