I left Windows ~2-3 years ago since I got tired of having to keep up with ways to disable the MS account requirements or disable the ads every time there is a major version upgrade on a platform I use every day.

More than likely it is Doze. https://developer.android.com/training/monitoring-device-state/doze-standby

Supposedly disabling battery restrictions on an app disables Doze, but in practice it doesn’t seem to make much difference.

It has been a thing off and on with Android since Doze was introduced.

Better than every year or so no one can play the games they supposedly “bought” due to some technical hiccup for a random yet lengthy amount of time than some percentage of people be able to more easily play our games without paying us. -some Sony/gaming industry stooge probably

In all seriousness, people need to stop being so willing to put up with this sort of easily foreseeable failing with the current way of doing digital goods. If I can’t use it without the blessing of someone else it is not buying, it is borrowing, and that severely impacts the value proposition for me personally.

Technical issues WILL happen. It is the nature of the beast, it is just terrible engineering to build what is essentially dead man switches into your customers products.

Not sure if this is still the case, but with Steam it used to be that if you didn’t put the client into “offline mode” ahead of time the client wouldn’t open, let alone allow you to launch a game once the connection was lost.

I hope they took care of that by now.

I haven’t played it in awhile. But last time I did, it still seemed to be doing good on the custom maps I used to play. Like Helms Deep.

Probably either Left4Dead 2 or the latest Hitman game

This is why I still prefer public restroom glory holes in 2024.

Tony Hawk pro wheelchairs

As the customer, which in a practical sense is the only perspective that matters to me day-to-day, Epic offers me nothing close to what Steam or GOG can give me. Hell, even EA’s and Ubisofts launchers were more useful since they at least had exclusives. All Epic has is Fortnite and for someone like myself that doesn’t care for that kind of game, there is no reason to even consider their platform for anything.

And given my recent switch away from Windows and to Linux full time on my gaming PC to put a further wedge between me and the things Microsoft has been doing with Windows that I don’t like that is a good thing given Epics history of embracing things that will never work as smoothly on Linux as Steam games do with Proton or GOG’s native Linux options do.

I’ve been using KISS launcher off and on since Branch bought Nova. Not nearly as flexible when it comes to customization. But if you just want a simple launcher that supports stuff like custom icon packs it is a good one.

I moved to esim for everything since my carrier (US Mobile) supports it and has a nice utility built into their mobile app to allow you to move your number to a new esim anytime you want to switch phones.

It has gotten to the point where if you work for a game studio that gets bought out or sold, might as well get ahead of the game and start looking for a new job before they have the chance to fire you.

I moved to Podcast Republic, and sometimes AntennaPod, on Android, Downcast on iPhone, and just import the OPML from one of those into gpodder to listen on desktop/laptop.

No accounts or other BS to keep up with, just the latest OPML export. Much nicer, and no one can take it away from me or “shut the service down” in the future.

They can try, but it is unlikley to work for long. So my general reaction is:

"And what we’re focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation,

Pretty sure that is said by at least one player in the console game every time they announce new hardware.

I’m surprised there was no further validation or approval for that kind of money beyond “find the right person and socially engineer them.”

Capcom are making the same mistake with RE as Ubisoft did with Assassin’s Creed in my opinion. Focus the whole giant studio on making games for one IP, then when that stops selling the whole ship will sink.

“We are going so hard into the AI synergies. It is going to blow away your quarterly projections about our growth centers and user engagements.” Continued rambling about things for another 20 minutes.

End result will be NPC’s with sometimes better conversation tree’s and micro transactions that are randomized based on the whims of same vague bot no one can articulate the functional details of.

To me, things like ChatGPT are just more efficient ways to search sites they scrap data from like Stack Overflow. If they ever drive enough traffic away from their sources to kill the sources the likes of ChatGPT will become mostly useless.

It is always amusing to see the head of optional entertainment industries make statements like they are making a declaration on par with climate change, a economic depression, etc. As if they expect massive press coverage and endless crying by their would be customers.

When in reality the actual reaction by most is along the lines of “oh no, anyway” and move on to the next bit of optional entertainment media while they and their company are forgotten to the trash pile of failed companies.

Take 2 is playing a dangerous game betting the farm on a single property and then trying to come up with new ways to milk it. When it falls out of favor it is going to sink them.

Yes it is gross, it Apple does the same thing in their app store. So it is nothing that can be avoided with using the major players.

Pretty expensive for the value usually provided by the Pixel line in my opinion.

And Mexico was going to pay for that southern boarder wall…

They frame it that way to reenforce the notion that ads are an inevitable thing.

The browser company in question is primarily funded by the advertising company in question.

How nice of them to provide me with the solution to the problem that they themselves created. Maybe they should just not create BS launchers used for upselling in the first place.

Ou no…anyway

Do those 7 years of updates come at a steady clip for the Android security patches as Google and Samsung mostly do it, or is it a patch here and there with massive swaths of time with no patches more like Motorola?

The former is progress, the latter is functionally not much better than every other OEM.