averyminya
@averyminya@beehaw.org
- Comment on Web publishers brace for carnage as Google adds AI answers 1 day ago:
These are never the sort of answers I would want to ask AI for anyway (not a slight against your example, this is a common thing I see).
@u_tamtam@programming.dev
I also haven’t seen any practical advantage to using LLM prompts vs. traditional search engines in the general case:
For general temporary facts I would agree. Even Amazon’s surmized reviews, it can be handy to know that “Adhesive issues” is commonly sighted… but I’d learn that from reading the reviews anyway… Like, a lot of the time it comes down to AI being used when the human should do their own due diligence. I will even admit to this in the very next paragraph.
I find AI to be especially good at things I am not, like math. I am very good at estimations, and I can work out some stuff over time. However, I am much slower compared to asking “I currently make 2.1-Z a month and I have 397-Z earning that interest. I would like to make 65-Z a month, how much do I need earning interest to make that?” (Roughly 13,100 btw) and getting that answer along with the formula showing its work. It spits out the answer in the amount of time it took me to work out that verbal question, both of which were far faster than the time it takes me to pull up a calculator and do the same math. It’s not that I can’t, it just takes a lot of time that could be better spent actually doing the thing I want to do, which is how many months based off what I earn will it take to reach that number.
Similarly, this reigns true for a lot of things with “facts.” Perpetual facts or immutable facts are the best use for AI. In my opinion based on experience, of course.
A fact about a song will always be in the key it was created in. A key will always have a specific set of scales that can be used with it. Math will always be the answer to an equation. These are, for the most part, immutable facts. A person on the other hand, will not always be their age, or even living, nor will their net worth stay the same. Let’s not even get started on the weather! These are temporary facts.
Quite a few people tend to ask AI temporary facts (rightfully so, it’s what we would like to do on a day to day basis for casual questions), but and it gets a lot of flack for not doing a great job at it (again rightfully so since it’s a basic question.) But I have found that AI is actually quite strong at perpetual facts. When time is short and at the end of the day I just want to jam to my favorite songs, I can get a quick reminder of the key and scales I can use to play along with. On my own I know and can remember these things, but asking a question and getting an answer possibly even faster is really nice.
Not to be pro-AI – In this case I really think it comes down to using the tool you have. We live in the present and the future, so it seems ridiculous to rely on something trained on data rooted in the past and expecting that it will always be that. Hence, immutable facts tending to be more reliable to work with when using AI.
I like tech, so I have used and played with local LLM’s and Stable Diffusion models and worked on a model based on my own art of Zentangles, I don’t think I would ever actively rely on this technology for anything more than cursory fun when I’m short on time and energy, or as a supplement to something that I, frankly, am going to take far too long to learn and will forget in the span of a couple months when I no longer need it. I don’t exactly feel the need to memorize the 300,000 Excel sheet tricks, but I will sure as shit ask BarGemeni about it. Using it to confirm my estimations to see that I was roughly accurate compared to an AI that is roughly accurate is good enough for me for some quick and dirty math.
Ultimately that’s what the LLM-AI debate is for me. Relying on it for anything that is ever changing, using it for anything more than just basic fun is setting yourself up for a bad time. Using it here and there as a calculator or for some non-important details about something that has remained static since the dawn of time? You can net yourself some pretty nice futuristic “Hell yeah’s”. Packing these things up into little boxes like supplanting a phone (or adding it to your phone), using it to create non-existent support (both support staff and supporting terrible products to trick people into buying it), or adding it to rice cookers and refrigerators is… the direction expected but not the one I was hoping for.
- Comment on Gabe Newell, the Man Behind Steam, Is Working on a Brain-Computer Interface 2 days ago:
Taking his ethics and actions out of the equation for a second – I would have no issues with his businesses weren’t scamming states out of legitimate transportation and fucking with people just because he could.
While dangerous, I’m not really against the idea of selling flamethrowers, kind of. It is kind of the American right, which may be dumb, but fuck if I have anything to say about it. And while it produces a lot of space junk, I’m not against Starlink or SpaceX. especially the former since it does do a lot of good. Coverage in the middle of the U.S. is not good, and anything more is good.
Ultimately what it comes down to is the fact that the more money tends to side on less regulation, and reintroducing ethics and actions into the mix he is abusing that. The flamethrower ploy could have been snark against the United States for not having regulation on that (if it were something that were actually important, that may have mattered…), and similarly the Hyperloop scheme could have been some form of commentary on how easy it is for a billionaire to manipulate voters with obvious pipe-dreams, then gone ahead with the high speed train plan.
Instead, he gets butthurt and lashes out. I know we’re on the same page, if anything I’m disappointed specifically because he is in a position to be doing a lot of good, has convinced some people that he is.
