Kyle Orland
@kyleor.land
Senior Gaming Editor, Ars Technica / The guy who LITERALLY wrote the book on Minesweeper -- bossfightbooks.com/products/min...
Signal: kyleorl.31
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My book on Minesweeper covers a game that was pre-installed on 4 billion Windows computers but has had very little previous scholarly attention.
bossfightbooks.com/products/min...
Welcome to Bluesky. If you're a writer, don't forget to TELL US ALL ABOUT YOUR BOOK!
so much this 💯
if people want shorter games with worse graphics made with less work many exist but not enough people buy them for developers to be paid more (or even recoup costs)
similar to "there should be more variety in games" there's so much! gotta look for it! won't have CoD marketing budget
I know it's meant in good faith but "if we just made smaller scope games and charged 20-40 dollars for them it would fix the industry" is very funny to me. indies release like 20 of those a week on steam. are you buying them? is the industry fixed? no? hm. sounds like you need a different solution
1) This is an amazing tribute to a great guy
2) This is "The Simpsons are going to Delaware" going from joke to reality over the span of decades
Top right corner. Can't help but wonder if The Simpsons paid subtle tribute to Dan McQuade in tonight's set-in-Philadelphia 800th episode.
That’s Dan❤️🩹🦅
Top right corner. Can't help but wonder if The Simpsons paid subtle tribute to Dan McQuade in tonight's set-in-Philadelphia 800th episode.
Maybe it's just a late night after a long weekend, but "eggs chilly" currently feels like one of the funniest things I've ever read
The fact that SCOTUS basically feels no risk of accountability or even having its ruling ignored/overruled is the key cause of this split
this is a really important point. the district courts are trying to contain this administration. the circuits, by and large, are still working, with the occasional exception of the 5th, 8th, and DC circuits.
the Supreme Court is on an island. lawless and completely rogue.
But now that I'm grown, I eat five dozen eggs so I'm roughly the size of a barrrrrrrrrrrr-guh!
If you're eating one egg a day, a 2% increase in egg costs raises your egg spending by about two dollars annually. You'd notice this?
Blocked
(apparently this is still an increase of only $120 annually? Sounds suspiciously low...)
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It's been five minutes, why hasn't this post gone viral yet?
Or that's what he WANTS you to think!
BREAKING: @barackobama.bsky.social clarifies his position on aliens after his answer during the speed round of our interview went viral.
Honestly the best evidence that there's no evidence is that Trump has been president for five years and not blurted out anything like "I will deal with the alien problem like no president before. All relevant files will be public in the next two weeks. Thank you for your attention to this matter."
This reminds me of the golden age of MoviePass when people were seeing like 12 movies a month, whether they were good or not, and the path to profitability was... iffy
I fundamentally believe this era is an illusion. The current versions of Codex and Claude Code are costing OpenAI and Anthropic so much money because they’re running at like a negative 150% gross margin. All improvements involve more and more compute. The limits will be sudden and brutal.
I sometimes wistfully look back and wish this short golden age existed when I did not have a small child
I know it's meant in good faith but "if we just made smaller scope games and charged 20-40 dollars for them it would fix the industry" is very funny to me. indies release like 20 of those a week on steam. are you buying them? is the industry fixed? no? hm. sounds like you need a different solution
I have been told not to comment on a now-retracted Ars story while an investigation is ongoing.
Ars Technica does not permit the publication of AI-generated material unless it is clearly labeled and presented for demonstration purposes. I always have and always will abide by that rule to the best of my knowledge at the time a story is published.
really reminds me of MMORPG addiction or mobile game platespinning
Token Anxiety
i think i mostly echo this for myself. with so much that can be done, i often feel like i *should* be doing something, always
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Many people in South Africa, where Elon is from, died to create a genuinely multiracial polity. They were killed by people who thought like Elon.
The people who thought like Elon also lost. Seems their “common culture” of white supremacy wasn’t enough.
bsky.app/profile/alan...
1/3 What Musk is really referring to here is, of course “race” - that construct that served to define the hierarchies of wealth & power structured by modern colonialism. Like other far right racists though, he uses the word “culture” as a seemingly less pernicious synonym.
Feels like a real “only Nixon could go to china” moment brewing
M&Ms CEO: 'most, if not all' meals can be replaced by M&Ms within 12-18 months
Can a shoe be a character?
Engagement time!! Name your favorite Mario character
The best case scenario is that Trump will waste $38 billion. The more likely outcome is that these will become warehouses of human suffering, and a permanent stain on America's history.
Breaking news: ICE expects to spend $38.3 billion on its plan to acquire warehouses across the U.S. and retrofit them into immigrant detention centers that can hold tens of thousands of people, according to agency documents.
i find the idea of trump doing deep research into legal arguments screamingly funny. like, come on, even the deep-in-the-tank trump supporters don't believe this, get real. they didn't elect him for his scholarship.
