Weasel @wildweasel@computerfairi.es

Now on the Secret Area proper: https://asecretarea.com/2024/02/20/celeste-frustration-puzzle-platformers/

silicon valley VCs' best ideas of the 2020s:
-put a drone on something
-wrongness generator 3000 (uses more energy than a small nation)
-fraud
-space pollution
-self-crashing cars
-an app that is actually criminally underpaid workers in another country
-an app that is actually criminally underpaid workers in this country
-fascism
-vrchat but it cost 20x to make and it fucking sucks
-layoffs

The creator of the Living Worlds app - beautiful old color cycling pixel art from the 90s by the legendary Mark Ferrari - is looking for new artists to do new scenes: https://iangilman.substack.com/p/next-living-worlds

Exactly how am I supposed to fit a microwave in there?

Japanese commercial for the PS1 port of Duke Nukem 3D "Total Meltdown" sure is... something.

Holy ...🤯

https://www.stef.be/dpaint/

#deluxepaint #dpaint #pixelart #amiga

several hours later here's a writeup on how i did:

https://www.tumblr.com/maplesynth/742691202686730240

spoilers, i didn't recover the whole JPEG. but about half of it is intelligible

Hey, Fedi admins, go right now and check to make sure that you have caps/limits set on your Object Storage provider so they just stop serving you images instead of charging you $3,000 because some random person in Europe decided to scrape your instance.

Re: https://cloudisland.nz/@aurynn/111937646419975910

This is a really tragic tale (I hope they can get the charge reversed) but right at this moment I want to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else.

This warms my heart.

"What would you do about the Internet access for our (yet hypothetical) young teenage kid?"

I wouldn't want them to get hurt online, but I wouldn't want to control their actions either. Banning the thing would not help, but not doing anything about it poses real risks...

Oh wait, isn't it the same with sex ed (and, for example, road rules, or maybe substance abuse, even if to lesser extent)?

You cannot stop young teenagers being interested in relationships. They will try to do their (often stupid) teenage things. What you can do, though, is to educate them. What's safe, and what's not. Why the rules are the way they are. How to avoid risks. How not to ruin someone's life by carelessness.

Apparently there is a whole curriculum "Online safety" posted at gov.uk which sounds absolutely sensible. Whether there are good teachers and materials, and whether parents are aware that internet talk is as important as birds and bees talk, that I don't know.

That makes me think that there's much that still can be done.

I was thinking about "let's ban all the phones and social media for under-16s" trend. It is true that children are exposed to all sorts of harmful content online. It is also true that for some vulnerable children, online is the only place they can feel safe. It is also so important that being an adult without a smartphone is basically an impossibility.

It is clear that banning phones and social media will not stop many, especially older children, accessing the Internet. It will hurt those who need the access the most.

One potential solution could have been parental and teacher moderation. Who can decide what's good for their child if not their guardian, right? But this is also not great, because there is very real risk of parental abuse (including unhealthy controlling behaviours), as well as potential for undue control from the teachers and maybe even governments (i.e. "report the kid who looked up lgbt topics to authorities").

I was really conflicted, until Atsuko asked me one simple question...

(tbc)