I am skeptical that it can grow to be a network the size of twitter, be ran as a for-profit, and not enshittify. I can’t think of a single example that hasn’t. Bluesky has ran as a public benefit corporation so far, but it has to keep the lights on somehow.

It took twitter years to run somewhat profitably. Even then Twitter was enshittified before Musk bought it. Premium subs are probably the least enshittified way to raise revenue, but ads and algorithms meant to raise engagement towards those ads are very much enshittification in action. That “normal people” have a high level of monetization they are willing to tolerate, is just grease on the wheels toward enshittification.

I admittedly have a limited understanding of the full operation of ATProto so please correct me if wrong. Appviews/lists/feeds are supposed to be the defense of ad/algorithm enshittification, anyone could write an appview with a different algorithm.

And this is why I assume that the network can only be run without enshittification, is by a benevolent provider. If Bluesky becomes hostile to an Appview that allows users to bypass ads or engagement farming, users can move their PDS to another relay that isn’t hostile to it. But there still remains the underlying reason that Bluesky would theoretically have become hostile to it. I don’t see how blacksky, for instance, wouldn’t also have to eventually take the same steps.

The obvious answer is whatever generation you grew up during.

I think the most realistic answer I think would be from 1998 to 2001 as the golden years of gaming. Just so many classics games from basically every genre and system of the time. Half Life on PC, Spyro and Crash 3 on PlayStation. Sonic Adventure on Dreamcast. Pokemon on Nintendo. Halo on Xbox. And that’s just the beginning of the list.

There, of course, were plenty of shovelware titles. So it’s not like the era didn’t have its own problems like we have with excessive reboot/remasters/remakes and subscription and battle pass slop and everything else.

But the difference is that gamers have changed their standards. It’s easy to avoid Hello Kitty Island Adventure in the year 2000. Hard to purchase a game today without a live service model or battle pass

I don’t have a single exclusive for PlayStation 5 that didn’t also come out on ps4. So idk, I’d probably say Astro Bot is PlayStation’s game

If twitter but with less right wing voices is what the people wanted then they will be sorely disappointed when bluesky enshittifies with no real recourse to prevent it. If everyone just hops on over to blacksky or whatever other 3rd party relay exists, they’ve still got the same problem. All the power resides in a single entity. Bluesky’s basic defense of their platform is that if they enshittify then ATProto allows some other benevolent corporation to take their place but has one major flaw. Corporations are not benevolent

Playstation: we have one game

FTFY

The generation has been hell

I played this game all the way through without a guide about 3 years ago. It has NES jank but the only really frustrating parts are unlocking the dungeon with the flute and with the candle. Everything else had a hint to tell you how to find it or was just out in the open

The key was to write everything down. The dungeons are fine, it’s just the overworld that needs hints

I don’t pay for the Verge, and if I did and still saw ads, I definitely wouldn’t renew. “Maximizing profit” only works, if we fold. If we fold to ad supported journalism, then companies will plaster their sites with ads. The market regulates itself if the consumer is principled enough. The problem is that your average consumer is weak willed and less-than-principled. I’m fine going without even if it ends up being a pointless endeavor.

Then they know their audience. Source: Nintendo customer

Phil was probably the last thing keep Xbox from fully imploding. You could tell he was an actual gamer that cared about the Xbox as a games console and not whatever Frankenstein they are going to turn it into.

It’s sad but Xbox had a really good run. Xbox won’t exist beyond the next console generation, it may not even make it that far before it just becomes gamepass.

I get it, but reader-funded journalism is always better than advertiser-funded. But if the reporting isn’t worth paying for to you, I don’t blame you for skipping them. I feel the same way some times. One article might be worth paying for but I’m not so interested in what they report to justify a full subscription.

Seems kind of icky to immerse that young of a child into brands like that. I ended up letting my kids play Mario with me whenever they started showing interest in it which was around 3 or 4.

It’s probably harmless, lots of people buy apparel for their baby with their favorite sports team and such on it. I think I’m just so black pilled on capitalism that I can’t see it unbiased anymore. Sorry for a bummer politically adjacent rant on the Nintendo community…

It was doing enough to distract from the fact he’s in the Epstein list so it’s usefulness was over.

I thought the steam deck would have been priced higher than it was as well, so I thought that they’d probably surprise us with a $600 machine. $800 made sense for the specs (Now I expect it to be $1000)

Once GPU prices super inflated 6 or 7 years ago, I got out of PC gaming for new titles. I built a top spec machine for $1200 in 2012 (when I had disposable income and no kids), that barely gets you an entry level today. I guess PC gaming, for new titles at least, will forever be out of my budget.

I was gonna upgrade when the steam machine came out but with the likely price hike taking it to $800+ I think I’ll just keep playing 20 year old Call of Duty: United Offensive

This will probably be unpopular but the leftist - liberal infighting is my least favorite part of the fediverse and why I usually end up having to give people a warning before telling them to get on the fediverse.

This drama is kind of the epitome of that

Seriously, I was put in psycho path lobbies yesterday.

Some dude downed a kid during harvester and wouldn’t defib him unless he said a slur (luckily for me I brought a rocketeer over who then triple barrage downed everyone sitting in the harvester participating in that stupid ritual)

And then after that some stupid free kit, chased me from Research and Admin to water treatment. I was willing to leave him alone but he wouldn’t give up so I eventually turned around and knocked him. I pull out my defib to rez him (and give him the lion king speech to run away and never come back) but of course he just surrenders and some dude walks by on the cat walk and calls me a rat and unloads on me. So I’m stuck in PVP lobbies all evening.

I don’t even know if they were full PVP lobbies or they just let a few aggressive raiders into PVE lobbies now because I heard so many “But I said I was friendly, why you do this?” while in PVP hell last night

Does this mean that if I pretend to be a bot, I can access any cloudflare site ad-free?

As long as it is roasted in salt and olive oil, the whole thing is good

It’s the same thing as people who are concerned about AI generating non-consensual sexual imagery.

Sure anyone with photoshop could have done it before but unless they had enormous skill they couldn’t do it convincingly and there were well defined precedents that they broke the law. Now Grok can do it for anyone who can type a prompt and cops won’t do anything about it.

So yes, anyone could have technically done it before but now it’s removing the barriers that prevented every angry crazy person with a keyboard from being able to cause significant harm.

He’s not telling you to be terrified of the single bot writing a blog post. He’s telling you to be terrified of the blog post being ingested by other bots and then seen as a source of truth. Resulting in AI recruiters automatically rejecting his resume for job postings. Or for other agents deciding to harass him for the same reason.

Edit: I do agree with you that he was a little lenient with how he speaks about the capabilities of it. The fact that they are incompetent and still seen as a source of truth for so many is what alarms me