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40 votes
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Meta’s Threads to launch in Europe in app’s biggest expansion since debut
9 votes -
Play Steam VR games on Meta Quest 2, 3, and Pro
28 votes -
Meta designed platforms to get children addicted, court documents allege
24 votes -
Sarah Silverman hits stumbling block in AI copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta
45 votes -
Yup hacks together a cross-posting app for X, Threads, Bluesky and others
18 votes -
Norway's privacy battle with Meta is just getting started – regulator says it's investigating the company's new ad-free subscription services
28 votes -
What is Classical Vaporwave?
13 votes -
In Canada’s battle with Big Tech, smaller publishers and independent outlets struggle to survive
15 votes -
A Meta engineer known as an expert at curbing online harassment saw his own child face harassment on Instagram. Now, he’s testifying before the US Congress
19 votes -
Thoughts on the Meta Quest 3?
The release of the Meta Quest 3 seems to have been slowplayed but my take is that Zuckerberg is still going full force ahead with MR but doesn't want to have a fiasco like the last round of...
The release of the Meta Quest 3 seems to have been slowplayed but my take is that Zuckerberg is still going full force ahead with MR but doesn't want to have a fiasco like the last round of publicity about "the metaverse” when people were mentioning it in the same sentence as blockchains and NFTs.
I read a lot of very positive reviews about the hardware
https://www.theverge.com/23906313/meta-quest-3-review-vr-mixed-reality-headset
https://www.reddit.com/r/QuestPro/comments/17631ja/24_hours_in_my_quest_3_review/
https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/meta-quest-3
so I got one and I am really impressed. It comes with a very convincing demo where cracks appear in the ceiling and walls of your room opening views onto another planet and then aliens come into your room that you have to shoot with the controllers to stuff them into a tube. I am showing this demo to people on the hopes I can sell some kind of MR exhibit to a local museum.
Karl Guttag could show that the MR quality is "awful" from an eye chart perspective but the motion-to-photon is really excellent, you can throw and catch a ball just fine wearing it, and it is totally practical to walk around the house, interact with people, read (large) text to copy, use a touchscreen, etc.
I get the feeling too that they are doing many of the right things to market it, for instance, it comes with a license for a major game that comes out in two months which will might give people who don't click with it right away a chance to re-engage. There is intensive notification based marketing with discounts and stuff which is totally textbook for a new app store and that I like at the moment but it is possible it just won't connect if the product isn't up to snuff.
I tried Horizon Worlds and ran into the problem of not being able to succeed at the fishing minigame (in real life I've only been able to catch sunfish and smelt, but you really can fill up your freezer with zero skill with the later) and also the way it is weirdly empty. I have some content that I think could be put in there which I think is often a good idea on a new platform that is heavily promoted (e.g. easy to get free publicity and other benefits from the platform) but that emptiness might mean they don't feel pressure to get content. VRChat was more fun but showed me the challenge of onboarding people to that sort of thing, I got into an entrance room where I met one person who was actually attentive and trying to communicate and I think a lot of kids who were "doing their own thing", I figured out some of how to interact in that space but the problem of "getting gud" while sharing the space with other people who might be annoyed seems tough.
My take is that the software is not up to the hardware right now but as a software developer I think that’s a great problem to have.
If you're excited about Apple Vision I think you should be excited by this. Any thoughts? Anyone tried the MQ3? Anyone developing content for it?
19 votes -
Meta accused by states of using features to lure children to Instagram and Facebook
18 votes -
Web Summit chief steps down over Israel remarks
15 votes -
Mark Zuckerberg delivers on promise to pour 'gasoline' on Threads growth as the platform regains users while X shrinks
21 votes -
Meta in Myanmar, Part 1: The Setup
12 votes -
Meta (Facebook / Instagram) to move to a "Pay for your Rights" approach
33 votes -
Facebook’s new AI stickers can generate Elmo with a knife
45 votes -
Meta Quest 3 convinced me to love VR by downplaying the metaverse
5 votes -
Norway asks EU regulator European Data Protection Board to fine Facebook owner Meta over privacy breach
9 votes -
EU warns Elon Musk after Twitter found to have highest rate of disinformation followed by Facebook
34 votes -
Meta’s AI chatbot plan includes a ‘sassy robot’ for younger users
8 votes -
China behind ‘largest ever’ digital influence operation
15 votes -
EU ‘gatekeeper’ list has five American and no European companies
43 votes -
WhatsApp is working on cross-platform messaging
18 votes -
Starfield - Thoughts on the main quest?
I just finished the Starfield main quest! Everything else will be in the Spoilerbox text but if you haven't, consider yourself warned! I would try and go through the main quest as much as you can...
I just finished the Starfield main quest! Everything else will be in the Spoilerbox text but if you haven't, consider yourself warned! I would try and go through the main quest as much as you can and maybe a couple of temples before you finish the main story if you havent.
