I see basically two nefarious reasons for bots to pretend to be people on lemmy. I can’t think of a good reason why you’d want them.

A company shilling it’s product by appearing like a regular person. Bots have already ruined user reviews for products in basically every consumer industry. The best way to discover decent products now is word-of-mouth, so I could see a bot that pretends to be a user so it can show up in recommendation threads, like in Ask Lemmy or Buy It For Life.

The propaganda potential for bot users is tremendous. Kind of like the company shilling its product but on a grander scale. This could be orchestrated by those with economic interests, like promoting car-centric culture or climate change denialism which is of great interest to the oil industry. Or it could be as grand as foreign or domestic influence interfering with elections.

The fediverse isn’t a huge place, but it’s not nothing either. Operating costs are technically lower because you wouldn’t need to use as many bots to infiltrate communities. You could even spin up your own instances so that your own bots don’t get banned. I’m not really sure how you’d go about countering this sort of problem.

I’ve worked for Loblaw (They own this brand, President’s Choice, and are probably Canada’s largest grocer).

They have this line of product called Always $10. It’s a package of food that’s pretty much devoid of branding except that the $10 price is part of the packaging and not a sticker. Twice a year we get planograms (a merchandising guide / map to make sure all displays across the company are the same) where we have to change all the Always $10 stuff.

It’s always the exact same product, but smaller.

Loblaw’s in the news recently for settling a class-action lawsuit over colluding with other retailers to fix the price of bread. That’s right, a bread cartel. And like, sure, a settlement isn’t an admission of guilt. But a monolith like this doesn’t settle unless they think they can lose, and they wouldn’t think they could lose unless they did a bunch of illegal shit.

This isn’t that hard of a crisis, just excommunicate the nazis.

Boom, problem solved. Being the pope is easy, next try selling some of your gold and jewels to feed the hungry.

I mean, you got it totally right about how it works, that’s better than most people. I work in retail and you hear some pretty crazy beliefs about how it works.

Totally agree with you about nationalizing. Food is a universal right and we should treat it as such.

This is not a law, it’s a common and voluntary thing by the retailer.

I wish it was a law, that’d be sick and nip this whole surge thing in the bud.

$15 in Quebec now, that’s neat

This is the first I’ve heard about the reaction from BZZZT - which is a shame because I thought it was a cute game. In any industry customer feedback should be taken with as much grace as you can manage. You don’t want to alienate your community even further. Then again, with a solo developer and the sort of people this industry attracts, I’m not surprised to see an emotionally driven response to negative feedback.

I’ve dabbled in game dev, and I have to say that - especially as a solo developer - localization is an intimidating problem. Ignoring the technical concerns, for me the biggest problem is in being assured of the accuracy of the translation. Getting that right is important to me, but I don’t have a very good way of verifying that a language I don’t speak has been accurately translated. I’ve played lots of games with poor English localization and it can be quite jarring, especially when the rest of the game is quite polished.

This is a tough problem for me too, because like, accessibility is super important to me. I want everyone who wants my game to be able to play my game. But at the same time, I’m intimidated into inaction when it comes to localization. It feels paradoxical.

As far as how to localize your games, I like the community-driven approach. Sooner or later, I’ll have to take it on faith that the quality of the translation is good enough for the community, and if the community does the translating, well that makes me feel better about it. I could also see hiring a professional translator, but I’m not really sure how you vet those services, nor do I have the budget to hire them. You’ll definitely see AI grow in this area, but I’m staunchly against its use so it’s a non-starter for me.

A question for you: how do you feel when a game provides no localizations? I understand feeling slighted if other languages are included while your market is excluded, but if the game is only available in the developer’s mother tongue does that bother you too?

Okay, I’ve completely derailed that without addressing what you actually asked.

Your reasons for leaving good and bad reviews resonate with me. I feel the same way about most of them, although not being Chinese I naturally don’t have a particular draw to Chinese culture and localization. Marketers who misrepresent their games and the betrayal aspect definitely motivate me to leave a negative review.

