tal
@tal@lemmy.today
- Comment on Baby dies after California mom leaves him in car to get lip filler on 101-degree day, police say 23 hours ago:
I do think that from a UI standpoint, cars either need to support being left in park without the climate control eventually cutting off or be so extremely clear that this will happen that it would be extremely difficult for a user to miss, as this is a legitimate example of a “fail-deadly” feature.
IIRC from reading comments from people who have slept in their car and very much want the ability to leave the climate control system active, at least some Toyota models do support leaving the climate control active for extended periods of time, but the car needs to be in “Ready” mode. It was not immediately obvious to users that this was the case.
- Comment on The Steam controller was ahead of its time 1 day ago:
There’s a whole class of controllers, often called “fightsticks”, which have a full-size arcade-style joystick and a ton of buttons, to replicate the feel of arcade fighting games.
!fightsticks@lemmy.world (not very active)
- Comment on Bethesda is allegedly working on ‘multiple Fallout games’, including Fallout 3 Remastered, teases report 1 day ago:
Honestly, I feel like Morrowind is the title least in need of a remaster, as unlike later 3D titles, it has an open-source fan reimplementation of the engine, OpenMW, plus the fan updates of content.
searches for video of content
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnvOy5Kw79Y
It looks like the OpenMW people are also working on a VR version.
- Comment on Jeremy Corbyn confirms new ‘socialist alternative’ before next election to fight Starmer 2 days ago:
new “socialist alternative” before next election
An ever-expanding category, that.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Category:Socialist_parties_in_…
en.wikipedia.org/…/Cross-Community_Labour_Alterna…
Cross-Community Labour Alternative is a minor political party founded to contest the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election. It stood three candidates[3] in the East Belfast, South Belfast and East Antrim constituencies. It was initiated by the Socialist Party.[4]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Party_(Ireland)
The Socialist Party (Irish: Páirtí Sóisialach) is a political party in Ireland, active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Internationally, it was affiliated to the Trotskyist International Socialist Alternative (previously the Committee for a Workers International) until 2024.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Unity_(UK)
Left Unity is a left-wing political party in the United Kingdom founded in 2013 when film director and social campaigner Ken Loach appealed for a new party to replace the Labour Party (which according to him failed to oppose the United Kingdom government austerity programme and had shifted towards neoliberalism).[5][6][7] More than 10,000 people supported Loach’s appeal.[8]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Unionist_Party
The Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) is a minor unionist[6] political party in Northern Ireland. It was formed from the Independent Unionist Group operating in the Shankill area of Belfast, becoming the PUP in 1979. Linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Red Hand Commando (RHC), for a time it described itself as “the only left of centre unionist party” in Northern Ireland, with its main support base in the loyalist working class communities of Belfast.[7]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Justice_Party_(UK)
The Social Justice Party (SJP) is a left-wing minor political party in the United Kingdom.[2] It was launched in August 2023 at a conference in Whitby,[2] and was officially registered with the Electoral Commission on 2 February 2024.[3][4]
en.wikipedia.org/…/Transform_(political_party)
The Transform Party (also known as Transform Politics, or simply Transform) is a political party active in Great Britain. A merger of two political groups, the Breakthrough Party and the People’s Alliance of the Left, Transform aims to build a new left-wing political party to challenge both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. The party is also associated with the Liverpool Community Independents and Left Unity, who remain independent parties.[1][2]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers_Party_of_Britain
The Workers Party of Britain (WPB), also called the Workers Party of Great Britain (WPGB) or Workers Party GB,[16][17][18] is a socialist and socially conservative political party in the United Kingdom, strongly identified with its leader, former Labour and Respect MP George Galloway.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Socialist_Labour_Party_(UK)
The Socialist Labour Party (SLP) is a socialist political party in the United Kingdom. The party was established in 1996 and was led by Arthur Scargill, a former Labour Party member and the former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. The party’s name highlights its commitment to socialism and acknowledges Clause IV of the Labour Party’s former constitution, as fundamental to the party’s identity. As of 2024, it is led by Jim McDaid.[1]
en.wikipedia.org/…/Socialist_Party_of_Great_Brita…
The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is a small socialist political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1904[2] as a split from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), it advocates using the ballot box for revolutionary purposes and opposes both Leninism and reformism. It holds that countries which claimed to have established socialism had only established “state capitalism” and was one of the first to describe the Soviet Union as state capitalist. The party’s political position has been described as a form of impossibilism.
