WhatsApp wasn’t a Meta product when it originally took off; Meta didn’t even exist at the time. WhatsApp was bought by Facebook in 2014, and already had hundreds of millions of users at the time.
It was honestly surprising to learn that SMS/RCS/iMessage is the most common way to send messages in the US, as it hasn’t been that way in the UK for over a decade now.
For better or worse, folks in the UK & EU all switched to apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, Viber, etc. due to better features and free international calls.
It seems like RCS is finally mature enough to compete, but good luck getting folks to move back.
If anyone else is wondering, I’ve not found a verbatim quote of the steps but I did see an article that mentioned the consequences. It seems like you will be able to turn this off but it will disable Voice ID:
anyone with their Echo device set to “Don’t save recordings” will see their already-purchased devices’ Voice ID feature bricked. Voice ID enables Alexa to do things like share user-specified calendar events, reminders, music, and more. Previously, Amazon has said that "if you choose not to save any voice recordings, Voice ID may not work." As of March 28, broken Voice ID is a guarantee for people who don't let Amazon store their voice recordings.
Sadly that’s often the way of things in games - writers brought in far too late, when the bulk of the design and development is already done, and being told to ‘just write something that connects these levels together’.
Similar to how the NES was made to look like a VCR, the PlayStation was made to look right at home as part of a fancy 90s home hi-fi setup. Functional/industrial grey was the aesthetic du jour, and gave it a look that said this isn’t just a toy; it’s the future of home entertainment.
Besides Tunic, there are still several good to great games in the first dozen (and no doubt a bunch more if you’re willing to dig into the smaller indies):
Cook, Serve, Delicious - Overwhelmingly Positive (95% of 3,631) all time
Hoa - Very Positive (89% of 2,098) all time
Tangle Tower - Overwhelmingly Positive (95% of 4,760) all time
Octodad: Dadliest Catch - Very Positive (93% of 8,480) all time
Whispering Willows - Very Positive (81% of 1,166) all time
Hidden Folks - Overwhelmingly Positive (97% of 7,333) all time
Eldritch - Very Positive (88% of 1,673) all time
They Bleed Pixels - Very Positive (84% of 2,014) all time
a vital defense against having your phone stolen is having an Android phone to begin with
Sorry, but this is just a laughable claim to make. Phone thieves aren’t going to hold back and try to figure out if the small slab in your hand is an iPhone 14 or a Pixel 9, they’re just going to take it and figure out what they’ve taken after the fact.
If anything, if they were paying attention to what targets were carrying, they’d be more likely to avoid iPhones because they can’t easily strip them for parts any more.
No, it’s integral to the show and most of the characters and only becomes more important as the show goes on.
I’m sure someone could assemble a list of episodes where the prophets/pah wraiths aren’t important, but it would just be a list of random filler episodes devoid of context.
Unfortunately even then the M.O. is to flatten half the country, dismantle any existing government, then half-heartedly declare victory before leaving any survivors to clean up the mess.
Yes, but there’s definitely some appeal to playing text based games on an e-ink screen. As for colour, sometimes less is more - the Playdate is also B&W and has built a terrific community.
Yes but that won’t allow the game to track stats, inventory, etc, or to dynamically change the text based on game state, so you’d be strictly limited to traditional CYOA book conversions.
This looks to be aiming for something more advanced.
Apple received the request to add a secret government backdoor and responded by publicly disabling a popular feature to invalidate the request.
I guarantee you that Google, Microsoft, and others received identical requests, but we’ve heard crickets from them. Implication being everyone except Apple silently complied.
WhatsApp wasn’t a Meta product when it originally took off; Meta didn’t even exist at the time. WhatsApp was bought by Facebook in 2014, and already had hundreds of millions of users at the time.