- Comment on Gabe Newell, the Man Behind Steam, Is Working on a Brain-Computer Interface 2 days ago:
I’ve had conversations with this person before, in my opinion many of the things they fault Valve for are… extreme nitpicking.
Also, IMO Corsair’s patents are BS and are drastically inhibiting accessibility controller availability. Their stranglehold on something as simple as buttons on the backside of a controller shouldn’t be lauded.
- Comment on Gabe Newell, the Man Behind Steam, Is Working on a Brain-Computer Interface 3 days ago:
Haha glad that I brought it up on your radar! I like this one cause it seems much more medically oriented, vs. Neurolink existing “just because it can”.
Which normally, I don’t really have an issue with. I think it’s great to do things just because we can (within reason ofc!), but I am definitely more skeptical of the fraud-Hyperloop flamethrower space-car man.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s Neuralink reports trouble with first human brain chip 3 days ago:
I’ll wait for Gabe Newell’s version, since it seems pretty clear to me that’s where Musk got the idea.
- Comment on Dell Data Breach 6 days ago:
What do you think about WhoIs data for websites?
(I don’t disagree, I’m just curious)
- Comment on Microsoft closes Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin and others 1 week ago:
This is also Arkane Austin, not the one that gave us Dishonored.
- Comment on I used an original iPod in 2024, and it was pretty fun 1 week ago:
There are a lot of non-Apple options for a very similar experience. I have a Fiio X1 Gen 2 that I like. They’re not widely available new anymore but they are still about the same price as when I got it.
- Comment on Am I the only person that feels that retro games are better? 1 week ago:
Hero’s Hour is a pixel art game that’s about building an army. Really solid indie game! Also a fan of Revita, it’s a roguelike but done very well and is mostly unique.
- Comment on Helldivers 2 Players Express Frustration On Steam As It Will Soon Require A PSN Account 1 week ago:
There’s no technical reason for it, as the game has already worked fine without it for months
Well, sort of. Friend requests between PC and PS5 have been borked for a long time now, recently they changed how account ID’s are generated randomly to now looking like it’s a specific ID. I wouldn’t be surprised if linking accounts was part of this in a skeezy way.
The worst part is I have a PSN account but I haven’t had a console since the PS2 lol.
- Comment on Interactive Loading Screens - High Hell 1 week ago:
I have a couple. For the Playstation 2 (and whatever other console) the game for Treasure Planet had a loading screen where you could manipulate how you flew passed starts.
Surprised to not see the Dragon Ball Z games mentioned.
There was another game I was trying to think of, but I got distracted and lost it.
- Comment on OlliOlli, Kerbal Space Program Teams Shut Down by GTA Publisher 1 week ago:
2017-2024
- Comment on Why do mobile games suck nowadays? 1 week ago:
I’ll side with OP from a slightly different perspective here, because you’re not wrong but neither is OP. First and foremost I think the word missing here is innovation – mobile games in their very initial start were exactly what you are describing, but mobile games that OP are talking about took some time to find freedom to innovate. The very first mobile games, almost all of them, were PC ports. Solitare, poker, mahjong, snake, tetris… These were all games that had existed for years and were just now put into a 160x128 res screen and played with a circular slider (first iPod), or whatever the specs of the Blackberry was back then. Few unique games were created for these devices.
By late 2009 the iPod Touch 3g had released. It was this and the following few years where OP is talking about, where not only were old games like Spy Hunter being remade, and funnily enough, I’m pretty sure Rockstar also released a few GTA’s on this device. But there were also entirely new games like Doodle Jump, Canabalt, and to a lesser extent Pocket God. (Well, relatively new and unique, at least.) These of course paved the way for Temple Run and honestly I had so many amazing mobile games back then that remembering them all would be a trip down memory lane far too long for today.
Anyway, my point and I’m assuming OP’s point is that it’s harder to find truly unique and “new” experiences in the mobile game world. The idea of Talking Tom when he first came out was something truly unlike anything else available. Not that it was particularly good, or that being unique makes it good, but rather there were more games willing to take a risk on being different.
And yes, of course back then there were plenty of shovelware games trying to pine off another apps success. I think it’s simply a difference of mindset, for the good games that are available today generally seem to follow the same principles – a good game comes first, and if you accomplish that the expenses pay themselves. For your examples, the only games that didn’t already exist were semi-MH Now (Pokemon Go/Ingress, but I agree they are unique and fun) and the Riot mobile games. I agree that the other games you mentioned are good as well, I’d even include the fact that there are other full PC/console games like Monster Hunter Stories 1 and 2, Final Fantasy, and plenty of others.
