BananaTrifleViolin
@BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world
- Comment on 'Terrorism has changed', says Starmer on Southport attacks 15 hours ago:
This was a tragedy and missed opportunity, but this was not “terrorism” in the sense being used. This was a seriously dangerous, violent and mentally ill person.
The focus on how Prevent failed is a real problem because the Prevent strategy is there to stop people being radicalised, not to police society for violent individuals.
The focus here should really be on the mental health system & social services, and how an extremely dangerous person who was excluded from school for violence, went to a special school and could only be dealt with as a home schooled student for staff and student safety, and for whom their family raised concerns. This guy was not radicalised, he was not a “terrorist”, he was someone who was clearly flagged as very dangerous as a child and failed to act.
There have been dangerous people before, and there are laws and structures to detain extremely dangerous people for public safety. That’s where everything failed - yet again Social Services, Police, Health and Education. It’s a pattern seen over and over again with public agencies not working together, often because they’re under resourced and stretched as it is.
- Comment on Baldur's Gate 3 publishing director thinks GTA 6 might have the "clout" to normalise a $100 price tag 15 hours ago:
“publishing director”. So Marketing.
As for game prices, in fairness to the industry prices have actually come down since 2000.
AAA Games on consoles in 2000 were around $50; that is $92 now due to inflation. Games went up to around $60 on consoles in 2006, that is around $93 now due to inflation. By 2019 they were still $60 but inflation eroded the value, and that is equivalent to $73 today. When they went up to $70 in 2020, that would be equivalent to $84 now.
So a nominal price of $100 is not as unreasonable as it sounds. It’s higher than games were in 2000 but in the future if static would erode back to equivalent to $90 in probably 3-4 years.
But the problem is people do not think in terms of inflationary value, and instead in terms of nominal value. And the bigger problem is most peoples earnings are squeezed by inflation and we have not been having pay rises to account for the inflation, so games are more expensive as proportion of income.
- Comment on Hulu quizzing about the ads played 1 day ago:
I would immediately cancel any service that does that.
I actively avoid advertising. I’ve cancelled Amazon prime now it has advertising.
I got Sky’s Internet TV here in the UK - a supposedly premium service yet the first VOD demand show I streamed I found it had adverts and you had to pay more to be able to fast forward through them. I immediately cancelled.
These companies are greedy as fuck, and driven by the stupidity of always trying to be “growing” to grow their share prices. That just means always trying to save money and take more money from their customers. Enshittification is a result of the stupidity of the stock markets.
- Comment on Marvel Snap is banned, just like TikTok 2 days ago:
The law bans the distribution of the app and applies fines to the app store companies of $5,000 per user who is able to access the app to download it.
So yes, TikToks position is theatrics - current users could continue to access the app but that would mean a slow inevitable decline as no one new could join and the user base would inevitably decline over time. Its not in TikToks interests to allow that and it would take pressure off politicians to do anything. So they’re within their rights to muddy the water and block access with a message blaming it on the politicians.
- Comment on How is the current AI bubble when compared to the .com bubble in the early 2000's? 5 days ago:
I think you’re missing the stock market part of the dot-com bubble which is very similar to AI, and the core part of the collapse.
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble on the stock market with companies getting hugely over valued despite not being profitable on the hope they would make bank. Companies were getting huge amounts in venture capital investment, and floating on the markets to huge valuations all based on expected future earnings.
Then companies started collapsing and not being protiable and eventually the stock market in the Internet companies collapsed. But the Internet didn’t collapse; lots of startups and companies disappeared but companies with solid business models surived, grew and prospered. Amazon, Google, Ebay etc survived the bubble and dominated their areas.
The AI bubble is very similar in that companies with AI focus are getting over valued despite not being profitable. The drive int he market is the same - people want to get in at the ground floor and are not being discerning in what they invest in. Very similar to the docotm era, people don’t yet see exactly how money will be made with AI or which companies will be the ones to triumph. It’s all gambling on things people don’t really understand. The AI bubble will also pop, but again AI as a technology isn’t going anywhere - it is investors who will be harmed and a lot of companies will collapse leaving behind ones that have viable business models.
