Is that the first game? Yes, it was great. But the publisher was scummy AF and broke the game up into four parts. Now, granted, each part came with an anime DVD which gave you some of the back story/real world issues around the back story, so they did try to make it worth it. But still, it should have been one game.
Nice — I absolutely use SponsorBlock on desktop (/laptop). Did not know it was on mobile.
It’s the other way around, it’s down to GrapheneOS to support other hardware. They simply choose to focus on Pixels.
You’re onto something with the AirTags but you haven’t got it quite right. Every Apple device participates in the Find My network, which means any Apple device marked as lost will have its location reported, anonymously, by every other Apple device it can communicate with. This is a good thing, unless you’re being stalked via an AirTag placed on your person, but Apple has taken pains to mitigate this issue. One shoe company recently released shoes with AirTag compartments so parents could track their kids, and the placement should mitigate the beeping they can emit. Honestly the AirTags and Find My network do more good than harm, the impact to devices participating in the Find My network is minimal, and if it’s your device that’s lost, you don’t want people opting out so thieves can get away with stealing your stuff.
The open source thing is largely a myth, though. AOSP is what’s open source. The version of Android on Pixel phones and Nexus before them was forked from that and bundles a lot of closed source stuff, like Google Play Services, Gmail, and more. But it’s close enough to AOSP that devs can target it and it should run on most/all Android forks.
So then Samsung and others take AOSP and they fork it and make their own OS that is based on Android. They are required per licensing to use Android branding if they want Play Store access. There are other rules, like Chrome and/or Google has to be on the main launcher page, Play Services has to be included… if they don’t play by the rules, they can still fork Android, they just can’t use the name Android… like Fire OS and Switch OS. (It’s unclear if modern Switches use any Android code. Before they were released they were rumored to have forked Android. Switches absolutely do not run Android apps, but the OS borrows several cues from Android design language.)
AdAway isn’t in the Play Store? That was my ad blocker back in the day… on, like, Jellybean and KitKat.
Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google has since banned ad blockers. They threaten their business model after all.
Not actually true, there are still some scam apps on the App Store. As long as they have recurring subscriptions, Apple doesn’t care too much. It’s the free apps that are just as good, they will bury, even if they have users.
As far as music, I agree. I use Apple Music because it’s the best streaming service for my needs and they pay artists better than the other big one. But on iOS you also have Marvis Pro and MusicHarbor. I couldn’t get that experience on Android. The actual Apple Music app is great on Android, and it has gotten better, but on iOS I still prefer Marvis, which is a frontend to Music.app.
Yes, my Android phone (Galaxy S10) has a headphone jack and a microSD card reader and a fingerprint reader. And it’s a flaghship. But it’s a 2019 flagship. (Still does things better than my iPhone 16 Pro Max, which is Apple’s flagship from last year, and still their current flagship model. Most notably, the Android keyboard is better.)
Do any new flagship Android phones have headphone jacks? Not that I need one. I’m 100% on board with AirPods. Love them. I own headphones but it’s a lesser experience. I have some decent (not great) over the ear Sennheisers (they were around $50, so not audiophile range, probably the brand’s entry model) and they’re good enough, but the AirPods are a better experience in many ways. But anyway, mid-range Android phones have headphone jacks, but they’re underpowered compared to flagships, and Android flagships are underpowered next to iPhones of the same year. So while granted, a mid-range 2025 Android likely outperforms my S10 across the board, I have no reason to upgrade what is essentially my backup phone.
Yes, ironically I just read another article about how Facebook/Meta has gotten around the ATT (App Tracking thing, I forget what the other T stands for) with in-app browsers. The article’s point was that all the beef between Apple and Meta is just for show and that they need each other like Apple and Google, Apple and Samsung, et al. So yeah, with you on that.
Yeah, I mean the violence is on another level from your average show.
And that typo/autocorrect is funny. You meant to say parody, I believe, but you said parity — they’re not exactly opposites, but kind of mean different things. If something is on parity with something, it’s not a parody.
Memo about custom firmware? No. I did see the bit about Google blocking sideloading. True, I don’t follow Google/Android news as closely as I follow Apple news due to that being what I use.
That said, I know a fair bit about Android and used to do custom firmware. I know it’s never been easy, largely due to the carriers getting involved. I thought Pixels were unlocked though, at least those bought direct. In the early days when they were Verizon exclusive, the carrier bought ones were locked (this was 2016). Custom firmware in the last 5-10 years? I know a lot less about that.
That’s true. Where I was, I didn’t have access to a physical one, but could have Googled it. Google often sources Dictionary.com which includes a thesaurus, but also gives AI answers.
That said, the AI gives several choices, so it’s not choosing anything. Still, point taken.
I read about this earlier on Ars Technica. I was expecting a paywalled link. Was not expecting to find a mention of “No Longer Human.” Ars didn’t mention that. Or the chat logs. It was a long article but didn’t go into the same depth.
