They have deployed an AI reply system into the comments, probably to make up for the decrease in traffic that could hurt their IPO.

I don’t think it even needs to be them for it to be a huge problem. People have been automating the process of gaining karma to sell accounts for years and years, I would imagine this process is accelerating with the rise of LLMs and the bottom falling out from under all the mod tools.

In Lebanon, “Handy” means a cordless landline.

Lord forgive me for what I’m about to do

The guy’s name was David. In the game, you’re chasing after an inventor who crossed different parts of the world, building giant pinball games on fields. You’re following in his footsteps, fixing the pinball games that have fallen into disarray using the lessons you learned.

Googling a little, it seems like that was a different game called Pinball Science, also by David Macaulay. So I definitely had both, probably got them both around the same time. I vaguely remember the setting for TNWTW being an island with different buildings with different themes of things to discover.

Those disks were super hard to get where I was, too. I live in Lebanon. My parents moved heaven and earth to get me quality entertainment, and the older I get the more I realize how much effort they put into making me a cultured kid.

Now I really need to spin up a VM! I also want to waltz around Beaumaris Castle in Encarta, and check out all the stuff in Encarta that I didn’t know to appreciate when I was a kid.

I’m really excited about Ange at Spurs. Regardless of whether he’s coaching a team I like, I’ve looked into the guy when his signing was announced and I’m genuinely inspired by his words, and I’m someone who is generally averse to inspiring fluff talk. Ryan Mason too, he has an appearance on some coaching podcast where he talks about his life experience and I actually feel inspired to go out and do things in a different way - also something that I don’t feel often, much less feel from hearing some guy I don’t know talk in an uplifting tone online.

Not directly related to the goings-on of an actual game, but it’s been on my mind. I hope we get some fun football out of the team next season, I can’t wait to be actually excited to watch their matches.

Oh yeah. I remember this. You learn lessons and then apply them to build a pinball system, at least in the sequel, creatively named The New Way Things Work. I spent years on all kinds of edutainment software made by these guys.

I genuinely believe that our generation got some kind of golden age for interactive educational stuff. DK/GSK were releasing banger after banger, I believe I’d still enjoy these as an adult! The virtual museums just speak to me, conceptually. I don’t know what similar stuff came after, but all the software I see young kids interacting with now is ad riddled digital nonsense sludge. Even the stuff that should be more than just entertainment.

All those old DK CDs should be available on the Internet Archive, by the way. Just need to finally get around to setting up a damn Windows XP VM and I’ll be looking through a lot of these with fresh adult eyes.

That said, isn’t that how leagues work in the US for most sports? The bottom teams are constantly given legs up to keep the winners cycling. That’s what the whole draft system is about, right? Full disclosure: I know close to nothing about US sports.

No disrespect to US sports fans or athletes but over there it seems more like the brand they care about is the league itself, as an entertainment product, compared to football teams in most of the world which are much more independent. Even just the name “franchise” says something.

Due to how haphazard it’s been with community growth, there’s always the possibility that another one will take off if spam or other issues start piling up here.

For now there’s a tiny amount of content at all, let alone spam.

Although I must admit, having the proper “Football” community instead of “Soccer” is nice.

Minus the sus stuff that used to show up when anyone googled “Reddit”.

Seriously, how were we ever okay with one of the site’s flagship communities revolving around perving on children. I even remember thinking it wasn’t that bad because “hey I’m not the one using that subreddit” but wtf

I do feel like that about Apollo. It’s crazy how different the Fediverse feels via a UI that copies Apollo pretty closely, I feel like I just dropped into a gaggle of tiny subs. Sure most features are missing, but the progress is so fast.

I still am pretty bummed about losing the old site. I’ve spent so long there. But I was hopping sites before and it’s now wrong to start doing that again. Complacency is how we get apps like Instagram, which are more ads than pictures of friends (which is all I want out of that platform)