The dot com bubble burst in March 2000 due to multiple factors - a Microsoft anti trust case loss, the AOL-Time Warner merger being increasingly questioned, and rising interest rates putting pressure on the debt-driven growth of dot-cons.
Looking at AI, it’s clear there is speculative valuations going on with lots of AI companies. And established tech companies are all throwing money at AI. Meta - which has been in trouble for a while as it needs to keep growing due to the stock market but Facebook and Instagram have peaked and face more competition - first tried to pivot to VR (that’s gone very quiet suddenly!) and suddenly has pivoted to AI. Nvidia has been wildly over valued based on its chips being used in AI and other companies stockpiling them for future AI work. Companies are making expensive moves to stake a claim on future AI market share but at the moment there hasn’t been any profitability coming from these tools.
AI will survive, but a lot of companies are very obviously going to get burnt. This feeling was also prevenalt during the dot com era - the difficulty was actually picking the winners not that people didn’t know there was a speculative market bubble during the dot com era. People knew it was going to burst just as we know the AI bubble will burst.
- Comment on Anon buys a TV without researching 1 week ago:
It really doesn’t sound too good to replace? It sounds like you got free junk, and haven’t actually bought a TV yet?
- Comment on I need a flicker free LED lightbulb running in the 3000 K range. 2 weeks ago:
Lots of good advice but one question - have you tried LED bulbs before and had flickering problems?
Just worth checking a standard LED from your local super market before you go down the route of expensive brands or.online purchases.
The reason I say this is that there are a lot of shoddy cheap and counterfeit electronics sold on Amazon for example. A supermarket bought bulb meanwhile actually has some quality control and standards plus you have somewhere you can go back to to return them.
All my LEDs are from my local supermarket, own brand (Tesco, I’m in the UK, but Philips are also available for me) and I’ve had no issues. I’d also buy from local retailers where you can get good returns policies.
Amazon meanwhile has a policy of mixing stock that it purchases with stock from small sellers that they place in their warehouses and sending any to a customer. So a “sold by amazon” item may actually be a counterfeit item supplied by a 3rd party. Basically do not buy anything of value or branded from Amazon.
Personally the only time I had a flickering LED bulb was a dimmer-switch lamp; it was designed for LEDs but didn’t work with the bulb I bought but turned out I’d accidentally bought a non dimmable bulb. Otherwise I’ve not had a single bulb flicker in my house including all ceiling lights and numerous lamps. All my bulbs are supermarket own brand.
- Comment on If you have diarrhea and you hold it in will your body retain some of the water? 3 weeks ago:
Your colon is very good at extracting water; if you can hold it in then yes in theory it could remove some of the water. However in reality when you have diarrhoea your colon is inflamed and irritated during and you can’t really stop it happening. You’d have to overcome the cramping and the body trying to push the contents outwards.
The most likely outcome of trying to hold it in is it gets worse and you get an explosive and even less controlled expulsion.
- Comment on Anon's in trouble 3 weeks ago:
The biggest problem is he’s engineering in Imperial instead of SI units.
- Comment on What makes a video game triple A (AAA)? 3 weeks ago:
It is just a buzz word in the industry and doesn’t have a tight definition. It’s basically any big budget full priced game from a big publisher. They’re just communicating that they’ve made a big budget game with an expectations of hopefully big sales and profit.
It does imply the game should be popular and high quality, but those are not a given. Plenty of AAA games end up being trash and flopping yet they’re still AAA games.
It’s similar to the Blockbuster concept in the film industry.
- Comment on Study finds young people more likely to spend Christmas alone 4 weeks ago:
This probably reflects increasing immigration - there will be plenty of people who don’t celebrate christmas so it’s just a bank holiday, or who are alone in the UK without family with them.
For example in 1981, 96% of the population was white british. In 2011 that was down to 87% and in 2021 it’s down to 83%.
