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Theres no longer any question that Threads and Bluesky have created the most viable alternatives to the platform once known as Twitter. But while the two services may share some of the same goals, theyve shown very different visions for how text-based social networks should operate. Threads, of course, is controlled by Meta, which is controlled by Mark Zuckerberg. And though the company has claimed to embrace public conversation, it has also consistently put its thumb on the scale to encourage certain types of speech over others. The company throttled political content in an election year, forcing users to tweak their settings to enable posts about elections or social topics to appear in their for you feed. This desire to limit any of what Meta described as "potentially sensitive" content has also led to some questionable moderation decisions. For months, the app prevented users from searching for some topics, including those related to COVID-19 and vaccines. Those limits have since been lifted, but there have been numerous and inexplicable instances of other moderation failures on Threads. In October, Instagram head Adam Mosseri admitted the company had found mistakes and made changes after users reported their accounts had been penalized for using mundane words like saltines and cracker. Earlier this month,, Metas communications director Andy Stone apologized after users noted that searches for posts about Austin Tice, the American journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2012, were blocked on the app because the content may be associated with the sale of drugs. Stone didnt offer an explanation but said the issue has been addressed. Bluesky, on the other hand, has taken less of a top-down approach to moderation. While the company employs some of its own moderators to enforce baseline moderation, users have a lot of control over how much questionable or harmful content they want to see. Blueksy also allows people to create their own moderation services for an even more custom experience. Moderation is in many ways, like governance, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber told me earlier this year. And setting the norms of a social space, we don't think one person or one company should be unilaterally deciding that for an entire ecosystem where people are having public conversations important to the state of the world. That philosophy plays out in other important ways. Twitter was never a major source of traffic for most publishers, even before Elon Musks takeover. But the platform once played a vital role in the news ecosystem. At a time when Elon Musk has acknowledged that X penalizes posts with links and Threads top exec has said that Meta doesnt want to encourage hard news, Blueskys leaders have actually tried to foster link sharing, and several publishers have reported seeing significantly more traffic from Bluesky, compared with Threads and X. But perhaps the most obvious difference between Meta and Blueskys approach is in what order posts even appear. Bluesky defaults to a reverse chronological feed that shows posts from accounts you follow. Users can also choose to add custom feeds based on hundreds of different topics. For example, I follow a cat pics feed that surfaces posts with photos of cats and a trending news feed that surfaces links to news stories that are being shared widely on the platform. And while Meta has recently come out with its own version of custom feeds, the app still defaults to an algorithmic for you feed that surfaces a mix of content users actually want and unasked-for drivel thats so random and bizarre its been compared to a gas leak. (Meta said it would test allowing users to make their following feed the default, but hasnt provided an update.) Its also telling that even the content creators getting paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to post on Threads dont really understand the platform. There are even more significant changes coming in 2025. While both Threads and Bluesky have so far been blissfully ad-free, both services will need to eventually make money. Bluesky has so far experimented with other ways of making money, including selling custom domains and an upcoming subscription service that will offer extra features to paying users. Though Graber hasnt entirely ruled out advertising, shes also been clear that she doesn't want to enshittify the service for the sake of advertising. Threads, on the other hand, is already attached to Metas multi-billion dollar ad machine, an entity so intrusive many people believe the companys apps literally listen to their conversations (a theory thats been repeatedly debunked.) Though Zuckerberg has indicated the company isnt in a rush to turn Threads into a very large business, it could see its first ads in January, according to reports, and theres little reason to believe Meta wont eventually employ the same playbook it has with all its other services. All this makes Bluesky even more of an underdog. Threads is already more than 10 times its size and Meta has made it clear it has no problem using its copy-or-kill tactics against the upstart. But thats also exactly why so many Bluesky users fervently believe that the platform is the one that has the juice. While Threads and X put public conversations in the hands of autocratic billionaires, Bluesky is an independent entity and has structured its platform much more democratically. The platform has had its share of moderation controversies, but it puts far more control in the hands of its users. Its welcomed developers, who have created dozens of third-party apps for the service. All that may not ultimately be enough to fend off Meta, which can afford to throw billions of dollars at Threads. But Blueskys vision for an open-source decentralized platform is about much more than becoming the next big social media site. We set out to change the way social media works from the bottom up, Graber said during a recent press event. I want us to have choice over what we see.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-and-threads-showed-us-very-different-visions-for-a-post-x-future-171046336.html?src=rss
