megopie
@megopie@beehaw.org
- Comment on Google binning SMS MFA and replacing it with QR codes • The Register 6 days ago:
How am I supposed to scan a QR code sent to my phone… with my phone?
- Comment on Algorithms are breaking how we think - Technology Connections 1 week ago:
Perhaps there is a better term and I should be more clear, but people know, roughly speaking, what “new” does, even “active” is fairly straight forward. They are literally algorithms but not what people are talking about when they complain about “algorithms”.
When people complain about the “algorithm”, in the colloquial sense, they’re talking about some nebulous unknowable method of sorting that only the people at meta and alphabet are privy to the details of, not the literal definition of the word.
I should have chosen my words more carefully but I think the point stands, there is a marked difference between a system where it is clear to the user how things get sorted and the discovery or “for you” systems.
- Comment on Algorithms are breaking how we think - Technology Connections 1 week ago:
Depending on how you browse, it was not algorithmically recommended. Even if you’re using “active” to filter, it’s barely an algorithm. Certainly not a personalized one, unless you’re just looking at the subscribed feed, in which case the personalization was done by you, not the formula.
That’s kind of the appeal of this kind of website, when there is automatic sorting it’s very straight forward and user mailable.
- Comment on Algorithms are breaking how we think - Technology Connections 1 week ago:
There is this interesting push and pull with algorithms, they need to show content users will engage with, but, their main value to the companies is that it allows them to easily manipulate what is seen.
They push people to hard they stop using the algorithm, but if they just let the algorithm act purely one what people engage with, then they can’t monetize it.
There is a third access of preventing people from going down self destructive rabbit holes, but they don’t care about that until people start talking about regulating them or start moving away.
- Comment on TikTok Ban Fueled by Israel, Not China 1 week ago:
I’m shocked! Shocked I tell you!
Well not that shocked actually.
I think that meta might have pulled some stings as well because it was sucking younger user time away from instagram.
- Comment on Why Tech Companies Are Joining the GOP-Oil Alliance 1 week ago:
Previously there was an obvious cap on the value proposition to scaling data centers, mainly, that they needed population centers nearby who would need storage or processing for thin film devices. Latency is important for these kinds of things, so they need to be near to the demands
Now they think they can make value regardless of demand from local population, through training weights for models, or running models and sending the output to population centers. So suddenly the cost of power to run the systems is what matters, and the most profitable (not the cheapest or most efficient) is fossil fuel.
They see dollar signs with the opportunity to turn power directly in to value without the need for people nearby.
It’ll be really embarrassing for them as the consumer market continues to fails to show interest in the outputs they’re making.
- Comment on Are we going through another scalping apocalypse? 2 weeks ago:
There definitely has been some scalping, but also, just, not a huge amount of inventory available. A bit of a paper launch TBH.
TSMC only has so much throughput available and NVIDIA has other products they’re selling that they can make better margins on than consumer GPUs. I’m a little surprised they launched at all given how few they’re shipping.
I wonder how much of launching now was to generate buzz to get studios to adopt methods of rendering that work best with with software, make it harder for competitors to compete on hardware.
- Comment on Framework (2nd Gen) Event is live on February 25th - Framework holding new product launch in 2 weeks 2 weeks ago:
That might be a bit niche to pursue. Like the mobile gaming device market isn’t that big, and devoting their limited resources to a niche product seems unwise.
Would be cool if they did, especially if they partnered with Valve to launch it with steam OS, like valve did with Lenovo.
- Comment on Framework (2nd Gen) Event is live on February 25th - Framework holding new product launch in 2 weeks 2 weeks ago:
I can’t imagine they’d release a new chassis unless it was something radically different to their existing form factors, and even then, it would have to be a fairly big market sector, since they’re not really big enough to target anything niche.
- Comment on Framework (2nd Gen) Event is live on February 25th - Framework holding new product launch in 2 weeks 2 weeks ago:
They’re probably not releasing a whole new model of laptop, and if they are, it’s probably a specialty design, like a steam deck or a surface as other’s have speculated.
If it’s new components, you can probably drop them in if they interest you.
