Oh man, that’s a good point. Surely she knows what she signed up for, I hope.

Still haven’t seen the first season and am not too familiar with Dever’s work, so I’m indifferent to this casting. Cool that she was Cassie Drake though.

I do hope she nails it. TLOU 2 was one of the most profoundly impactful works of art I’ve experienced: it exposed my susceptibility to bias resulting from narrative framing. Abby’s depth of character was essential to that experience.

I also hope they keep the narrative structure from the games. The shock of the midpoint twist was also essential.

You think it’ll make money?

Mainly because of the hype/marketing, but I may be overestimating it. It’s a good point that Avengers bombed, but I do think Rocksteady is a more competent developer than CD (I’m not personally a big fan of their Tomb Raider games).

I also just tend to think anything is possible until it isn’t. It wouldn’t be the first game to buck expectations if it somehow managed to be a hit.

Either way, the fact that this is the only game Rocksteady releases in nearly 10 years will be a deep source of bitterness.

I’m really interested for this game to release. I expect it to be a critical failure and a commercial break-even, mostly due to Rocksteady’s (as yet untarnished) pedigree and marketing.

But I also haven’t ruled out that it will be a surprise hit. I didn’t even realize this wasn’t being fully marketed as a live-service game, and who knows, maybe all the hogwash in this article about the “trinity” of gameplay elements and sharing experiences with friends will actually work somehow.

But if it is all the worst things about the live service trend, I do hope it fails for the greater good, all due respect to the individuals who’ve done their best with it.

Armie Hammer should be the husband that all men strive to be.

😳

Just started Alan Wake 2 myself yesterday. In the past couple months I played the original’s remaster and then replayed Control (including the DLC).

This game’s an absolute trip. I’ve said before that I wasn’t terribly hooked by Alan Wake the first time I played it way back, but I fucking loved Control. The world building was fascinating, and there was some new, mind bending idea around every damn corner in the oldest house. But one of the best things it did was expand the world of Alan Wake in a way that benefited them both.

I’m only a few hours in but Remedy is so far promising to deliver on the best of both worlds with renewed vigor. I am hooked this time.

Yeah, that’s fair, I did not have that context originally. I should have quoted the article I linked, because the salient parts point out that it was strange the graffiti evoked the Israeli flag, which I had noticed originally:

Also the message in the medium was confusing. Conceivably a blue Israeli flag, or what immediately evokes it, could be seen as a pro-Jewish sign. Surely any genuine antisemite would have found a clearer way of expressing their hate.

I’m inclined to agree with the BBC’s conclusion:

As for the purpose of Operation Star of David, like all dezinformatsiya it seems to have been to sow confusion and anxiety. The fact that the symbol could be either pro- or anti-Israeli made it all the more interesting: that way both sides would be suspicious.

I notice the Times of Israel doesn’t consider this months-old information when continuing to reference it as evidence of anti-semitism.

Marking buildings with Stars of David is how the Nazis marked Jewish homes and properties.

But that’s unlikely to be what happened here: BBC

All your sources rely on the same primary source: the interior ministry. And I don’t see a breakdown of the acts. In a number of articles, graffiti of stars of David across buildings in France was categorized as anti-Semitic, which seems really weird to me because they weren’t defaced or altered in any way, just stars of David. On its face I would think that was…pro-semitic.

Either way, I’m not denying there has been an uptick in anti-Semitism and that any and all anti-semitism is indefensible. But there also seems to be a deliberate effort to embellish the narrative by treating anti-Israeli or pro-Paletinian acts as anti-Semitic. Then people react to that narrative with fear, and their fear is used to further credit the narrative.

The insidious part is that these stories treat the narrative as support for Israel’s ongoing aggression.

I feel for anyone who feels unsafe in their homes and communities. I can’t imagine the weight of the decision to uproot yourself and your family to emigrate to another country for reasons beyond your control, especially discrimination.

It’s worth noting, though, that this article seemingly goes out of its way to obfuscate what qualifies as anti-semitic acts.

"This kind of expression is no longer coming only from the extreme right, but also by the far left — and while it’s doubtful that it’s always antisemitic, anyone sensitive can feel that it’s never far away in certain discourse,” warns Wieviorka.

Palestinian solidarity is not anti-semitism, and there are abundant indicators (from this article and its links) they’re being conflated in France.

No argument here. There’s a global paradigm shift needed to break out of that mindset should it even be possible, but it still boggles my mind in the meantime the resources invested in sustaining this ecosystem.

That came as a surprise to me too. 2.5% is just so little.

“Tracking protection” sounds more like “alternative tracking.”

Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative, just like its name implies, was designed to be an alternative to cookies that will allow advertisers to serve users ads while also protecting their privacy. It assigns users to groups according to their interests, based on their recent browsing activities, and advertisers can use that information to match them with relevant ads.

Lot of time, money, and effort toward a moderate improvement rather than just not perceiving users as products. But…improvement is improvement.

What’s the downside?

