I’ve spent a solid 30-40 hours playing it since December last year so I’d say it’s pretty fun and playable! IIRC it has prototypes up to the interplanetary phase though only the single-cell and multicellular stages were really playable when I last gave them a go.

I’m a big fan of Thrive!

AFAIK every single ebook reader on the market actually runs Linux under the hood!

I’d say that depends on how profitable it is - services like AdSense and gmail are still going strong some 20 years after being introduced!

Looking at how Valve acted when called out for breaking Australian consumer protection laws I sure as hell hope not!

Valve and Steam have pulled their fair share of shady anti-consumer moves, like the time they violated Aussie and EU consumer protection laws with their refund policy (fucking EA Origin had refunds years before Steam); there have also been allegations of it being a toxic workplace with a trans former employee claiming she was referred to as “it” by her manager.

Simple Mobile Tools (Simple Contacts etc.) cost money for the full version on Play but you can get it for free on F-Droid or GitHub!

I think you’ve got a bit of a misconception about FOSS software - you’re allowed to make money selling it, you just also have to provide the source code to any customers! A fair few FOSS apps have free versions on F-Droid but paid versions on the Play store, for example.

“Firefish” doesn’t defederate from anything because it’s just a set of software. The specific instance that that user visited might not defederate from right wing instances, but other firefish instances do.

Isn’t that a problem with specific instances/federation rather than the software itself? There are some hateful right-wing Lemmy instances too but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for you as the instance you use has probably defederated from them.

China isn’t the end destination of all the stuff they manufacture.

If you pay somebody to murder someone you’re still legally responsible for that death, even if you avoided actually pulling the trigger. Same shit with resource use and pollution - paying China to produce stuff for you rather than doing it in-country doesn’t magically absolve you of all responsibility for the resource use and environmental destruction that is required to maintain a modern western lifestyle.

Yeah at the end of the day the whole idea of every single person owning a one ton chunk of steel and rare earth metals just to avoid taking the bus or walking a couple of kilometres is unsustainable and incompatible with the continued survival of our society (and maybe even our species).

Climate activists have been trying peaceful, convenient protests for decades now yet humanity is fucking up the environment faster than ever.

It’s still part of their code of conduct, and Alphabet (which owns Google) has “Do the right thing” as their motto. Google did evil shit even when “don’t be evil” was their motto, and Alphabet continues to do evil shit today despite their company motto.

Turns out corporate mottos are absolutely meaningless when there’s profit to be had.

Parallels is hardly shiny and new lol - messing around with it on my dad’s work mac was my introduction to virtual machines back in 2008!

Yeah Parallels was so simple that I could figure out how to make and run VMs using it when I was 11 years old!

Interesting that the global temperature peaks around the middle of the year when half the globe is in winter, wonder if it’s because of all the land they’ve got up north?

Been wearing a pinetime pretty much constantly since the start of the year, it only tracks walking though afaik but luckily that’s my main source of exercise (and way of getting around the city)!

I haven’t used it myself but I’ve heard that Ventoy is a fair bit easier than doing it manually!

There’s been a bit of a crackdown on some types of guns (assault rifles in particular) since the Christchurch mosque shootings and it’s gradually getting more expensive to (legally) own firearms but rifles and shotguns are still extremely common in rural areas.

My high school had two different types of shooting teams, and I first learnt how to shoot on a field out the back of my suburban intermediate when I was 11 or 12 years old. That was in the late 00s / early 10s so things might have changed but guns are still relatively normal - my local botanical garden gets shut down at night once a year so hunters can shoot any possums, and that’s right next to our uni campus!

That said, our attitude towards them is quite different to places like the USA - you’ll basically never see civilians carrying guns (outside of a shooting range or hunting) and even our cops hardly ever carry firearms on their person. You’re also not allowed to murder somebody just for trespassing on your property or trying to rob you, though using equivalent force to defend yourself is fine.