ilinamorato
@ilinamorato@lemmy.world
- Comment on Gaming Website Polgyon Sold To Valnet And Hit With Layoffs 3 weeks ago:
There’s also a complete rehash of the Wikipedia article about the game, its release and reception, and maybe even a slideshow of memes before you get to the “No confirmation” part. And then a list of all the times the developers have said, “yeah, if they want to do another one, we’d take their money.”
- Comment on Gaming Website Polgyon Sold To Valnet And Hit With Layoffs 3 weeks ago:
Looking through their portfolio, I honestly don’t know how XDA and Android Police maintain their quality levels. Everything else is Taboola-level click farming junk.
- Comment on Gaming Website Polgyon Sold To Valnet And Hit With Layoffs 3 weeks ago:
Mass layoffs, though. That doesn’t usually presage a great time in a news site’s life.
- Comment on Gaming Website Polgyon Sold To Valnet And Hit With Layoffs 3 weeks ago:
Aftermath is the only gaming site I really pay attention to anymore. I still have Kotaku and PCGamer in my RSS reader, but I don’t really read any of their articles.
- Comment on The BBC deepfaked Agatha Christie to teach a writing course 3 weeks ago:
Deepfakes predate the current AI craze, if I recall the timelines correctly.
- Comment on The BBC deepfaked Agatha Christie to teach a writing course 3 weeks ago:
The editor of The Verge tends to be fairly neutral-to-negative about AI, at least on his podcast.
- Comment on I hate this image because idiots will see it, not understand what its showing, and make up some crazy shit based on it. 2 months ago:
Yeah that outer edge is called the firmament.
I mean, it’s not the worst name for the CMB.
- Comment on Chat, is this true? 2 months ago:
Looks like “not exactly,” but it’s cool nonetheless:
- Comment on Indiana is a great place to hire child labor 2 months ago:
Wrong Christmas color.
- Comment on Indiana is a great place to hire child labor 2 months ago:
You’re not wrong.
- Comment on Indiana is a great place to hire child labor 2 months ago:
Hoosier here. We’re trying to fix it. But guess which party has had a supermajority in state government for decades?
- Comment on Balatro wins formal appeal to reclassify poker game as PEGI 12 2 months ago:
In college, circa 2005, I played about three hours of WoW during a free weekend. I installed the game (from a CD!), started it up, and played for an afternoon. When I got up to go to the bathroom, I realized that I was at a crossroads: I could either make this game my life for the next indeterminate number of years, or I could leave it behind forever. Those were literally the only two options for me. My brain would accept no third option.
I deleted the game and went out to get pizza. Since then I’ve never picked it up again, and now it’s so big and unwieldy I’m not even tempted anymore. But that was a touch and go situation for those few hours.
A few games have given me similar pulls over the years, but I’ve gotten better about it. Balatro is the most recent one to grab me, since I got it only when it came to mobile. And yeah, it grabbed me pretty hard, but I also know that once I unlock all the Jokers I’m unlikely to go much further in it.
- Comment on Balatro wins formal appeal to reclassify poker game as PEGI 12 2 months ago:
Addictive, yes, but non-extractive. There’s a big huge difference.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 months ago:
It’s an illusion. Not that many people care (which was the problem in November), but the ones who do are loud about it.
The issue is one of education. The Republicans have been spewing non-stop misinformation, and the populace is too uneducated to understand the difference. When people actually know what’s going on and understand it, they overwhelmingly oppose conservative policies. Which is why Project 2025 wants to take a sledgehammer to public education.
If Democrats diverted all of their advertising budget toward remedial education of the electorate, I think they’d find themselves in a much better state in 2028.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 months ago:
It’s not exactly 0%. Their ineptitude is still fully on display, and that’s always been our greatest hope. But it is pretty bleak, and pinning our future on the hopes that the other side makes a mistake only makes it bleaker.
- Comment on You'll never see it coming 4 months ago:
Also true!
- Comment on You'll never see it coming 4 months ago:
I don’t believe it’s unfalsifiable, its just fundamentally true. You cant observe yourself in any reality where you are incapable of onserving yourself.
As you note, it’s the only logically-consistent framework through which to view the world we live in. But are there other ways in which the universe could’ve formed that we might be able to falsify it?
Imagine two universes, A and B. They’re entirely disconnected and independent from one another; no matter or energy can flow in either direction, except that through some exotic process, a small window exists in universe A through which universe B can be observed without affecting it in any way (Heisenbergs HATE this!). Universe A is just as our own is, including our existence, with the single exception of this window. In universe B, however, the laws of physics do not permit carbon atoms to form in stars, so no sentient life has ever formed.
In those universes, then, the Anthropic Principle would be falsified; as the residents of Universe A could observe a universe in which they could not have arisen.
Or consider a Boltzmann Brain (or a simulated universe). Were we to discover that our existence was of either nature, that too would falsify the Anthropic Principle, as we are not actually observing a universe.