- Comment on Bethesda is allegedly working on ‘multiple Fallout games’, including Fallout 3 Remastered, teases report 2 days ago:
“Fallout is the big one,” Middler claimed. “There are multiple Fallout projects in development, including, as far as I’m aware, that one that I’m sure you’re all wanting. It’s not far enough in along to say anything like ‘you’re going to be playing this game anytime soon’.”
Middler then joked, “Anyway, New Vegas 2, coming soon”. Is this the one we’re “all wanting”? Yes, but then also so is Fallout 3 Remastered, Fallout 5 and even a remake of Fallout 2. The fanbase is rabid, and hungry, and it’s been a long time since they’ve been fulfilled outside of Fallout 76 updates.
I mean, if Bethesda released all three of those, I’d buy all three.
I also don’t know what “Fallout 3 Remastered” entails, but if it means forward-porting the content to Starfield’s engine, that’d be pretty cool, though I do wonder how much effort will be required for mod-porting.
- Comment on I have about 55 hours of flights coming up. I’m thinking about the deus ex collection. Any thoughts? 3 days ago:
I love CDDA, but I don’t know if I’d call it light on a battery. It won’t hammer a GPU, but it actually does use a fair bit of CPU time for the simulation. Also, every time it redraws a frame, it does so via recomputing the world lighting and such, so it’s actually surprisingly heavyweight.
- Comment on Join the "beehaw" seeded Luanti server (Minecraft clone) 3 days ago:
kagis
docs.luanti.org/for-players/controls/
Touchscreen
Display inventory: Press on-screen button in left lower corner
- Comment on I have about 55 hours of flights coming up. I’m thinking about the deus ex collection. Any thoughts? 3 days ago:
There’s a similar, open-source game, Luanti (until recently, known as Minetest). It doesn’t have as many mods in 2025 as Minecraft does, but you might also enjoy it.
- Comment on What quintessentially British images should go on the new banknotes? Our panel has some ideas 4 days ago:
Me neither, but that just provides us with an objective look at what’s clearly best, free of encumbering sentiment.
I like the Bermudian idea of using flora and fauna to capture a country’s distinctive identity. A shift like this would show that we’re not trapped in tradition.
Exactly. A spectral lion, dragon, and unicorn in the background. In the foreground, a bulldog wearing mirrored steampunk goggles on a surfboard doing an aerial off a cresting wave with a fancy caption beneath him reading “Britannia rules the waves!” The mirrored goggle lenses are where the shiny anti-counterfeiting hologram goes.
Also, get Jessica Borutski to do the draft. She did a Canada logo a while back.
- Comment on The Mayor of Calgary, Canada, just received this letter 5 days ago:
I assume that it’s legal to ride a gasoline-fueled moped in the bike lane, and that no car lanes are being removed. Does this make everyone happy?
- Comment on Yep, I actually own 7,255 games on Steam. I’ve played 23% of my library. I regret nothing. 1 week ago:
Not ignored—not played yet.
Journal, July 3, 2025:
The day opened with a round of Barbie Project Friendship.
I then followed it up with survival horror Amnesia: The Bunker from survival horror specialists Frictional Games.
Next on the list was gay dom/sub dating sim Blood Domination.
Then hard milsim Command: Modern Operations.
I wound down with some relaxing time in art toy Zen Trails.
I have always been partial to variety.
