megopie @ megopie @beehaw.org

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2 yr. ago

Something like the steam deck or the original switch were probably on the upper end of meaningfully “portable” in that sense, and even they can’t really compete with smartphones on that front. But with the currently available chips/batteries/screens, you cannot really get much smaller without starting to limit the games that can be played on them.

There is a whole other conversation to be had about game optimization and the push in large parts of the games industry towards more power intensive games. If the PC/console games space had an incentive to better optimize for lightweight devices, that could change. Especially if something shifted on the smartphone storefront market that created more demand for better less exploitative games there.

But, they do for mobiles, because mobile app storefronts force micro transactions to go the through them and they take a significant cut on each one. The 30% apple tax for example.

So they have a huge incentive to put F2P slop front and center which other storefronts on other devices don’t. In the context of steam, they do make money on the micro transitions of games that valve owns, but they make more money selling everyone else’s games over all, so they still have a reasons to show those.

It’s not so much saying that other storefronts are angles who love their customer, but more that their incentive structures are aligned differently.

If there were significant shake up in the mobile storefront market, or in terms of how they can make money, there might be a shift in they type of content they push.

How much of it is that no one is willing to pay 20 or 30 dollars for a mobile game, and how much is it that anyone willing to pay is unable to find them, or has just given up on the segment entirely.

Of course the mobile store fronts have no incentive to increase the visibility, because a free to play game is liable to make them significantly more money in the long term due to their cut of each micro transaction.

PC game and console storefronts are full of free to play slop, but they’re not the first thing people are shown, even when they are popular. They make an active effort to highlight quality games, and thus users willing to pay for them can actually find them.

There is a lot to be said of the atrocious design of mobile application storefronts.

It’s a very interesting trend, it seems like companies are convinced that this form factor is the future, that consumers will choose something with a portable option over something stationary.

Like when the steam deck and switch came out, they both did well, I think the switch did well mainly on the grounds that it was the Nintendo device for that console generation generation. But they’ve hardly taken over the market.

I think the console industry kind of just wrote off the mobile market because they were late to the party, despite it being immensely profitable and a huge market segment. It seems now they’re becoming interested in it again, and I wonder if it’s due to there being an unmet demand, people who want to play games outside of their living room, but who are turned off by the state of games on mobile.

Like, the mobile games market is just a swamp, and people who want a more meaningful experience than a time waster puzzle game, or a cash grab gatcha game, are kind of left out in the cold. Maybe this is the legacy games companies seeing an opportunity, all it would take to smash that opportunity is for the mobile phone games market to start being… not awful.

The thing about primaries is that they’re largely internal affairs of parties. That’s why things like super delegates can exist. Like states do make laws regarding them, but there isn’t much actual legal framework about them.

Changes to them mostly are handled with in the respective party structure. Federal legislation regularizing them would raise some legitimately interesting legal questions.

For one court to come to this conclusion and then enforce a large scale national policy shift, even temporarily in the case of the ruling being over turned by a higher court, is a pretty jarring exercise of power by an unelected official over an elected one.

Of course, if it is confirmed illegal by higher courts, then it is with in the checks and balances to order civil servants to stop collecting the tariffs even if the White House orders them to keep doing it.

There are of course situations, particularly concerning the violation of people’s civil liberties, where such a halt order is entirely warranted even if it is jarring. But the White House abusing a vague power to collect additional taxes on imports, while harmful and disruptive, is not as directly harmful or destructive as people getting black bagged or having their citizenship revoked, where a an order to stop from a lower level judge until the policy is reviewed at a higher level, is entirely warranted.

It’s one of those situations where we see how kind people can be, and how indifferent and cruel to that kindness a depersonalized organization can be.

The type of thinking that says “ well, yah, sure users won’t like ads in the start menu, but we need to make money on the unlicensed installs, and they’ll switch to something else if we brick them for not paying, so we’re going to inflict this on paying users as well, because they’re not going to switch.”

Is the same type of of thinking that says “well, this government is willing to sign a huge contract to use our infrastructure, but only if we punish anyone in our organization who speaks out against them, so we’ll just fire anyone who does so. This would be much harder if they were all unionized, but luckily we nipped that in the bud.”

Microsoft’s organizational and incentive structure makes these outcomes inevitable. Profit before people is the rule.

and paying off influencers to not mention sensitive topic seems like a pretty pathetic way to do that.

Like, maybe they should try committing to real policy changes, or promote popular candidates who manage to mobilize voters, rather than have a complete melt down when their preferred candidate loses a primary.

Or not fire one of their most effective organizers when he starts trying to spend money on popular candidates.

Maybe they should stop trying to manufacture sudo progressive candidates that look pretty and do as little as possible.