But none of these were made specifically with the attributes of mobile gaming in mind. Where are the disjointed IRL vs. on screen games like Panoptic! There’s so much potential for mobile phone games of really wild and unique stuff, but it’s easier to make money by iterating and porting existing things to the platform.
I found a little list that was fun:
- Jetpack Joyride,
- Plants vs Zombies
- Real Steel World Robot Boxing,
- Real Steel HD,
- Pacific Rim,
- Ultimate Robot Fighting,
- Cut the Rope
- Fruit Ninja
- Flappy Bird,
- Where’s My Water?,
- Crossy Road,
- Asphalt 8,
- Call of Mini Zombies, Call of Mini Infinity,
- Clash of Clans Real Steel Champions,
- Transformers Battle Masters,
- Geometry Dash,
- Minecraft Pocket Edition,
- Hungry Shark Evolution,
- LEGO Hero Factory Invasion from Below, LEGO Hero Factory Brain Attack,
- Beach Buggy Racing.
- Hovercraft Takedown,
- Table Top Racing,
- Smash Hit,
- Riptide GP, Riptide GP Renegade,
- Mechanic Escape,
- Robo5,
- BombSquad.
- Draw a Stickman Epic Free,
- Zombie Tsunami,
- Badland,
- Hill Climb Racing 1,
- My Singing Monsters,
- Despicable Me Minion Rush,
- Bad Piggies HD,
- Star Warfare Alien Invasion. Star Warfare Payback,
- Pixel Gun 3D,
- Block City Wars,
- Pac-Man 256,
- The Impossible Game,
- Gravity Guy.
- Laser Air Hockey
- That one game where you’re a 2D spider-man swinging
- Comment on You can now buy a flame-throwing robot dog for under $10,000 2 weeks ago:
Remember when Mollusk sold the flamethrower? It’s all I can think about
- Comment on What do you personally use AI for? 2 weeks ago:
Its also great for readmes. I have a template that I follow for that and only work on one section at a time.
Templates in sections are somewhere where it shines. I set up a template for giving information about a song – tempo, scales used and applicable overlapping ones, and other misc stuff. It’s really nice for just wanting to get going, it’s yet to be inaccurate. It’s quite nice, having a fast database that’s mostly accurate. I do scrutinize it, but honestly even if it were to be wrong one day, it’s just music and the scale being “wrong” can only be so wrong anyhow.
- Comment on What do you personally use AI for? 2 weeks ago:
The linked A1111 is definitely by far the easiest to set up!
- Comment on Hades II - Sign Up for the HADES II Technical Test - Steam News 4 weeks ago:
It depends on the game really. Some are really cool to see the transformation, it becomes like playing two completely different games.
Other times… yeah it just kind of shows all the flaws at the forefront and then leaves you feeling confused when 1.0 drops and very little has changed lol.
- Comment on The Fallout show's been a pleasant surprise 4 weeks ago:
Titans was rough.
Doom Patrol is where it’s at!
- Comment on Fallout is available to watch on Amazon Prime 4 weeks ago:
Sounds like what it should be! Glad to hear. I don’t have it at the moment but I’m sure I’ll get my sights on it soon. Thank you! :)
- Comment on Frac4D – a 4D Tetris variant from 1990 4 weeks ago:
Also, thank you for sharing this looks really cool.
- Comment on Frac4D – a 4D Tetris variant from 1990 4 weeks ago:
Also, anybody else find it a bit amazing that we can emulate DOS games in our frickin’ browsers‽
I do, but not since like… 2012? I remember being in high school and coming across DOS games on websites, in browser. Absolutely crazy stuff haha. Not saying that it’s not still impressive, just that it’s been many years since the initial impressed!
- Comment on Fallout is available to watch on Amazon Prime 4 weeks ago:
From the start I’ve been wondering if this show really needs to be anything more than what has been described in this thread.
- Comment on T-Mobile's New AI "Profiling" Privacy Toggle Is On By Default 4 weeks ago:
The new toggle can be found in T-Mobile’s “Privacy Center Dashboard”. You can click here to go straight to it, or follow the steps below.
Login to your account either on the web or in the app as a full permissions user (typically the account holder’s main line). On desktop/the web, click “Edit profile settings” at the top. On the app, tap “MORE” at the bottom of the app and then “Profile settings”. Scroll halfway down the list and choose “Privacy and notifications”. Find “Privacy dashboard” and open that. On this page, you’ll have all the privacy opt-out options. Take the time to opt out of all of them, if you haven’t already and want to. Otherwise, scroll down and find the new “Profiling and automated decisions” section, as shown below this list, and disable it. If you have more than one line, go back to the top, and choose “Manage a different line >”. You’ll need to toggle this for each line on your account.