So, I’ve read “No Longer Human.” A more recent translation is called “A Shameful Life” and that’s a bit more apt, I think, but doesn’t have the same ring. It’s about a guy who feels less and less like a person, like what he does and feels doesn’t matter. It’s a wild book, about a double suicide, and the author later killed himself much the same way. There have been several adaptations — none of them very good. None of them quite captured the book. I wonder if it’s just unfilmable. Anyway, it’s a shame that it’s being referenced here, because it’s good literature worth considering, and I hate to see it maligned in much the same way as the Doom game was following the Columbine massacre. Relevant or not (guns in that case, suicide in this case), it’s a shame art gets associated with tragedy simply by association.
Perhaps the same could be said of AI technology, and it has been. But certainly AI needs better safeguards. According to Ars, when the guy started asking about suicide, ChatGPT said it could not help him — unless he specified he was talking about fictional characters. So he did that (Ars constantly refers to it as a “jailbreak”) for a while, and then I guess (and they guess as well) that ChatGPT just assumed that context and stopped requiring him to specify that.
Yeah, so Musk’s argument is that even though OpenAI’s product ChatGPT has more downloads, Apple should consider letting X’s Grok take the top spot because… reasons, I guess? Grok is still listed despite its antisemitic and other disgusting actions. It might be #2 (yeah it’s definitely shit, right?), it might be #5, but it’s still on the list, and it’s still available. Musk is just mad that Apple is not featuring it.
Meanwhile, Fortnite is the top downloaded free iOS game. It sits on top of the charts. Thusly, Apple has buried the chart and they refuse to feature Fortnite, instead choosing to feature Roblox and PUBG instead. It’s petty and silly, but the rankings do show which one has more downloads. That’s it. It’s not even about quality or anything.
I tend to agree with Epic (Fortnite) over Apple, but in regards to X, I’m with Apple. I may be slightly biased in that I don’t like Musk/X, but I’m with Apple strictly on the merits here. I don’t need biases to influence my reasoning here.
As an iPhone guy, I always thought, what apps am I missing? It was mostly emulators. Then Apple allowed them, and I ask the question again.
Oh yeah, we have Delta, why doesn’t Android have anything like that? So, in a nutshell, I can uninstall Delta right now. App gone, games gone, saves gone, it’s all gone. No longer have any trace of it on my iPhone. Go to the App Store and download it. Empty library. Got to start over, right? Wrong. Go into Settings, connect Google Drive. It’s now downloading my games, my saves, my settings. Everything back where I was. Would be so cool if it were on all the platforms, so a game started on one could be picked up and played on another. Not necessarily Android <==> iOS, but more like phone <==> computer/tablet.
Yeah, so anyway, what can’t I get in the Play Store or the App Store that I actually want?
I get it’s a slippery slope and future implications. I get that. I’m just not seeing the issue now.
Also, it seems like Google has taken away all the things that would convince you not to get an iPhone. They took your headphone jack (though an Android was the first to do so). They took your microSD card slot. The tech always sucked, no one tried to make it better; past 16 or maybe 32GB the write speeds were too low to be usable. Now they’re coming for your sideloading? Honestly what is the argument for staying?
Read the article, they got my attention.
About to finish with Luther, another British crime series. I think a lot of people just know “British television” as Dr Who because that’s made the biggest splash across the pond. I would recommend fans of the Time Lord check out the spinoff Torchwood, which isn’t very good but shows how dark the BBC will actually go, a stark contrast from Dr Who. Then I’d say, especially if you liked the Tenth and Thirteenth Doctors, to check out Broadchurch. They star as a detective investigating a child’s death, and the child’s mother, respectively. And Whitaker is better in Broadchurch than she was in Dr Who, so even if you didn’t like her Doctor, it’s worth giving her another chance with better writers. Then of course there is Luther, which is even darker, both figuratively and literally (if you have any lights on it will make the washed-out dark images hard to see; like The Batman you kind of have to watch it in the dark).
It’s cheesy but that’s part of the Fallout aesthetic. It sounds like you’re not familiar with the games, in particular the ones owned by the current IP owner, Bethesda. So Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. Corny is part of the brand.
The TV show could have chosen to take the subject matter seriously, but they did not. In some ways it feels like a kids’ show, but then you have violence and gore and you kind of want it to pick a lane? It worked in the games, but I can see why people not familiar with the games would be put off.
I do think it’s a good series (season), but not great. It could have been better. I’m glad it exists. And Walton Goggins (the ghoul cowboy) is awesome.
Not on Android. People love to stan for Android because “it’s open source,” but Android would have gone nowhere if Google didn’t buy it, and Google wouldn’t have bought it if they weren’t convinced it would let them scrape more personal data than Gmail. (And Andy Rubin made Android because he heard Steve Jobs say the iPhone would run OS X, and he thought he could probably whip up a Linux distro to run on a phone.)
