I love that idea. Props to your teachers for running with it.

I mean, generally I agree, but what gives me pause here is that Graber is basically moving into a focus on federation full-time. A leadership change like this would be a perfect moment to pivot away from atproto and into a more walled garden, but Graber isn’t even leaving the company.

This could just be theatrics, but it’s at least interesting that they aren’t taking this opportunity to close it all off when they absolutely could.

I would like to read that paper.

Hey, fyi, this is called spam, and it invariably backfires every time.

You must adhere to my religion or you will no longer be working for this company.

That has been audited by third parties around the world. I detest Apple’s business practices, and even I know this ain’t it chief.

No, this is different. They’re not saying “we’re allowed to,” they’re saying “we didn’t do it”:

In no circumstance did the test affect the standard functionality of the device nor did it limit access to its main features. The users could and can continue to normally use all HDMI inputs, external devices, consoles, subscription streaming apps, or standard broadcasts without any type of interruption or obligation to watch advertisements.

Which is totally believable. /s

I fundamentally disagree with both your premise and your example’s conclusion. I’m not saying that it can be justified, though; just that it must be contextualized differently. To wit: it would be right for you to criticize them even if you are being hypocritical. You have far fewer resources to dispose of that oil. Your business model is not predicated upon handling oil well. You are not enriching yourself at the cost of others. And yes, there may be others doing it as well, but the combined impact of every individual doing it is almost certainly a tiny fraction of the company doing it.

It’s not really beside the point, from most reasonable perspectives. A multi-billion-dollar company enriching itself on the backs of starving authors so that it can go on enriching itself on the backs of its users is significantly different from a small number of comparatively destitute individuals stealing some temporary enjoyment for themselves. They are both wrong, but the discussion is utterly useless if you don’t talk about the harm involved and who benefits.

There’s a pretty big difference in scale, and the perpetrator, and whether or not they’re benefiting monetarily, and much more.

Games already have this. There’s almost always a difficulty setting, and one of those settings in newer games is often “story only.” You make decisions, but your character executes the fast-twitch stuff itself.

Solid choice.

To be clear, I do think they should make noise, yes please. Totally agreed. When they’re moving slowly enough that people can get out of the way (and the tire noise is a little less significant), they should be making an artificial sound.

Also, Space Invaders sounds would be an amazing choice; along the same lines, the Pac-Man “wakka-wakka-wakka” would be awesome, especially if you have a yellow car. Come to think of it, the Fozzie Bear “wokka wokka!” would be hilarious, too.

I just think allowing people to choose a sound that’s automatically blasted at loud volume from their car at any given time is something we’ve already had a lot of experience with, given that stereo systems have been standard on cars for decades now; and we can be certain that people can’t be trusted with it–especially when they themselves can’t hear it. There are absolutely people who will use that power to broadcast ads, or their own recorded voice shouting obscenities, or a high-pitched screech sound that harms people’s hearing.

Or, even worse, they’ll change the sound to silence or something super quiet. Maybe to be malicious, but probably more so just because they find it annoying in some niche situation (like in their garage or whatever).

Allowing people to choose from a certain subset of options, or having some sort of onboard algorithm try to detect whether the sound is an appropriate volume (and replacing it with a substitute if needed) might be a good compromise.

I want to be able to choose my own noise (being fully aware why that is a bad idea more broadly). Can you imagine driving through the grocery store parking lot making a TIE fighter sound?

Chesterton’s Fence, but for workflows you don’t understand.

Officially and under the hood it’s still 1.26, actually. At least on Bedrock.

I want to hear so many more of these stories.

If there ever is a “Minecraft 2.0,” they would absolutely continue developing Minecraft 1.xx in parallel.

Honestly, props to them. They could make a huge amount of money by just moving over to a 2.0 and forcing a billion people around the world to buy the new version (and you know those people would buy it), but they aren’t doing that.

Can you immediately tell? Do you memorize the last day you released? Do you release daily? There’s definitely some benefit to making the version equal to the date, but you lose all the other benefits of semver (categorizing the scope of the release being the big one). That’s not a strange philosophy, it’s just being a good api provider.

First Dev: “Oof. Uh…hm. Ok. So…no, give me a second, I’m thinking…So, the player character already has an attribute for a familiar that we’re not using, since we removed familiars from the game. We could use that as a scarf, I think. One of the options was a tiger that walked next to the character, we could translate that up and around to the neck. Animation would be tough…could we come up with some reason why the scarf sticks to his shirt? …no? How about a reason why it’s always fluttering behind him? …ok. So yeah, that should work…I think. We’re a month out from code freeze, so we won’t be able to do much with it other than put it in.”

After launch

Project Manager: “Hey, people on Twitch have discovered that some of the player’s clothes disappear randomly if you lose to the lich in level six…?”

Second Dev: “Weird. I’ll take a look…”

Second Dev, in Slack: “Hey, does anyone know why all of the neck-slot customization items are coded as cats? Turns out the Dog Lich still deletes cat familiars if you lose to it.”