I will never forgive them buying the rights to Utopia (UK) - probably the greatest show ever made - and remaking it into absolute shit. Just thinking about it makes my blood boil. Fuck Amazon (even if The Expanse was pretty good)

For me the most classic one is Civ III by a mile. 4 was way too modern/ flashy for me and 2 too old school. But maybe I was just born at the right time for 3.

You can turn off a lot of the Civ 4 flash and it will feel more like Civ III.

But to each his own. Civ 4 was the first one that really, really hooked me.

For me it was Civ 4's modability that made it the best for me. Because when I got tired of playing Civ 4's normal game, I could install the Fall From Heaven mod and play a completely different game. Wizards, golems, angels, demons, spells, wild animals instead of barbarians (which could be tamed and turned into your own units if you had units with the right promotions)... it made for a completely different gameplay experience.

If I hadn't quit computer games cold turkey (when I realized I was showing all the signs of addiction) over a decade ago, I would still have Civ IV installed and still be playing it today. It just didn't get old, because of how varied the game could become.

How old were when you stopped? What made you realize you had an addiction?

Around 30 to 35, don't remember which year it was exactly.

And the thing that was largest in making me go, "Yeah, this isn't good for me, I need to quit" was that it was consuming my thoughts all the time. When I wasn't in front of the computer gaming, I was thinking about the game and planning the strategy for my next move. (I usually played turn-based games rather than action games). Which is fine in small doses, but it was taking over my mind when I was at church wanting to focus on worshiping God, when I was at work (and distracting me from getting work done), when I was trying to read...

Basically, I realized that it was an unhealthy focus for me, and taking over way too much of my attention that I wanted to be able to spend on a much wider variety of things. So I quit. First year was the hardest, second and third years were hard too, but by now I've gotten used to reaching for a book to read rather than a game. And the book, I can put down anytime I need to, without feeling that empty-ish feeling that says "Awww, I want to get back into the game..." That letdown when I exited the game was another clue, BTW: it matched how I'd heard drug addicts (specifically, former addicts who had kicked their habit) describe the feeling of coming down off a high. I've never used drugs myself so I can't compare it directly, but it was similar enough to the descriptions I'd heard from them that I said "okay, that's probably not a good sign either."

More surveillance and tracking won't be the solution.

>management values speed and quantity of delivery above all else

I don't know about you but this has been the case for my entire career. Mgmt never gave a shit about beautiful code or tech debt or maintainability or how enlightened I felt writing code.

So then type the code as well and read it after. Why are you mad

Its always just around the corner, just a couple years out with this guy... FSD, AGI, tunnels, robots, manned mars missions, whatever... Maybe 36 months is just the ideal timespan where everyone will have forgotten what insane thing you have dreamed up last time

I use a small local provider (posteo) and have 0 problems with spam.

So a 20 pound monkey can also throw around some weight. To be fair I only use it for personal stuff its probably different if you need enterprise scale l.

I always wondered how much of a cultural etc influence 4Chan actually had (has?) - so much of the mindset and vernacular that was popular there 10+ years ago is now completely mainstream.

Ah, a rare opportunity to share a blog post that had a big effect on my political outlook back in 2016, Meme Magic Is Real, You Guys

Who can say what effect it had on the world, but a presidential candidate reposting himself personified as Pepe the frog was still weird back then, and at least a nod to the trolls doing so much work on his behalf

https://medium.com/tryangle-magazine/meme-magic-is-real-you-... (dismissable login wall)

Counterpoint: https://youtube.com/watch?v=r8Y-P0v2Hh0

Summary: Trump used memes not in the sense of pepes but in the original (Dawkins') sense of "earworm" soundbites, along with a torrent of scandals, each making the previous seem like old news, to exploit a public tired of the "status quo" into voting for a zany wildcard pushing for reactionary policy

I remember in high school finding the whole nazi thing funny. They were literal losers in ww2. It was like drawing a communist hammer and sickle.

Looking back on it, I wonder if this was priming.

I didn't fall for it. They are still losers, but the encyclopedia dramatica with swastikas looks way way way less funny in 2026 than it did in 2008.

Internet trolls want attention. When the internet gives trolls attention and said that the trolls are culturally and politically important and dangerous it is exactly what was desired.

That many serious commentators didn't see this was itself very funny as anything with lots of attention on the internet does become influential! It is funny to a troll to see people pay serious attention to them "I am just a clown and they think I'm serious!". But don't think that they were actual comedians, lol, they are as serious as HN users.

In the dawkins sense of the word: the "meme" wants to spread and grow and the mechanism for it's virality was the immune response to it.

On another angle, the responses also gave the target an identity. Groups get defined as groups from outside more than from within. And it's always a wrong characterisation which also helps define the in group in relation. "You guys are all toxic Linux dude bros" inside: "but some of us love macs and windows, and some of us are girls, they sure dont understand our ways"

That is a crazy amount of emails from/about moot...

News has always been propaganda for one side, its just sometimes more or less obvious.

Personally I prefer the ones that make it clear where they stand as opposed to subtly influencing you while masquerading as "neutral".

I think you misunderstood my comment?

I mostly agree with you, I also read zero hedge, al jazeera and other media whose stance I don't broadly agree with.

To me NYT is actually pretty conservative, but YMMV