From DuckDuckGo:
For what it’s worth, I subscribed to Ultra about an hour ago and DDG hasn’t picked up any additional tracking attempts since then. I think it may be limited entirely to Google’s ad service for the free, ad-supported tier and maybe crash diagnostics that the app gives you the option of enabling or disabling.
2/3 of my registered instances are having issues it seems.
It’s been an hour since this comment but just in case anyone else has the same, canceling and restarting allowed it to start downloading. For some reason the automatic attempt just hung on my device.
Facebook/Instagram (Meta) is one I am not sure how to get a read on. They are branching out a lot, but I have no idea what they’re doing to remain profitable. It seems like they’re in “Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” mode, hoping that they find a new niche before their sizable warchest from the 2010’s runs dry.
They severely downsized once this year already and I have a feeling that won’t be the end of the story. Wouldn’t surprise me if they sell off/shut down Oculus in the near future.
Tiktok, meanwhile…well it’s already undergoing enshittification (it is the subject of that original essay) and old people are starting to use it, so I feel like it’s only a matter of time before it’s no longer cool with kids and they lose a sizable chunk of their revenue stream and content.
Just to add onto this good answer, you are really only expected to tip for sit-down restaurants with service and bars.
For takeout, cafes, fast food, etc., you don’t need to tip. A lot of places these have payment machines that just ask if you want to tip by default. You can safely hit “No tip” on these if you don’t want to.
Ostensibly it’s just to replace the tip jar for those who don’t use cash, but the prompt appearing every time you pay by card has convinced a lot of people that tipping is what you’re supposed to do in those situations, when in reality you have no obligation to.
Baseless speculation here, but my gut tells me that Microsoft is going to put a remaster-focused studio to task on a current-gen Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim triple pack, a la the Master Chief Collection, to tide people over.
Remastering Skyrim is the easy way out, but Oblivion is still trapped on the 360 (if you don’t have a PC) and Morrowind is the darling title of the franchise that people would love to see remastered (and was recently used as an example by Nvidia on “how to remaster a game”). Remaster the earlier two and then just shove the Xbox One copy of Skyrim Anniversary Edition in there for funsies is something people would get behind, more than just another port of Skyrim alone.
Consoles are by far the best bang for your buck right now in terms of performance vs cost. A decent GPU alone today costs as much as a PS5/Series X. Unless you need a powerful desktop for other purposes, it’s cheaper to buy a console and a decent laptop separately than it is to build a gaming PC.
I’m assuming by that point, you wouldn’t have people driving anymore, it would all be automatic. Likely hooked into some sort of flight control system that would allow the vehicles to navigate around each other and avoid collisions.
Plus, look at it this way. Accidents are common now because roads restrict cars into shared paths of travel, requiring drivers to successfully avoid colliding with other people moving very close to them. If you are able to fly, you’d be able to beeline from point A to point B, distributing vehicles across a much broader area of travel. Plus, the added vertical axis means you won’t even necessarily collide if your vehicle can just move up or down around potential midair obstacles.
Still a lot of pasta, which predates the Columbian exchange. But probably a lot more focus on herbal seasonings, cheese/dairy, oils, etc. Carbonara probably still popular. A lot more pesto on average.
Pizza would be white pizza with toppings, maybe with a pesto base. Fish, meat dishes, and European vegetable dishes probably still mostly untouched.
You’re really just missing tomato sauces and gnocchi with the lack of the Columbian exchange, and tomato is essentially optional in many Italian dishes anyways. Surprisingly not as big a change as I would have thought.
I think maybe in North America we associate tomatoes more strongly with Italian food because it was more readily available for Italian-American immigrants than it was back in Italy.
That essay was honestly a work of art, and I have a feeling it’s going to remain relevant for a while. I’d love to probe Cory for additional perspectives.
FYI: This is mainly going to be a rebalance/bugfix patch. Expect both PvE rebalances now that the dust has settled on the Savage race and PvP rebalances as followup for all of the Frontlines adjustments.
The following content will not be coming until 6.45 sometime in late July/early August:
Blue Mage Update
Mount Rokkon (Variant and Criterion Dungeon)
New Hildibrand Quests
Next Relic Weapon Stage
Next Crafting/Gathering Relic Stage
The island sanctuary bug fix concerning the Workshop Board that was originally slated to come with 6.41 ended up arriving earlier as a hotfix, but there may be other fixes included in this patch that were not mentioned as part of the original 6.4 patch notes.
Give me the outcome of The Good Place as well where you can choose oblivion after there’s nothing left to do.
San Junipero was one of the few “happy” episodes of Black Mirror but it didn’t ask the question of “where are we in 10,000 years?” like The Good Place considered.