- Comment on Apparantly, you can no longer reset the "User" BIOS Password with the "Admin" BIOS Password? Why??? I literally am the Admin lol. 1 week ago:
If it honestly doesn’t permit the User password to be reset, is there a “factory reset the whole BIOS” option?
- Comment on Like it or not, developers are experimenting with AI for their remasters and remakes - but can they ever be any good? [Eurogamer] 1 week ago:
Sure, but I think that the type of game is a pretty big input. Existing generative AI isn’t great at portraying a consistent figure in multiple poses and from multiple angles, which is something that many games are going to want to do.
On the other hand, I’ve also played text-oriented interactive fiction where there’s a single illustration for each character. For that, it’d be a good match.
AI-based speech synth isn’t as good as human voice acting, but it’s gotten pretty decent if you don’t need to be able to put lots of emotion into things. It’s not capable of, say, doing Transistor, which relied a lot on the voice acting. But it could be a very good choice to add new material for a character in an old game where the actor may not be around or who may have had their voice change.
I’ve been very impressed with AI upscaling. I think that upscaling textures and other assets probably has a lot of potential to take advantage of higher resolution screens. Maybe one might need a bit of human intervention, but a factor of 2 increase is something that I’ve found that the software can do pretty well without much involvement.
- Comment on Spelthorne restricts hoverboards, catapults and balaclavas 2 weeks ago:
What is banned?
- Possession of catapults, slingshots, or similar items without a legitimate reason
Was there an actual problem with widespread use of catapults in Spelthorne?
- Comment on 98 degrees upstairs, ac stopped working at 8am. 2 weeks ago:
Gotcha, thanks!
- Comment on 98 degrees upstairs, ac stopped working at 8am. 2 weeks ago:
I’m assuming that it’s some sort of component from the air conditioner, but damned if I know what it is. Looks like power plugs on it, and someone else mentioned “caps”, so maybe a capacitor, though I wasn’t aware that there was some kind of plug standard for large removable capacitors.
kagis
Yeah, this capacitor looks similar.
- Comment on UK to host Donald Trump for full state visit this year, says Buckingham Palace 2 weeks ago:
No, please don’t mess it up. While he’s off doing pomp and ceremony stuff, he doesn’t have his fingers in policy. In fact, a full world tour of all British territory might be warranted.
- Comment on What are your favorite Tactical RPGs? 2 weeks ago:
What did you think of the new aiming system? I’ve heard mixed things, but it sounded good to me (or at least way better than a flat percentage).
I don’t know what the internal mechanics are like, haven’t read material about it. From a user standpoint, I have just a list of positive and negative factors impacting my hit chance, so less information about my hit chance. I guess I’d vaguely prefer the percentage — I generally am not a huge fan of games that have the player rely on mechanics trying to hide the details of those mechanics — but it’s nice to know what inputs are present. It hasn’t been a huge factor to me one way or the other, honestly; I mean, I feel like I’ve got a solid-enough idea of roughly what the chances are.
even if it doesn’t hit the same highs as JA2, there hasn’t really been much else that comes close and a more modern coat of polish would be welcome.
Yeah, I don’t know of other things that have the strategic aspect. For the squad-based tactical turn-based combat, there are some options that I’ve liked playing in the past.
While Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3 aren’t quite the same thing — it’s closer to Fallout 1 and 2, as Wasteland 1 was a major inspiration for them — the squad-based, turn-based tactical combat system is somewhat similar, and if you’re hunting for games that have that, you might also enjoy that.
I also played Silent Storm and enjoyed it, though it’s now pretty long in the tooth (well, so is Jagged Alliance 2…). Even more of a combat focus.
And there’s X-Com. I didn’t like the new ones, which are glitzy, lots of time spent doing dramatic animations and stuff, but maybe I should go back and give them another chance.
- Comment on UK must 'actively prepare' for potential of war in the 'homeland', review warns 2 weeks ago:
The UK must “actively prepare” for a potential “wartime scenario” in its homeland, the National Security Strategy has warned.