That would all be a really fucking good way to influence the narrative.

But they want to have their cake and eat it to. They want donor cash to maintain the political consultant/lobbyist revolving door system.

This was the inevitable outcome of all the “we need a liberal Joe Rogan” talk.

Like, they have a huge ecosystem of left wing content creators out there, but they won’t pedal the party line. They won’t stick to the issues that the Democratic Party wants to campaign on, because the issues that actually engage the voter base, the policy that would convince people to get excited and mobilize them to enthusiastically support them, are politically inconvenient for the democrats ability to appeal to the donors and their imaginary “moderate voter” who they still think exists.

They have this ideal campaign they’d like to run, but they’re unwilling to adjust their platform to fit that strategy. They want to have their cake and eat it to. There is so much excited and skilled talent in the Democratic milieu, and the party leadership keeps sending them to the timeout corner for actually trying to apeal to the voters who could win them elections.

They have such an awful mobile website. Like, every time I go on there because I’m looking for a picture that is apparently there, the page is full of unintuitive interactions. Like I’ll try and scroll down and it will suddenly redirect me away from the page, or I’ll tap on something to select it and suddenly the it’s showing me “similar images”

It reeks of desperation to keep people on their site.

The Streisand effect.

Kids are being harmed, but so is everyone else.

We need to stop acting as if there is some bandaid fixes or regulations that can adress these issues.

Phones in general need to be refocused on their utility, and social media specifically needs to be rebuilt as a public services, and the notion of it as a for profit enterprise needs to be buried six feet under.

the core issue here is not that the modern internet and social media landscape is bad for kids, it’s that it is bad in general, for everyone! Kids are just a vulnerable population that it is easy to point to and limit access for.

We need to reject the notion that this is a business, and accept that digital spaces are a public services that shouldn’t be designed around maximizing user engagement and profitability.

Delaying when we allow large companies to destroy people’s minds with dark patterns doesn’t solve the core issues. There’s no good way to regulate this, the core failure is the nature of these services as for profit companies with no incentive but to design manipulative and addictive systems, and things won’t get better until that is dealt with.

Sanctions do not stop wars, nor do they outright stop trade, they inflict costs for doing trade and for doing a war. They are there to make it harder to prosecute and fund a war, not impossible. It was always understood by those making the calls that these sanctions would be subverted and worked around, but that this would increase costs and lower Russia’s capacity to divert resources to fight the war.

The idea that they stop wars or are some magic trick to destroy someone’s economy outright is absurd. No one implementing them ever claimed they did or would, although people in media outlets sure seemed to talk about them as if they would.

The sanctions have done what they were intended to do, and it is the fault of the writer for believing the media sensationalism around them, not the fault of the policy for failing to accomplish the unrealistic goals that were imagined for them.

It’s not a sudden influx, he wasn’t getting talked about much before now, and suddenly he’s in the news and the commentariat is mumbling about a presidential run.

From my perspective, it seems he has no convictions and is willing to say and do what ever he thinks will get him the most positive headlines. He made those transphobic comments during the fucking Charlie Kirk podcast appearance, why the fuck did he do that? Because the opinion pieces were all winging about how Harris lost because she didn’t go on enough podcasts, and/or because she hadn’t been mean enough to trans people.

He’s doing this now, not because he thinks it matters but because all the opinion pieces are saying this is what he should do. He’s letting the tail wag the dog. Maybe the opinion pieces are right at the moment, but what happens when they suggest something idiotic?

He’s an awful candidate who will lose a presidential run at worst, and at best his milk toast careerism will knee cap the congressional battles that happen at the same time, leaving a divided congress incapable of passing real legislation.

People forget that national guard isn’t a full time position. It’s usually one weekend a month and one week a year.

So calling them up is very disruptive to them, they have jobs and lives that are being massively interrupted by a call up. When it’s to deal with flooding or wild fires, or like any sort of actual emergency, that disruption is probably justified to them.

This is definitely pissing off a lot of them, especially given that they’re best positioned to see what a non issue the situation on the ground is.

“Wait, you mean our effort to attract more people with good educations to improve our knowledge base and marketability to businesses might attract people who have… gasp educations?”

It’s so crazy to me that people will rush out and try and ban tools like these, rather than force car companies to use more secure systems. Like, banning these is futile, they’re not that complex of a device to make, the core issue here is that car companies have fallen over them selves to be “tech forward” to justify pushing further in to the premium price range, but have completely failed to secure their systems.

New technology will not solve issues unless we have the political will to ensure it will help everyone.

Such technology is worthless or potentially actively harmful until we deal with the social disasters currently occurring.

We do love our takoma park retirees.