vaguerant

Whoops, thanks.

Based on the article, they're not sure if this is the same game he's had in development since 2019, Legacy, which is some kind of business sim where you have to buy your land as NFTs then create more NFTs to sell to other players.

Time for somebody to make an EU-exclusive Mastodon instance called realthreads.legit and put it up on app stores. The real way to grow the fediverse in a hurry is to trick people into it. /s

As much as I'd like to argue otherwise, it's easily one of the most accessible versions of live chat around currently. I'm still on IRC and also on Matrix, but neither is as user-friendly as the centralized single-account, single-app, single-server setup of Discord. That's absolutely not to say that it's the best option, but it's the simplest to explain by far.

My fellow Matrix nerds can tell us all day about how they got their whole family using Matrix and it's great and everybody understood it, but I strongly suspect there's a level of one dedicated user doing things like app and instance selection (or self-hosting) for the entire group, while everyone else is pretty much along for the ride.

Matrix does solve some of the issues of IRC, like using a single account to interact with basically any server, but room discovery is still not great, the mobile apps lag heavily behind desktop, there's persistent basic usability bugs like unread notifications getting permanently stuck, and privacy is an afterthought with most Matrix apps broadcasting your presence to all other users at all times without any option to stop that behavior. Plus, the heavy reliance on bridging with IRC for many communities also kind of loses you the benefit of the single-account approach since you end up having to register an account for your bridge user anyway (and I can hear the eyes glazing over at this point).

Then there's the network effect, of course. Most of the stuff you can reach via Matrix is super nerdy: Linux distros, fediverse support rooms, Wii U homebrew development channels. This part isn't Matrix's "fault" per se, but it's definitely a reason why people would choose to use Discord or maintain a presence in both. At this point, unless there's just nothing that interests you on Discord, switching to Matrix really has to be an ideological choice.

Bit of a downer, but it is an Android news site. kbin currently doesn't really merit much of a mention in that context. The PWA is nice, but by its nature barely related to Android, since it also runs on Windows, MacOS and everything else under the sun.

People self-host all kinds of things on Raspberry Pis, from web and other servers to home automation hubs. Web serving is extremely cheap in terms of CPU time, even moreso when you're only hosting for yourself and perhaps family/friends. I wouldn't recommend running an open web service like a Lemmy instance on a Raspberry Pi, but hosting something like this would have a minimal impact on a Pi. I have a multiple-generations-old Pi 3 which hosts an IRC bouncer, DNS-level ad blocker, Matrix chat bridge, web server and probably more stuff I've already forgotten and I can still use it for media playback or retro emulation concurrent to the rest, if the mood strikes.

A PWA is a "portable web app". You install it by opening it in an Android browser (e.g. Firefox, Chrome) and selecting Install somewhere in the browser UI. This creates a single-site browser instance which runs the PWA directly, as if it was a natively-installed app.

I think this is something which makes kbin pretty interesting. It supports threads and microblogs, so it can serve both purposes. I have a Mastodon that I post to once every few years, but I think I might post or at least reply more to people if I could just click between threads and blogs on the fly.

But yeah, for that and all of the other reasons, Threads is out. No interest whatsoever.

@MilkToastGhost As long as we're YSKing, just want to let you know that the word "spaz"/"spastic" has a complicated history. While its meaning has drifted heavily in the US, in the UK especially it remains closely associated with the disability cerebral palsy, and is considered highly offensive to many. The relative innocuousness of the US version has led to it being used in pop culture (e.g. songs by Beyonce and Lizzo, and also Mario Party 8 for Wii), which in turn has resulted in recalls and edits when they were released in the UK to some offense.

I'm not the word police, you can say whatever you want, but it's handy to know when you're speaking to a global audience how your words might be interpreted.

On reddit you could see karma breakdown by subreddit which was useful to see where people were most active.

I'd argue that doesn't really tell you where somebody is active. Most of my karma on Reddit was because I made literally one popular comment in a default subreddit. I could make a thousand comments elsewhere that would never see that kind of traction. You might get the impression that I was really into that subreddit even though I just saw it on /r/all and made a drive-by comment that struck a nerve.