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When it comes to new horror games, there are times of feast and famine, and this past year we gorged until our bellies bulged and our mouths dripped with gruesome grease. In 2024, we received a rich spread of dark experiences from solo creators, indie teams, AA developers and AAA studios in a vast array of genres and visual styles. There was a fantastic Silent Hill 2 remake and beefy updates to contemporary classics like Phasmophobia, Alan Wake 2 and The Outlast Trials, and there was also a steady cadence of brand-new horror franchises expanding the genre in unexpected ways. First, lets take a moment to celebrate a sampling of the years fresh horror universes. In 2024, we got the following new titles: Crow Country from brothers Adam Vian and Tom Vian at SFB Games Fear the Spotlight from husband-and-wife team Cozy Game Pals Hollowbody by solo dev Nathan Hamley at Headware Games Home Safety Hotline by Utah studio Night Signal Entertainment INDIKA from Spain- and Kazakhstan-based studio Odd Meter Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess from Capcom Lorelei and the Laser Eyes by the high-strangeness experts at Simogo Mouthwashing from Swedish indie team Wrong Organ Slitterhead by Silent Hill and Gravity Rush creator Keiichir Toyama at Bokeh Game Studios Still Wakes the Deep from horror veterans The Chinese Room This is not a comprehensive list of new horror franchises in 2024, but its a suitable demonstration of how vast and varied the offerings were this year. Indie studios are leading the charge when it comes to fresh ideas and original mechanics, of course, but there are also plenty of references to early-2000s graphics and PS1- or PS2-era survival horror on this list. The combination of innovation and nostalgia is particularly potent in titles like Fear the Spotlight, Crow Country, Mouthwashing and Hollowbody. These games infuse blocky 3D worlds with modern sensibilities and smooth animations, resulting in experiences that illuminate the staticky memories of Resident Evil and Silent Hill that lurk in our heads. This is how we wanted those games to feel, fixed camera angles be damned or, in the case of Hollowbody, lovingly embraced. Fear the SpotlightCozy Game Pals It should also be noted that Fear the Spotlight marks the debut of acclaimed horror-movie maker Blumhouse as a video game publisher. Fear the Spotlight is the first release in Blumhouses lineup which includes future titles from EYES OUT, Half Mermaid, Perfect Garbage, Playmestudio and Vermila Studios and its an excellent exploration of low-fi teenage drama and dread. The horror-game revolution is upon us and Blumhouse is absolutely going to snag a piece. The least horror-like game on the above list may be Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, and it also happens to be the only title from a AAA studio. Ive included it because, as a dedicated fan of horror games, I think Kunitsu-Gami checks plenty of boxes: It features huge, disgusting demons and a lethal blight that envelops whole towns in skeletal yet strangely juicy organic material. Its monster designs feature colorful displays of lechery and body horror, and theres comfort to be found in its tense strategy-action gameplay loop. Kunitsu-Gami wasnt marketed as a horror experience, and it certainly contains just as many scenes of stunning beauty as it does grotesquerie, but I heartily recommend it to any horror fan. I think youll be pleasantly surprised. Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the GoddessCapcom INDIKA is another entry that straddles the genres of horror, camp and religious satire, but it definitely features a few scenes of soul-piercing terror. Plus, the literal devil is your friendly companion throughout the game, and that has to count for something. Among scenes of grief, inhumanity and devastation, INDIKA is a laugh riot, and its a preeminent example of mature themes handled well in video game form. An additional genre-bending standout from 2024 is Simogos Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. It contains incredibly satisfying logic puzzles in a hotel made out of mysteries but phantoms haunt the hallways, theres a corpse in the back garden and every scene drips with palpable unease. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is one of the best and most unsettling games of the year, period. Still Wakes the Deep, meanwhile, offers a familiar and beautiful brand of monster-stalking horror on an oil rig in the middle of the angry North Sea. Its a must-play game for any horror fan, acting as a vessel for The Chinese Room to show off its skills in building authentic worlds and cultivating ceaseless tension with a paranormal edge. Plus, it's one of the best-looking games I played on PS5 all year. Slitterhead is another one for the action-horror players out there, presenting a supernatural mystery in a version of Hong Kong thats been infested by body-snatching demons, featuring buckets of bloodand frantic close-range combat. Still Wakes the DeepThe Chinese Room The year began with the release of Home Safety Hotline, a simulation of a 1990s call center where players help diagnose and treat household pests, which include otherworldly threats like Bed Teeth, Fae Flu, The Horde, Laundry Gnome, Mirror Nymph, Toilet Hobb, Unicorn Fungi and others. Home Safety Hotline really was the amuse bouche of 2024s horror game lineup and Mouthwashing is the dessert. All the horror kids nowadays are playing Mouthwashing, a polygonal first-person romp through a stranded space ship filled with doomed crew members steadily losing their minds, overseen by a maimed captain with a maniacal, bandaged smile. Mouthwashing is strange and claustrophobic, and its a fabulous