There's a PlayStation community I was subscribed to whose main mod posted a gamergatey rant over the weekend with a number of factual inaccuracies. I wanted desperately to assume they were just benignly uninformed, but it didn't turn out that way.

I'm not interested in subscribing to a community at risk of being affected by that kind of toxicity, so I had to leave. Which is a bummer because I liked having PS-specific news in my feed.

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

"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.

I thought I'd heard one defense that goes if it's theoretically possible to simulate an entire universe, which I understand it is, then it's just statistically waaaaaay more likely that we're in a simulated universe. There's only one real one (excepting multiverse stuff), and potentially infinite simulated ones.

I don't remember where I heard this though, and I am a self-admitted idiot, so it's extremely possible I'm extremely wrong.

I struggle to imagine how the House could actually get worse, but I also know unequivocally that it is going to get way, way worse.

For Facewatch’s Gordon, the argument against using the technology is weak. “Normal customers aren’t going to be tracked and traced. The idea that they are is complete rubbish."

In other words: Yes we have the means, but the idea we would abuse profitable data already available to us is absurd.

At least this is working as intended:

Supermarkets gripe that data protection laws are an obstacle. Walker says that GDPR laws have prevented managers at different Iceland stores from sharing photos of shoplifters across WhatsApp groups

Nonetheless...

Mask up.

This is such a absurd statement I'm inclined to agree about the trolling.

Maybe you love the characters, maybe you love the world, or maybe you love the character creator. That’s all well and good, but the fact of the matter is that all of those things—and a good many other aspects that Baldur’s Gate 3 has been praised for—are poor measurements of evaluating a game. If these subjectivities were the most important aspects of games, then we could say that chess or soccer are bad games. And I don’t think I need to explain how absurd that statement would be.

Vehicle missions and airdrops – endless dynamic events

I have never liked this in any game ever. Just map and notification bloat.

I think I read Wagner forces number about 25,000? Can anyone contextualize how big a headache this will be for Russia?

The creator didn't even hide that they were use generated. The screenshots in the article show that the people in an uproar commenting on a shared post clearly labeled from "AI Art University." The complete lack of scrutiny with which some people approach things online is startling.