It’s not surprising that 10% of young people might spend Christmas alone if nearly 20% of the population is not white (which is largely Christian or secular with some Christian traditions). While some of the non white population may be Christian, it’s not surprising that christmas may not be an important day to Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs.
Also European white migrants who might be christian may celebrate christmas on a different day.
So there is a danger of over interpreting statistics like these. Saying more young people are spending Christmas alone over 50 years is kind of meaningless as it’s a totally different group of young people today than 50 years ago.
- Comment on Why did people in the 90s/early 00s say that the internet "couldn't be taken down"? 5 weeks ago:
This opinion remains largely correct - the Internet as a network is very difficult to take down.
However things have happened that have undermined the Internet in favour of commercial priorities.
Net Neutrality was a major principle of the Internet but that is under attack, particularly in the US, where infrastructure providers want to maximise profit by linking their income to each Gb used rather than just paid as a utility. Their costs are largely fixed in infrastructure but they push the lie that they need to be paid for how busy that infrastructure is. A network router doesn’t care whether it’s transferring 1gb or 10gb, it only matters if you hit capacity and the network needs to be expanded. The Internet providers instead want profit profit profit so are pushing for a way to maximise it.
The other major issue has been consolidation and that’s thanks to monopolies being allowed to form and dictate how the Internet works. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple - they’ve all used their services to try to manipulate customers into their walled gardens and prevent competition.
So the Internet as many people think of it is very vulnerable - big centralised services can have outages that affect everyone because people don’t have much choice.
But the reality is the underlying protocols and infrastructure remains robust. Google might have an outage, but the Web itself is still functional. Email protocols and file transfer protocols still work. The problem is people who are sitting in Googles walled garden of services are locked out of everything. And with Googles huge monopoly on search and advertising it means lots of other major services are out too.
So the Internet itself is fine. It’s the services and monopolies built on it thay are the problem.
- Comment on I bought an HP Laptop with 8gb of Ram...and was suppose to be 256gb SSD. I downloaded one game and its all the way down to 80. Is there any free software to download to help? 5 weeks ago:
The hard drive may be 256gb but a big chunk of that is taken up by Windows and also there will be a hidden recovery partition. So 170gb sounds about right.
If you download a big game, then it’s not a big deal if you’re using that game. 90gb is still plenty.
There may be programs HP have installed that you can remove in add/remove software to make a bit more space.
256gb isn’t much but it’s enough unless you want multiple big games installed or have a big library of data such as movies or pictures.
Also it may be possible to upgrade the hard drive - depends on the model and how accessible the hard drive is. If you can access the hard drive to replace it then you could get a 1tb drive for example. There are guides online but basically you’d need to copy the existing drive to the new drive (would need a USB adaptor to mount the new drive first) and then swap the drives round. It very much depends on the laptop though.
Another option is an external hard drive connected via USB - it’s not good for gaming or running big programmes but it is fine for storing movies and pictures.
- Comment on How likely will "Cloud Storage" eventually replace Local Storage? 5 weeks ago:
I would say it is unlikely - storage is so cheap that some form of local storage is likely to stay.
A terminal device still needs some form of storage to run the software to access the cloud. That might end up being some small storage on a chip but the difference is not between none and something, but some and more.
I also think there are enough people who want storage they own and control that it’ll persist as a concept. Also having devices that work when networks are down is a benefit in itself - attempts to make devices dumb terminals get exposed as a productivity nightmare when networks do go out.
I think big business will certainly try hard to lock people in to their ecosystems. Remote storage, remote computing/graphics processing are all ways they will try. But conversely there are vibrant communities pushing independent & private alternatives that I don’t see dying - whether thats Linux on PCs, or Graphene OS to take control of your android device etc.
- Comment on Do you want the murderer of the UnitHealthcare CEO prosecuted? 1 month ago:
Yes of course he needs to be prosecuted.
I get that people hate insurance companies but at the end of the day this was a brutal and cold blooded murder.
As unhappy as we may be at the state of the world, the last thing anyone should want is for things to be determined by who has the gun and is willing to shoot.