The review highlighted Russia and Iran as potential threats, including saying that the latter’s “hostile activity” on British soil is increasing in an effort to “silence critics” as well as “directly threatening the UK”.
If you read the article that they’re linking to, it does say that this is a “low probability” scenario.
“We are trying to raise awareness through this war game to say, look, let’s have a look at what might happen,” he said.
“Unlikely and low probability though it is, so that we can start to put some measures in place and remind ourselves about how we used to do it - use history as our weapon, if you like, in that regard.”
Russia has aimed to assassinate people on British soil and has engaged in sabotage in Europe, but that’s also a long way away from what I’d call a real wartime situation.
Vice asked a guy at Jane’s to do an assessment of whether Russia could do an invasion of the UK a decade back. He said that Russia likely could:
The requirements for carrying out a successful invasion are pretty substantial, which makes the list of realistic threats to Britain quite small. The bigger military powers are an obvious contender to begin with; the USA and Russia have certainly got the manpower and capability to carry it out but China, for example, doesn’t yet have a global reach and couldn’t support enough troops and aircraft that far from home to make it viable without support.
That being said, that was also pre-Russo-Ukraine War, and that may have altered things (China’s certainly built up her military a lot over that decade). Might be interesting to go back to Jane’s and ask for an updated assessment.
Iran could engage in terrorism, maybe smuggle some weapons in, but doesn’t have the force projection capability to engage in much by way of conventional war on the UK territory. Iran’s current ballistic missiles don’t have the range to reach the UK from Iranian territory, so unless they can launch them from ships or aircraft or closer territory, they aren’t in the picture…and while you could probably hurt the UK with said missiles if you could get them close enough, hit seats of government, power plants, I don’t believe that it’d be sufficient to take the UK out of the fight, and then you’d be in a fight with an opponent who has more force projection capability than you do who is at a range that you can’t easily hit them at; not a favorable situation. Not to mention NATO.
- Comment on One gamer got so tired of waiting for Valve, he made his own 'Steam Controller 2' out of Steam Deck parts, and it even splits in half like Switch Joy-Cons 2 weeks ago:
They have mechanical components that will wear out over time (though I suppose some propel probably use them lightly enough that it’s less of an issue).
- Comment on What are your favorite Tactical RPGs? 2 weeks ago:
Just tried it, and it was some other game I was thinking of.
While I haven’t finished the game, thoughts:
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It’s the strongest of the post-2 Jagged Alliance games that I’ve played.
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Still not on par with JA2, at least relative to release year, I’d say also in absolute terms.
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My biggest problem — I’m running this under Proton — is some bugginess that I’m a little suspicious is a thread deadlock. When it happens, I never see the targeting options show up when I target an enemy, and trying to go to the map or inventory screen doesn’t update the visible area onscreen, though I can blindly click and hear interactions. The game also doesn’t ever exit if I hit Alt-F4 in that state, just hangs. AFAICT, this can always be resolved by quicksaving (which you can do almost anywhere), stopping the game (I use
killin a terminal on Linux) and reloading the save, but it’s definitely obnoxious. Fortunately, the game starts up pretty quickly. Nobody on ProtonDB talking about it, so maybe it’s just me. I have not noticed bugs other than this one. -
So far, not much by way of missions where one has to figure out elaborate ways of getting into areas or the like: more of a combat focus. I have wirecutters, crowbars, lockpicks, and explosives, like in JA2, but thus far, it’s mostly just a matter of clicking on a locked container with someone who has lockpicking skill. Probably more realistic — in real life, an unattended door isn’t going to stop anyone for long — but I kinda miss that.
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The maps feel a lot smaller to me, though the higher resolution might be part of that. A lot of 3d modeling to make them look pretty. There’s a lot more verticality, like watchtowers.
