I think for me, the only female I remember in a video game was the princess in the arcade version (because consoles didn’t exist yet) of Donkey Kong. And she seemed kinda cute, for a blob of coloured pixels.
Much later, I do remember being quite entranced by Lara Croft’s walk in Tomb Raider… I think that was the first time I thought a computer generated female looked attractive. Honestly, the image quality was still horrible but they nailed that walk.
Can’t believe nobody mentioned Last of US.
I’m currently in Asia and – in this country at least – you are basically required to have a smart phone to do anything. Credit cards don’t exist. And they use QR payments for most things. So that implies a camera and a banking app (for your bank). Many places don’t accept cash anymore (!) - I don’t really get how they can do that because not everyone has a smart phone (poor people (obviously) & tourists (not even allowed to get bank accounts here) come immediately to mind — of which there are millions of both). I think so far it’s not a big deal because these people just spend their money elsewhere, but I worry this will become entrenched.
Anyway, I tried “dumb phoning” my iPhone and there’s just way too many things I rely on daily that require a smart phone: paying by QR code, banking, international banking, translating, navigation, ride booking, accommodation booking, messaging on iMessage, Line, Messenger (almost everyone in this country uses the last 2). When travelling in a foreign country, these things aren’t really optional. If I can’t pay for a bus ticket or food, I could be really screwed.
Now you might say some of things in my list are doable without apps; like accommodation booking… sure. But even if you find a place old skool style, how do you contact them? Most don’t have web pages, they use Facebook pages. And the contact info is usually a Line or Messenger id. Even if somehow you managed to find a phone number, they are unlikely to speak English. I’m old enough to remember travelling before the internet and honestly it was great and worked well, but that was because everyone was on the same footing. We’ve lost that and I actually think it’s much more difficult now.
I’ve gotten rid of most social media (except fediverse) which has helped my screen time a lot, but I think going back to a feature phone is, unfortunately, impossible here. I do hope that they see how economically unfair requiring a smart phone is though and at least pass some laws that require shops to take cash payments (last I heard these laws did exist in the West).
I tried watching a 30 minute video on YouTube the other day and it injected ads every 1 minute for the entire video. Fuck Google. Fuck YouTube. Fuck Alphabet.
Back in the day, I had one of the fm transmitters wired into the antenna with a ground loop isolator from radio shack (!) and I tapped a power lead so it would also charge my iPod while in use (and automatically turn off the power when the car was off). Honestly, it was awesome. CD quality sound. If I remember correctly Belkin made the transmitter.
Well, on Mastodon they are already called “toots”, which is kind of American slang for a fart anyway. So ya, switching to calling them “Trumps” is not far off…
THIS IS WHY TARIFFS NEVER WORK. In the long term tariffs actually encourage manufacturing to leave the country charging tariffs, not move manufacturing there. It’s much cheaper to pay the tariffs once, on the final product, than to pay the tariffs on every part that is required moving back and forth across an “imaginary line” (border in Trump-speak).
None of Trump’s tariff bolstering hurts Apple at all. They are a global company and can easily adjust around the asinine policies of America for a few years. Americans will get sick of paying a minimum of 25% more for EVERYTHING, while the rest of the world continues on as if nothing happened. Eventually Americans will see that the rest of the world has all the nice things and they’ve become a self imposed Soviet-era block country that has nothing and has to line up for toilet paper, and they’ll be right pissed. Until then, enjoy your delusion. 👏
First off, this isn’t Apple Intelligence… it’s Siri. Secondly, “What’s the temperature in here?” — were you trying to get the temperature inside your home? Do you have homekit enabled temperature sensors in your home? Because, if not, then I can’t really fault Siri for being confused. Granted Kyiv seems like a pretty random answer. Maybe try “what’s the temperature outside?”
Epic is a piece of shit company. The only reason they are fighting this fight with Apple is because they want some of Apple’s platform fees for themselves. Period.
The fact that they managed to convince a bunch of simpletons that they are somehow Robin Hood coming to free them from the tyrant (who was actually protecting all those users all along) is laughable. Apple created the platform, Apple managed it, curated it, and controlled it. That gives them the right to profit from it. You might dislike that but — guess what? Nobody forced you to buy it. Buy Android if Fortnight is so important to you. Seriously. Please. We won’t miss you.
Epic thinks they have a right to profit from Apple’s platform and not pay them for all the work they did to get it to be over 1 billion users. That is simply wrong. They should build their own platform and their own App Store and convince 1 billion people to use it. The reason they aren’t doing that is because they know they will never be as successful as Apple has been.
Great. So, even if manufacturing does return to the USA – the jobs will not. As everyone predicted. What is the difference if robots have all the manufacturing jobs on US soil instead of foreigners in China? Correct. There is none. Except the company has avoided paying the tariff — whose only purpose was to “bring the jobs back”.
Quite simply we must boycott any company using robotics. The Trump tariffs are an insane policy, lowering America’s standing in the world, destroying the world economy (and there will be unexpected blow back for that too) and they should be immediately reversed.
In what way? I find it exactly the same as Signal but without needing to disclose my phone number (and therefore more anonymous). The user experience, imho, is the same.
Session is very good and doesn’t require a phone number (like Signal).
lol, found a short of all the Lara Croft walks… I was referencing the first one, obviously.
Lara Croft walking