Anyway. It’s not falsifiable in our reality, as far as we can tell. But we can imagine ways in which it could be falsifiable.
- Comment on You'll never see it coming 4 months ago:
I’ve never heard of that name for it, though the “observation selection” principle might be what you’re thinking of. They’re synonyms.
- Comment on You'll never see it coming 4 months ago:
There’s a principle, I can’t remember the name of it, but basically it goes that the universe exists in such a way as to support life, because if it didn’t, there would be no one around to discuss the ways in which the universe might have formed.
The Anthropic Principle. It’s a mind-bender, especially because it’s fundamentally unfalsifiable.
- Comment on You'll never see it coming 4 months ago:
We don’t really know what consciousness is, so we can’t really be sure that it is subject to entropy.
- Comment on There is a fee to close my HSA account 4 months ago:
“You are not the customer, you are the product” is true so often, but in many cases (like this one) it doesn’t really apply.
First off, “not the customer but the product” is an inherently antagonistic relationship. Your goals are opposed to Facebook’s, for instance, because you want to spend less time on the platform and you want to interact with friends and not brands, but Facebook wants the opposite of both. But with HSA administration, your goals and your employer’s goals are aligned: you both want someone who will quickly and painlessly manage your account without being a pain.
Second, “not the customer but the product” implies an undisclosed, extractive payment occurring behind the scenes. TikTok is harvesting a great deal of data from you and selling it to other companies. You are the product in that your data has value. But with HSA administration, the product is just the management of your HSA money; there’s no under-the-table dealing going on here (or there shouldn’t be); they’re getting paid by your company for their services.
Third, “not the customer but the product” relationships are entirely one-way; you have no way to impact the providing company beyond just not using their services. They do not, will not, and at some level can never care about your experience beyond making it as minimally useful to you to keep you on the platform. But that HSA provider desperately needs your company’s business, so if enough of your coworkers raise a stink and get your company to complain, they will make a change.
In actuality, “not the customer but the product” ignores the unfortunate reality of most HR/payroll service companies in this case: they’re just the lowest bidder, contracted at the bottom dollar to provide the cheapest services possible, because your employers don’t have to use their services and don’t care about your experience.
- Comment on There is a fee to close my HSA account 4 months ago:
At the very least, the USPS is getting money out of them. More than the 2¢, even.
- Comment on Grirrrll.... 4 months ago:
College bros would compete to swallow the roughest and sharpest ones. There would be a Silicon Valley startup trying to “disrupt” gastroliths with a “smart stomach stone” that gathered data about what you’re eating and sold it to McDonald’s and Kroger. Couples who were really serious would prove it by regurgitating and swapping stones. The “raw gut” movement would be trying to convince people that they didn’t need gastroliths, they just needed to eat softer foods.
- Comment on Grirrrll.... 4 months ago:
People will make a health conspiracy out of every innocuous thing, though.
- Comment on 25 Years Ago, A One-of-a-Kind Movie Captured the Hearts of Star Trek Fans Everywhere 5 months ago:
It’s been on Trek fandom lists of best movies because the fans noticed.
Trek fans prior to 2010-ish tended to not take themselves too seriously. They took the show seriously, sure (maybe too seriously) but not themselves.
- Comment on Do spam calls "I wanna buy your house" ever work? Has anyone ever sold their house like that? 5 months ago:
The “I want to buy your house” things are a little bit different, because they’re usually not technically scams (though they are definitely predatory). If you work with them, you will probably receive money in exchange for your house. It’s just that your sale price is likely to be far, far below what you could’ve received by listing it yourself on the open market.
- Comment on Do spam calls "I wanna buy your house" ever work? Has anyone ever sold their house like that? 5 months ago:
They’re exclusively targeting people who don’t know how much their property is worth. Usually people in transitioning neighborhoods who bought their home 40 years ago for $10k, who don’t know that their property alone is worth $200k today and will happily take $80k cash from some rando on the phone because they think the 800% return is a great deal.
I’ve lived in neighborhoods like that for a while. The phone calls we receive are insane; in our old house, which we knew was worth $300k because we had just had it appraised to put it on the market, the guy on the phone offered us $65k sight unseen. I was like, “if you even took the twelve seconds to look at this property on Street View you’d know why that is a laughable idea.”
- Comment on Rumors Of End to Xbox-Only Exclusives Swirl As More Game Studios Embrace Simultaneous Launch Strategy 5 months ago:
Yeah, well, losing two console generations in a row will do that.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
I’m a parent, and I don’t want special treatment. Some consideration would be nice, but honestly I just want every employee to be treated like adults.
- Comment on Will Republicans try another Federal Right to Work attempt? 5 months ago:
It’s not your right to (do) work. It’s the employer’s right to (have) work (provided to them at low cost). So you’re absolutely right about the FFPUWW.