I’d like to think I’m pretty decent at sticking to boycotts, but holy hell, my work platform is Microsoft and their products, and I run gaming servers for my friends online and play through game pass. This is going to be so hard for people to step back and not use their platforms and software if they’re in it like me. Not sure how to proceed.
Oh the flip side, I have a Bazzite desktop rig running Proton/Steam for gaming and a PS5 and Switch. I’m not in the market for an Xbox and have bought one since the OG… so I’ll just keep not buying their stuff I guess? I feel like boycotting things I’m not buying anyway doesn’t really send a message.
You’re at least making up for my inability to step away from it atm. I wouldn’t have bought into the environment had it not been for my partner, and work of course. I grew up on PS and PC gaming, just recently started using Xbox. Damn it.
as a bazzite user, it’s kinda ironic that they’re dependent on GitHub cloud to keep their updates going. I wonder if they have a non-apartheid version?
The problem with replacing GitHub with something that isn’t owned by genocidal Microsoft is that GitHub provides a fuckload of free compute via their runners. If you migrate away from that to another smaller service, suddenly you’ve got to pay for your automated builds (or lose them).
I fear that many FOSS projects simply wouldn’t be popular if they had to be built manually from source by end users.
start with the stuff that’s easy to get rid of and the rest will snowball down the line.
as for your workplace using Microsoft, nobody expects you as an individual to force your company to stop using them. the best way to achieve that in my opinion is through unions and collective actions.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, because in that case it usually ends up being nothing. If you have the desire to limit what you described in any way you can as much as you can, it’ll be something. If everyone does as much as they can, it’ll be a huge something.
Amazing news! It’s great to see GeoGuessr coming to Steam! 🥰 This should make playing on Steam Deck much smoother. I just hope there’s a free option (even with ads). On the web, most people have switched to free alternatives like FreeGuessr. If they go with a monthly subscription on Steam, I’m not sure it will work.
Geotastic is definitely a great alternative! If I could add another it would be https://freeguessr.com/. You can turn off street names, it doesn’t have Ads and you can play No Move or Blink Mode directly from the game.
There's a few, like Openguessr too. But they are not really Geoguessr alternatives in the same way Geotastic is, with all the community features, I also like the transparency Geotastic has with running costs, I can donate to cover my own usage without overspending for profiteering like is the case with Geoguessr now.
Yeah, GeoGuessr is an extreme example as Google basically did 95% of the work for them. Having to image large chunks of the world would mean a huge investment and I highly doubt GeoGuessr would even exist without Google Maps.
If Google would double their API pricing tomorrow there’s very little GeoGuessr can do except maybe switch to Apple Maps (they offer an API, not sure they offer one for their “street view” data though).
Companies are subject to the places they operate in and not following it could have consequences. I remember Guardian having to censor stuff due to UK court order. My gripe is that they are going diving into the military contract business that they had control over but still got into due to money.
Yeah, considering that the whole game is dependent on Google Maps, they can end it any time. I just hope GeoGuessr has a good partnership with them. I saw somewhere that they pay millions per year for the maps!
Up front cost cannot cover the ongoing API costs they must be paying for Google Maps. So either this has to be free and just a front end for the same shit, or they’ll still end up net negative.
They are adding a "Steam pass", which doesn't let you play on the web and your web subscription doesnt let you play the Steam version. Just play Geotastic instead.
Huh, half a year after Luanti introduced volumetric lighting. I find it hard to believe that Microsoft execs watch out for what Luanti does, but maybe a whole bunch of Android re-packagings of Luanti suddenly looked a whole lot better than Minecraft and that got through to those execs…? It’s a bit of a strange coincidence, at least.
While I would love that to be the case, I don’t think it is that simple. Java edition, at least, has been experimenting with shader-like features in resource packs for a while now. It could be that Luanti convinced them it needs to be built in and not an extra pack, but I think it is at best parallel ideas, or at worst, Luanti taking inspiration from those shader-like packs and trying to do better not even knowing they are doing the same process as Minecraft.
Yeah. Luanti following Minecraft is nothing new. Mineclonia was an early pilot game for the engine.
But there hasn’t been much effort on copying Minecraft lately. Mineclonia is done, and it’s great.
We’ve had more mobs, animals, plants, textures, and such than un-modded Minecraft for a long time. (Which is unfair, as Luanti is a mod-first design.) But my point is the core Launti dev team doesn’t have to work on any of that.
The most noticeable recent Luanti updates have been to make the configuration screens much nicer, and add I think to add native support for more graphics tricks?
I’m not paying attention to graphics in Luanti. As others have mentioned, that’s not why I play it. I actually had a conversation recently about the best way to downgrade Luanti default graphics to match un-modded Minecraft.
That said, the Minecraft team taking notice of Luanti would be new, as far as I know.
Oh yeah, I wasn’t trying to say that Luanti had an incredibly original thought with volumetric lighting. There’s been (pre-resource-pack) volumetric lighting mods for Minecraft probably already a decade ago. I was rather just wondering, when the proof of concept has existed for a whole decade, why do they decide to include it now. It probably would have worked well even on weaker phones three years ago already…
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