My guess as to the “why” is that it’s just another example of enshittification. Podcasts were essentially a bubble that everyone was trying to get in on, but the amount of low quality (not just production but also content) flooding the market devalued it significantly and listeners and subscriptions began declining. Everyone is trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of it now, which means there are even more ads on top of all the ads and cross-promotion that come baked into an episode.

Cycling infrastructure development in Adelaide and SA always seems to be based around tourism and leisure. Like if you want to do a family day trip, or you’re here on a cycling holiday or just want to spend your day somewhere there are quite a few good cycling paths that all connect up with minimal need to cross or ride on roads. But the daily cycling infrastructure is absolutely terrible. Most “bike lanes” on suburban roads are narrow, damaged and filled with rubbish and many motorists do not respect them at all. Thankfully we are allowed to ride on the footpaths so that reduces the danger somewhat but it’s also pretty inconvenient since footpaths are even less consistent in terms of terrain.

She can be pretty tough to deal with but I do think at the lower levels a lot of players just feed her due to their bad positioning/game awareness. I play a lot of Vindicta myself and most of my kills, particularly earlier in the game, come from picking off players who over-extend or aren’t paying attention to the mini-map. I had a match the other day where the enemy Vindicta ended up with 28 kills and an insane souls lead because 3 players on my team were repeatedly going deep on their lanes despite a souls deficit. I don’t think I died to her once and the rest of their team was beatable, but these guys on my team fed so hard that the Vindicta became a nightmare to deal with late in the game.

The biggest thing I miss about SMNC was the “sports on TV” theme.

Have you played The Finals? That has a very similar theme. There was another FPS game in development called Combat Champions that also trying to do this but it was cancelled before ever making it to release.

This is a pretty clickbaity counter-article that doesn’t review the original in good faith. The New Yorker article is not titled ‘Social Media Is Killing Kids’ but rather ‘Has Social Media Fuelled A Teen-Suicide Crisis?’ with a lead of:

Mental-health struggles have risen sharply among young Americans, and parents and lawmakers alike are scrutinizing life online for answers.

So the implication that the premise of the article is to demonise social media is completely wrong, since it’s actually an investigation into the issue. That’s also the reason it’s long (another strange complaint from a guy whose 3000+ word response is only ever his opinions).

The “moral panic tropes” are testimony from real parents whose real children killed themselves. And these real parents think social media was responsible. It strikes me as pretty low to hand wave away the grief of these real people because it inconveniently feeds into a narrative you have some instinctual problem with.

The author tries to frame the balance of the New Yorker article as some kind of gotcha. Like it’s somehow a bad thing that this other writer took the time to consult with and quote experts who provide a different opinion. Personally I would much rather read that then something like this which was basically the equivalent of a reddit eXpOsEd thread.

Well it is still a very new game so I think the fact that there are so many noobs and non-MOBA players is helping with that. But yeah, there are a lot of quality of life improvements and enjoyable mechanics front loaded into the experience so it doesn’t have that usual MOBA barrier of boring/wildly inefficient gameplay for beginners. You don’t need to have a lot of learning or in-game experience to have fun and feel like you know what is happening in a match.

The game wasn’t on my radar either. I only played it because some of my old PlanetSide 2 outfit mates were running a 6v6 training night and invited me to join. They assured me I’d be fine because of my ability as an FPS player but they completely underestimated how little I knew about MOBAs (I didn’t even know this game was a MOBA, I have basically never played the genre previously because I find it so uninteresting).

I got absolutely destroyed and thought about uninstalling but decided to give it another week of play by myself and put some time into learning the basics. I’m really glad I did, it has been unexpectedly enjoyable and something really different. I am a large scale shooter (PlanetSide, Battlefield, etc) player primarily and the state of that sub-genre is absolutely dire, so it has been so revitalising to actually find something fun which also feels like it has a future.

So I think it’s possible he’s using the opportunity of legal action to generate publicity for the issue.

Yes I did actually think this as well, interesting way to keep it in the news cycle. This story had pretty much died off until now.

None of these games had as many shooter elements as Deadlock. Like the maps were all just generic wide open MOBA lanes seen from a third person angle, whereas Deadlock’s map has tons of cover so the positioning skills you learn as an FPS player can actually translate, particularly in the laning phase. Movement is also way more shooter-reminiscent, in that every character has stamina and universal movement mechanics with a high skill ceiling. A lot of these other third person MOBAs only had movement mechanics built into the hero, at all other times it was fairly basic. The reason why FPS players like myself ignored all those other games is because they were just MOBAs with a different camera angle. Mechanically they were still boring as fuck to play, whereas Deadlock actually has very fun shooter mechanics that are the hook that can get players like myself in and learning all the “boring” but very important MOBA parts.