You could get an iPhone and not run any apps by Google, Meta, Microsoft, X, or any of the other privacy-opposed companies. You’d also better change the default search off of Google. DuckDuckGo is an option. Ecosia might be. Not sure. The issue is, while Apple says they’re all about privacy, that’s based on them being a computer/hardware company first (and Google being a data company first). However, Apple is heavily leaning into services now — Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple News+, and more — and there are rumors they want their own search engine. So while Apple may be privacy strong now, you don’t know what they’ll be a year from now, or three, or five.
It’s like Tim Cook (Apple CEO) said about Facebook when they introduced the tracking limiter. “You can still give Facebook permission to track you all over the web, they just gotta get your permission first.” That’s true of privacy. You can still use Google, Meta, Microsoft, X, TikTok, and other privacy-violating companies’ products, but what you share is entirely up to you. You can use some of those services in Safari and block some tracking, or you can install the apps and allow it all. It’s up to you.
Or, you can buy a Pixel and reward Google’s business model, and put GrapheneOS on it. That is probably better, privacy-wise, than using an iPhone. But you’re still rewarding Google’s business model. And if they’re making so much money off your data that opting out isn’t even an option, why does the Pixel cost the same the iPhone does (and more, considering the Pixel Fold)? You are getting more RAM, but RAM is cheap. You’re not getting a better processor — Apple has won that race for years. Camera tech is about 50/50. Screen is up in the air — I think Apple’s is better, but Google et al use higher resolutions. Apple buys from the same companies but screens are made to spec which is why Apple’s are better than those by companies they buy from. Their spec is more demanding. “Good enough” is what passes in Android — it’s like how iPhones use NVMe and Androids use UFS. NVMe is more expensive, and it’s faster on paper, but in the real world? UFS is good enough. You wouldn’t see a difference, or a significant one, in real world usage. So what are you paying for in a Pixel? The lower specs plus the privacy/data factor should make the Pixel significantly cheaper… except Google is a publicly traded company, so they can’t sell it that low.
Apple may not be the best option, but they’re advertising that they are (with regards to privacy). And I think they’re trying. I’m not saying they’re saints. They are doing better than Google though. And you have to decide if that’s worth your money. And dealing with a crappy keyboard. The keyboard sucks.
I’m not sure. There have been times where I thought, this would be the perfect place for an ad break. And lo and behold… ad break. Sometimes they get cut off mid sentence and I think, either it’s automated, or maybe you’re right and they got a say but didn’t specify enough ad breaks so one was inserted semi randomly…
Yeah, I think it was meant to. Maybe the origins are same/similar.
Fun trivia: Isekai is a Japanese genre that means “trapped in another world.” Sword Art Online made it popular but it wasn’t the first, even in Japan. The idea of being trapped in a video game goes at least back to Tron in the 1980s. SAO was itself a revamp/remake of an older anime called .hack//SIGN — not officially, but it shared way too many details with that decade-older show. (The books were written around the time it was airing, but the show would have been green-lit almost a decade later, knowing there was a very similar show already out. And the same people worked on it, made the music, made the games, so yeah, similar DNA in both.) But the first isekai may have actually been Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Isekai has western origins, Japan just gave it a simple name. And now it seems like there are dozens of isekai (word is the same singularly and plurally) coming out every year, and most of them suck. But isekai is everywhere. Stephen King has written isekai — The Dark Tower, The Talisman, 11/22/63, Fairy Tale, and probably more.
Been wondering this, or something like this.
I used to be good at Mario 1, but I cannot play it on emulators. It feels like there’s a delay. It feels a little like Mario is on ice, much like the ice levels of Mario 2. Mario is running, and I want to jump or stop, but there’s a noticeable delay and it makes me feel like my old ass has lost my touch. But playing any modern game, my reflexes are good enough. In a Nintendo to Nintendo comparison, I play Animal Crossing on the Switch, and sure enough, if I’m running and pull back on the stick, my villager skids at exactly the time I want them to. But on that same Switch with the same controller, I can’t control Mario in Mario 1 worth a damn. I do just fine in Super Mario Wonder, though.
(Side note, more to do with Animal Crossing than older games, but I’ve noticed a wired controller, plugged into the Switch dock via USB, with the Switch on the dock, gets more latency than the Switch in handheld mode, which I’m pretty sure uses Bluetooth to connect to its controllers, even if they’re physically connected — not 100% sure on that. But for one example, fishing — even the five-star rarity fish — is quite easy in handheld. But, with the wired connection, I mash A as soon as the fish bites, and it still slips my hook. Maybe the latency isn’t from the controller to the dock to the Switch, maybe it’s from the Switch to the dock to the TV (and speakers since I close my eyes and listen for the sound, which most animal crossers agree is the best way to fish).)