Trump: “The Democrats refuse to vote for Voter I.D., or Citizenship. The reason is very simple — They want to continue to cheat in Elections. This was not what our Founders desired … There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!“
Like something out of an Elie Weisel book
On Thanksgiving, the immigrant children held at the Dilley detention center gathered in the gym for what they thought was a holiday feast.
The kids salivated over a spread of turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, a family told me.
But the food wasn’t for detainees — it was for the staff.
"Worry—but don't panic" is precisely the right stance to take as Trump revs up his election delegitimization machine. Excellent from in .
Not to harp on my pet issue but the filibuster prevents things from ever getting *that* different even when voters put a trifecta in power.
American politics is a seesaw driven by the biggest dipshits you’ve ever met
it’s just this comic over and over and over again, forever
good news! poison wasn’t bad for us after all!
Breaking News: The Trump administration repealed the bedrock scientific finding that greenhouse gases threaten human life and well being, meaning that the EPA can no longer regulate them. nyti.ms/4rSszQu
This is the most Encyclopedia Brown-ass shit I've ever seen in real life and I fucking love it.
Aided by genAI models like ChatGPT, “writers” hoping to get paid for fake stories have become an even bigger problem for publications big and small. One such writer almost pulled one over on COYOTE — until @soleilho.com, who is a nerd, spotted a key idiosyncrasy.
A decent opposition party could organize messaging around this and make it a national drumbeat story easily!
I am old enough to remember Dukakis getting blasted for one guy who got released. How Jan 6th pardoned assholes have gone on to commit crimes?
This is an incredible photo.
Every photo from Minneapolis looks like this. Cops decked out with guns and full tac gear facing off against people in bathrobes, parkas, and sweatpants armed only with whistles and cell phones.
Yet every verified MAGA chode on X dutifully calls it a riot or violent insurrection.
i mean this guy is right in the sense that the nazi regime demonstrated the logical end state of far-right politics and it was so obviously evil that it made being far-right almost universally socially unacceptable until the bulk of people who could remember it first-hand had died
Similarly, the Super Mario Bros. movie should just be an EXTREMELY FAITHFUL direct adaptation of the '90s Nintendo Power Super Mario Adventures comic
people want a Zelda movie to be "what if Ocarina of Time was LotR" when what it should be is an 80-minute anime OVA released in the early 90's with the weirdest plot you've ever seen and at least one original character who was so endearing that it physically hurts they aren't in any of the games
Can't say I'm really surprised at who is close to me on this map
I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!
bluesky-map.theo.io
I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail
having your city noticed by the president is now a natural disaster on par with a hurricane or major flood
Who's gonna tell him?
Jim Jordan: "You have a right to protest in the street, but that doesn't give you a right to go into the Capitol and disrupt Congress"
An error occurred while loading the video. Please try again.
NEGUSE: AG Bondi, that man works for you now, right? The man in that video from J6 yelling 'kill them!' at cops. His name is Jared Wise.
BONDI: He does work for us, yes. I believe he was pardoned
NEGUSE: And you expect hard-working police officers to believe you take law enforcement seriously?
An error occurred while loading the video. Please try again.
this is the saddest thing I've ever seen
"Sir, to show our appreciation, the trophy says 'the undisputed champion of beautiful, clean coal'"
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This is some genuinely psycho shit...
This is a good summary of why AI haters and AI maximalists are often just talking past each other
The challenge is that many different issues are packed together, and people pick the ones they want to object to. The economics of data centers could be unsustainable, content generated could be shoddy, IP issues could be untenable, etc. *and* the project to displace workers could still succeed.
This piece reminds me of my first ever EGM story, where I documented how I "earned" an OG Xbox by earning points through a bunch of those "free trial" offers that were popular in the '00s Internet.
aftermath.site/switch-2-cit...
Here's the piece in question, preserved in the EGM Compendium from Aug. 2005, issue 194:
egmcompendium.com/free-and-not...
As always, “who was president in 2020” is the key political issue of our time
voters pulled the lever for it to be 2019 again, and for their hubris, they got us all 2020 instead
Some personal news
(that billion point game is so tantalizingly close)
Youi mean this wasn't an accurate signal that insiders really thought Jesus was returning?
If your review average is a 7 because everybody gave you a 7, that's one thing. If your average is a 7 because it's half 10s and half 4s, that is how you know it's The Good Stuff
ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN | Reviews
9 - PSU
9 - CGM
9 - Console Creatures
8 - VGC
8 - Slant
8 - Gameliner
8 - TechRadar
8 - Noisy Pixel
8 - GameReactor
7 - IGN
7 - TheSixthAxis
6.5 - GamingTrend
6 - PSX Brasil
6 - WellPlayed
6 - Push Square
5.5 - ZTGD
5 - Gamespot
4 - MonsterVine
MC: 74
OC: 71
Amazing a whole story about Eddie Bauer filing for bankruptcy can leave out the fact that it was owned by private equity from 2009 to 2021 www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/b...
"It's undisputed"
Q: The rule today would block anti-tariff votes in the future. What's the reasoning for that?
MIKE JOHNSON: The president's trade policies have been a great benefit to the country. It's undisputed. I think the sentiment is we allow a bit more runway for this to be worked out.