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The game also feels considerably shorter than JA2, based on the percentage of the strategic map that I’ve taken. That being said, JA2 could get a bit repetitive when one is fighting the umpteenth enemy reinforcement party.
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Unique perks for mercs that make them a lot more meaningful than in JA2 (though also limit your builds). For example, Fox can get what is basically a free turn if she initiates combat on a surprised enemy. Barry auto-constructs explosives each day.
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Thematic feel of the mercs from JA2 is retained well.
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Interesting perk tree.
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A bunch of map modifiers like fog that have a major impact.
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Bunch of QoL stuff for scheduling concurrent tasks for different mercs.
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Pay demands don’t seem to rise with level, though other factors can drive it up (e.g. Fox will demand more pay if you hire Steroid).
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Feels easier than JA2, though I haven’t finished it.
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I’m pretty sure the keybindings are different.
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Tiny thing, but I always liked the start of JA2, where your initial team does a fast-rope helicopter insertion into a hostile sector. Felt like a badass way to set the tone. No real analog in JA3.
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I started running into guys with RPGs early on in JA3, much earlier then JA2.
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JA2 has ground vehicles and a helicopter and they require you to obtain fuel. Transport logistics don’t exist in JA3, other than paying to embark on boat trips at a port (and just checked online to confirm that they aren’t just in the late game).
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More weapon mods in JA3. Looks like some interesting tradeoffs that one has to make here, rather than just “later-game stuff is better”.
For me, it was a worthwhile purchase — even with the irritating bug I keep hitting — and I would definitely recommend it over the other post-JA2 stuff if you’ve played JA2 and want more. It hasn’t left me giggling at the insane amount of complex interactions that were coded into the game like JA2 did, though, which were kind of a hallmark of the original.
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- Comment on Walmart Scales Back Self-Checkout Amid Security and Customer Feedback 2 weeks ago:
On a related note, I’ve been wondering whether the masking for COVID-19 will have any long term effects. Like, little kids didn’t see faces much for years during their formative years.
- Comment on Walmart Scales Back Self-Checkout Amid Security and Customer Feedback 2 weeks ago:
I like self checkout. I struggle with talking to people and it can really drain on me so it’s a godsend to have if I only need to run in for a few things.
Valid take.
That being said, I’d probably prefer human checkout unless we can get a more-automated form of self checkout. Self checkouts have gotten a lot better since the early days, but human checkers are still faster than I am at the self-checkout and if a human is doing the checkout, I can dick around on my phone or whatever.
Cost savings are nice, but cost savings on my groceries just aren’t a massive concern for me. I don’t have strong feelings about the human interaction one way or another.
Maybe one day, we can get some sort of robotic arm setup that can do checkouts as well as a human checker, and then I’d quite happily be in the “machine” camp.
- Comment on One gamer got so tired of waiting for Valve, he made his own 'Steam Controller 2' out of Steam Deck parts, and it even splits in half like Switch Joy-Cons 2 weeks ago:
From the article, I believe that it’s Steam Deck parts.
Which makes sense, because you can get a Steam Deck, but the Steam Controller 1 has been out of production for some years.
- Comment on Temperatures surpass 29C as UK heads for heatwave 3 weeks ago:
I mean, retrofitting whole-house HVAC is a pain, but it’s not hard to get a window unit.
We tend to want a 240V heavy appliance outlet for beefier window air conditioners, but you’ve already got that as standard on British household circuits.
- Comment on Temperatures surpass 29C as UK heads for heatwave 3 weeks ago:
To grab a random city in a toasty state over here in the US, Phoenix’s current high today is 116°F, or 46.6°C.
- Comment on Windows 11 user has 30 years of 'irreplaceable photos and work' locked away in OneDrive - and Microsoft's silence is deafening 3 weeks ago:
If you had the photos in question professionally taken, it might be that the photographer, if they’re still around, might have copies. I don’t know whether they retain copies, but I suppose asking can’t hurt.