- Comment on What is your most watched movie, and how many times did you watch it? 5 weeks ago:
Hm, this is a tough one. The Princess Bride is definitely up there as I watched that a bunch as a kid, along with Toy Story and the Aristocats (all on one VHS). Nausicaa and the first Star Wars are definitely up there too.
In my adulthood the Toy Story and the Aristocats are the only two I haven’t rewatched consistently (though I’d like to with the latter!). There’s still a lot of Princess Bride & Nausicaa, I watch through all the Star Wars’ a couple times a year, but my adulthood comfort movie has been Baby Driver.
It just seems to check all the boxes for what I need. It’s not too slow, there are a bunch of subtle details, it’s fun, it has good heart and emotional connection to the characters. It has a lot of homage, particularly to the movie Drive (2011) while managing to stay a completely separate film. I can’t say how many times I’ve watched it, it at least as many times as the others, just in a shorter period of time.
The only issue with the movie is that it has some problematic actors, Kevin Spacey and the main character played by Ansel Elgort. Despite their IRL problems I don’t really mind separating them from the film. And the rest of the cast is just stellar.
There are others but my Plex is acting up so I can’t check my playcounts
- Comment on 5 weeks ago:
For liberty!
- Comment on Steam is a ticking time bomb 5 weeks ago:
You mean the trivially easy DRM that is a single patch found on GitHub?
- Comment on Steam is a ticking time bomb 5 weeks ago:
Idk, there’s a backup system that I’ve put on a hard drive with a very easy to find GitHub steam drm remover. Haven’t had any issues playing my games without a steam account – sans online services for some, but most of the time I’m on trips or without Internet anyway. That said, if the idea is that in some 5-10-20 years this will happen, I feel like a lot of the online services won’t be around… For as much as I love Helldivers 2, I don’t really expect it to be around in 7 years. Online games from 2013 aren’t all around either, and those that are aren’t super populated.
On the other hand, a lot of these online services do rely on Steam, so if it went down a lot of them would need the same unofficial online servers.
I’d be more concerned if Steam were to have extreme DRM, but it’s so laughable that it’s literally worth paying for the game just to have the streaming/per game notes/cloud saves and for current games to not have to deal with updates and online services. But a Steam Library of mostly single player games? Anyone who is concerned can get a $50HDD and install/backup their games with Steam to and then apply the patch. Of the issues Steam has, I think this particular one is low on the list. And per the articles issue, I would actually blame the OS more than the storefront. I used to game on Mac’s from 2007-2013 and let me tell you, Steam was a freaking triumph. All the Mac game stores were truly short lived, had poor support while they were alive and had things like license activations per machine, so good luck past 5 computers (talk about 15 years). Back then Aspyer ports were really great too, always something to look forward to.
Back then Steams issue was that it didn’t have refunds, Tuesday Maintenance, and sometimes it would just be buggy for a bit when trying to open (on OSX – never really had an issue on Windows). Since then they’ve only made it more service oriented, doing things they absolutely should, but didn’t have to, like refunds applying to everyone after the AUS lawsuit instead of just that region. Looking at Apple for this one.
I would implore the author of this article to go back in time, get their games on the macgames store and other similar storefronts for OSX and I would wonder how they fare today.
I have my accounts. I have no access to those games because licenses were activated too many times or because they no longer support the current OS. So I’m effectively limited to a previous version of OSX which cannot download the app because I need a new version of the OSX store. I don’t have the right terms but it was hours of hassle to find out that my OSX copy of Borderlands, Assassins Creed II and Brotherhood, and a couple others are just gone. To add insult to injury, I had to log into the account every year to keep my “platinum points” that you got for buying on that storefront, to use for discounts etc. I didn’t log in so byebye incentive!
My point? I had about 250 SteamPlay games that I bought and used on OSX as a Mac gamer, which seamlessly downloaded on PC when I switched to Windows for my desktop computer. None of this is to say that Steam doesn’t or can’t have shortcomings, but rather that it is a substantially better service than than pretty much every alternative right now, save for GOG probably.
- Comment on Spotify plans to raise prices this year and introduce new plans - GSMArena.com news 5 weeks ago:
It is now? That’s cool Would have been nice to not have lost my entire childhood library because it was locked behind iTunes.
- Comment on Windows users don't want copilot on their taskbar 1 month ago:
Can you list the filepath?
- Comment on Chatbot letdown: Hype hits rocky reality 1 month ago:
That music example is how I’ve used them, it really is spot on. Key, tempo, scale, overlapping scales that could be used, plus factoids included. It really can be very helpful.