Me and my family are all on Apple products since ~2014 (or even before). We never paid for iCloud. I opt in this year because (I) the 1st tier costs me 1€/month for 50Go and (II) it’s very convenient to get auto backup for the whole phone (except photos / videos, we are using a family plan with Google Drive for that).

But I admit that enabling iCloud by default and frequently showing a pop up because you are beyond the 5Go plan is pretty bad. But you can disable it at anytime, and there is no more pop up when you have done it.

I do not think they should be afraid of Analogue. It’s not like they release a new machine in 2 weeks. Also, they much prefer to sell 1 machine per console rather than an all-in-one machine.

Regardless of what they have, as a consumer, the SuperSega looks like a vaporware. It’s a very ambitious project and we have almost nothing that confirms they are able to build such machine.

Analogue is also very bad when communicating, but they have a good-enough track record (at least hardware-wise, software is usually bare-bones at launch).

It’s great news because it will now be available in other countries which ban F2P games with « gacha » mechanics. I think I will give it a try in December (but I have to get some info on it first, I like Animal Crossing games but I have no idea how good this mobile version is).

I tried to replace Twitter by Mastodon but, in the end, I just left Twitter and don’t use Mastodon at all. The main reason I think is because the « onboarding » is painful. I never succeeded to find interesting people to follow. I faced many ghost accounts from people posting once a month or stopped a few years ago.

If you don’t find people by yourself, no one is going to see your posts and so, you won’t be able to find new people to follow by posting.

I don’t like what Twitter became, but the base principle of the algorithm (before it became X with the paid subscriptions) was working great for me. I was constantly adding new people to the mix, and removing inactive ones every month.

If I struggled this much with Mastodon, I am not surprised many people create an account and leave a few days / weeks later.

I still remember the first time I played it. I was still living with my parents, and they left for a few days. I started the game in the evening, and couldn’t stop until I reach the end of it … in the morning. It’s very uncommon for me to do so (even at the time), but it was so … captivating. I could not stop and go to sleep 😅.

And then, they will blame the studio when the game fails :/. There is no point to force a studio specialized in single-player games to develop a multiplayer one. And using an existing IP for that is not very effective imo (it reminds me a lot when, during PS360 era, all single player games had an uninteresting multiplayer mode solely to justify the online membership, like Fable 2 or Mass Effect 3). It’s exactly like the last Crash game no one cared about.

It feels like they are buying lottery tickets, hoping a winning ticket will cover all their expenses.

Just to add some information, what’s innovative here is that they are likely using a traditional machine learning model (eg: neural networks) to identify the corners of the screen and infer the position the gun is aiming at from this.

Sinden is aiming to do the same thing, but using older techniques known as compute vision. It adds a white border around the screen and uses those CV algorithms to find this rectangle. It is not AI at all.

The reason Sinden is doing this is because it is much more easier this way (and so it is fast to compute, and very accurate).

Whatever AI they use, it will likely be either less accurate and/or be very slow (imagine situations with low ambient light and the screen turning black). I have seen a review in japanese from journalists who tried it, and the response time was not great (and the team wants to divide it by 2 before release, which will still be worse than Sinden).

Another possibility could be there is no AI at all, and they exploit specificities of Time Crisis. When you shoot, the screen goes white for 1 or 2 frames. You don’t need AI to spot this frame and do something very similar to Sinden without using any border.

At this point, it might be too late to move the « cursor » to the right location, but emulators nowadays are able to apply inputs in the past, and « replay » internally the last frames in the background so that you cancel the native input lag of some games (which can make them more responsive than games running on real hardware). They could use this option and it’s done. You have a system only working on games like Time Crisis with white frames while shooting, with no white borders nor machine learning model.

TLDR; if they use AI (=machine learning) as they claim, there will be no constraint like existing alternatives (sensors / white borders), but it will likely be less accurate / responsive. For Time Crisis specifically, it’s possible to come up with a solution without those constraints nowadays, so it’s possible they have no AI at all and use the term for marketing purposes.

At the beginning of this generation, I planned to buy a used PS5 when the Pro version was coming. I did not know that the PS5 would have almost no games for me (especially because they released the big ones for me on PC), the base PS5 would cost even more, and most people will not upgrade to the Pro because of its absurd pricing (note because it’s not worth it, but because the market for it is likely very niche).

I guess I will just skip Sony’s platform for this generation.

Listen to music when shopping or at work (especially if I am surrounded by noisy coworkers), speak out loud to myself when I am alone (I also do it to just think about anything, it’s much easier for me to sort my ideas and take decisions). Another thing I do when I feel sad is playing rhythm games, because it forces me to focus about what I am doing while listening to musics I enjoy (but I do not do it a lot now that I have a dog, I feel much better thanks to her <3).

I started with kbin but left it for lemmy + mastodon. It was not mature enough to handle so many users (which was unexpected by its own creator). Too many issues with bots, the instance itself, and the lack of mobile apps motivated me to move on. It’s sad because it’s creator seemed pretty invested into its project (and I loved the UI, and the ability to get both a Reddit-like and a Twitter-like experience).

I won’t repeat what others said, but another point is that some people are desperate at feeling “special” (or serve a narrative where you are not responsible for your failures). By accepting an incorrect self-diagnosis, you can start to mimic autistic traits (even unconsciously) to fit better the label you desperately want to wear.

I have to admit I was too happy and relieved when I started to suspect I was also autistic. It was somehow validating my whole life, and providing me a convenient explanation for all my failures and why I am alone nowadays. But after a while, I realized it was not as simple, and I could just be desperate at finding an external cause to this, rather than objectively trying to determine whether I truly am autistic.

In the end, I realized being autistic or not is not what should matter to me. It shouldn’t change who I am. Instead, it is giving me a direction to follow to improve myself, which is a great improvement compared to before. I can be wrong on my self-diagnosis, but the direction I follow is a good step forward whether I am autistic or not.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to be convinced of something that is not supported by a professional expertise. What if you are wrong?

However, there is no harm to find similarities with autistic people, and use their experience to improve yourself in some situations if their tricks to handle them also work for yourself.

I personally suspect I am autistic, but I won’t be convinced until it has been approved by a professional (if I ever feel the need to know for sure). Meanwhile, I like to read experiences from others and sometimes, they provide tips that really helped me. But the best thing I learned so far is that there is no problem to be different and do things your own way most of the time if it is much easier for you to handle this way.