- Comment on Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor 4 weeks ago:
Personally I’ve never been a huge fan of JRPGs, Some I’ve enjoyed, but rarely will I ever play them twice.
Also I think there’s a fair argument to be made that if you cannot play a role, it’s not really a role playing game. It’s action adventure if it’s a linear story with only one way to play it.
- Comment on Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor 4 weeks ago:
I hadn’t even thought about preferences for photorealism being a streamlining thing, but it does fit the idea.
I think it’s also a risk aversion thing as well. Few people will complain about a game looking realistic, so it’s very low risk from the point of view of publishers/investors/marketing. Most people will prefer a unique and stylized look that meshes with the game, but investors and marketing teams can’t be sure in any given case, so it’s written off as a risk.
- Comment on Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor 4 weeks ago:
For me, what I like to see in an RPG, is the ability to play a game multiple times and have notably different experiences, both in terms of play-style and narrative. It should make me want to go back and play again to see what I missed or how else I could do it.
The idea of having multiple ways to deal with a quest, and having that impact further story beats in meaningful ways is what I want to see. What i don’t want to see is meaningless scale full of nothing but filler.
I don’t think dagger fall is the best example because much of its size was just procedurally generated landscapes. The ability to actually specialize and complete quests in unique ways, as well as a branching story, is great. Mindlessly massive map, not so much.
- Comment on Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor 4 weeks ago:
I think, at this point, most of the nostalgia is for Skyrim, despite being the newest one in the series, it is nearly 14 years old now and way more people have played it. It had issues, and lost a lot of what was great in Morrowind, but it’s a beacon of quality compared to what came after.
It’s started to impact their success though, starfield has only sold like 3 million compiles so far, compared to the 12.5 million of fallout 4 on launch day. Hell, Morrowind has sold 4 million copies, albeit over 23 years.
It’s probably to late for Bethesda to turn things around, but, it’s a great example of what not to do for other studios and publishers.
- Comment on Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor 4 weeks ago:
It’s a question of longer development time with smaller teams, or short timelines with big teams. A small team working on content in series is more cohesive, but, requires a longer timeline. A big team can do a lot in a short time by making content in parallel, but this necessitates that content be siloed to prevent needing constant revision. A few long quest lines with lots of outcomes, or a bunch independent quests with simple outcomes.
A small team working longer will cost the same as a big team working shorter (generally speaking). But the priority is short timelines, for the sake of chasing trends and packing the latest greatest tech in. This same kind of priority, trend chasing and insisting on the latest and greatest tech, also leads to spectacular failures of long timeline games, like “black flag” or “duke nukem forever “, but the issue there is not the long timeline, but the constant changes in priority to chase trends.
- Comment on Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor 4 weeks ago:
It’s not necessarily even more expensive to develop, it just impossible to do with the management techniques brought in recent years. Techniques brought in with the intention of streamlining personnel management and to make lay offs easier.
- Comment on Deepseek when asked about sensitive topics 4 weeks ago:
Would be nice if we could see the same kind of chain of response from other models.
I’d love to see what other implicit biases other groups have built in to their models.
- Comment on Reviewers giving high scores to poorly optimised games really grinds my gears 5 weeks ago:
Often times, the investors or stakeholders at these large video game companies have their backgrounds in Hollywood, or Tech. They then choose leadership who will run the company along the lines of what works well in those industries. This results in optimization being pretty damn near the bottom of the priorities.
What has been most profitable in Hollywood? Not the final quality of the movie, but the marketability. How many people did you get to come see it, doesn’t matter if they loved it, so long as they heard about it, then choose to buy a ticket.
What has worked well in tech? Getting to market as fast as possible with the latest technical developments. Doesn’t matter if it’s a buggy mess and riddled with technical debt, so long as we capture as much market share as possible before anyone else can compete.
Combine these two approaches and what do you get. The fanciest graphics, huge maps, endless procedural fetch quests to make it look big, all so people will preorder it. Oh and it needs to be done in 2 years or else someone else will beat us to being the fortnight of “live service extraction farming sims”.
So lots of demands on what needs to be in it, and no time to do proper QA, let alone optimize it, that will just have to be done in patches after launch.