Having said that though, maybe things are getting beyond the point of no return. Democracy in the US seems to be a joke, and the billionaire class have unfettered power. I worry we’re on trajectory towards violent revolution.
The ambivelence and even open celebration of a shocking violent murder is a warning sign of how bad things are right now. Across the democratic world countries are devided and in flux because the political class is not listening to voters and in hoc to the billionaires.
Trump in the US will be a mess. But France and Germany are also in political flux. What we are lacking globally at the moment is an outlet for this mess or a solution. People seem to be divided and unable to coalesce around a solution to the problems. I worry that means more chaos and ultimately violemce to come.
- Comment on When did browsers start being able to remember your previous session. 1 month ago:
- Comment on Meal prep 1 month ago:
There is literally a kettle on the left lower side of the image (likely deliberately as it seems awkward having it in front of the air fryer like that)
- Comment on 8 yr old me after my parents did my woodworking assignment 1 month ago:
He sounds very Trumpian.
- Comment on Anon's uncle is sick 1 month ago:
Statistically if you’re born, at some point you will die. Being born is deadly.
- Comment on US Senator Warner Presses Valve to Crack Down on Hateful Accounts and Rhetoric Proliferating on Steam 2 months ago:
Politicians would be better focusing on things that matter like how the Democrats lost the election to Trump and how they’re going to win the midterms.
A crappy paper finding rude words and phrases on steam is not really worthy of anyone’s attention but Valve’s
“Millions” of examples sounds dramatoc until you look at how many billions of exchanges have been made in valves forums and comment pages. It needs addressing but it’s not of international or even national importance.
Instead of virtue signalling, Warren should be asking how the Dems managed to allow Biden a free ride through the primaries, held on til the bitter end blocking alternatives and then endorsing Harris blocking any debate.
I’d rather Warren focus on fixing the Democratic Party. A bit of democracy in the Democrat party would be a start.
- Comment on why is mexico not treated the same way as canada?? 2 months ago:
Also English language books are going to be predominantly sold in English speaking countries. And it makes sense cost wise to target both markets together rather than printing individual runs priced for individual countries where possible.
And Canada and the US both use dollars; there is potential ambiguity in price for manufacturers and retailers, so better to clearly specify both. There is not ambiguity with the peso - if a customer sees a book is $10 they will know there is a different price in pesos.
- Comment on RazerGenie for configuring Razer devices on Linux v1.2 brings new features 2 months ago:
Great that people are developing tools but personally I use OpenRGB as its broader focused than just one manufacturer. It also uses the same underlying OpenRazer drivers for Razer devices as well as supporting other other RGB devices.
RazerGenie seems a little too focused to me but maybe there are benefits of such a tool I’m missing?
- Comment on Is There A Source For Unbiased Election Results As They Happen? 2 months ago:
I’d recommend video streams from BBC, Sky News and Channel 4 all in the UK. Channel 4 is partnering with CNN for data and shared stories, and their UK election coverage earlier this year was well regarded. TV news in the UK has to be impartial by law so they will not take a side in the election. They will however voice opinions from both sides.
Having said that though all coverage will endlessly speculate all night on what ever result means because that’s the nature of elections and filling air time.
Regarding the Guardian, that is not regulated but it is a good quality broadsheet. It is left leaning and effectively supports Harris but it’s coverage will still be good quality and not as partisan in the style of US media. But expect it to be biased somehwta in Harris’ favour.
- Comment on Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy 2 months ago:
It’s a thought experiment, not an observation. The idea is that if you have infinity and it’s truly random than eventually all possibilities emerge.
The idea of infinite monkeys typing randomly on infinite typewriters is that eventually one of them would accidentally type out all the works of Shakespeare. Many more would type out parts of the works of Shakespeare. And many many many more would type random garbage.
If we imagine for a moment the multiverse is infinite and random, then every possible universe would exist somewhere in that multiverse.
It can be taken in other directions too. It’s a way of cocneptualising the implications of infinity and true randomness.
