u/Enough_Credit_8199

I’m not really a gamer at all. I am normally used to a few fidget games and my beloved Backgammon. However I decided, being the Apple fanboy that I am, to try out Apple Arcade as in the UK they’re currently offering a 3 months for the price of 1 starter trial. I’ve only been using it for a couple of hours so forgive me if my question is basic. As a casual gamer, some of the titles look appealing. I haven’t played Angry Birds since my days of owning an iPhone 3G, and aaaawww here it is, as addictive as ever, without ads or in-app purchases. I’ve also played Solitaire, relieved at last to be able to play without ads that are more baffling than playing the game itself to exit. But once you’ve finished playing, how do you actually exit the games? Solitaire, Angry Birds, Warped Karts, Sasquatch none of them seem to have a simple escape button on the main screen to tap to get out of the blooming thing. I end up force exiting by swiping up to the app switcher, but that seems to be a bit drastic. I’m playing on an iPad M2 by the way, although I did try Angry Birds on the iMac M3 where it looked good but again quitting the game by the normal means of hitting Escape on the Keyboard didn’t want to work and I can’t quite remember what I did to get out of it. Finally, I’m a bit disappointed that there isn’t a Train or Underground simulator on Arcade. I found one on the App Store (In app purchases) called Paris Metro that wanted like a tenner a month to drive around the same stations over and over which got boring after 10 minutes. I don’t want anything majorly difficult but to ride the Northern Line on the London Tube or ride the overground from Brighton to London with a vaguely realistic graphic interface would be nice. They’ve had these things in Windows for years, but I’ve never found a single train sim for the Mac that a) works and b) holds enough interest. So can anyone recommend one, and if you’re a developer, can we have a decent train sim for Apple Arcade please?

The question is really to examine how far we’ve come in terms of tech since the 1970s. I got the idea for the question watching George Lazenby in OHMSS copying documents using a gadget so big it had to be swung into an office block via a huge construction machine. Bond these days would just have an iPhone 13 or something, not even the latest. He could go to CEX and pick up something used to accomplish most of that. I reckon an app might be able to crack the code to open a safe as well.

Apparently Nettie’s visiting New York next week. If you live in the US I believe you can pressure the Mayor to have him arrested. http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx1FuBBc-5LgJw\_EP75U\_wQh2CXmCaEyPz?si=URjhmOY2pAIHpIvX

I just saw a YT ad for Purina who are a Pet Food company. They’re telling us how they’re saving the Oceans. Yet they’re owned by Nestlé, who own 58% shares in an Israel food company called Osem. While Israel systematically starves Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, they eat. It’s immoral. Boycott them.

“Yesterday”…and Today is a couple of weeks shy of 60 years old! 60 Years Of The Beatles "Yesterday"...and Today!
https://youtu.be/izYeDBXd\_W4

I’ve been binge watching Endeavour, a British detective story based on the Inspector Morse series. The theme reminds me so much of Little Things. Both pieces begin similarly but then diversify, but the start of the show’s closing theme always makes me wonder if Benny had enjoyed the series and subconsciously nicked the first bar or three of Barrington Pheloung’s lovely piece. The show uses an edit of the full piece that’s available for online streaming so the “little things” theme starts at around 0:36s, after an intro based on the Morse code spelling of Morse played repeatedly on the same note. What do other people think?

Despite it sounding like two great grandads à la Harry Enfield’s Old Gits, this is actually a quite powerful, punchy song that gets under the skin with just one play. I like it. Thoughts anyone?!

The search engine Duck Duck Go comes up as green on No Thanks. But asking questions of its duck.ai version of Grok or Chat GPT reveals a clear pro Israel bias. I tried to ask it questions about the recent Golders Green stabbing in London. The media are going with an anti-Semitic narrative, which would be fair enough if that were the actual motive. They’re using it as an excuse to condemn the Genocide Protests in London as antisemitism. So I asked duck.ai how many victims there were, and it was able to name two Jewish victims, one aged 76 and one aged 34. It found its info from the Times of Israel and the BBC. Both Zionist news institutions. I probed duck.ai further because I happen to know, from the Crown Prosecution Website, that the same suspect is charged with not two but three victims, one of whom is a Muslim, although the CPS don’t actually name any of the victims or state a motive. The duck.ai first denied all knowledge of victim 3, then tried to paint the third person as a suspect, then it renamed the Muslim guy as a Jewish person. So it goes to show, the Zionists can get their teeth into any software, “Good For Now” or not.