Reading the post and comments on Softbank plans to cancel out angry customer voices using AI made me think it could be an interesting topic to chat about.

I think the best support I received was in the chat application and service Slack. A competent, friendly human responds. I had two or three support inquiries with them.

The last issue I had in Slack was when I opened via try icon click my clipboard content was being pasted. I was surprised they were able to identify the issue which was due to a third-party application that had only just released with the issue a day earlier. Slack support was responsive with a first message before the solution, and fast to respond with the second message with the identified cause.

I'm not sure any stand out as particularly awful for me. [Kinda] Bad seems to be the norm. Sometimes bots sit in front of being able to write a message (my bank, I have to write the same inquiry a second time), sometimes the first response is automated or templated, sometimes the first response is automated and immediately but a human will follow up, sometimes you call and can hardly understand them because of accent or even awful intonation. Often you receive incompetent answers that don't respond to your message or issue. Sometimes they're unwilling or incapable of resolution or agreeable conclusions.

I stumbled upon their videos and watched three. It's absurd and often hilarious how bad most of the games are.

Jauwn shows us through the games and their gameplay, but also checks further into the mechanisms trying to bait people and the publishers and developers at times linking them to previous scams.

• About Banana - the Steam game that reached fourth-most-played-game apparently, and still has 90% positive on 14k ratings
• Exploring three crypto games on the Epic Games store - I laughed multiple times at how bad and absurd it was
• Exploring some crypto games games on Steam (which is the timestamped post link)
• They have more such videos on their channel

I found this article a bit too elaborate and digressive, but it has a lot of content and sourcing.

In one email, Fox adds that there was a “pretty big disconnect between what finance and ads want” and what search was doing.

When Gomes pushed back on the multiple requests for growth

In a WIRED interview from 2021, Steven Levy said Raghavan “isn’t CEO of Google— he just runs the place,” and described his addition to the company as “a move from research to management.”

From Forbes and Money content farms, to Google search algorithm changes promoting generic and generated content and big media platforms over specific results, to Google prioritizing ads, overpriced, and other worse results.

Developing interactivity is effort and an investment. Most developers put up a simple loading screen, maybe some text like rotating tips, and a loading indicator. Until 2015 a patent on interactive loading screens may have made developers and publishers cautious and decide against developing interactivity.

High Hell, released in 2017, features fast gameplay, short levels, and interactive loading screens. (Linked Clip) (High Hell Steam page)

What's the best kind of loading screen? Do you have examples of good or bad interactive loading screens?

In Sky: Children of the Light you can let yourself get taken by the hand, and the other player guides/plays for you and you barely need to do anything anymore. Felt a bit absurd and funny, but interesting nonetheless. Certainly unique. It was also very good to eat some snacks and watch yourself progress while doing so.

Sky is an interesting and visually beautiful/well-crafted game. It has many things going for it. But also things I found frustrating and annoying.

I was also confused quite a bit, about quite a few things about what is happening and interacting in what way.

If only there weren't so many cutscenes blocking me from actually playing the game and feeling embedded in the world and atmosphere. I hate those disrupting cutscenes. Forced camera focus was also annoying at times.

Overall, I find Sky quite interesting, and can certainly recommend taking a look at and even into it.

Sky: Children of the Light is available on Steam for free, in Early Access. It has also been available on iOS since 2019, Android since 2020, Switch since 2021, PS4 since 2022.

Walking back and forth between sofa + controller + TV and my PC + keyboard to chat with people was a hassle though 🤡 (I was streaming PC to TV so it was the same thing. Chatting is entirely optional.)

(Sorry for the shitty ~~screenshot~~ photo of hand-holding.)

Have you played Sky? What did you think of the implementation of social systems and interactions with other players?

I have an Android tablet and a pen for it.

Do you have any FOSS experience or recommendations for Android tablet drawing apps?