Yeah it’s a real shame because from what I saw of the Artemis app it looked good as well. I hope the dev is ok.

Kbin definitely needs a decent app. The web app does the job but it can be a bit irritating as you say

The worst thing to do would be an inorganic botch job on here to fill a gap when there’s no need, you can read that content elsewhere.

Anyway, it’s not an automatic guarantee of engagement or interaction. It’s purely a hack move.

I’m happy to use Reddit if I feel I can’t find anything to read on Kbin. You are allowed to use both you know?

I mean yeah I vape, that makes sense because it wasn’t the nicotine itself which was killing my lungs.

Apparently nicotine itself is as bad for you as caffeine, the worst thing about it is it’s insanely addictive without giving much of a high or anything in return…

That’s a very black and white way of putting it. As long as you’re an adult who can tell the difference between fantasy and reality, and you’re not spending hours obsessed with it I don’t think it’s unhealthy. The way you phrase ‘avoid it completely’ makes it sound like you’re going out of your way to avoid it already.

(I think the problems are coming through with the generation being ‘brought up on porn’, and thinking real sex is like it is in the videos online but that’s a different story really.)

Can cigarettes be used in a healthy way? Eh, only in very specific scenarios

Gonna have to bite and ask what very specific scenarios smoking could be healthy?

It’s not really that surprising that the average user wants the most popular search engine instead of yahoo (of all things) baked in, whatever your views on Google.

I remember having to change things I got from… places… from epub to mobi using calibre for my old school kindle to recognise it years ago. I don’t even have that device anymore.

Glad they’re accepting what appears to be the standard format tbh.

From a British perspective I know there was always a huge political obsession with maintaining the ‘Special Relationship’ with the US up until Trump came in and Brexit happened basically simultaneously making us more irrelevant.

It’s still there in a half hearted transactional way when it comes to intelligence sharing, day to day stuff etc. But in terms of the PM sucking up to the President photo opportunities to get some media attention - that aspect seems to have died pretty quickly.

It strikes me there are a lot of similarities with our politics right now though - lack of faith from the voters, rampant cronyism, lawbreaking heads of state FFS, culture war obsessions dominating the discourse when the average person is more worried about affording their rent/mortgage at the end of the month. I’d say our government is dysfunctional on the same level but the difference is we stopped being a superpower way back when.

I’m rambling way off topic, sorry. Reading that just reminded me of when our politicians used to be all over the American ones as being the glamorous ones to suck up to (whether the public agreed or not) but things have definitely changed.

This is about misinformation on social media plays a part in war and journalism

Yeah, I guess if you own an iPhone and a Mac there’s more appeal. I see the prices for things on my son’s Switch and he’s not old enough to want the really expensive stuff yet, and you don’t even get a desktop version there.

I think my original point stands though - that having “you buy it and then you play it” games on mobile is not a new concept.

Funnily enough gay sex was fine in ancient Rome (as long as you were the dominant one) but having sex in the light (whether natural or candle light) was seen as a massive taboo.

(Amongst the upper and middle classes anyway, I doubt the majority of people cared)

Thing is, there’s plenty of Premium games exactly as you describe - it’s all I play on mobile or tablet - but they all cost on average between £5-10. Many are ports, some are free to install to play the first couple of levels and then you unlock the game with a one off purchase. The only thing I own good enough to play games on is my tablet and phone so I know this the hard way, but quality is out there, it’s just hidden away.

Anyway, £60 is a big step up from the usual £10. I think the Final Fantasy/Ace Attorney ports are about £20. Usually the cheaper price to my mind is that you’re playing on a smaller screen and with a touch control system that doesn’t always suit the game you’re playing (although it can improve certain games - Cultist Simulator, Kingdom Two Crowns and Bad North all feel like they work better with touch controls for me but that’s more a genre thing)

Obviously - I guess I’m more surprised at The Register in that case. They’re a very savvy industry magazine. Presumably they get a hefty wad.

Devolver have done some terrific games going way back - I think the first time I played one of their games was the first Reigns for mobile and that was what, 2016?

Their name is a good indicator of quality so good for them thinking rationally about what they have to offer to players and not just taking the money

Thanks for this - this is something that has passed me by. So essentially plagarising another website’s content for traffic plus the usual Google shenanigans? Nice

Thanks for the info - was not aware of this before. Yet more wonderful business practices from the world of big tech…

Sorry for that, but I don’t actually understand what you mean…

EDIT OK I’ve googled it and it seems to be a page that is sponsored by Google but I use Firefox and it worked fine with that - so is the problem that it doesn’t work with certain browsers?

Someone I’m in a Discord group with wanted an invite to bluesky because it was more familiar to him than Mastodon.

He pretty much wanted a like-for-like replacement for Twitter, though to his credit he had already tried Mastodon before dismissing it out of hand.

It’s not that he disliked it exactly, but he wasn’t that interested by what he saw so didn’t stick with it - to each their own

I mean this isn’t miles away from what the writer’s strike is about. Certainly I think the technology is great but after the last round of tech companies turning out to be fuckwits (Facebook, Google etc) it’s only natural that people are going to want to make sure this stuff is properly regulated and run fairly (not at the expense of human creatives).

I just started using it for Android the last month or so when Chrome dropped the flag feature that let you toggle dark mode for websites with system dark mode.

I have a VPN with an adblocker so that aspect of Chrome never bothered me so much. Chrome felt like it worked slightly smoother but at the end of the day a browser is a browser and Firefox does the job. (Samsung’s browser is actually surpringly good for those with a Samsung device looking for a Chrome alternative)

Firefox does seem more trustworthy overall, although I’ve learned by now that trusting tech companies is not a sensible thing to do.