It depends on the game, character etc. I mean I suppose it adds to the escapism slightly?

I play all sorts of different games though, some where you’re not given the choice (Life Is Strange for example) and I don’t feel like it’s that big a deal

It’s the b-plot from what I recall, it’s not the main focus of the episode.

It was written long before his TERF days and so it’s not exactly hateful, just ignorant and it’s comparable to a lot of other ways comedy treated trans characters from the era - The League Of Gentleman was much, much worse than the IT Crowd imo, and that was a recurring character in every episode.

It’s rather the issue that while Matt Berry has distanced himself from the episode Linehan actually still defends it as pro-trans.

Obviously - I guess I’m more surprised at The Register in that case. They’re a very savvy industry magazine. Presumably they get a hefty wad.

Thanks for this - this is something that has passed me by. So essentially plagarising another website’s content for traffic plus the usual Google shenanigans? Nice

Thanks for the info - was not aware of this before. Yet more wonderful business practices from the world of big tech…

Sorry for that, but I don’t actually understand what you mean…

EDIT OK I’ve googled it and it seems to be a page that is sponsored by Google but I use Firefox and it worked fine with that - so is the problem that it doesn’t work with certain browsers?

I’ve only slipped over in my current pair once in 4 years or so - but I’m in the UK so winter boots for me are more about warmth and rain resistance than snow!

I’ve always had Doc Martens boots for casual wear in the winter. They’re really comfortable as long as you break them in by wearing them around the house for half an hour a day for a week or two before going outdoors with them.

Getting cushioned insoles might help?

I mean this isn’t miles away from what the writer’s strike is about. Certainly I think the technology is great but after the last round of tech companies turning out to be fuckwits (Facebook, Google etc) it’s only natural that people are going to want to make sure this stuff is properly regulated and run fairly (not at the expense of human creatives).

Still use Google search, but switched out Chrome for Firefox recently and it’s working out well. I do still use their calendar, docs apps but I’ve never been a big one for YouTube. I do have some Google speakers though and use Maps all the time - so I guess out of big tech Google is the one I’m suckered into the most…

Stopped using Facebook around 2016 and deleted my Twitter account a few years before that, basically when the novelty had long gone and it all seemed to be more toxic.

In the UK around that time it was just everyone going on about Brexit on Facebook but even before then people weren’t sharing stuff about themselves (with good reason) so it was just low effort memes). Use Facebook once in a blue moon to get in touch with really old friends

Didn’t miss either, although I recently signed up to Mastodon more just to see how the fediverse worked over there.

Then Reddit - probably the social media I was most invested in just because it was so granular in it’s There’s A Sub For That ability to cater for virtually all interests. But the utter disdain they held for their own volunteers and the contempt they seem to hold virtually everyone in was a bit of a wake up call. I do go back and check on it but I’m finding that I check on it less. Fedi has less content so I am reading all those eBooks I should have been reading instead!

My son is 7, I’m interested in how things are looking in 5 year’s time when he’s an early teen. He’s already got bored of watching YouTube videos, tiktok isn’t really a thing with us or anyone we know yet… time will tell I suppose. The main thing will be constant reminders that porn isn’t real and cyber security lectures

What you stand to when I tell you to soldier, if you’ve quite finished asking questions!

No sorry, this is an extremely trivial thing to send death threats over. The PR for this achieves the impossible and gains sympathy for Unity

What if they realised they’d made a very stupid decision and if there’d been some more checks and balances that decision could have been avoided?

The Third Reich, I think we can all agree was totalitarian. Hitler wanted to plunge into a war on two fronts against the USSR drunk on victory against France and expecting to beat Britain. Most of his military advisors weren’t keen. But being a Dictator he could just do it and hey presto war against Stalin. As time went on he got more erratic, made more random millitary decisions overruling his generals and made a pigs ear of things but whatever decision he made on a whim happened straight away anyway.

That’s just a famous and obvious example of a totalitarian leader rushing into things and getting where he wanted to go faster which didn’t end well for the leader.

I use dark mode late at night, especially using amoled screens under artificial lights or with all the lights off in bed. I don’t like using it when I’m outside, it seems off somehow.

Breakfast has always been my least important meal of the day… I’d rather have an extra 10 minutes in bed.

I use Surfshark but I expect most of the quality ones offer something similar. Nord and Express often get mentioned as the best VPNs but Surfshark as the best cheap VPN - I’m impressed with it, would recommend. You can even use Chrome on Android and most sites seem like normal, though I’ve switched to Firefox anyway

(If you are thinking of using a VPN just don’t use a free one because they’re probably dodgy)

I use a VPN which has an excellent ad & bs blocker. But occasionally some sites need me to turn it off to pay for things or whatever and I forget to turn it back on and end up browsing the internet in its normal state.

And wow… welcome to commerce central. It’s not that all the ads are obnoxious though some are, but the quantity of them is out of control on some websites.

To be fair, I’ve found it’s a good rule of thumb that the quality of a website is usually proportionate to the less amount of ads they have.

I also reviewed mobile games for a while and had to play without a VPN to get the same experience most players would get - game ads are the worst. Unrepresentative of the games they’re trying to sell, but also often sexist (veering towards misogynistic), obnoxious and with false endings.

The Precession To Calvery was hilarious from beginning to end.

You beat me to it because this game is genius!

Someone else mentioned Procession to Calvary - an adventure game set in a cut and paste world of renaissance art with a very surreal plot and sense of humour. Pythonesque.

There Is No Game is pretty hilarious, the voice acting always makes me crack up.

Agatha Knife is a funny point and click adventure game where you’re a 7 year old girl who’s a butcher and needs to set up her own religion sacrificing pigs in the basement for… Reasons.

Yeah I’m a man but I have a wife and quite a few friends with medium to large chest extensions and I do not envy them - the inconvenience looks like a right pain in the hole. I find running for a bus bad enough in the morning without having to worry about things getting out of control up there. Unless you’re planning on being stationary a lot (basically not doing day to day activities) you’re going to need support for those things.

My wife keeps trying to arrange a free bra fitting at M&S but it seems like that’s a high demand service…