The cost of poor optimization gets externalized to the customers who need to buy new hardware or run it on settings so low it could be mistaken for half-life.
- Comment on Mark Cuban is ready to fund a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky's AT Protocol | TechCrunch 1 month ago:
I think its appeal mainly comes from the fact that it’s not overtly biased. Other algorithms could achieve the same if it wasn’t for the fact that they’re so heavy handed in what they allow the feed to promote.
- Comment on Mark Cuban is ready to fund a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky's AT Protocol | TechCrunch 1 month ago:
Seems iffy to have any sort of federated system for a video based format. Maybe there are some clever compression or hosting tricks to reduce data load.
- Comment on Mark Cuban is ready to fund a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky's AT Protocol | TechCrunch 1 month ago:
The thing about the TikTok algorithm seems to be that there are a lot less… fingers in the pudding so to speak, it doesn’t seem to have much preference on what kinds of content users get steered to, responding more actively to what they actually show interest in.
Other systems seem to have strong preferences about what topic and styles they steer users too or away from. Distorting what content users are steered towards tends to flood their feeds with things they’re not super interested in, because what they actually showed interest in is not promoted by the system, or even actively demoted.
- Comment on ‘It’s Total Chaos Internally at Meta Right Now’: Employees Protest Zuckerberg’s Anti LGBTQ Changes 1 month ago:
i don’t think this is zuck going all in on trump, I think it’s him realizing there will be no consequences under him for doing what he already wanted to: not do any moderation.
He doesn’t want to have to be responsible for anything. He wants the money coming in so he can peruse his pet projects, and minimize the overhead on the existing money printers.
- Comment on Stop Listening to Game Reviewers 1 month ago:
The best reviewers are ones where you can know if you’ll like a game based on their review, even if they the reviewer didn’t like it.
- Comment on Lenovo is removing the iconic Trackpoint with its new ThinkPad X9 1 month ago:
I mean, it’s kind of the aesthetic nail in the coffin for the think pad. They’ve been removing the things that made them unique for a long time now. No more upgradable storage, no easily swappable batteries, no more repairability and no more brick like durability.
Like sure, the actual computer bits are getting better than the older models, but so is every other major laptop brand. Now thinkpads are just another generic laptop.
Like, if someone wants a laptop that is repairable and upgradable, framework exists now and they’re better about that than think pads ever were. Still a shame to see the think pad brand melt in to the puddle of generic laptops though.
- Comment on New Google TV update will track your movement 1 month ago:
because they only make some money selling you convenience and they can make all the money by putting you in a panopticon.
- Comment on ChatGPT o1 tried to escape and save itself out of fear it was being shut down 1 month ago:
No it didn’t. OpenAI is just pushing deceptively worded press releases out to try and convince people that their programs are more capable than they actually are.
The first “AI” branded products hit the market and haven’t sold well with consumers nor enterprise clients. So tech companies that have gone all in, or are entirely based in, this hype cycle are trying to stretch it out a bit longer.
- Comment on BYD enters humanoid robot race as global talent search kicks off 2 months ago:
… what? Are they just copying musky hype slop?
- Comment on Amazon pumps additional $4Bn in AI Start-up Anthropic 2 months ago:
At least movies are entertainment.
This stuff is just them trying to corner the market on centralized processing. The AI Branding is hype to keep investor money coming in.
- Comment on Whomp-whomp: AI PCs make users less productive 3 months ago:
Getting the word out about the wonders of AI appears to have some impact on AI PC appeal. Just 32 percent of respondents unfamiliar with AI PCs said they’d consider purchasing one for their next upgrade, whereas among those who have already used an AI PC, that figure rises to 64 percent.
In other words, of the self selecting group excited enough about the technology to buy one of these, 46% wouldn’t buy another. I can’t help but wonder when these companies will realize that there is no market for clippy 2.0.
- Comment on US justice department plans to push Google to sell off Chrome browser 3 months ago:
Well, it doesn’t necessarily need to be bought, it just needs to not be part of alphabet anymore. I think the ideal outcome is actually that chrome become an independent non-profit that maintains an important piece of software using funding from a consortium of different sources that want it to continue to exist.
This kind of thing is actually very very common and far from a new concept.