• 2 Posts
  • 63 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 30th, 2023

help-circle








  • So because I play a lot of games and read a lot of eBooks then I would say getting my first tablet was pretty great, even though it was a midrange one that was just thrown in to the deal when I was upgrading my phone and I probably wouldn’t have bothered otherwise

    It was a Samsung A8 from 2019, had about an 8" screen and I used it mainly as a kindle and games device. The games I play are mainly strategy or board games, but there were certainly some games that you wouldn’t necessarily think would cause a problem (Wingspan?) that would lag or crash. Since I review games it helped to have a second device to check things on, and a bigger screen is better.

    Last year I upgraded it to a Samsung S8 which is a flagship. It’s a 10 or 11 inch screen which felt more unwieldy though I’m used to it now. It can run more things. It’s a really nice device. The screen isn’t actually OLED but feels like it, the quality is amazing. It actually came with a stylus which was a neat touch. The screen is good enough that yes I have found myself watching more TV on it.

    However, when people say ‘productivity’, I don’t know really know what they mean by that tbh. I’ve got a work laptop for work. I’ve got my own laptop for other stuff. Do people mean drawing and things on tablets but that?






  • Still use Google search, but switched out Chrome for Firefox recently and it’s working out well. I do still use their calendar, docs apps but I’ve never been a big one for YouTube. I do have some Google speakers though and use Maps all the time - so I guess out of big tech Google is the one I’m suckered into the most…

    Stopped using Facebook around 2016 and deleted my Twitter account a few years before that, basically when the novelty had long gone and it all seemed to be more toxic.

    In the UK around that time it was just everyone going on about Brexit on Facebook but even before then people weren’t sharing stuff about themselves (with good reason) so it was just low effort memes). Use Facebook once in a blue moon to get in touch with really old friends

    Didn’t miss either, although I recently signed up to Mastodon more just to see how the fediverse worked over there.

    Then Reddit - probably the social media I was most invested in just because it was so granular in it’s There’s A Sub For That ability to cater for virtually all interests. But the utter disdain they held for their own volunteers and the contempt they seem to hold virtually everyone in was a bit of a wake up call. I do go back and check on it but I’m finding that I check on it less. Fedi has less content so I am reading all those eBooks I should have been reading instead!

    My son is 7, I’m interested in how things are looking in 5 year’s time when he’s an early teen. He’s already got bored of watching YouTube videos, tiktok isn’t really a thing with us or anyone we know yet… time will tell I suppose. The main thing will be constant reminders that porn isn’t real and cyber security lectures




  • What if they realised they’d made a very stupid decision and if there’d been some more checks and balances that decision could have been avoided?

    The Third Reich, I think we can all agree was totalitarian. Hitler wanted to plunge into a war on two fronts against the USSR drunk on victory against France and expecting to beat Britain. Most of his military advisors weren’t keen. But being a Dictator he could just do it and hey presto war against Stalin. As time went on he got more erratic, made more random millitary decisions overruling his generals and made a pigs ear of things but whatever decision he made on a whim happened straight away anyway.

    That’s just a famous and obvious example of a totalitarian leader rushing into things and getting where he wanted to go faster which didn’t end well for the leader.




  • Someone else mentioned Procession to Calvary - an adventure game set in a cut and paste world of renaissance art with a very surreal plot and sense of humour. Pythonesque.

    There Is No Game is pretty hilarious, the voice acting always makes me crack up.

    Agatha Knife is a funny point and click adventure game where you’re a 7 year old girl who’s a butcher and needs to set up her own religion sacrificing pigs in the basement for… Reasons.



  • I like the part where they point out that writers probably have more leverage than they think about having a say - but then maybe many writers don’t consider the ebook side of things when thinking about getting their work published.

    It’s obvious that ‘they’ are out to demonise IA as something like Pirate Bay whereas it really, really isn’t. Aside from the massive amount of obscure reference material, I found BBC documentaries on there from the 80s about some history which is otherwise unobtainable. I can understand if there’s some legal points which need to be worked out between both sides in order to keep the site going… but that obviously isn’t what the publishers are going for.