I don't know that this is really a problem as such. Maybe people shouldn't care if other users get the wrong impression about which communities they're interested in, but ultimately where you make your reputation is probably more a function of where you're speaking to the largest audience. Unless you're avoiding larger communities completely, basically everybody will get most of their reputation from posts to the largest, most-visible communities rather than the smaller places where they may be spending as much or more time.

Looks more like 17 minutes after launch.

• SNES

  • the Donkey Kong Country trilogy, just good platformers; first one hasn't aged as well as people think, if you don't enjoy it skip ahead to 2 and come back later if you feel like it
  • The Lost Vikings 1 and 2, fantastic character-switching co-operative (but playable solo) level-based puzzle-platformer; don't play the sequel on newer platforms like PlayStation, they tried to modernize the graphics and only succeeded in making them hideous, stick with SNES
  • Star Fox 2, as long as you enjoy dated 3D and poor framerates, this is the most ambitious 3D game on any 16-bit console, with a very replayable campaign full of hidden unlockables that differs on each play
  • Super Mario All-Stars & Super Mario World, just an enhanced compilation of 4-5 seminal 2D platformers; while you could use save states on the NES versions, the SNES versions all support native saves, so easier to pick up and play
  • Tetris Attack, nothing to do with Tetris, just a match-three puzzler with deep, engrossing mechanics that can keep you interested long-term; also Panel de Pon with a translation hack if you want more
  • Top Gear, fantastic competitive racer with the line-scroll road effect you know from classic arcade games like OutRun and a killer soundtrack; pick the white car
  • Yoshi's Island, another classic platformer

• Mega Drive/Genesis

  • Gauntlet IV, better than the arcade original, this is M2 (now known for developing emulators for many classic systems) flexing with some RPG mechanics added to the traditional Gauntlet gameplay
  • The Lost Vikings, SNES version is better but there's a few brand new levels in this one if you want more
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles, basically the first Sonic that noticed it's a home game, so it has saving and improved replayability with multiple characters, paths and unlockables

• Game Boy

  • Donkey Kong, this is not a port of arcade Donkey Kong, it's a full-blown puzzle platformer you can play one level at a time
  • Kirby's Dream Land 2, easy-to-finish platformer but with tons of content if you're playing "properly", using the sort of rock-paper-scissors logic to use the right powers to enter the secret areas
  • Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, just a proper "mid-period" (SNES-esque) Mario platformer which you can play over as long as you like

• Game Boy Color

  • Balloon Fight GB, predates Flappy Bird by literal decades but like if that was a proper game with a campaign
  • The Mummy, based on the Brendan Fraser movie and an awesome Konami puzzle-platformer with short individual levels and password save (use save states on emulator), super underrated
  • Pokémon Puzzle Challenge, Tetris Attack but with Pokémon if you prefer that theming
  • Wendy: Every Witch Way, based on some kind of comic book I think, developed by WayForward who developed the Shantae games and then branched off into Yacht Club Games (Shovel Knight), Wendy is a gravity-flipping platformer where you're in control of which direction is up or down

• Game Boy Advance

  • Advance Wars 1 & 2, adorable turn-based strategy war game with a campaign based around small, self-contained levels, except for a few huge ones
  • Drill Dozer, developed by Game Freak (Pokémon), is a sort of level-based Metroidvania platformer with lots of backtracking to older levels as you unlock new abilities
  • F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, the only true sequel to SNES F-Zero, don't at me
  • Game Boy Advance Video: Shrek, endlessly replayable
  • Metroid: Fusion and Zero Mission, they're Metroid games
  • Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 e-Reader version, I think you can get this officially on Switch somehow, but you've been to the Internet before; this officially-released modified version of the original game includes a bunch of brand new levels previously distributed only on scannable cards, I'm not telling the whole story but they remix elements from the first four mainline Mario games into basically a whole original game. This is New Super Mario Bros. this is Super Mario Bros. 5, still don't at me