Starfield spoilers!
What does everyone think about the Unity idea and the way it's integrated in New Game Plus? I loveeee the multiverse explaination and the little things they changed in New Game Plus, I imagine it'll be different every "loop". While I kinda wish you didn't lose everything, it was amazing to respawn in a new Starborn ship.I do feel bad for the people who invested a lot in base building though! I kinda wish they had a better solution for that, honestly I can see how it'd be discouraging to go through new game plus again. I kinda wish they could somehow make it a bit more clear that you'll lose everything and to not invest too much in the playthrough.
At the same time, I really do love the way the game makes me feel on a meta level. I'm usually a hoarder in these types of games, getting all that I can and dumping it all somewhere, but once I realized that nothing matters I found myself kinda letting go of that notion and just enjoying the game. I'm used to Bethesda jank so I just enjoyed it haha.
Overall probably some of the smarter writing Bethesda put out, and I'm really excited to see the rest of my loops!
12 votes -
Meta lost a legal battle Wednesday to halt a Norwegian ban on its advertising practices that came with hefty daily fines
22 votes -
Meta-analysis: Effective strategies in reducing car dependency
14 votes -
Google Gemini eats the world – Gemini smashes GPT-4 by 5X, the GPU-poors
9 votes -
Most of my Instagram ads are for drugs, stolen credit cards, hacked accounts, counterfeit money, and weapons
41 votes -
It looks like Facebook will be forcing me to switch to Messenger. What are my options?
Today when I opened Messenger Lite there was a message from Meta saying " your chats will be moving to Messenger" and that Messenger Lite will stop working on September 18. I actively switched...
Today when I opened Messenger Lite there was a message from Meta saying " your chats will be moving to Messenger" and that Messenger Lite will stop working on September 18. I actively switched from Messenger to Messenger Lite several years ago because the regular Messenger app was draining my battery. Are there any alternatives to Messenger Lite on Android? Perhaps even FOSS?Or will my only option be to move to the old Messenger app if I want to use Facebook messenger? I have some work related groups on Messenger that would be tough to move to another platform, so Please don't just say "use Signal" or something similar.
28 votes -
Canada demands Facebook lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing
51 votes -
Meta-discussion about the "Regional news thread" and possible future attempts
About this one: https://tildes.net/~news/19bm/regional_news_thread First of all I want to thank everyone who participated and gave it a shot despite the weird setup, and apologize for ghosting the...
About this one: https://tildes.net/~news/19bm/regional_news_thread
First of all I want to thank everyone who participated and gave it a shot despite the weird setup, and apologize for ghosting the meta-discussion about it. Y'all have many suggestions which convinced me that my original idea was flawed.
For one, I agree with Algernon_Asimov that splitting into a separate 'US-local news' and 'non-US global news' would have made more sense. If there's a next round, I think I'd focus on US states first, then non-US countries in another thread. But before that I want to get some feedback to make sure.
Do you think general news threads like that are necessary?
Algernon_Asimov said that news should just be posted directly to the frontpage to be more visible.
spit-evil-olive-tips made a point about the distinction between local news of general interests vs. local news of local interests, and the latter could benefit from having dedicated threads.
For me, I believe megathreads are fine as long as they're optional. In my experience, people do sometimes prefer to post in comments instead of as full topics. As long as people are free to choose either way (which is different than on Reddit where if there's a megathread then posts outside it got removed), overall we should end up with more activity not less.
Does the comment-to-comment format make sense?
In my head I imagine that to be a natural way to generate location-based grouping, but I could see the convoluted setup might be confusing and unenforceable. One the one hand, if each location only has 1 post then the extra step is unnecessary. On the other hand, if there are multiple locations, each with multiple posts then trying to find your regions of interest would be a pain.
Is the scope of the thread too broad?
This was a point made by skybrian here, which was in the context of the original thread being both US and non-US. But even if we divided them into separate US and non-US, are they still too broad?
Having one thread for each location is probably the most natural way, I fear that currently that would ended up being too niche. This was touched on by merry-cherry here as well. I could imagine that would work for a US state (which ever has the most people here) but since no one tried it yet, it's hard to know which states are most likely to succeed. And we probably shouldn't just make one each for all them (which would fill the entire frontpage with nothing but state names).
Should these threads be news-focused?
While that was my original goal, maybe megathreads could be more useful if they fills the needs of the people posting in it rather than just the one starting it. Usually that requires guesswork by the poster but since I'm already asking, might as well.
For the US-local thread, if the goal is to serve as testing grounds to see whether there's enough activity to make the case for local groups, maybe news is not necessarily the most popular when it comes to local content? If anyone support this direction, please share some examples of what types of content you'd like the most when visiting local groups. If you do, please also rank them in order of importance. That way the scope of the thread could be made to focus on the most needed activity as starter.
