Wow, a Lain meme was not something I was expecting.

I should watch that show again sometime, I still have the DVDs somewhere I think.

But that’s exactly what they just said isn’t UBI, with UBI you’d get to keep the money while working if you wanted to. “Universal” means everyone gets it, not just people who “claim to be uncomfortable working”.

Playframe doesn’t exclusively highlight small indie games, but they do cover a fair number of them alongside various bigger games.

Although, I guess it depends on how unknown a game has to be to “count” as “lesser-known”; I’ve certainly been introduced to games by Playframe, but, it’s not like they’re going onto Steam Roulette or anything.

Some examples of games that I personally hadn’t heard of until they showed up on Playframe include “Worldless”, “Cursed to Golf”, “Frog Detective”, “Say No! More!”, etc. I don’t think any of those are, like, deeply obscure or anything, but, they’re “smaller” indie games in my book.

Also, they’re just really rad people.

For those wondering, this is from “Science: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness”, by the inestimable Zach Weinersmith.

I’m always keen to shit on Google, but, this is about “having search terms in the query string” and “having links that take you directly to the thing you clicked on without any redirect dance to obfuscate the Referer header”. With all the other shit to legitimately complain about from Google, this seems so silly to focus on. Google isn’t even the one that sent the Referer header, that would be your browser (which, Chrome didn’t exist yet at the time). RFC1945, from 1996, for HTTP 1.0, even explicitly stated that any application that communicates over HTTP (i.e. a web browser) should offer the user a configuration option to disable sending Referer headers.

Edit: slight clarification, Chrome did exist during part of the time period that the lawsuit covers, though it only started to pick up serious market share towards the end of the relevant time period.

Here’s a weird one I had a half-baked idea for: Tower Defense Metroidvania. The idea is that your an acolyte of a temple (or a mechanic in a space station, whatever), and there’s an armed group trying to force their way past the temple’s traps and defenses to get to the heart of the temple and steal the macguffin; that’s going on in a little horizontal track at the top of the screen, and meanwhile the rest of the screen is Metroidvania gameplay as you navigate the interior of the temple (or space station) to activate defenses, acquire magical relics, and eventually awaken the temple’s guardian spirit. You lose if the bad guys get to the heart of the temple, you win when you successfully gather everything you need to awaken the guardian. In the meantime, you have to decide when and where to spend resources (including time) shoring up the “normal” defenses (that delay the attackers) and when you need to just push onward to awaken the guardian.

Tampopo is pretty great, and, I feel, pretty obscure as well.

Man, I’d never read “Stop talking to each other and start buying things” before, that’s a hell of an article.

Oh my god I love all of this

Such a good fucking show