umbraroze

It's easy to think that crypto is over. The NFT bubble is so deflated. We've seen big companies like FTX bomb the hell out. I mean, the signs are obvious now, aren't they? Crypto was, conclusively, proven to be the scam everyone said it would be and we don't need any more proof, right?

And then we hear Trump administration is really into this crypto nonsense.

Somehow.

Guess they didn't get the memo.

Brace yourself for 4 years of spectacular, glorious fail.

And if someone says stuff like "oh, Trump just got filthy rich off of the meme coin he launched yesterday", let's wait and see how the coin does at the end of his administration.

My favourite example of a straight-to-the-point animal name:

There's a species of turtles. Goofy looking fellas with big heads. So what are they called? Big-headed turtles. OK, but surely the Latin name is sensible? No, it's megacephalum. Totally a band name.

Bah. Me, I've been using Debian since 1997. I've tried Ubuntu (and, what was it called, Progeny?) a few times but decided it was just Debian with extra steps.

Yup. One of the most artsy American comics deeply appreciated by the 🖤goth community🖤. ...With this inexplicable page. Most people who read this thing probably went, like, wtf. ...And continued reading.

Well that's the neat part, you don't! If you post on Pixelfed you're already on Mastodon.

...I suppose you can reshare it if you want. Me, I just point people to my Pixelfed account on my Mastodon profile and vice versa.

One day I was walking about.
Someone said "Excuse me, could you tell me where is (random street)?"
I was like "That sounds familiar, hold on a second."
Looked it up from the map on my phone.
It's literally the next street over.
It was about that time I decided people perhaps shouldn't ask me directions if they value their time.

Well, I suppose they're less "AAA" and more "Games With Actual Noticeable Budget". Simulators aren't exactly mainstream these days, yes.

I don't think I even remember what "AAA" games I bought last year. Uh... Baldur's Gate III and Train Sim World 5. That's about that.

Thing is, I didn't play much of those either! I have an absolutely gigantic backlog! And in December I got somehow addicted to Skyrim again. It never ends

Best and awesomest and most profound game experience I had last year was Chants of Sennaar, and even that technically came out in 2023.

I once read about Andy Warhol's film Empire and thought it could form a decent stylistic background for a movie about your average programmer's work day.

One continuous 8 hour shot of a programmer sitting by a computer, slowly scrolling through a code, pausing for a long time to stare at particular sections, and occasionally saying "why the fuck doesn't this work?"

I got Dark Souls for free on the Games with Gold on Xbox 360.

Was like "hey, this seems pretty nice, love the art style and music."

Only months later I heard this was supposed to be this notoriously hard and frustrating game for real pros.

I was then like "Well it did seem a little bit unforgiving, yes. Maybe I should leave this for later. You know, after I've 100%d Metroid Prime 2."

(Metroid Prime 2: Echoes on GameCube is balls hard. I beat the last major area boss. Then my Mad Catz memory card died. Did the whole game again. Beat it. Didn't get 100% because I missed one scan. I will do it again, probably soonish now that I've dumped the disc for Dolphin, but I'll wait a moment if there's a Switch rerelease.)

I have enjoyed some other Soulslikes - Elden Ring is great fun even though my tangible progress is quite slow.

Funny thing, Pixelfed isn't even a competitor to Instagram in the very very strictest sense.

Pixelfed is a federated service for posting photos.

Instagram started out as a service for posting photos, but it has become this... thing. I don't even know anymore.

In addition to the stuff already listed:

In the Swedish film version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", Lisbeth and the hacker dude use Ubuntu, especially in the scene where they recover the stuff from Lisbeth's broken laptop. (In the US version, they decided to use Macs instead. And included a scene where she goes to an Apple store with the broken laptop and they helpfully tell her shit's unfixable. Realism.)