The best time for Dems to get rid of the filibuster is always "when they last had a trifecta"
Wasn't the idea that red-blooded Americans were going to be snapping up these jobs that were being "stolen" by immigrants?
Peter Navarro: "The jobs report comes out tomorrow. We have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like ... Wall Street has to adjust for the fact that we're deporting millions of illegals out of the job market."
The first 75 issues of EGM had 22 appearances of Street Fighter and/or Mortal Kombat on the cover, apparently
(via the EGM Compendium)
Do a test of late 20th century history like Leisure Suit Larry did
shoutout to @amazingthew.bsky.social for the actual answer to discord adult verification
My “don’t panic” emails is leading to a lot of questions answered by the email itself
Extremely exciting news: We're hiring a full-time film critic to come work with me at The A.V. Club!
You probably have an idea if you're qualified for this, but if there's something that's not in the job listing, I'm sure I can answer Qs www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/43...
Feels like we’ve hit a tipping point
REP. STEIL: Some Dems demands put at risk the safety of members of law enforcement
CNBC: You mean like taking off their masks and having a badge that shows who they are?
STEIL: Well, they're known to their supervisors
CNBC: No other law enforcement officials in the US are allowed to wear masks
My theory that AI maximalists don’t know how to use a computer remains undefeated so far
You all started it and we fucking finished it.
Follow up question: who is doing the burning?
Rep. Tony Gonzales on Minnesota: "The problem is you've got so many local municipalities that don't want to work together. And when that happens, your city burns."
Nice to see Zero Suit Samus represented at these Olympic opening ceremonies
Feels like we've hit a tipping point
BREAKING:
New reaction from Leader Jeffries to the racist Trump video:
"This disgusting video posted by the so-called president was done intentionally. Fuck Donald Trump and his vile, racist, and malignant behavior. This guy is an unhinged bottom feeder."
Join me for some wild speculation about Steam Machine pricing in the "crazy expensive RAM and storage" era. With and more!
arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/...
Wrote about getting laid off and why media workers deserve a little grace.
www.readergrev.com/p/washington...
Feels like we've hit a tipping point
COONS: Joe, it's same rules NYPD follows. Do you see roving bands of NYPD w/ masks using bear spray on people?
KERNEN: You lost the election! That doesn't give you right to shut down govt
C: I have to fight for the core value of our democracy, including law enforcement that doesn't murder citizens
They found the line
1. It was not an accident.
2. It was not a staffer.
3. While the president may have dementia his racism is not due to dementia.
4. He isn’t sorry. He means every racist thought he shares.
5. His base agrees with him.
6. He will do it again.
7. No one in power will hold him accountable.
I agree, Polygon Man does make up for all the stuff that sucks
Going through the 1995 E3 Show Dailies. There are some amazing trade-only ads in these that I don't know have ever been reproduced
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Also, clip art collections and public domain/creative common visual repositories exist for this very reason
this is such a profound misunderstanding of what art is and what it means
I talked to someone involved with the production of that AI-generated Revolutionary War docuseries for Ars. Learned a lot about the process, including how it still takes "weeks" of prompts and re-prompts to generate minutes of usable video.
arstechnica.com/features/202...
The entire anti wokeness nonsense of the past decade was about making this kind of gutter racism broadly acceptable again bsky.app/profile/adam...
Pour one out for every professional political pundit, writer, consultant whatever that has spent the last decade trying to pretend that the Trump phenomenon was about trade or opiates and not a big chunk of white america losing its mind over having a black president bsky.app/profile/kyle...
We’ve hit a tipping point
Wow! What sounded like the entire AEW Dynamite audience in Las Vegas tonight chanted "Fuck ICE! Fuck ICE!" in unison before the main event
No joke, this reminds me a lot of Obama
Child at the podium: “A woo woo woo.”
Mamdani: That’s how I felt when we came up with this plan. Together, we will expand the idea of what is possible in our city—and what sounds and noises we can make at a press conference.
golden age of committing crimes you’ll probably get away with
The top federal prosecutor in Minnesota says his short-staffed office has been abandoning "pressing and important priorities" to manage the flood of immigration cases.
Daniel Rosen says his office is buckling under the crushing weight of emergency lawsuits filed by immigrants detained by ICE.
this, too, is an impeachable offense
Trump wanted Dulles Airport and Penn Station named after him as condition of releasing rail tunnel funds
ok, whoa. the DOJ just told me that the unredacted version of the document in question contains an image of a victim’s face overlayed on the face of the Mona Lisa image. so, that's why it's redacted. jesus christ
cool. glad we protected her identity at least www.404media.co/the-doj-reda...
This is a good pick but I think I have to go with "The Boy Who Ate Lasagna and Could Jump Over a Church" genius.com/King-missile...
Two local snow-clearing hotshots compete to see who can plow the most driveways -- and plow some other things -- after an icy storm descends on the area.
Sleeted Rivalry
Two shotputters compete to see who can throw things the furthest while competing in the bedroom.
Yeeted Rivalry