This place says up to a year:
wanderlustportraits.com/how-long-photographers-ke…
Photographers typically keep photos of their clients for a minimum of 90 days and up to a full year as part of standard practice; however, if this is important to you, review the contract and ask your professional.
This guy says forever:
old.reddit.com/…/how_long_do_you_hold_on_past_wed…
I keep ALL files on two 16tb drives drives. Those drives never get wiped and I will always keep two copies even when they fill up. One internal on sata for reference and one off site. When I first started shouting, I was cheap and deleted RAWs and just kept high res jpegs. I have clients coming back for albums and I am stuck re-editing the jpegs to match in the albums. Lesson learned. If you do want to consolidate, then keep the RAWs of the editor we jpegs and delete the unused. But that’s more hassle than the cost to store unused raws. You can also rely on cloud source but you never know if you’ll ever switch cloud servers or move onto another business on want to stop paying cloud fees. For the high volume photographers it becomes wise to invest in tape drives. HDD have lives of 10 years. So eventually all those old drives will need to be transferred to newer drives. Budget this into your bottom line
- Comment on Windows 11 user has 30 years of 'irreplaceable photos and work' locked away in OneDrive - and Microsoft's silence is deafening 3 weeks ago:
I was consolidating data from multiple old drives before a major move—drives I had to discard due to space and relocation constraints. The plan was simple: upload to OneDrive, then transfer to a new drive later.
I’m assuming that the reason that he didn’t just do the transfer to a new drive instead of to OneDrive (which seems like it’d be more-straightforward) is because the new drive was going to also be a system disk, not just hold his data.
I think that it would have been a good idea to get a second drive just so that there’s a backup. I mean, it doesn’t really sound like the user was planning to wind up with a backup of his data, or for that matter, that he had a backup to start with.
Maybe OneDrive locking the account was unexpected, but drives can fail or be inadvertently erased or whatever. If you’ve got thirty years of irreplaceable data that you really badly want to keep, I’d want to have more than one copy of it. The cost of a drive to store it is not large compared to the cost involved in producing said data.
- Comment on Involvement of Chinese vessels in cable breakages in Europe, and Russian vessels near Taiwan, suggest 'plausible China-Russia coordination', UK report says 3 weeks ago:
I’m skeptical.
I could believe Russian intelligence maybe paying off some captain to drag an anchor.
But there’s no need for the Chinese state to be involved for that, any more than various European states were involved when Russian intelligence was paying people to perform acts of arson. Like, China isn’t a hive mind.
- Comment on HS2 to be delayed again as costs spiral by £37bn after 'litany of failure' 3 weeks ago:
“HS2 has made Britain a laughing stock in terms of its ability to deliver big infrastructure projects, and it has to end. This will set out the way we will do that,” a source told the PA news agency.
Ten years back:
raconteur.net/…/britains-most-successful-megaproj…
Infrastructure is not “the new rock ‘n’ roll”. However, if it were, then with a seminal project management playlist ranging from Heathrow Terminal 5, via the Olympic Park and Crossrail, on perhaps towards Thames Tideway Tunnel and the HS2 high-speed rail link, the best of British is fast becoming a greatest hits for the 21st century.
Recent project history has placed Britain in a unique position of global influence, according to Professor Andrew Davies at University College London’s Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment. “Over the past decade or so, the UK has transformed the way megaprojects are delivered, moving away from a world of fixed-price contracts, risk transfer, lowest-cost tendering and adversarial relationships,” he says.
For Professor Davies, who specialises in the management of projects, the market has witnessed the emergence of a “flexible megaproject delivery model”, initiated by Heathrow’s T5.
“The UK has created an institutional environment for delivering megaprojects in a radically new way. The United States and many European countries are watching and learning,” he says.
I’m not entirely convinced that either the “everyone is sitting in awe at the feet of the master” or the “we’re a global laughingstock” statements about HS2 are quite true.
