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Halo Infinite’s Battle Pass
Halo Infinite’s Battle Pass Is Totally Fine, You Guys , by Ari Notis
One refrain—and it is legit—is that, the way Halo Infinite currently works, there’s very little incentive to play to win. If one of your challenges tasks you with racking up 15 gravity hammer kills, you’ll naturally focus on
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Web3 Needs More Product People
I know that it’s a bit of a wild west right now, but basically every web3 website I go to needs more input from product people to be usable for anyone besides the enthusiast crowd.
Every single time I’ve tried to do anything in this space, I’ve had to go to social
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Omicron Doesn’t Change the Vaccine Math
Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist, over at (fittingly) Your Local Epidemiologist:
There is a lot of anxiety. I have a lot of anxiety. The public is being asked to understand the second most complex system in the human body while navigating a sea of misinformation while coping with significant pandemic exhaustion and mental health problems. All
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If Fact They Just Don't Care, and That's Kinda Comforting
Greg Morris, who I may as well make a co-author of my site, I link to him all the time:
Our brains are made for < 150 person groups of gatherers, not thousands of people online so it's important to remember that there is no need to worry about what others think,
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Full Self-Driving Doesn’t Look at All Ready for Prime Time
We tried Tesla's 'full self-driving.' Here's what happened - CNN
What "full self-driving" could do well was impressive, but the experience was ultimately unnerving. I can't imagine using "full self-driving" regularly in a city. I noticed I was reluctant to ever
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Brave Builds in a Native Crypto Wallet
From Brave's announcement post:
Today, we launched the Brave Wallet, a crypto wallet built into the Brave desktop browser, enabling Brave users to store, manage, grow, and swap their crypto portfolio from a single wallet. Unlike most crypto wallets, the Brave Wallet does not require extensions; it’s browser-native, reducing security risks
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News Orgs Are Pulling Back Top Talent from Substack
Axios:
Pressure from new publishing platforms has finally pushed newsrooms to create programs that give writers more pay, autonomy and flexibility. Those changes are attracting some independent writers back to traditional news companies.
We had a whole wave of people leaving their jobs at major news sites and newspapers, and venture off on their own
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Microsoft Really, Really Wants You to Use Edge
Nick Heer:
In the latest build of Windows 11, Microsoft has blocked the methods used by EdgeDeflector and web browsers like Firefox. It is almost admirable how transparently anti-competitive Microsoft is being because, despite being the world’s most valuable company, it faces little scrutiny from regulators.
In case you're not following
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Apple Will Let You Repair Your Own iPhone
Apple PR:
“Creating greater access to Apple genuine parts gives our customers even more choice if a repair is needed,
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YouTube Totally Fixes Creator Abuse
YouTube announced they’re happy with the results of previous tests and are going to stop publicly showing dislike counts on videos:
Based on what we learned, we’re moving forward with making the dislike count private across YouTube–this means that the dislike button is staying, but the number of dislikes on a video
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The Truth is Paywalled
Nathan Robinson: The Truth is Paywalled but the Lies are Free:
A white supremacist on YouTube will tell you all about race and IQ but if you want to read a careful scholarly refutation, obtaining a legal PDF from the journal publisher would cost you $14.95, a price nobody in their right mind would
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The Lord of the Rings in 4K HDR is Unbelievable
I’ve spent the last 2 weekends watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy again (it’s been at least
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Dueling Athletes
Aaron Rodgers is my favorite quarterback in the NFL (on my favorite team, so that helps), but uh…he's fallen in my esteem over the past week. I hoped his appearance on the Pat McAfee Show would help him clear things up, but he only made things worse. As I tweeted tongue-in-
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Don’t Count Out the MacBook Air
The M1 MacBook Air is still the best machine for most people – LJPUK
An Air is around £929 currently and the Pro starts at £1,899. You really need to be able to justify that extra £1000. Don’t write off the Air just because it’s not the best, it’s an amazing machine
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The Impact of Monotype Gobbling Up Another Type Foundry
Some are not too pleased with Monotype's recent acquisition of Hoefler&Co:
The impact of H&Co’s acquisition cannot be overstated, says Nadine Chahine, […] "I think it’s about time that I can speak more openly about this. It’s the future of our industry at stake and it’
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The Best Way to Play Old Video Games Is Unfortunate
People are pretty grumpy about the quality of emulation on Nintendo Switch Online:
One of the draws of the Expansion Pack isn’t just the ability to play classic N64 games on Switch. It’s also the chance to play them online, something that wasn’t an option before. But players have similarly been encountering
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Facebook Switched to a Reverse-Chronological Timeline, Facebook Made More Money, and Users Hated It
Apparently in 2018 Facebook turned off the algorithm for a small percentage of users:
"What happens if we delete ranked News Feed?” they asked in an internal report summing up the experiment. Their findings: Without a News Feed algorithm, engagement on Facebook drops significantly, people hide 50% more posts, content from Facebook Groups rises
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Apple's Curious Reasoning Why the Mac Doesn't Have Touch
Chance Miller on 9to5Mac quoting Apple's John Ternus in WSJ (paywalled):
We make the world’s best touch computer on an iPad. It’s totally optimized for that. And the Mac is totally optimized for indirect input. We haven’t really felt a reason to change that.
Like okay, but I can use