For the non-US global thread, do you still want dedicated global news? If so how should we set it apart from just regular posting? boxer_dogs_dance mentioned r/anime_titties being quite high quality for global news, any lessons we can adopt from them?
Digging around and I found this post asking about how to do cultural exchange on Tildes, maybe shifting the focus from global news to this might be more fruitful? (people are probably more willing to share nice things about their country than drama). Each subthread can be something like this Turkey Information Thread, or something else maybe.
Should they be recurring?
News probably make sense as recurring, others depend. Since this is still in trial whatever arrangement we agree on, I'll probably just make one and see from there.
Anything else you want to let me know (like maybe don't do this anymore haha), shoot away. Also it's not like I'm an official thread maker or anything, if any of y'all have your own take, go for it! The more people trying out stuff the better.
31 votes -
The association between daily step count and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality: a meta-analysis
11 votes -
Depression, anxiety, and the risk of cancer: An individual participant data meta-analysis
17 votes -
How to move your Instagram feed to Pixelfed, the photo app that doesn't track your every move
41 votes -
A pro-Putin Facebook network is pumping French-language propaganda into Africa. The pages promote Russia’s line on the war in Ukraine to more than four million followers...
40 votes -
Meta has long fought Europe's demands that it get people's consent before using their data for targeted ads – then a Norwegian regulator threatened daily fines
51 votes -
Meta is releasing AudioCraft: Generative AI for audio made simple and available to all
34 votes -
I spent a week alone in the Metaverse
39 votes -
The Court of the Hague orders Meta to unmask anonymous Dutch user accused of repeated defamatory posts
31 votes -
Lets talk roguelikes!
Roguelikes have a special place in my heart. When you know that your character is mortal, the stakes feel so much more real, and your progress feel so much more earned. You can’t second-guess the...
Roguelikes have a special place in my heart. When you know that your character is mortal, the stakes feel so much more real, and your progress feel so much more earned. You can’t second-guess the level design, because random, and sometimes things are simply not unfair, like when you get transformed into a cute mushroom, while your otherwise generic foe get transformed into a god. I consider unfairness, uncertaincy and chaos to be core gameplay components.
Here’s some roguelikes I liked, in no particular order:
Inscryption
Sort of like Slay the Spire with retro aestetics combined with the gritty feel of the SAW franchise. The most atmospheric and foreboding deckbuilder I've ever played. It is sort of a meta-game where you play a retro computer game in which you play a tabletop roleplaying game with a deranged dungeonmaster.Noita
Looks like a rather generic pixelart side-view dungeoncrawl, but beneath the humble surface lurks Finnish folklore, a revolutionary physics engine and an insanely versatile magic system, likely the best in any game. The game is vast, both in sense of game world but also the numbers of monsters, spells, perks and secrets. I consider this the best roguelike, full stop.Don't Starve
Craft to survive in an unforgiving wilderness, battling wildlife, hunger cold and insanity. Having to constantly collect resources makes this game a bit on the grindy side, but the hand-drawn artwork and a rich world to explore and unlock makes this stay fresh.Jupiter Hell
This, the successor to DRL (Doom Roguelike), is the only classic roguelike I could ever get into. The top-notch visuals makes me literally forget that I'm playing a grid-based turn-based rogue-clone. Still, the game is rather lacking in variation, and there's no lore or story choices. While I think this is by design, the DOOM roots and whatnot, I'm missing the sense of exploration and wonder found in other roguelikes. But even with that, the game is cool and ever so dark, and there's quite a lot of depth despite the simple controls.FTL
Simplistic and neat pixelart space exploration game. The meat of the game is space combat in real time with pause, between which you plan your route on a node-based overworld and make various choices. The game, while cozy, is quite intense. You're trying to escape a vastly superior fleet while fighting off incoming attacks and trying to not run out of fuel while hopefully improving your ship to survive as the stakes rises. Every choice you make feels like a life or death decision. The fights offers a lot of different tactics. There's various ships to unlock by completing various missions. The one downside is that you have seen all the different encounters way before you have everything unlocked, but the mod FTL Multiverse adds a lot of new content.Into the Breach
Simple tactical turnbased on 8x8 fields, by the folks behind FTL. The main gimmick is that you can see how the enemies are going to attack in their turn, and try to counter it. This works surprisingly well and offers a lot of depth.Depth of Extinction
Underwater turnbased tactical. The game feels like watching a cheap action movie from the eighties. Sometimes the missions can feel a bit samey, and the underwater setting could be more in forefront but this doesn't stop the game from being quite a lot of fun. I'm hardly an expert here, but I've heard people who prides themselves of their expertice at turn-based tactical gaming giving this one a lot of praise.Retromancer
Arena-shooter with a very stylish retro aestetics which doesn't confuse you in the fast-paced chaos. This, combined with a RPG fantasy theme really make this stand out from the other twin-stick offerings. This is a game I consider a spiritual successor to the original twin stick shooter, Robotron 2084. Of course, you need to play the Hunter, the other characters doesn't have the Robotron-trademark mashine gun fire. There's a dash function which is quite handy when you're about to be cornered. There is not really any character building, although by scoring enough points you can unlock various pickups. I guess it is designed for local multiplayer (there's four characters to choose from) but I haven't tried this. Plays excellent with controller.The Wrath's Den
This is basically Dungeonkeeper, but simplified into a turnbased pixelart game with keyboard controls. You use space to switch between minions, arrow keys to move them, X to do various actions. Besides the random room choices, everything follow simple strict mechanics, which sometimes requires a bit of observation to grasp. The one major downside is that you cannot save your game. Much suck! But other than that, this humble little game is quite easy to fall in love with.90 votes -
A thread for news and discussion about UFO/UAP related topics
##NEWS## "A bipartisan group of lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee says a high-profile hearing on UFOs is just the start of their push for answers. And they are threatening to use...
