Why aren’t they matching the 104%?

That’s not going to keep them from selling it.

Their defense is the need to keep Firefox “financially viable”, but if that keeps them from being able to broadly state that they won’t sell our data, it’s better to use a fork that prevents Mozilla from accessing that data in the first place.

Aside from the organization’s charter mandating editorial independence, the BBC being publicly-funded by the country’s annual broadcasting fee ensures that it does not need to pander to politicians to conduct its operations. It’s far more effective at this than PBS, which is more likely to be biased due to its need for corporate and charitable sponsors.

RT in contrast is only accountable to the Russian government, and ultimately Putin, and is thus unable to maintain editorial independence from the government’s national and foreign policy interests.

RT is a mouthpiece of the Russian government; the only “other side of the story” that would come from it would not only be misleading, but also promote the authoritarianism, war crimes, and aggression of the Russian government.

In an age when LLMs make reading the truth harder and harder, blacklisting publications that are guaranteed propaganda is essential.

In the same vein, even though I’m fully supportive of Ukraine and its right to self-defense, I don’t think people should use any of the equivalent American propaganda agencies (U.S. Agency for Global Media: Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and Office of Cuba Broadcasting), since their reporting is often deliberately biased in favor of American foreign policy interests. Furthermore, there’s plenty of Western media sources not backed by state interests, so they’re never the only source on something anyhow.

The only reliable public broadcasting organizations are those with independent operations financed via public contributions, such as the BBC.

Private broadcasting organizations often have bias as well, with tabloids and extremist sources such as Newsmax being just as unreliable and misleading as state-backed outlets, so vigilance in maintaining a line in the sand between journalism and propaganda is essential.

For many Palestinian civilians, ‘all hell’ and more has already broken out.

Black Flag was the first one I played. As a result I then played Rogue and 3, then tried 2, which seemed mechanically a bit outdated (might try it again; just wish its health UI were more like Black Flag’s), so played Unity instead. Still have to try Syndicate, which seems to still be mechanically similar enough to the original formula to be interesting.

Played Origins past the first boss fight, but stopped since it no longer felt like an Assassin’s Creed game. Odyssey and Valhalla appear to replicate the Origins formula, so skipped them altogether. Might try Mirage at some point, given its lack of the RPG mechanics of the prior three games, but probably won’t get Shadows due to it seemingly returning in part to the RPG formula.

The ‘restored’ version is an official ROM hack of the NES version, so it can be played on the NES itself too via a flashcart.

Pokémon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire; unironically more addictive than the mainline Pokémon games.

I’d hardly count something like a simple Solitaire clone app that could be otherwise played for free as a full game release… In terms of actual games, I’d much rather support mobile ports that can be bought for a one time price tag than those that are locked behind a subscription in perpetuity.

Admittedly I did need a guide at times for Quern too; I think the best compromise is what Cyan did for Firmament and just include an optional hint system in the game itself. By avoiding the need to consult walkthroughs, not only would excessive spoilers be avoided, but the experience would remain self-contained, something especially important for a VR game.

Something they didn’t fix for the Myst remake that the Myst-like Quern is much better at is not making puzzles so obscure as to essentially require a guide to complete the game. Was anything done about that problem for the Riven remake?

Good on the EU for supporting consumer rights over corporate profits.

No worries, Minesweeper’s definitely a classic!

While Minesweeper’s a great example, since random levels are a feature of nearly every Minesweeper iteration in existence, I mentioned in my post that I was excluding such games from the list. For those looking for such a game though, Globesweeper and Tilesweeper are great options.