EDIT: Not arguing with you by the way, just piggybacking off your comment to further explain why this game is different to everything else that came before it.

It was only political in the sense that Israel/Palestine is a political issue and referencing it at all is often labelled a “political” act. I’ve read the actual transcript of the speech and it was just stating statistics related to the theme of the piece. I am a little surprised he is suing though, he sounded more bemused than upset at the time and I thought it would be something they’d just put behind them after the backflip and investigation from the MSO.

This is not a leak, it is just a prediction from some random based on their weird analysis of the market. Pure clickbait.

Yes, my grandmother has middle stage Alzheimer’s. She was diagnosed a few years ago after a few years of what I guess were early stage symptoms (though I didn’t recognise them as such at the time). It is very challenging for my grandfather, who has been married to her for over 65 years at this point. He has his own issues physically and is also quite forgetful, so attempting to care for her 24/7 is a massive weight. The whole family has been helping out, some are doing the cleaning, some are taking them out for activities, my partner and I cook and deliver some of their meals. They receive some government assistance as well but I don’t handle any of that so I’m not sure how extensive it is currently.

It is very surreal to see her in this state because she was always extremely chatty and would call the younger ones into the kitchen for the weekly dinners she would host so she could talk our ears off with some educational lesson about cooking or something. She would routinely have 1+ hour phone calls with members of the family and it was genuinely difficult to exit a conversation with her because she could just talk endlessly without ever getting bored. I used to find that annoying but now it’s just sad to think about, she can’t hold an extended conversation with anyone and it feels like so much of her personality has disappeared so quickly. She usually seems okay whenever I see her and we can have some short conversations and show each other love but some of the stories from my mum (who spends a lot more time with her) are disturbing.

I’m sorry if that was a grim read but I just thought I’d share anyway, so you know there’s someone else here experiencing something similar. I don’t have any advice or anything but I’m happy to chat about it if you ever feel like sharing more.

BAE is moving in with me, what a big milestone! 😍

So yes the Motorola synthetic back is definitely more durable than glass.

I was thinking more in terms of durability relating to general wear and age rather than short-term drops, scratches, etc. I’ve seen some images of people claiming their Motorola back wore out within months (could be a problem on their end, mine is fine after a year) and we all remember those older plastic devices with the soft touch finish that “melts” after a few years.

I have a Sony Xperia XZ1 and the aluminium finish on that is so good. Definitely my nicest feeling phone, though it is still slippery of course. In terms of modern phones I like the textured backs Motorola has been using. Not sure about their long-term durability but they are very grippy and comfortable.

Part of it (at least historically) was also related to wireless charging and reception.

I just gave up and bought a new (secondhand) phone at the beginning of this year. I returned one of my older phones (Galaxy Note 9) to stock as a backup but I’m not even sure if that will work now because it’s a grey import (even though it has working VoLTE currently and supports all Australian network bands). It’s a bit sad that I have this little collection of otherwise great older phones that still receive updates to their custom ROMs but will now be useless as phones.

In fairness it is a poorly written and confusing article (the guy is not a writer by profession, just a telecommunications expert trying to draw attention to the 3G shutdown). I shared the video just in case people had a hard time understanding the main takeaways, since Hugh Jeffreys did a good job summarising them.

It sounds like they are over-complying in response to recent legislation:

This is due to an update to the ‘Emergency Call Service Determination’ (ECSD), in the explanatory statement it says:

“Subsection 6(2) directs ACMA to include requirements for providers to identify mobile phones unable to access Triple Zero, notify the user, provide assistance if necessary to access an alternative mobile phone, and cease providing service to the affected device. Providers will also be required to not provide service to a prospective customer seeking service with an affected mobile phone. This requirement makes clear the responsibility providers have to ensure mobile networks provide access to the emergency call service.” […] “The amendments to the Determination to be made under section 6(2) are to be determined and commence in full by 1 November 2024.”

The author of the article claims AMTA is not a reliable indicator of VoLTE compatibility:

Additionally Tools like the ‘AMTA 3G Lookup Service’ are not accurate or reliable. AMTA knows this, hence why you need to agree to a long list of terms & conditions before using it.

This new ACMA policy is deeply disturbing because many consumers, including myself, own fully functional devices that can make VoLTE calls and emergency calls, yet are deemed “incompatible” by the telcos.

These are devices with the exact same hardware and software as ‘officially supported’ devices, the only difference is the telcos didn’t sell them.