Balinares
@Balinares@pawb.social
- Comment on Zelda BotW vs TotK - which one should I buy? 6 days ago:
See my answer above for my personal take on this. TotK is a bigger, longer game with far more things to do, but in filling the delicate emptiness that’s at the heart of BotW, they also made TotK… mundane. Greater, by most metrics. But mundane.
When I played TotK, a great game, I enjoyed myself a lot, then moved on to the next item on my pile.
When I played BotW, I went through an experience, and it stuck with me since.
- Comment on Zelda BotW vs TotK - which one should I buy? 6 days ago:
Then I’d pick BotW.
Like another poster said, BotW is a once in a lifetime experience, and somehow strikes a kind of beautiful perfection even as, oddly, TotK is mechanically better in most respects.
BotW achieves something unique by dropping you in what’s left of Hyrule a century after Hyrule was defeated. And it’s a wilderness that could have been desolate, but it’s not: it’s beautiful. Things are growing back, despite everything. Wildlife, but settlements, also. It’s all sparse, this renewal, and there’s so much woe yet to fight. But it’s there. And the mood is both mournful, and quietly hopeful in a way I find comforting and deeply healthy.
BotW is built around a core of emptiness, but that emptiness is not a void: there are countless secrets and little wonders to unearth everywhere, everywhere. Sometimes it’s a treasure, or a trace from the past. Sometimes it’s the shapes that rain drops draw on wet moss. There’s wonder everywhere, just a wander away. BotK understands this, and elevates the wandering.
Where TotK is full of activities and minigames and quests everywhere, so you’re never at a loss for what to do next, and it’s by all measures a richer, bigger, fuller game. But it’s also, squarely, a lesser experience.
Of the two I’d pick BotW in an eyeblink and it’s not even close.
But that’s my answer, not yours. Only you know what you’re looking for in a video game.
- Comment on RIP Thomas 2 weeks ago:
Is your pigeons’ threatspin routine like, 360 spin one way then 360 spin the other way then charge? That’s what I’ve observed most often. You can tell how pissed the pigeon is by the speed of the spin too.
- Comment on Digital Fingerprinting: Google launched a new era of tracking worse than cookie banners | Tuta 4 months ago:
Ah, that Techlicious link is a great find, thanks. It does lay out clearly what the theoretical concern is. That’s still a far cry from the “Google will start fingerprintint you” scenario that seems to have people up in arms.
Thanks for digging out this link, I really appreciate it.
- Comment on Digital Fingerprinting: Google launched a new era of tracking worse than cookie banners | Tuta 4 months ago:
Thanks – that’s an announcement about policy updates. I already read it and it says nothing about fingerprinting. The only change to underlying technologies it mentions are the use of e.g. trusted execution environments (the doc for which, per a further link, is in fact on github). Those seem to claim that they let announcers run ad campaigns through Google ads while keeping their campaign data provably locked away from Google. So, basically, all these links are about purported “privacy-enhancing” techs, and you’d be forgiven for taking that with an enormous grain of salt, but either way, nothing in there about fingerprinting.
The Guardian article basically paraphrases the Tuta one – or it’s the other way around, maybe – but does also not provide actual sources.
I just want a source on what fingerprinting Tuta is claiming Google will start using. It feels like that should be front and center to this discussion.
- Comment on Digital Fingerprinting: Google launched a new era of tracking worse than cookie banners | Tuta 4 months ago:
I’m aware of fingerprinting techniques, thank you. The article is claiming that Google will start using some of those and I’m looking for the source for that claim, hopefully with specifics about which techniques are involved. Confusingly, the article does not appear to provide such a source.
- Comment on Digital Fingerprinting: Google launched a new era of tracking worse than cookie banners | Tuta 4 months ago:
You’d THINK the article would link to a source about the fingerprinting in question instead of 90% filler slop and ads for their own service… Anyone got a link?