Me? Not at all. I actually posted this out of concern because, as I’ve said elsewhere, I’m a Firefox user, and my layman’s impression was that its reputation has been improving over the past couple years. I assumed its user base was doing the same as people grew increasingly concerned with Google’s intentions.

Apparently ZDnet has some reputational issues itself I was unaware of.

I don’t think so. The article claims Firefox lost some of its lead developers to Google when it started developing Chrome and then took a long time to regain its footing around 2017. That sounds about right to my recollection. I had admittedly switched to Chrome myself for a while (I’m not terribly tech-savvy, maybe a little more than average) but switched back to Firefox last year. I am still pretty deeply embedded in the Google ecosystem though in other ways.

This is a very good example of the skewing I imagined. If you’re unable or prohibited from using Firefox on work devices (as many environments restrict), all that workday traffic will be coming from “approved” browsers.

As a relatively elder millennial (1987), I’d concede the title of last true pre-internet generation to Gen X. My family got AOL dial-up when I was in 6th grade, which was a little behind the curve compared to my peers, but not much. So I certainly lived through a seminal transition period as the internet developed and became…what it is today.

But the hallmark experiences of the pre-internet times, payphones, paper maps, coordinating with others, I only did so in my limited capacity as a child. I had a cell phone by…10th grade, I could at least print out MapQuest directions, etc.

I remember a lot, but didn’t truly interact with most of it.

I’ll try, hope this makes sense. As a leftist space, Beehaw is a bit of an echo chamber. On its own, this is kind of a neutral value, maybe even a positive one (we’ve seen with brutal transparency what “free speech” platforms actually are). But echo chambers are vulnerable to the creeping growth of some inhospitable characteristics (being dismissive, derisive, reductive, etc.) toward ideas outside the narrow lane of the chamber. We treat conclusions as foregone and perceived opposition as hostile. And that’s the main thrust: I firmly believe that internet culture, broadly, mistakes and/or conflates things like ignorance, diverging personal experience, or even sufficient inarticulateness as opposition and treats it accordingly.

One of the most frequent examples I see here is the devolution of a minor disagreement (there was a relatively recent example concerning the fairness of a news headline) into a hyperbolic declaration of someone’s overall character (e.g., “because of how you’ve conducted yourself in this conversation, or the ideas you’ve expressed, you probably would have supported the Nazis” as a demonstrative example). At other times, I’ve seen relatively harmless stubbornness responded to with blocks or bans, which felt extreme to me despite the fact that the stubbornness was indeed frustrating and potentially (but not actually, yet) malicious.

I want to be explicit that I don’t think any inclusive community is well-served by being tolerant of harmful ideas. Harmful ideas should be countered, blocked, banned, censored, and burned in a fire. But I’d like to see non-hostile opposition, ignorance, diverging personal experiences, etc. treated with more cordiality and grace up until the point that they are effectively exposed as malicious. I think there are good people with bad ideas (I’ve been one of them and expect to be again) who could learn and grow in a community like this with the right balance.

A holiday meal, I’d say, is defined by its rarity and specificity. Once a year, family members and close friends gather together for the purpose of being together. I don’t see that mapping onto online social media[…]while being kind and open etc is obviously a good aim for a social media space, so long as it is social media, which means open ended discussions/topics, (relatively) open membership, relative anonymity, constant activity, and, let’s be honest, some expectation of providing some form entertainment to lurkers … the personal bonds and purpose of a holiday meal just can’t exist.

Familial relationships are the product of time-tested, intimate bonds. They can’t be manufactured, and attempting to do so is likelier to limit comfort and expression from users in the absence of functional knowledge of others’ boundaries. Social media should, ideally, encourage cordial free expression, dissent, and disagreement, when (1) the focus of those activities are on ideas rather than people (e.g., other users), and (2) those ideas are not harmful to any other person or people. I actually don’t think Beehaw is great at this currently, with the strong caveat that I also believe it is much, much better and more earnest in its endeavor to do so than any other alternative I’m aware of. But I fear further seclusion would be a move in the wrong direction.

the moment you make a social media space more closed or exclusive while trying to still be a form of social media, it will become quieter, duller and less compelling to users (for better or worse) and eventually fall into relative disuse and so seem to fail at social media.

Observing from my own experience here (and the admins would obviously be well-suited to prove otherwise), too much of the contributions to this community are weighted toward the admins and mods rather than general users. Discussions get decent traction, but I notice that many of the posts themselves are coming from the elevated accounts. If this is accurate, it’s a significant point of failure that would conceivably hasten the “fall into relative disuse” in the event that just a few of these power users are unable to contribute as prolifically. Federation helps fill this gap.

All this being said, I want to counter-balance my criticisms by extending my gratitude and admiration for the admins and mods who’ve made this community what it is. I have an account on Kbin as well that can view much more of the fediverse, but I spend roughly 85% of my time here on Beehaw because of the strength of the community (and, admittedly, to a lesser degree because there are no good kbin mobile apps). It’s clear to see the amount of time, effort, and diligence it takes to create this space, and I am extremely grateful for it. For my own sake, I hope that Beehaw remains here (or on another federated service), but whatever direction is chosen I wish the experiment enormous success.