That’d be great if it was true but there have been rumors that development largely reset when they left. Guess we’ll have to wait until they release credits to know for sure.

the devs given any reason to doubt them

I agree that it’s super early for much speculation, but Dan Houser and a few other key players left Rockstar after RDR2. He and Michael Unsworth (who I think also left the studio with Dan) were two-thirds of the GTA 5 and RDR2 writing team. Without their involvement, I fear a scenario where the core single-player narrative has less gravitas, around which much of the detail and realism of the gameplay and game world has previously resolved, and the company leans more into the success of its GTA Online style gameplay.

I’m sure they can still be wildly successful with that formula, but it will be a huge disappointment for me personally.

I can’t disagree. But as one facet among others, I also think “concern” is reasonably warranted in conducting a comparative assessment.

Edit: also worth highlighting: “there’s nothing wrong with being against gay marriage because it’s a political opinion” is certifiably homophobic. How much responsibility Kagi’s moderators bear for not removing that comment or otherwise explicitly advising that homophobia won’t be tolerated is debatable, but it’s not great.

Seems fair, in reference to Kagi:

Unrelatedly: I’m concerned about the company’s biases, as it seems happy to use Brave’s commercial API (allowing blatant homophobia in the comments) and allow its results to recommend suicide methods without intervention. I reject the idea that avoiding an option that may seem politically biased is the same as being unbiased if such a decision has real political implications.

When we were trying to book a hotel, my partner clicked on the top link of a Google search, which was of course a sponsored link and took her to some completely off-brand intermediary whose website was designed to mimic the appearance of the hotel’s. She completed the booking there before ever realizing it wasn’t the hotel itself, and when I quoted the same stay directly with the hotel it wound up being some $100-$200 cheaper.

I had to have a lengthy phone call with their customer support and exchange a few emails before they finally agreed to refund us. I suppose we’re lucky they even had a reachable customer service, but I was and remain infuriated by the conditions that created the situation in the first place.

Now, with Republicans withholding critical lethal assistance, largely at the behest of former President Donald Trump, Ukrainian troops are feeling the pressure.

The amount of damage being done globally at the behest of Donald Trump’s personal ego is unconscionable.

Topic of tonight’s nightmare: “sex party with Matt Gaetz.”

Ghost archive link

Yeah, that’s fair, I did not have that context originally. I should have quoted the article I linked, because the salient parts point out that it was strange the graffiti evoked the Israeli flag, which I had noticed originally:

Also the message in the medium was confusing. Conceivably a blue Israeli flag, or what immediately evokes it, could be seen as a pro-Jewish sign. Surely any genuine antisemite would have found a clearer way of expressing their hate.

I’m inclined to agree with the BBC’s conclusion:

As for the purpose of Operation Star of David, like all dezinformatsiya it seems to have been to sow confusion and anxiety. The fact that the symbol could be either pro- or anti-Israeli made it all the more interesting: that way both sides would be suspicious.

I notice the Times of Israel doesn’t consider this months-old information when continuing to reference it as evidence of anti-semitism.

Marking buildings with Stars of David is how the Nazis marked Jewish homes and properties.

But that’s unlikely to be what happened here: BBC

All your sources rely on the same primary source: the interior ministry. And I don’t see a breakdown of the acts. In a number of articles, graffiti of stars of David across buildings in France was categorized as anti-Semitic, which seems really weird to me because they weren’t defaced or altered in any way, just stars of David. On its face I would think that was…pro-semitic.

Either way, I’m not denying there has been an uptick in anti-Semitism and that any and all anti-semitism is indefensible. But there also seems to be a deliberate effort to embellish the narrative by treating anti-Israeli or pro-Paletinian acts as anti-Semitic. Then people react to that narrative with fear, and their fear is used to further credit the narrative.

The insidious part is that these stories treat the narrative as support for Israel’s ongoing aggression.

I feel for anyone who feels unsafe in their homes and communities. I can’t imagine the weight of the decision to uproot yourself and your family to emigrate to another country for reasons beyond your control, especially discrimination.

It’s worth noting, though, that this article seemingly goes out of its way to obfuscate what qualifies as anti-semitic acts.

"This kind of expression is no longer coming only from the extreme right, but also by the far left — and while it’s doubtful that it’s always antisemitic, anyone sensitive can feel that it’s never far away in certain discourse,” warns Wieviorka.

Palestinian solidarity is not anti-semitism, and there are abundant indicators (from this article and its links) they’re being conflated in France.

No argument here. There’s a global paradigm shift needed to break out of that mindset should it even be possible, but it still boggles my mind in the meantime the resources invested in sustaining this ecosystem.

That came as a surprise to me too. 2.5% is just so little.

“Tracking protection” sounds more like “alternative tracking.”

Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative, just like its name implies, was designed to be an alternative to cookies that will allow advertisers to serve users ads while also protecting their privacy. It assigns users to groups according to their interests, based on their recent browsing activities, and advertisers can use that information to match them with relevant ads.

Lot of time, money, and effort toward a moderate improvement rather than just not perceiving users as products. But…improvement is improvement.

What’s the downside?

Me? Not at all. I actually posted this out of concern because, as I’ve said elsewhere, I’m a Firefox user, and my layman’s impression was that its reputation has been improving over the past couple years. I assumed its user base was doing the same as people grew increasingly concerned with Google’s intentions.

Apparently ZDnet has some reputational issues itself I was unaware of.

Boy that paints a grim picture.

I don’t think so. The article claims Firefox lost some of its lead developers to Google when it started developing Chrome and then took a long time to regain its footing around 2017. That sounds about right to my recollection. I had admittedly switched to Chrome myself for a while (I’m not terribly tech-savvy, maybe a little more than average) but switched back to Firefox last year. I am still pretty deeply embedded in the Google ecosystem though in other ways.

This is a very good example of the skewing I imagined. If you’re unable or prohibited from using Firefox on work devices (as many environments restrict), all that workday traffic will be coming from “approved” browsers.

Haha yeah, when I say I had a cell phone, I mean that I was essentially reachable at all times. I didn’t start using text messaging regularly until like…2009, and didn’t use it for anything else until I got my first Droid a few years later.

Fair point though, my response was very American-centric.