"is this person/company really doing terribly dystopian things, or are they only pretending to be able to do terribly dystopian things?" has become one of the major questions of our time
Life hack:
Instead of "meetings" refer to them as "some sick fuck's idea of a good time"
For a time traveller, the past is your future
The US granted visas to Jews but only allowed 30,000 in from Germany a year. You had to wait for your number to come up.
Meet Robert Smallbones. An unassuming British diplomat who 'hacked' this system so effectively (saving 48 THOUSAND Jews) the UK government kept his scheme secret for decades /1 🧵
It's amazing that Google's AI is so reluctant to give you a link. Even if you say "add links to this response", sometimes it just won't.
They solved hallucinations with belligerence I guess.
I like waving at birds as I pass them. Their responses are always super awkward. Same with dogs.
P.S. If you do download the game via an ad, it changes nothing in this process. You still have to watch the rest of the ad.
And they won't stop advertising the game to you either. In fact they'll probably do it more because you showed interest.
So they get more desperate and go deeper into these stupid tactics.
That's how we got here.
Also Google wants it this way. The trickery keeps you unsatisfied and always looking for a new game (and therefore more likely to click an ad).
And low quality users don't stick around for long and so aren't worth much to games makers.
People who clicked accidentally on an ad are unlikely to buy the premium pass that "removes all in-app ads" (but only removes a fraction of them in reality).
Every step of the way is trickery.
They don't try to get you to *want to* download the game they have actually made. They rely on wearing you down and/or accidental clicks.
They are going for quantity, not quality users.
6) You can click out of this static ad page by pressing the X again.
There may be a timer before you can press the X, and it may or may not take you to the Google Play page again.
This whole process repeats every 90 seconds on average.
Note: The overall rating on Google Play also does not represent actual reviews.
Games showing a perfect 5 stars in Google Play often (impossibly) have many 1 star reviews.
5) You return to your game from Google Play, but there is more of the ad. Usually a static image which also shows how many stars the game gets on Google Play.
This number of stars shown here is not linked to Google Play, and will not be the same as what you see on the games page in Google Play.
4) To return to your game from Google Play in step 3 (or 2) you have to press back using your phones functionality (usually twice).
However, if you press back within Google Play (in the top left) then you go to Google Plays homepage. You cannot return to your game this way.
(After returning to the ad from step 2 if you tapped at the wrong point...)
3) When the timer says so, you can press the X to close the ad. This does not close the ad - it takes you to Google Play.
Sometimes it says "Google Play" instead of X, giving you no way of knowing how to exit the ad.
2) Many ads are playable demos. These ads will generally bear little relation to the game being advertised.
Some ads stop being playable suddenly, and take you to Google Play on a random tap.
Some ads pretend to be playable and do this on your 1st tap. These two types of ads are indistinguishable.
Freemium mobile game ads on android are just series of tricks at this point. It goes...
1) A pop-up appears in your phone game asking if you want a reward for watching an ad.
If you tap yes, the ad plays. Often if you tap no, the ad plays anyway (but no reward is given).
Spent the weekend with my extended family. Spending today in bed to recover. I love Christmas.
He tree. He panic
After a lifetime of straight forward and/or bland naming, Google finally finding a personality and calling their image gen AI "Nano Banana Pro" does not spark joy.
I personally always enjoy adding the context to reports in December: "less will get done this month because everyone has mentally checked out."
The Nobel Prize committee should announce the World Cup winner tomorrow
Blue sky should do the account location feature X just switched off. Give fake accounts another hurdle
Remember when Google had that "I feel lucky" button that would choose a search result for you, but they removed it because no one used it? Few people trusted Google itself to know the answers.
AI overviews are the revenge of that idea. AI mode is just the "I feel lucky" button writ large.
Susie Dent's place in UK culture is so weird. Do other countries have a beloved human dictionary?
Ad saying "raise a glass in remembrance" with a pic of Ross Kemp holding a pint with a poppy on it up
People will mock this. But something to note:
When Remembrance Day was introduced, this is EXACTLY what many British WW1 veterans did on it.
They would meet up with old friends and colleagues from their units. Talk. Laugh. Cry. Toast those not there and get joyously, and utterly shitfaced. /1
My 11-year-old sitting with her pile of Halloween candy, sorting it into a bar graph
We have progressed from data collection to data analysis.
Just learning that John Candy was born on October 31st, which technically would make him Halloween Candy...and that brings me joy.
If AI was as good as they pretend, it could create images/videos that were both realistic and easily verifiable as AI
Two texts from the same person. The top one says "it's going better than my wildest dreams". The second one says "*my wildest dreams on this specific topic".
The most important caveat
