Oh to see a medieval peasant’s face after reading them this headline.

I’ve never played Factorio and had fun playing the game. I think there is supposed to be a tutorial when you first start the game? And I think the tech tree is a good guide for what to do next.

https://prisonjournalismproject.org/2024/03/31/popular-video-game-banned-federal-prisons/

From my prison cell in Colorado, I conquered sites on alien planets, used conveyor belts to supply my factories, and organized weapons to defend against enemy attacks. I was playing Mindustry, a world-building game that relies heavily on logistics and strategy.

For less than $2, I could lose myself in my Android tablet at night — then, when I slept, my dreams about the game replaced my usual nightmares. And I wasn’t alone: Inmates talked about the game over meals and at work.

Then came an announcement from officials last July. Mindustry would no longer be on our prison-issued tablets.

“I knew a lot of people would be upset when I read they were taking it away,” one inmate from Nebraska said. “I could walk around the chow hall, my work assignment and other areas — everyone was talking about it.”

According to a statement from a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson, Mindustry was removed because it was “found to jeopardize the safety, security, and orderly operation” of federal prisons.

When Prison Journalism Project asked for specifics on how the game jeopardized safety, security and orderly operation, the spokesperson said the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not discuss specific security practices or internal procedures for security reasons.

The game’s fans here in Federal Correctional Institution at Englewood, a federal prison in Colorado, included a retired colonel for the U.S. Army.

“All they’ve left us with are stripped-down children’s games,” he said.

Another player had one of the most elaborate mining and distribution centers I’ve ever seen, the fruit of many hours of thought — which, of course, is one key to fighting recidivism.

“Whenever I’m feeling upset, I can pick up my tablet,” the player told me. “It calms me down and changes my whole mindset.”

Users have come up with their own explanations for Mindustry’s fate. One theory goes that players had used the game’s drawing pad to sketch dirty pictures or leave secret messages.

Whatever happened, people are disappointed.

“I wanted to buy a tablet,” one person said, “but now that they’ve taken Mindustry I don’t want one.”

Sentiments like that are understandable. We are still without many of the tablet features we were told to expect, including free e-books through Project Gutenberg, video messaging, and a life skills program through Khan Academy.

In a statement, the prison bureau said that games are controlled by a vendor, and that the bureau has “the right to remove any game that it deems inappropriate.”

I miss the game. When I played it, I could stop dwelling on my past or my unknown future. And it encouraged me to be more social with others, especially when we would discuss strategy. My tablet now lies neglected in my locker.

The player who put together the elaborate mining center isn’t shocked that Mindustry is gone.

“It’s not uncommon for the BOP to take away something we like,” he said.

This sucks. :(

What kind of data does listenbrainz and last.fm store and what are they used for?

Also doesn’t display anything without javascript

I personally use tankie.tube.

I don’t think ð was pronounced exactly the same way as thSeems like I was thinking of other languages where they were/are pronounced differently.

Btw, what is a non-local RSS reader? I have come across multiple that RSS readers that advertise being “self-hosted” and I’m confused about that since in my mind RSS readers are simply clients that periodically query different servers for an .rss file, so I’m confused about where there is anything to host besides the host of the .rss feed.

I like my toots.

I thought public Invidious instances stopped working?

Here you see the chinese meddling in other countries’ politics. The canadians are so brainwashed by the chinese that in canadian elections they vote for the Communist Party of China!

I didn’t know who she was, so I just assumed it was true and that she was just another celebrity sponsored by a VPN company.

Let’s hope some day this bug gets fixed: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/71929

I couldn’t run it because of that bug back when I tried it.

lemmy.ml has non-unicode emojis?

German has the term raubkopieren for piracy which translated literally means theft-copying. I kind of find that term funny because somehow it makes it sound even worse than just piracy, since with pirates we at least have the pop fiction image of the pirate, and because it has a paradoxical sound to it (“how can you steal something by copying?”).

I use bookmarks for stuff that I know that I will some day in the future want to go back to. I don’t bookmark every link I open, because I want my bookmarks to only have the “good stuff”, ie. stuff that I know I will need often or in the future.

I now have installed an auto tab discarter extension, so I can keep all those tabs open without using too many resources but still be able to go back to them when I need to.

The f in foss is for free as in libre, not price. And I imagine it is used to avoid touching the topic of open source software vs libre software. So saying you can make money from one and not the other doesn’t make sense.

Couldn’t we just get rid of the animals and just ferment the beans ourselves by using the bacteria in their guts?

With the assumption that we now measure inclines of course

I interpreted your reply to njm1314 as meaning “we don’t need to measure inclination to cheat, we can do that by simply increasing our precision”