I understand what you’re saying. I don’t have any love or respect for Falcons as an organisation and I felt the same way when PSG won Eurocup this year. But I can feel happy for the players, while feeling regretful about the organisation behind it that made it happen. Obviously, nobody likes Ammar - I don’t like him as a person either - but his talent is undeniable, and I really hope seeing things like offlane Huskar and Ursa shake the meta up a bit and influence other offlaners to play similar styles.

I’m pretty happy for Falcons. I don’t particularly like them, but they deserved to win it. XG actually looked very strong going into the finals. Their drafts in games 1 and 3 were really impressive. But Falcons did a great job of adapting to them. A lot has been said of the Falcons players, but we can’t forget Aui2000, winning his second time as a coach. He’s an absolute legend of the game.

Overall, I was a little disappointed by the results. Nigma and Heroic vastly outperformed expectations, but I was still hoping at least one of them would make it to the final day. I was also cheering hard for Noone and it was sad to see him come so close and miss again, just like all those years on VP. I hope they stick together, that team is the one I would most like to see win it all next year.

Yeah, their draft came together in a way I did not expect. I’m feeling a bit sheepish about saying that, but I think it’s forgivable considering how poorly the game started out for them. Amazing comeback though. Especially loved how impactful Sandking looked, especially when the casters were saying how much worse it was than earth shaker.

And just as I say that, Satanic starts popping off. He’s really carrying Parivision.

Still, he looks like he’s doing it all by himself. The rest of his team is looking a bit uncohesive, especially in teamfights. It is getting pretty interesting though…

BBT is looking extremely dominant. Their drafts are great and their gameplay is completely suffocating Parivision. They’re looking like the strongest team at the moment from my perspective, even better than XG at this point. But they likely won’t meet until the upper bracket finals if they continue winning at the paces they have set.

Some thoughts:

• WEU teams looking very shaky - especially liquid. I haven’t watched any Aurora matches, but they look like the strongest WEU team, aside from Falcons maybe.
• Surprising that two Chinese teams are at the top of the group. I haven’t watched Tidebound, but XG looked very good against Falcons. I think at least one of them has a good chance of playing in the finals, maybe even winning it all.
• I was hoping that some underdogs would perform well (Navi, Nigma), but it looksl ike there haven’t been any real surprises or upsets.
• BBT sees to have rebounded after losing first round to Nigma, but their next two matchups were pretty easy. I watched one Spirit match against XG where they looked pretty bad, but they may be improving too.
• As always, the team that wins is the one that plays best at the end, not the group stages, so let’s see how things go in a week. I think the remaining group stage matches are going to be pretty interesting.
• I really enjoy the Swiss format. It forces teams to adapt to the meta much more rapidly than the usual group stage format.

How did Ame get in the fountain???

Falcons vs XG, still going at 75 minutes. These late game fights are ridiculous. 19k damage by Ame in a single fight.

Remove it mid-tournament. If it’s really that bad, it’d be the right thing to do.

Ghost did look very good. It was great to see him play with so much confidence. And it would really be great for the SEA scene to see one of their own go deep into the tournament.

Also happy to see Sumail still going strong. His initiations were amazing. TI5 was 10 years ago at this point, it’s good to see him still playing great Dota.

The AM draft is working. God help us all.

That said, XG is playing very well and Spirit is not looking in good form. The micro from Yatoro was crazy though.

Awesome series between Nigma and BBT.

they were unable to come to an agreement with their organization that would allow them to participate.

What the hell is that supposed to mean…?

B-b-b-but my convenience!!!

My understanding from what you’re writing (and from this article) is that the phone number is really the account number. That’s all well and fine, but then they force you to verify that the number is yours (or at the very least, one that you have access to because you need to receive a confirmation over SMS), so you can’t use something more private. And sure, it makes it a little harder to find your new contact, but I don’t think it’s really that big of a deal - just exchange your other “account number” via some other channel.

Besides, don’t think for a second that when this identifying information inevitably falls into the wrong hands that it will benefit you in any way. “What are you hiding, citizen?” and all that bullshit.

The part of it that bothers me is the sense of entitlement that these companies exhibit. The “Give us your phone number or fuck off” sentiment is something I just refuse to accept. If Google forces us to do the same and we refuse, what makes Signal think that we’ll do it for them when they’re so much smaller by comparison? Especially when you’re trying to claim you’re more secure and private to people that much more tech savvy than average, this just comes off as not understanding your audience very well. I’m sure I’m not the only one that is holding out against using Signal because of this.

I’m surprised this hasn’t been said yet… but what I hate most about Signal is its requirement for a phone number. I don’t want to be identified, and I want to be able to create multiple separate accounts with different identities if I want to.

I also hate the fact that it’s a mobile-first service. Yes, there is a desktop application (and just one really crappy one at that), but it’s clearly designed to revolve first and foremost around your phone and be virtually impossible to use without one. As someone who hates writing on a 3-inch screen, this is a also non-starter for me.

I understand the arguments about perfectionism, but this is too much. I’ll stick with XMPP, Matrix and IRC, thanks.

but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all.

The fact that we have a telephone system that works with separate providers contradicts this sentiment. If I want to pick up the phone and talk to my cousin’s puppy in New Zealand, I can do that without creating an account on his provider’s service.

I don’t understand why we’ve forgotten this as a society. Yes, it was difficult to upgrade the phone systems over the past century, but it’s worth it in my opinion. I really wish we’d start seeing government regulation that says “you should be able to talk to someone on a service without having to create an account on said service.” I thought the DMA would do this, but sadly, Whatsapp still requires an account to talk to people using that service. Very disappointing.

The colors in the peertube logo are pretty hideous.

Are we claiming now that Activity Pub is the only protocol that we can use for the fediverse? I think XMPP is roughly 30 years old at this point, and I’m pretty sure Activity Pub is much younger than that. I could be wrong though.

But regardless, I don’t see why Activity Pub has to be the only protocol we accept to be considered a part of the fediverse. It’s not even like different AP implementations talk to each other all that well. My understanding is that Mastodon doesn’t federate that well with Lemmy, and I haven’t seen Loops or Pixelfed on Lemmy yet either.

I’d be happy to be corrected on any of this though, I haven’t looked too closely into exactly how AP works or how it’s supposed to interoperate with different applications.

Beautiful Game 3 between GG and Tundra. I always feel like GG’s strategies are very fragile, but they proved that it’s more resilient than I thought. A really nice demonstration of how they can still push their early game advantages late and win, and overall, their map movements lategame looked amazing. I’ve also been very impressed with how Quinn has been playing. He does so much for them in all of their teamfights.

I’ll be cheering for GG in the final, but can’t be upset with whoever wins. All 10 of them deserve it so much.