Uncompressed textures and uncompressed audio for all languages at once (this started with the 8th gen consoles because their shitty CPUs couldn't handle real-time decompression), so a lot of space is being taken up by audio that's never used in languages you don't understand because at some point in the last 20 years the gaming industry forgot how to create checkbox installers.

The NHS' virtual appointment service in the UK doesn't support Firefox either, only Chrome, Safari and Edge. The dark days of "please view this website in Internet Explorer 6" are creeping closer to the present again. I hate the modern internet.

There's even rumours that the next version of Windows is going to inject a bunch of AI buzzword stuff into the operating system. Like, how is that going to make the user experience any more intuitive? Sounds like you're just going to have to fight an overconfident ChatGPT wannabe that thinks it knows what you want to do better than you do, every time you try opening a program or saving a document.

The Fediverse is home to a lot of young, tech-minded people distrustful of major corporations. The younger generations are more likely to come out as transgender due to greater awareness and acceptance of gender identity and dysphoria, and a decentralised, open platform is naturally going to appeal to communists, syndicalists and other left-wingers who don't want some billionaire buying the next website they get comfortable on. And funnily enough, there are a surprising number of trans people in the tech sector, to the point where trans-flag socks have become a meme among programmers.

This is the first I've heard of the JPEG XL format, but it sounds pretty good!

Hopefully it doesn't get misused by websites to mangle lossless compressed images with so much compression they're barely visible to save a few kilobytes, though.

Did you read the article? Excerpts include:

Generally, in business, it is sensible to provide your customers with what they want. With Twitter, the meme-makers' favourite billionaire is doing the opposite. The cyber-trucker is trying his best to cull his customer base.

Threads is what would happen if Twitter and Instagram made out in a bowling alley. It's all their worst parts combined - but it may well succeed. Rocket-man Musk's changes to Twitter have not exactly made it 'brand friendly'. Threads, meanwhile, is shaping up to be a paradise for in-your-face brands - and the AdTech industry would love for you to join them

and

Threads' naffness won't stop its success. It's data-scraping fluffily dressed up as substandard corporate twaddle. It's a cringe-inducing privacy invasion. It's not meant for users, but that doesn't really matter: you're not a user, you're a product.

It's describing Threads as a product not for users, but advertisers. The perfect brand-friendly non-place for companies to stick their marketing crap. That doesn't really come across as a ringing endorsement to me.

Honestly, the biggest problem with the Quest headsets is that they're made by Facebook. Sorry, "Meta". The Quest 2 stand-alone headset would be an obvious recommendation to anyone curious about virtual reality if it weren't a Mark Zuckerberg product.

I'm so glad we prevented all those abortions so the unwanted or unhealthy kids could instead die in more painful ways such as congenital defects, poverty and neglect. Virtue signalling is bad, unless it causes preventable suffering to children in which case apparently Supply-Side Jesus is all for it.

Remember the 10-year-old rape victim who had to travel out-of-state for an abortion, and poor Milo Evan Dorbert, who lived a short life of 99 minutes before dying painfully of Potter syndrome, which left him without functioning kidneys. There are many other rape victims and babies with invariably-fatal conditions who have needlessly suffered for political reasons.

This is a total affront to the ethos of the web and everyone involved in drafting this awful proposal should be publicly shamed. Stick sandwich boards on each of them saying "I tried to build the Torment Nexus", chain them together and march them through the streets while ringing a bell and chanting "shame".

They really weren't, though.

Yeah, the Panzer III was better than a lot of the early-war British and French tanks, but that isn't really saying a whole lot and it didn't have any room left to grow after the long 50mm upgrade. It was arguably the best all-rounder tank in the world in 1939 with its torsion bar suspension and great ergonomics, and its chassis endured right to the end of the war in the form of derivatives like the StuG, but it wasn't exceptional in any way.

The Panzer IV became a pretty good medium tank around 1942-3, but by then the T-34 had overcome the worst of its early teething problems and received a less awful turret, and the M4 Sherman, which totally outmoded the Panzer IV was entering production. Plus it was still ultimately a 1930s design (if a rather forward-looking one) with crappy suspension.

The Tiger I was a pretty good heavy tank for 1942 but still, ultimately, just a heavy tank. It was never intended to be a mass-production vehicle making up the bulk of a fighting force. It was a specialised tool that did its job pretty well, not a battle-winning wunderwaffe.

The Panther was a 45-ton tank made out of parts designed for a 30-ton tank. Reasonably quick in a straight line, handled nicely when it worked, solid medium-calibre gun but it broke down frequently and was quite maintenance-intensive - this was less of a problem on the specialised Tiger I than on the Panther, a tank intended to replace the Panzer IV as the standard tank of the German army.

The Tiger II was frankly insanity. All the Tiger II really needed to be was a streamlined Tiger I with sloped armour, a longer gun and a redesigned turret. Instead, it became an immobile 70-ton brick that was never available where it was needed and was generally a total waste of resources. Let's not even talk about the Jagdtiger.

Sure, the Germans had some very effective guns - the L/70 and the 88s - but it's not like nobody else did. The British ended up with the very effective OQF 17-pounder, the Americans actually had the 76mm M1 and its derivatives pretty early on but didn't much use it because the 75mm was more than "good enough" until Panthers started appearing in large numbers, and the Soviets had their own very effective 85mm and 100mm guns.

The 128mm on the Jagdtiger was frankly absurd overkill considering the long 88 was already eminently capable of putting down the bulk of Allied armour at long ranges; the Jagdtiger really doesn't offer much advantage over a Jagdpanther in practical terms outside of hypothetically fighting Allied counters to the Jagdtiger like the Tortoise, IS-4 and the various American super-heavies (T28/T95, T29,30,34). At least the IS-2's 122mm cannon had the excuses of being an expedient use of surplus equipment and the larger shells being a better fit for infantry support since they could fit more HE filler.

Rise of Nations. It's like Civilization but as a real-time strategy game and I really enjoy it. Microsoft actually released an updated edition in 2014 which was good of them but I basically never hear anyone actually talk about it which sucks because it's such a cool game. The single-player Conquer the World campaigns are also cool, and have some elements reminiscent of the classic Risk board game.

There's also Star Trek: Bridge Commander, which is often mentioned in discussions of "what Star Trek games were good?" but not much outside of that context. It strikes a perfect balance between having starship combat that really feels like you're commanding a ship with a lot of mass behind it and actually being fun and easy for an average person to pick up and play (which is where stuff like the X Universe games fall down). There are tons of "space fighter" games out there but I've never really seen anything that captures space capital ship combat as well as Bridge Commander.

The users Facebook deserves. Zuck can keep them, somehow I think we'll do just fine without these outrage-farming reactionaries.