What's this?
This topic header is updated to link to the newest top-level comment link post so it's visible through the sneakpeek.
Since many people are upset about the homepage getting swamped with UFO/UAP news, maybe a dedicated thread to contain all the discussion would help.
Edit: also please keep the conversation civil
Direct links to each sub-thread:
What's this?
Currently the thread is dominated by meta discussions, making it hard to find the actual news. I'm thinking maybe having a short list of top-level comments directly from the thread's main body can help browsing to find relevant discussions more manageable.
The comments will be categorized into link posts and text posts, emulating the way the site works (though I suspect there'll be mixed cases where judgement call will be needed).
I'll try to keep the list (as well as the header) updated. Hopefully this will alleviate somewhat the worry that topics in megathreads aren't visible.
Link posts (newest first)
- "A bipartisan group of lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee says a high-profile...
- "The UFO congressional hearing was 'insulting' to US employees, a top Pentagon official...
- "Congress update: U.S. Senate passes multiple UAP/UFO measures" (D. Dean Johnson...
- This comment on Reddit explained the legislation that this hearing is about, I'll quote...
Text posts (newest first)
- I share sentiments with several others in this post. While the topic of extraterrestrial life is...
- Just my $0.02 since opinions are like assholes, everyone has one... I'm not arrogant enough...
- I want to point something out here as a skeptic and as someone who laughs at these...
- I don't want to drag the conversation down with an extensive write-up of my own thought...
- This comment was deleted by the poster, but there're still some discussions underneath
- Does anyone want to hypothesize why there are congressional hearings about this? Do...
Off-topics (newest first, posts are placed here only after it's noticeably clear that comment labels have taken effect)
56 votes -
Do you use a puzzle mat for jigsaw puzzles? Is it necessary?
I've been doing some high-ish quality wooden jigsaw puzzles, and I'm a bit worried about them getting damaged, so I'm using a puzzle mat. And...I hate it, so much. It's crazy hard to move...
I've been doing some high-ish quality wooden jigsaw puzzles, and I'm a bit worried about them getting damaged, so I'm using a puzzle mat. And...I hate it, so much. It's crazy hard to move completed sections around if you need to rearrange, which is often an issue since i always solve without looking at the image. This is the primary irritation, but it's significant, and there's also some secondary irritations like the board is just kinda annoying to deal with and it's itchy lol.
So, to people who do jigsaw puzzles, how do you protect your pieces? Do you use a puzzle mat? Something else? Just do it on a hard surface and all is fine?
(also meta-note: this is my first topic post here so I hope I've done this correctly, tell me if I haven't!)
15 votes -
Fear, loathing, and excitement as Threads adopts open standard used by Mastodon
40 votes -
Apple tests ‘Apple GPT,’ develops generative AI tools to catch OpenAI
17 votes -
Meta introduces LLaMA 2, their next open source large language model, now free for commercial usage as well
44 votes -
Meta's social media platforms will be temporarily barred from behavioral advertising in Norway after a ruling from the Norwegian Data Protection Authority
13 votes -
Best way to use Instagram from a privacy perspective?
If I wanted to create an Instagram to try to build a brand but value privacy, what are some good tips and tricks for using the app and not have all your personal data harvested by Meta? Of course...
If I wanted to create an Instagram to try to build a brand but value privacy, what are some good tips and tricks for using the app and not have all your personal data harvested by Meta?
Of course they're going to collect whatever info I post but are there some mitigation strategies? Always use a VPN? Should I get a brand new phone number?
13 votes -
Tax prep companies shared private taxpayer data with Google and Meta for years, congressional probe finds
45 votes -
Twitter blocks links to rival Threads, while CEO downplays reports of traffic decline
121 votes