Sorry! I didn’t realize it was paywalled because I could see the whole thing. Hopefully this should work:

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mercurynews.com%2F2023%2F07%2F24%2Fbuilt-in-software-death-dates-are-sending-thousands-of-schools-chromebooks-to-the-recycling-bin%2F

That’s what they should be doing, but it isn’t what they’re going to do, unfortunately.

Kimathi Bradford, a 16-year-old Oakland tech repair intern, has looked into whether there was a way to replace the outdated Chromebook software with a non-Google brand, but it ended up being a lot of work, Kimathi said, and the open-source replacement wasn’t up to par. “It’s like the Fritos of software,” he said. “No one really wants to use it.”

Now, I’m not sure if what they tried was Linux, but I wouldn’t be too surprised. The younger generations grew up with smartphones; I feel as though operating systems will become more streamlined and opaque as time goes on. I suspect we’ll have to contend with the phonification of mainstream computing in the coming years.

That’s super cute!

This is Beehaw, we expect you to be(e) nice here. Gatekeeping isn’t nice.

Besides, there are people who play games that are of all skill levels and time constraints, and they deserve to be able to enjoy games as much as you do. Have some compassion.

Definitely extrinsically. In a lot of those super open games, I get just completely overwhelmed by choice, don’t know where to go or what to do, and give up. I’ve tried twice to play Breath of the Wild and I just can’t. Give me a linear experience any time.

I don’t mind Calibri, but Aptos does look like an improvement. I particularly like the serif added to the lowercase L… it has always annoyed me how that and uppercase I look exactly the same in many fonts. It’s one of the reasons why I’m partial to fonts with serifs.

With the sheer amount of books they have on record, it’s pretty much impossible to vet them all. So I’m not terribly surprised some nazis snuck some in. I am, however, disappointed that some retailers didn’t immediately yank them out of stock. Honestly, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to see a version of The Turner Diaries on some of those sites. They really don’t give a shit.

Thankfully, most companies kinda turn a blind eye to piracy of their back catalog. It’s really mostly Nintendo that gets all bent out of shape about it, and, honestly, they bring it on themselves for essentially vaulting many of their classics(like most of their GameCube games, for example). It really doesn’t help they they slow drip the releases so that only the same old few games are available at launch(I don’t want to play Clu Clu Land or Urban Champion, Nintendo… and I’m someone who likes those black box NES games more than most). Hopefully Nintendo Online solved that issue, but I doubt it.

Anyway, it’s not like anyone is going to miss, say, Major Minor’s Majestic March for Wii. I would like to encourage companies to release more of their stuff, but realistically, it’s out there for anyone savvy enough to get it. We need to fix this stupid broken copyright system.

That just leads to a toxic community. No thanks. Also the “Hate speech does not exist” thing is certainly a take.

Final Fantasy Tactics(PS1) remains my favorite game to this day. I really liked messing with the various classes and abilities, and it’s a rock-solid tactics game, to boot. Couple that with amazing music and a great political story, and you’ve got a classic.

TG Cid is hilariously broken, though.

This is utterly insane. Twitter has basically become pay-to-use. I give it less than a day for him to walk this back.

Yeah, I absolutely can’t imagine being a writer who is trying to break in this space. Discoverability is going to be a nightmare going forward.

“If it was up to me I would love to get rid of the entire exclusives on consoles, but that’s not for me to define especially as a low-share player in the console market. The dominant player there [Sony] has defined market competition using exclusives, so that’s the world we live in. I have no love for that world.”

I’m not sure I believe him on that. Exclusives on console have been a thing pretty much the entire time. Him trying to blame on that Sony is a little weird considering that.

I don’t personally steal at self-checkout, but if saw anyone stealing I’d just ignore it. As far I’m concerned, they deserve to be stolen from. Zero interest in hearing the crocodile tears of those who were complicit in price gouging.

Yeah, sometimes people will just tear down others out of jealousy. I saw a lot of that when I was in the military. It was depressingly common to have one group leave for the day, and someone who still had work to do would call out, “Must be nice”. I always hated that. I was assigned to a submarine(which was really awful since the sub force was all male at the time and I was a closeted trans woman), everyone had it lousy. I would always think to myself, “Is it really that hard to be happy for someone, instead of being bitter that you have to stay longer”. Now, granted, there were some people who had demonstrably worse times due to workload. But that doesn’t give you carte blanche to be a drag on everyone else.

I have since deactivated my account, but i still will occasionally click on the Twitter link on desktop. That site loads sooooooo slow these days. It’s really disheartening to see so many people refuse to let go of birdsite.

Gross. Keep your hands off of Sega, Microsoft… I like their games, and your track record of developing games has been lousy since the 360 days. Plus, you know, the whole market consolidation thing…

Welp. With this and other AAA games like Alan Wake going full digital, I suppose the end is nigh for physical media. It’s a real shame. I own tons of physical games dating back to the Atari 2600. I tend to view things like Limited Run Games to be collector bait, so I guess most of my games are going to be purchased on GOG or Steam once the plug is pulled(I do not trust digital storefronts on console).

Mostly, I felt it was important to discourage IP ownership by corps by making the individual term much longer. I’m open to making it shorter, but still considerably longer than that of corporations. An individual isn’t going to be able to harm infringers the way that, say, Nintendo can, and does.

I’ve mentioned this before here, but my stance is 20 years flat for a work owned by a corporation, and life for works owned by an individual.