Khrux

@Khrux@ttrpg.network

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Death to Spotify’: the DIY movement to get artists and fans to quit the music app⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t picture a service which beats Spotify in what they offer which isn’t just the same business model but more ethical.

  Discovering music for free is an enormous benefit, and the fact that Spotify has practically all mainstream music is nice. People often cite that one quote by Gabe Newell that is “Piracy is not an economic problem. It is a service problem”, as a highlight for steam, but largely Spotify offers what consumers want in a way Netflix or Audible can’t. They have everything you want and guide your discovery in even more, and as long as their encroaching enshittification doesn’t undercut this service, they will continue to underpay artists and fund immoral activities.

  The developer of Ultrakill, Hakita, said something which I’ve often thought about. “You should support indies if you can, but culture shouldn’t exist only for those who can afford it. ULTRAKILL wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t had easy access to movies, music and games growing up. If you don’t have money, you can support via word of mouth”. There are plenty of independent things I financially support, particularly things I attend in person in the city I live in. I may spend £100 per month paying for art and entertainment all said and done, and when that’s spent, I will pirate everything else.

  I split a Spotify family plan between 6 friends, I think that’s about £3.50 per month, and I pay for no other media services. With video, I run a jellyfin server with a “parent friendly” interface, so they can have “netflix with everything”, which I have at my place too. I don’t read that much any more, if it’s physical I just go to the library and if it’s an audiobook I’ll just pirate it. The benefit here is that even if I’m on a reading binge, that’s not even a book a week. With Spotify, I often pick something and play it via song radio, which is probably 50/50 music I know and new music. Sometimes I just stick albums on, but it’s not like that’s harder. If I had a locally hosted music repository that I’d “paid for”, I could enjoy albums, but not as easily have a radio like discovery experience.

  One day, a pirate tool may appear that rivals Spotify, but until that day, I can’t see myself moving away from it.

  Go to your local live music, drag shows, theatres, independent cinemas and libraries. Don’t feel obligated to pay for any internet service.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GEEKDeck Is A SteamDeck For Your Living Room⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Microsoft has absolutely been preparing for the end of traditional consoles more or less since the flop of the Xbox One. Their entire push a few years back to make “Everything Xbox” was a bit mistimed and disloyal to their console war cultists but they’re right that it’s the natural end point.

  I think we’ll probably see streaming games from their servers reoccur in popularity pretty soon, as much as I’m not a fan of it, because it’s the total end point for non tech savvy consumers, they just pay a subscription, get a controller which can connect to the TV or phone and download an app, no hardware required. Meanwhile every consumer who is resisting the death of tech literacy (everyone else), is going in this direction. The physical console will reduce in popularity year by year as it fills a niche that nobody needs anymore.

  That being said, the popularity of the switch and steam deck interests me, because it’s a third direction away from traditional consoles that I’d not have predicted.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spotify says it's fixing the bug that caused Premium users to hear ads⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Someone in my work had this happen to them, but it was the “sick of ads? Pay for premium” advent.

  It could still be part of a deliberate action but that must be the worst advert to try to sneak ads in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Alec Baldwin indicted for involuntary manslaughter in fatal gunfire on film set⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  If you follow every procedure you believe you’re supposed to be as part of your job, doing something you’ve probably done before and is standard in your industry, but someone else has done something that they shouldn’t have that made that action deadly, you literally have no accountability.

  The armourer illegally left that gun loaded, nobody else is to blame. It’s like arresting the waiter at a restaurant for serving food that was improperly missing a nut allergy when the chef made that mistake.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GTA 6 is likely to skip PC again and only launching on current gen consoles⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  With GTAV, the original release was 2013, the next gen was 2014 and PC 2015 so I forsee it being the same and being even later.

  The upside was that the PC port was really good at release and I’m pretty indifferent to if I pick this game up in 2030 when it’s actually a good value on PC.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Star Citizen Just Had its Biggest Crowdfunding Day Ever With $3.5 Million in 24 Hours⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I paid for star citizen a decade ago and honestly enjoyed it enough for about 2 days. It always felt exciting to see how ahead they were of early Xbox 1 / PS4 games in their scope with volumetric effects etc.

  The trouble is, 90% of their innovative content has been long overtook by general game progression, they’re making a game that could have probably launched with the PS5 and been innovative and are already falling behind there. I genuinely believe that they were Innovating their game slowly over time and there were amazing things in the works, but they missed the moment that it was exciting and new by so many years.