- Comment on Why are laptop adapters so much larger than phone adapters of same power rating? 2 months ago:
One significant difference that has been missed here is that Laptops can and often do run on the power supply, while phones usually use the power purely to charge the battery.
It’s a significant difference as the laptop needs a stable electricity supply to supply all it’s components or the laptop would crash. That means not only does the brick need to dissipate heat, but it also needs to be able to deliver a stable continuous DC current. So as well as a taanformer and rectifier (that together convert AC to the correct DC needed) there are smoother and potentially capacitors to ensure a smooth continuous output even if the wall supply is janky.
If you turn off the power at the wall / unplug you often see any light on the power brick stay on - that is because of the capacitors and there is still a small amount of energy available to the laptop as it discharges.
While phones are mini computers they are usually designed to always run on the battery. Even when charging, the phone draws it’s power from the battery and it’s in built circuits to smooth the current; there isn’t usually the redundancy in a phone to switch between different supplies in the same way as a laptop. There isn’t also the expectation that they need to run off the wall continuously by users (even if users might plug their phone in and expect to continue to use it, they will find their phone shuts down if its at 0% and they push it beyond what the recharging battery can supply; a laptop would be expected to run solely on the wall not shut off).
Things are blurring now with USB C power supplies for laptops - but you will find the plug itself has more of the electronics built in or some of the functions of the power brick have moved into the laptop to reduce charger bulkiness. Look at how bulky a USB c charger plug is for a Mac - they’re not simple USB chargers you’d use for a phone or tablet, they’re bulky because they are also doing the smoothing and stabilisation people expect for their laptops.
- Comment on What does this emoji mean? Is this a British thumbs up? 2 months ago:
It’s the “call me hand” emoji.
- Comment on What does this emoji mean? Is this a British thumbs up? 2 months ago:
It is not the shaka. It’s the “call me sign” emoji.
- Comment on Subnautica 2 early access should last "2 to 3 years" - it'll launch with "several biomes" and "some narrative" 2 months ago:
It is but it’s also one of the few options available to devs. They can sign up with a big publisher and then be beholden to them financially and creatively. Or they can try the kickstarter route, or they can take out huge loans or investment and be beholden to them. If they’re lucky they can get grants from governments but that is sporadic and uncommon. Or they can scale back projects to reduce financial risk.
Some devs can self fund once very successful, but even a successful dev like the makers of Subnautica won’t have lots of money on hand. Plus even if they have cash, it is also about risk and sharing that so they don’t go completely bankrupt on one project and all their employees lose their jobs.
Early Access has its down sides for definite but it does allow game devs to get revenue in while developing, and also (if done well) focus on delivering a game the players actually like. The biggest benefit is definitely that it allows devs as much independence as feasible.
Of course for the players, it can be hit or miss but that is the risk with any game. And no one forces anyone to buy an EA game - if you don’t like it, don’t buy and wait til 1.0. That’s no different than waiting for any game to release so not sure what the problem is from that point of view?
For players in terms of a pure “investment” then of course it’s a bad deal - the only return you get is the hopeful 1.0 game, and you get no share of any profits. You’re actually just another customer, who has been tapped very early. But again, it’s a choice and gamers can just not buy early access.
I’ve bought quite a few games via kickstarter and EA routes, but only games that I’m passionate about and are relatively niche (like small indie projects, or genres that don’t get much mainstream action now like Adventure games). As much as I enjoyed Subnautica, I personally wouldn’t buy its sequel on EA except maybe if it was very close to release.
- Comment on Explain why the US bail system is not insane 3 months ago:
I think a lot of people misunderstand because in so many TV shows and movies it’s a trope for someone to get in trouble and be bailed out. The fact that they’ve got a court case to attend and that’s not the end of it is often left out.
- Comment on Replacing an old mini fridge 3 months ago:
I know this is random, but I like your writing style. You manage to throw in flourishes of language and colour, even dramatic biblical references, when talking about nothing more than a broken fridge.