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I still use Twitter but I have no idea what the quality of ads is like since they're long blocked. I could well imagine that there is some absolute bottom of the barrel garbage and scams a plenty.

Absolutely and it's so lazy a series. While some entries did raise the bar a little bit in terms of world building or graphics, they are still the same crap in a new skin. There is a side by side comparison between the first game and the latest on YouTube and while there are changes you'd be forgiven for not knowing there was a 16 year gap between the two games. Even some of the same bugs remain such as feet clipping into the horse during mount / dismount because they couldn't be bothered to fix the animation.

I would be surprised if their sub service was not a failure. In fairness the service has hundreds of games but most in the last 5 years has been garbage and beyond that, where is the value? As a consumer I might as well buy old games on GOG, Steam or wherever at my discretion rather than be locked in to a sub that costs the same and have nothing to show for it afterwards.

These services need thousands of games, across a range of publishers. Even better if they support downloads or streaming as options. So basically I don't see subs working unless it is large platform owner who can incentivize publishers and thousands of titles to partake in it.

Subscriptions are taking off, just not Ubisoft subscriptions because most of their games are derivative shit.

And personally I don't have an objection with the concept of subscription as an option. It's no worse than streaming music or videos, or renting a DVD / VHS back when. But whatever the service is will have to have a LOT of content, not just back catalogue but new stuff too with fair & reasonable terms for people to want to subscribe. If Ubisoft wants to ever see its stuff streamed it will have to be as part of some other, better service than the one they offer that's for sure.

I got a popup saying "wanna try the new Outlook app"? So I did and the fucking thing immediately inserted ads that resembled email into my inbox. If this is the future I'll install Thunderbird.

I use Twitter with the control panel and ad block. Both on my desktop and my phone. The phone doesn't use their app, it uses a web app which gets stripped of all the ads and other bullshit. I peek into Bluesky and Mastodon and post the odd thing there. Some Twitter accounts I follow are starting to mirror on other sites which is a positive thing. I just wish the news services I follow would do the same. I don't get why the BBC (for example) doesn't mirror its content or other news orgs when Twitter / Musk is so hostile to them and their journalists.

It's all about stickiness. Twitter still has accounts people want to follow whereas other platforms don't so people can't shift or find it hard to. I've seen some prominent users move to Threads, Substack, Bluesky, Mastodon etc. but not enough and scattering to the four winds doesn't help either. If there were an actual exodus of accounts across media, news, celebrities, sports, government etc. then Twitter die on its ass. Or even if big accounts started mirroring their content across other social media services.

And these rival services should really federate. But we all know that the commercial services are loath to cooperate with each other when they want all the pie.

A few months back and he was driving his employees to produce banking apps and god knows what else. I wonder what they think of their mercurial asshole boss who'll demand everything all at once.

I wonder if there shouldn't be a way of federating duplicate groups after the fact so one doesn't have to "win", they just all combine as one.

It has little buttons on the wheel for left or right instead of a stalk. Problem is when you're going through a roundabout you're twirling the wheel around so it is almost impossible to to know where the buttons are at any given point in time. A stalk stays put, the buttons are anywhere depending on where the wheel is at. I think this video demonstrates it most clearly - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBFxbKTEWu8

It was designed to cut costs and hope fanbois would think it was innovation. It's so dangerous a change it should be banned in countries where drivers are expected to properly indicate while traversing roundabouts.

The new Tesla Model 3 should be banned from the whole of Europe until they put the indicator stalk back. It is virtually impossible to safely and legally traverse a roundabout without it.