My recently widowed father (72) is planning a trip across the country to meet a woman who he claims called him by accident and with whom he has since built a romantic (remote) relationship. Here's what he's shared with me:

• He received a "wrong number" call from a woman that led to a number of other conversations online and on the phone that started to take on a romantic tone.
• He believes she is real because he has checked her out online, including validating that she is indeed the CEO of her company, is 40 years old, and is originally from Taiwan. Haven't seen this myself.
• She says she runs this company with her brother in Canada and her father back in Taiwan. The details of the company were not clear to me.
• They have exchanged photos but not video because her webcam is not working.
• He is planning a trip to Los Angeles (from the East Coast of US) in a few months to meet her in person. She said her driver will pick him up at the airport.
• No money has been asked for or sent, according to him.

This is obviously a scam, right? But, without there being an ask for money I can't figure out the angle and haven't been able to convince him to disengage.

It is either going to be an ask for money to help her overseas family or a "can't lose" investment in her company. I'm guessing she'll back out of the travel plans last minute so they never meet OR he's going go there and have his organs harvested.

Does anyone recognize this scam? What should we expect next? Has anyone else successfully talked their elderly loved ones out of one of these?

I spent years, but I didn't find any interesting acquaintances, and I came across such people that I thought I was in the Stone Age, I seemed to be dumb by 25 percent at least when I communicated in discord or I was terribly bored, it's difficult to explain, but that's about how I can describe my experience.

Not sure if it is a planned maintenance or something else.

On Lemmy.world when i click a link and then hit the back button, the entire page refreshes. That's sucky. Is there a setting in web browsers that can either make a page not refresh, or make that site always open links in a new tab?

Some context does involve me opening up to this person and they telling me it's cute that I open over text, being lonely might make me get attached to them quickly.

The whole thought is if they didn't have same feelings about me; should I be open and say I should pursue a healthy relationship or just not say anything and let it come out through my actions

I'm lucky enough to have disposable income, I could afford to buy one without it hurting. That said, idk just off principle it feels like an insane ask. Especially considering its not doing anything a PC can't do (as far as I know). For those not in the know, the cheapest edition will be about 1,000 USD and the most pricy will be around 1,500. To my knowledge, consoles themselves aren't profitable historically. So, do you think even at this price point Valve is taking a hit? Do you think if this sells well it will drastically increase the cost of other consoles (completely independent of the external factor being hardware shortage due to AI). General steam machine discussion post as well, just dont be a dickhead to anyone.

Are friends just supposed to be like a TV? You talk to them when it's convenient for you and you can't think of something else to do?

I've just realized all the people I thought were my friends only talk to me on their schedule, when they feel like it. I'm left on read for days, meetings are ignored, text message conversations just end abruptly until they get back from vacation....

Is this it? Is this what friendship is? Because I don't want it. I don't want to feel like I have people to rely on only to find out that I'm just a convenience for people.

There was a comic, I thought it was on a games community, but I can't find it anywhere and I've scrolled back for ages. Pretty sure the context was the OP complaining about souls games, the comic was definitely about that, and i think it was a bird and it bit the game and then in the background the final frame had 'GOD SLAIN'

Maybe the post has been deleted? Or maybe it was in some random not games or comics related community.. but I scrolled back like 4 days and it was definitely posted in that time period, pretty sure yesterday..

So we have these regular announcements like https://lemmy.world/post/48341079

The app stores listed there are only from the big hardware vendors. Not a single mention out of the Open Source world. I guess ut means all these developers were reasonable enough not to play along.

What do you think is going to happen? Is Google really going to cut them all down?

I joined because Reddit has become a cesspool of bots and toxic behaviour. Lemmy is still completely open-sourced, while Reddit isn't at all now. Also, when you first sign up on Reddit currently, you get completely ignored now and can't post or comment on regular subs.

I'm looking to get a different OS on my phone (currently it's default Samsung Android), but I can't find any that officially support my model. Where can I find a list of OS that support my phone?

My phone is a Samsung galaxy a32 5g if that helps

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/questions/p/1210820/why-the-fuck-do-people-post-photos-of-text-instead-of-just-text

I find this very weird.

On one hand you got text, which is very accessible and very efficient and easy to translate for non-native speakers.

On the other, you got photos of text which is inefficient, hard to translate and not easy to read compared to just text.

So what gives? Why do people use photos of text instead of text?

Having rewatched Stargate SG-1 a bazillion gazillion times, I'm looking for something else with which to feed my Claudia Black needs.

Is Farscape any good? Why? Any other recommendations?

If you want a dad moment check out !dadforaminute@lemmy.world It's not a nice day for everyone

Bonus points if you share a humorous or informative moment with them.

I know that there are prisons where the interaction isn't face to face, rather via phone where the only thing separating both inmate and visitor is a window (from that type of interaction, the conversation is definitely recorded but can languages alone hide the nature of the conversation?) That depends on the language spoken and it's similarities to English (like Spanish) while languages that are very different (like Japanese or Korean) making it hard to translate.

I mean, most languages can be translated but the nuances from the mother tongue won't be 100% retained since changes can be made plus different languages have their own cultures attached to them. As in what is considered profanity and offensive in the mother tongue translates as a normal word in English (unless you clarify the context), as in what is 100% accurate won't be to the other party since languages are different the same way cultures are.

For me if I had to pick a good contender it would be the UK version of The Office.

I know many tend to debate how Ricky Gervais really fell off and how he repugnantly acts like a whiny centrist edgelord but me personally IMO I actually don't think he was ever funny not even a little.

His big break through television was just so painful to sit through it's so charismatically boring the characters are completely generic at best (notably Tim) or straight up insufferably unlikable at worst (especially the protagonist David FUCKING Brent) and most importantly the humour is just embarrassing.

Always seemed like The Thick Of It but without the nuisance tongue in cheek and charming satire.

I am a father of two. Wife was working today. It is very warm today, so I wanted to go swimming with my kids. My son was oke. My daughter also wanted to go, but she was on her period. She didn't want to go swimming in this situation. But for her it is also a very warm day. How can she find cooling? Any tips?

does anybody know whether directly linking to inv.nadeko.net site is illegal as piracy? because it provides a service that would otherwise be provided by youtube

I only pay ¥900 ($5.60 / C$7.90) per month for (Japanese) Apple TV while the same subscription is literally $12.99 for Americans and C$17.99 for Canadians per month, like WTF? Regional pricing is also taken into account despite using the exact same streaming service, why is that? There are differences though, mainly in the shows available (different countries share their exclusives that don't exist in the other). Why does it cost "less" in Japan though...

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/questions/p/1209070/what-is-the-origin-of-fuck-you-use-as-a-insult

How does "fuck you" work as insult? What is the origin?

WWF. Especially during the attitude era. It was like 1998 through 2000 that nearly everyone was into wrestling, especially with what the WWF was doing and some of what WCW was doing with NWO. But, as the years piled on, it seemed like the flaws became more apparent. I look back at that period now and was like "...why did we like this again? and what from it did people want?". Because some people want swearing back, they want buckets of blood back, they want sex appeal back .etc

That was just car-crash television and I learned later that what both promotions were doing back then, were doing whats called hot-shotting. It's a wrestling term where you're booking things in a seemingly appealing matter that audiences want to see. That's what they were doing and it did honestly work for a long time.

If there was anything I'd want out of wrestling anymore these days, is competent booking and for matches to feel like and be big-fight moments. The cat is out of the bag for what wrestling really is, it's just about characters, smoke and mirrors and highly choreographed moves that when they look routine, stand out.

At least some of the video games were still fun.