ryan

A fascinating take on it. I’m still wary about Threads interoperating with the rest of the Fediverse, and how that may change the culture as well as the system over time (Meta would have the power and money to throw around regarding changes to ActivityPub implementation), but I also see it similar to email. And I’ve spoken about this before to the point I sound like a broken record …

But people understand the basics of email. They understand they can sign up for a Gmail account and send an email to anyone else. Maybe Threads will be our Gmail here, and introduce people into the idea of a wider open social media concept in a more familiar way to them, and they can branch out as needed or just choose to stay on Threads.

In any case, any given instance can choose to block Threads if they so choose.

This is almost certainly totally out of date.

Today, the confusing, intimidating pile of Google Messaging services is bigger than it has ever been, with Google Chat, Google Messages/RCS, Google Voice/Project Fi, and separate messaging services in Photos, Messages, Pay, Assistant, Stadia, Maps, and Phone.

• first three - still around
• Photos - yep
• Messages - duh
• Pay - I couldn’t tell you as moved out of Pay when Wallet rebranded to Pay and then Google inexplicably released a second app called Wallet
• Assistant - I think this technically doesn’t count since you can’t message people
• Stadia - RIP, thoughts and prayers to the five people who used it
• Maps - Took a bit of clicking around to find a business near me that used it, but, yeah. Still there.
• Phone - The most baffling thing on this list. Even ArsTechnica in the article doesn’t know if this is the same service as the above Maps chat or not. I’ve never seen this, so hopefully it was a short lived experiment that never took off… but maybe someone else here has seen it recently?

Welp, never mind, not that out of date.

These clowns want to push a messaging standard. Jump to RCS, Google says. Hey, Google. How about you standardize your shit first. Nearly all of these could be collapsed into a single messaging platform with little integrations into your other services via the Messages app (aka sent as links and displayed as integrations in compatible devices).

You’re telling me I can meet a potential partner, have video calls with them, get scammed out of money, and tweet about how sad I am, all from the same platform? Sign me up.

2024: Google Assistant formally deprecated in favor of Google Bard, now appearing on all new Android phones
2026: Google Bard development ceases and is left to languish as Google promotes their new Google Mobile Co-Pilot
2027: Bard finally ends service, Google Mobile Co-Pilot is rebranded to Messages Co-Pilot and is integrated into the Google Messages app for some reason so you have to basically text it for help
2029: Google Assistant is relaunched with new technology and Messages Co-Pilot now only responds to tell you to use Google Assistant instead

Oh man, you’ve got me itching to get into the intricacies of JavaScript…

One fun example of the difference: when doing arithmetic operations, null is indeed converted to 0, but undefined is converted to NaN. This has to do with null being an assigned value that represents empty, whereas undefined is not actually a value but a response indicating that there was no value assigned in the first place.

This whole thing is absurd and overcomplicated - they could have just copied Unreal and slightly undercut them.

It isn’t too complicated, but for example, a game which made $2 million in gross revenue would owe Epic Games $50,000, because it would pay 5 percent of $1 million, keeping the first million entirely—minus whatever other fees are owed, such as Steam’s cut.

There should also absolutely have been a grandfather clause for games already released.

I get Unity needs to make money. They’ve never been profitable. But they’ve seriously overcomplicated the whole thing and gotten people angry at them.

At my old job we had a system of first initial + last name, or if that was already taken then the first two characters of first name + last name, etc. A ticket came into us from an Lo[…] Li who had some concerns about being loli@bignamecompany.com. We obviously gave him an alias.