way to end the year in horror gaming. Silent Hill 2Bloober Team But we havent even talked about the existing franchises yet. The Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team, the Polish studio behind Layers of Fear and Blair Witch, was a brilliant success, even in the face of exacting standards from longtime series fans. The remake looks and feels like the game that players remember, only spit-shined and smoothed over, and Silent Hill 2 remains just as terrifying in 2024 as it originally was in 2001. Maybe even more so. Bloober Team had a lot to prove with this one, and they made us elder-Millennial horror players proud. Alan Wake 2 was one of the best games of 2023, horror or otherwise, and it received two significant batches of DLC this year: Night Springs landed in June and The Lake House went live in October. Each bit of content not only keeps Alan Wakes hellish world alive, but it adds depth to the cross-franchise universe that Remedy is building between Control and Alan Wake. Personally I always want more Alan Wake, and in that regard, 2024 didnt disappoint. The Outlast TrialsRed Barrels Two live-service indie games, The Outlast Trials and Phasmophobia, also saw major updates in the past 12 months. After entering early access in May 2023, The Outlast Trials studio Red Barrels has been working to establish a solid cadence of new content drops, and this year they really got into the groove. The Outlast Trials launched in full in March 2024 and its received multiple updates since then, introducing new enemies, maps, game modes and limited-time events for the players trapped in the Murkoff Corporations secret Sinyala Facility. The amount of work that Red Barrels puts into The Outlast Trials is endlessly impressive, especially considering there are only about 65 developers at the studio. Phasmophobia has an even smaller team than Red Barrels, but theyre making big moves. The crew at UK studio Kinetic Games have kept Phasmophobia alive since its Steam launch in September 2020, and this year, they finally brought the ghost-hunting game to consoles. Phasmophobia hit PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 29, and it also came to PS VR2. Kinetic Games has grand plans to keep supporting and expanding Phasmophobia in 2025 and beyond, so even though the console release happened four years after launch, this is really just the beginning. Lorelei and the Laser EyesSimogo There it is our humble ode to horror gaming in 2024. Its been a dozen months of indie innovation and gorgeous gore, with a side dish of fabulous remakes and sizable updates. Some new horror games push against the boundaries of the genre, expanding our ideas of whats scary and why, while others find fresh ways to dissect classic tropes. Its a case of modern cuisine vs. comfort food, and on my plate, theres plenty of room for both.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/dang-2024-was-a-great-year-for-horror-game-fans-160009640.html?src=rss
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Its no secret that Russia has been slowly working towards eschewing as much Western technology as it can and developing its own, and its latest effort seems to be related to video games. On December 25, Anton Gorelkin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, revealed some information on a domestic video game console being developed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, as reported by TechSpot. The theoretical console will have an Elbrus processor and be powered by either Aurora or Alt Linux, both Russian forks of the popular Linux operating system. According to TechSpot, the Elbrus processor was developed by the Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies and primarily designed for defense, critical infrastructure and other applications. This processor isnt up to what Intel, AMD and Arm produce right now, and it certainly wont reach PS5 or Xbox levels of power. Despite the weaker chipset, Gorelkin stressed that the console isnt designed to play ports of older games, but will play domestic video game products. Presumably, this means Russia will also need its own developer community to design these games. Theres also another console called Fog Play in development, but its more of a cloud-gaming device. Users with high-end computers can rent them out to Fog Play owners, who play games on these computers through the cloud. These potential consoles are only one aspect of Russias broader technological sovereignty plans. Ever since its invasion of Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions, Russia has been trying to make this a reality but digital isolation is making this difficult. The adoption of Astra Linux in government, intelligence, military and even educational computers is another Russian effort to develop its own technology. To this end, Russia is also trying to replace file and website scanner VirusTotal (owned by Google) with its own Multiscanner platform in fears of US government infiltration. Despite this progress, Russia is still heavily reliant on Chinas technology. Chinese smartphones are popular there, and Chinese electronics and dual-use technology continue to enter Russia even as the Middle Kingdom no longer exports them to the US. Russia is likely unable to achieve true technological independence, in video gaming or other crucial areas, as it relies too much on China and doesnt have the capabilities to produce PS5 or Xbox-level chips. The two Russian video game consoles serve as a good example of the challenges the country faces given its poor relations with many of the worlds superpowers. Just like the Elbrus processor isnt going to truly compete against the best consoles, Russia will likely continue to struggle for technological sovereignty.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/russia-is-trying-to-make-its-own-game-consoles-in-a-bid-for-technological-independence-151358041.html?src=rss
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