I joined Google Plus with a group of a couple dozen friends from a long-time online community, and many of us loved it! As i recall the biggest issue at launch was that you couldn’t push a pay to a circle and still leave it discoverable on your timeline, without pushing it to everyone. That kinda made it more insular than it should’ve been. Slowly we all stopped because no one else (family, friends,) was joining.

Imagine investing in another company being led by Elon Musk these days.

If I’m not mistaken it was in 2020-2021, when Tesla stock prices when going gangbusters, Musk was saying it was overvalued. Given constant Cybertruck updates/recalls, general Tesla safety concerns, Ford and Rivian apparently doing well in trucks, and Mercedes apparently having the best self driving, all happening since then, I’m not sure why it should be valued exceptionally high. They had a good name in EV cars, now they have scary stories.

And that’s not even getting into politics and dropping sales, so, I’m not surprised the stock is trending down

I know I’m old. I see things like this and always think of leaving Digg because they didn’t want us to share a way to pirate Blu Rays and HD-DVDs, which none of us would ever use.

You’re closer to a “gamedev” than me, then. You’re an actual “dev” of some type! That said, I’m still trying to find the character of /c/gamedev, so feel free to toss in things you want to see there.

Hey, I’m just a hobbyist. (I’ve tooled around with the programming and made a few things I never released, but I work in journalism, and not games journalism!) If there’s a community you want to help, the best thing you can do is comment, upvote, and when possible, make a post. And if you want to RUN one, trying is better than just letting things not exist. If people don’t like it, they can downvote your posts. That’s fine too.

To anyone else out there thinking about this? Do it. I took over /c/gamedev a couple of months back. Not because I dislike anytging about r/gamedev, but because I want more than one place for that kind of thing on the Internet, and am beginning less of a fan of reddit itself.

(And yes, it’s slow going, especially with the holidays and job hunting. But I’m okay with that.)

It’s basically video all over again.

Wasn’t adding engagement numbers to each tweet one of the first things he added? I remember thinking “who the fuck wants to see that?” But I guess to people like him that was important at the time? Huh.

While I’m reluctant to call anything a magnum opus… You’re bang on about the difference between those two and SWFG.

That’s what led me to this. I quit Audible a few months back, planning to just buy more media outright. But they offered me a “come back and pay $0.99 for the first three months!” and I’m not really saying “no” to basically giving them Amazon’s money. (Though for the holidays they’ve apparently upped the offer to that plus a $20 credit.) So I thought this would be a good general question as I look for more ways to support creators directly, after taking their money runs out.

Good mention of Libby, too. A coworker recommended that to me, so I’ve got it now as well. Sadly my local selection isn’t great for audiobooks. But it does make me want to get an ereader more.

Bandcamp looks to be a good way to buy music though, as someone mentioned. But I can’t find any good way to buy digital copies of movies/TV. It’s all pretty platform locked, it seems.

I love the question! I rarely listen to songs or playlists, and almost never algorithm based streams. Instead I put on albums I like. Even in my 10m-15m drive to work, and do that until I’m tired on an album. So, love the question.

Aesop Rock’s Integrated Tech Solutions. Being a long time fan I thought The Impossible Kid was fantastic. TIK was as creative and ponderous as anything he’d done, but often felt more accessible and personally inviting. While accessibility is not something you generally look for with Aesop, that feeling of being personal really made it pay off. Spirit World Field Guide was good and was interesting, but didn’t work for me as much. Maybe it was a case of enjoying TIK so much, and comparison being the thief of joy? But ITS absolutely feels top notch again. Love it.

Also worth mentioning is Powerman 5000. A year or so ago (while on a kick to my youth) I found out they were still making music and had released an album (The Noble Rot) in 2020. Shortly after I discovered that, they released one in 2024 (Abandon Ship.) They’re not great songs, but they’re all great vibes. The songs feel like they 3/4s to being great to me. Like they kept the dial at a 7 or 8 instead of turning it up to 11. And even when they did turn it up, it was only at the very end. Maybe he’s going for something different, or maybe I’ve changed, but the strength feels off. But damn the vibes are still there.

I’ve often wondered if it was an age or even time thing. I’m 44 and I noticed at some point years ago I was getting more reluctant to click buttons and try to figure things out on my own. That’s how I learned everything as a kid and became the typical family IT guy. I had to relearn that curiosity and the willingness to learn things in that fashion, which I think shrank just from disuse. I’m not in IT, but I’ve seen that reluctance grow in other people too.

I wonder if rising to certain levels (or just gaining support staff to help with things) contributes to not doing small things. Then that can lead to an increased reluctance to do other small things. (Just out of no longer feeling comfortable with them.) I hadn’t thought about it, but it makes sense to me.

Anyone knowledgeable about city planning? Why did we never put some type of signal in our roads? (I don’t know. Passive RFID every few feet?) It would only cost what, ten, twenty thousand on top of each million spent paving every mile?

Seems it would be better baseline navigation than self driving cars and occasionally map apps. The cars would still have to do obstacle avoidance, of course.

I’m not particularly knowledgeable about self driving tech or city planning. But if interstates are replaced every 10 years, and highways every 20, and Musk first made these claims in 2013? Then we’d have the base tech for every auto manufacturer to do moderately reliable self driving on interstates and a lot of our highways already.

Or maybe that large view pathfinding is the relatively easy part? That’s why I’m asking. I’m sure there’s something more obvious from an informed viewpoint that I don’t know.