To your point 3: I don’t automatically feel that way about my own country’s games and culture. However, I do thoroughly enjoy a game that feels culturally significant while being authentic to its people. Particularly if those stories feel deeply personal or are an underrepresented culture - especially indigenous peoples or queer stories. I also thoroughly enjoy a game that is satirical or otherwise critical of the establishment.

I’m far more likely to leave a good review than a bad one. Reasons for a bad review:

• The game is no longer playable. Either because of OS incompatibility or required online services are defunct
• The game disrespects my time. This is difficult to quantify exactly, and the things I have gripes with I could be forgiving of depending on implementation. Things like endlessly grinding to upgrade a piece of equipment that works the same but a little better, so you can now endlessly grind to upgrade it again. Constant long loading screens and other breaks in the action. Poor management of inventory/collectibles/maps
• The game grossly misrepresents what it is

If the game is good, it gets a good review. Goodness is entirely subjective. Sometimes I think about value for time/money, sometimes I think about how fun it is, and sometimes it’s about the level of polish on the little details. A game that is a joy to play is ideal, so a game that is accessible and has low friction when interacting with its systems. Bonus points for cozy games.

For me, the best reason to leave a good review is if the game evokes an emotional response. For me this is commonly a heartfelt story, or a plea for activism.

As confusing as it might seem, “I trust you as far as I can throw you,” and “I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you,” essentially mean the same thing.

One could probably argue that the negation is explicitly saying “I don’t trust you,” while the standard phrase implies a limited amount of trust. But in practice, throwing ability is never considered, and both mean that trust is in short supply.

I also grew up in Canada, I do my spelling freestyle. Half my apps use my system settings so they use the Canadian dictionary, and the other half seems to default to US spelling

Sometimes I’d look up the spelling on a word, and you’d see the charts that show US, UK, and Canadian spelling for words. Usually the Canadian entry would show both other versions as acceptable.

At the end of the day, as long as you’re understood, it doesn’t really matter

Embrace the red squigglies, follow your heart and don’t let your computer tell you what to do

I’m actually guilty of skipping to the end of the post, but it looks like maybe you didn’t make it that far.

The point still stands though: if one does not want to be ejected from the plane, one ought to listen to the directions of the cabin crew.

If the cabin crew tells you not to put your seat back, then don’t put your seat back

You don’t want to be kicked out mid-flight

He checks all the right boxes for a sidekick too.

He’s comic relief. He’s a flamboyant character. He chokes at almost every critical moment. He requires additional exposition so the rest of the team can explain things to the audience.

The camera follows him, and he thinks he’s the main guy. But we know he’s not.

“I’m starting to feel a bit like an outsider here.”

“You are!”

“You remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like that: ‘Have ya paid your dues, Jack?’ ‘Yessir, the cheque is in the mail.’”

Jack talking tough on the radio sends me, he’s just such a wannabe tough guy clown.

So many adventure movies have the white saviour action hero protagonist with a sidekick who’s an (often racist) ethnic caricature. Jack is a caricature of an American tough guy, and it works so well. I wish we saw it in more movies.

John Carpenter gives a lot of good recommendations, many of my favorite movies. Here’s a few more:

The Thing

They Live

In the Mouth of Madness

Halloween

It takes place in Chinatown.

It’s similar to Little Italy. But Chinese.

Really great movie TBH, especially when you view Kurt Russel as the dumb white sidekick

Jack McDaniels serves what I like to call an Unhappy Meal

Each of them, at least once.

Sometimes twice

I’m practicing my social skills in ranked skill-based matchmaking.

Pleased to announce I’ve been promoted out of Plastic tier and now I’m in the Wood league

Slam slamming!? Straight to the slammer!

It’s hard to come up with a more apt metaphor of the injustice of the justice system

But life, uh… finds a way

Removed by mod