conciselyverbose @ conciselyverbose @kbin.social

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2 yr. ago

Because they want control.

Eh, it is what it is. I could sideload if I really wanted to.

After more effort than it should have taken (for some reason my PIA app or Android was bouncing local connections even with the settings to allow it enabled) ebooks do work. Probably not well enough for me to actually use it, though. It only turns pages with swipes and doesn't really give any ways to do formatting. I'm surprised I've seen it suggested by people for ebooks with how limited it is. (I fully understand that it's not the priority development-wise).

But at least I finally set up docker, which I've meant to do forever.

It's a US site and a US court.

US law is the only thing relevant to the case being discussed.

It's mind boggling. I know a lot of other tech has awful naming. But they at least have the excuse that they have a lot of products to name. 360 was dumb, one was dumber. One S/X was just weird. But Series S/X after that? Giant mess. Two S/X would have still been dumb, but at least people would know it was actually better.

I'm not crazy into stats (I don't track books when I re-read them, though goodreads supports that), but audible's "you read 30k minutes last year" was definitely kind of cool. (The fact that it took me a full 30 minutes to add the new books I've read across 5 apps since last time I bothered putting stuff on goodreads? Not so much.)

My problem is I have a whole stack of different apps to fill out my listening, so Audible's numbers are 90% the 1 author I actually bought from them outright, then there's two different library apps, and a subscription to Scribd Everand for a bunch of my reading, plus actual files in a different app, so none of it really means anything, and not everyone provides it so I can't even compare.

It's too bad the iOS app is stuck behind test flight, but it looks like it supports ebooks, too, so I think I might try it on my Android readers and see how it manages for those. I desperately need a better system for those than "just go find the file and use boox drop when I feel like it".

It's crazy how different different apps render the same text in the same font.

I ended up having to force roboto thin to get something close to how moon reader displays regular roboto.

I'm giving it a shot now, though. I do like that nice side bar that gives you fine control over how your library is displayed, with different profiles for different things.

It was an insanely long time before you could walk into a store and buy a PS5. You'd have to catch specific retailers right when they dropped a couple units online.

Eventually Sony let you sign up for a waiting list, and if you had a real history on their platform you'd get a shot in a reasonable amount of time to order within like a 12 hour window they gave you.

Xbox wasn't completely immune to that. But for a long time, if your goal was just "get a next gen console to play Madden or FIFA" (whatever multiplatform game had a mechanically better next gen version that people who mostly play one game would want), it was a lot easier to do that with Xbox.

It's pretty clear that that's mostly because PS was way more popular, but the audience I'm talking about might consider switching if it means they can play that one game now.

The least annoying reader on Android I've found is moon reader pro. It feels a lot worse to me than maple reader on iOS though.

A lot of people seem to recommend KOReader (it might be because it can be installed on a lot of readers that don't have Android though), and actually reading is fine, but browsing your library is awful. It's completely free without anti features though (on fdroid if it isn't on the play store).

This is a lot of words to say nothing.

Assuming the number is accurate, the fact that that's with Xboxes pretty readily available and PS requiring jumping through hoops for a solid year+ after launch, and the series S being sub 300 is really rough for Microsoft.

Though their naming being so confusing I have to double check after looking at a listing that it's actually "current gen" or not definitely doesn't help.

It's disgusting.

It should be illegal to require any personal information unless you can prove that it's literally impossible to provide your service without it, and always illegal to share that information with anyone (but a payment provider exclusively for verification purposes) for any reason.

It's nowhere near half the industry. It's a small corner of games that already are dogshit anyways.

2K is one of the only examples where there's actually a game underneath it to be made worse by the model.

but every game that matters is liable to demand thousands of your actual dollars

This is not ambiguous. It is an insane ridiculous lie, and the extreme bad faith of posting it inherently invalidates your ability to take part in the discussion.

It's not anywhere close to everything. There are far more quality games that don't do anything like it than quality games that do. It's primarily the same AAA shovelware that's also terrible for 50 other disastrous design decisions and isn't actually playable regardless of the business model.

I don't think this monetization scheme is valid.

That doesn't justify you fucking lying about it.

There are plenty, plenty of games that "matter" that respect players and don't rob them blind of their money or their time with arbitrary grind bullshit.

When that lifespan is at the cost of meaningful extra bulk you have to carry around, there are plenty.

It's not saving them money. It's because being required to carry a giant battery no matter what you want to do is a significantly worse product.

Don't buy it if you don't want AR.

But it's beyond idiotic to trash the first device on the market actually capable of functional AR because you personally don't care about the tech people have been waiting decades for.

Nintendo's drives are tiny, capacity wise. And expensive enough that publishers won't pay for the "high capacity" (that's still not big enough for games anywhere except the switch, due to how low res assets are) ones.