"Come play with us..."

A Rugrats game in 2024. Certainly didn't have that on my bingo card.

While I largely agree with your point, as an Odysee user myself I know there is a visible amount of actual Neo-Nazi content there. That said, such channels are not difficult to block on the user end on the platform so you don't see them after the first time, there's not so much that it's a constant annoyance, and there is still plenty of worthwhile content on Odysee to watch, including various YouTubers who mirror their content to the platform. While the Neo-Nazi content is harder to find on Rumble, it's more politically focused and feels like it's more meant to be "right-wing YouTube" whereas you can actually find more of a variety of viewpoints on Odysee.

GNOME is more different from Windows, which means that users will have to put more effort in to get used to the UI, but it doesn't have as many complicated settings or customizability for EVERYTHING that Plasma does, so it can be less confusing in that sense. I switched to primarily using Plasma a couple years ago and I'm probably with Plasma to stay, but personally I think GNOME might be better for Linux beginners. Though if you really want a beginner-friendly DE, go for Cinnamon.

In addition to the perception that you have to be "good at computers" (aka a programmer) to use Linux, in my experience a lot of Linux media outlets (websites, YT channels, podcasts, etc) tend to be heavy on advanced features and tools without much explanation in layman's terms and tend to be geared towards an IT professional/hobbyist audience, which can reinforce that stereotype among those (like me) who are not.

IMO the title of "worst computer tech company" is essentially a tie between MS and Google right now, with the two constantly one-upping the other back and forth on stupid ideas and corporate practices.

+1 for Odysee here. Some give it a pass due to it being a haven for people whose content gets kicked off YouTube, but the same is true for just about any alternative out there, including many instances of PeerTube. With PeerTube you have greater control by being able to self-moderate and federate if you run your own instance, but that takes time, effort and resources you may not have. Odysee has a greater variety of viewpoints and video categories/topics on the front page than many other competitors such as Rumble, which is basically just right-wing YouTube (and IIRC that's what Rumble is meant to be) and it has a nice balance of enough content to find new stuff to watch every day and not being so overwhelmingly big that you'll get lost in the vast ocean of content. If you just want to find a place to upload videos, join a PeerTube instance that seems good to you or use Odysee.

Very few third-party games remain exclusive to one platform forever, so in those cases I'm usually content to just wait it out until the exclusivity deal is over then pick the game up on a platform I own. Sometimes the wait can be pretty long but I really don't have much of a sense of FOMO most of the time.

I think the Fediverse is an ideal platform on which to experiment with things like this. There will always be a difference here between those who want to see the Fediverse grow into a dominant platform and those who prefer things more quiet. Fortunately, the nature of it means that in this case we can actually have our cake and eat it too. Instances of Fediverse platforms such as Mastodon, Lemmy and PeerTube (likely the three that have potential to grow into a significant market share), especially the larger general audience ones, can attract and bring in the high profile users/accounts, such as brands, that can bring in a larger general audience that some current users are looking for, while those who want to keep away from that can move to smaller or more niche instances, or create their own, that can then defederate from the larger instances they don't want to interact with. People who like aspects of both types of environments can have accounts on multiple different instances, even if those accounts or instances can't interact with each other due to defederation. Seems like a win-win to me, and part of the beauty of the Fediverse. Don't like something where you are? It's easier than anywhere else to move to a different part of it and maintain a presence on the platform overall.

I dunno, when it comes to the "gamer moment" meltdowns over this game, I haven't seen them related to Miles, he seems to be pretty well-liked. I've mainly seen them over MJ's design. Not saying I agree, just saying what I've observed.

Probably not gonna happen this time, but I predict an announcement early next year for release within the year.

I like the more platformer style rogue-lites, a couple favorites that haven't been mentioned yet are 20XX (rogue-lite tribute/spiritual successor to Mega Man X) and Rogue Legacy (first rogue-lite I ever played, perhaps not as hard as others). For top-down ones I had a bit of fun with Wizard of Legend as well. Never have beaten a roguelike/-lite, but I've gotten a decent way into each of the above.