swordgeek
@swordgeek@lemmy.ca
- Comment on What are your favourite single-player games without much fluff, grinding or difficulty spikes? 6 hours ago:
Portal I and II.
Psychonauts I and II, with the caveat that there used to be a HUGE skill spike in the penultimate chapter of #1. I gather they’ve softened it, but don’t know how much.
- Comment on Is it weird I sleep with an old blanket I've had since I was a young girl? 1 week ago:
It’s unusual.
It is absolutely NOT weird. If anything, it makes you more human.
- Comment on What are some good places/activities where a middle-aged man can new make friends? 2 weeks ago:
My experience is that they generally are, but if they’re not they’ll be very friendly in suggesting that they’re not the right venue for you.
If that sounds weird, go (or phone) and ask them. If they say “Well we’ve got a pretty hardcore community here,” then that’s a sign that maybe it’s not where you should start. But gamers, on the whole, LOVE sharing their passion with new people.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on The first weekly What Are You Playing? thread! 3 weeks ago:
Just finished playing Morrowind for the first time in decades. Half-tempted to go back and do it all again as a pure mage.
Failing that, I have so many games in my catalogs that I’m not sure where to start. Maybe Portal Revolution, maybe Brütal Legend, or maybe I finally get into the Witcher III. I keep trying to like Ride, but racing games never feel remotely like actually riding or driving a vehicle and I always spend my time in the weeds.
- Comment on Why don't people like Melon Tusk get tired of the shit they gave you pull through literally every day ? I mean doesn't the guilt of bad decisions pull them down enough like the rest of us ? 3 weeks ago:
I had a cousin who probably could have been diagnosed as a psychopath. He had no sense of right or wrong, of good or bad. The only think that registered with him was who he could manipulate, and whether he could get away with it.
It was interesting to see. At a family funeral, he started goading his brother, talking about how much time he had to golf (in jail, no less) while the brother had to work all the time. He thrived on being an irritant to get his own way.
- Comment on My mom tells me I should cut dad off for cheating on her, am I a bad person for not wanting to do so? 3 weeks ago:
I have very very little respect for people who cheat in a marriage instead of getting out; but it is clearly not your mom’s choice to make.
If you’re closer to your dad, then stay with him. Explain to your mom that you’re not trying to attack her, but choosing your own well-being first (as you should).
- Comment on Am I weird for avoiding flying on prop planes, and only fly on jets? 3 weeks ago:
Yes, yoy are. But so what? You’re not hurting me with your weirdness, so go hard,
- Comment on How does AI-based search engines know legit sources from BS ones ? 3 weeks ago:
I’ve thought a lot about this over the last few years, and have decided there’s one critical distinction: Understanding.
When we combine knowledge to come to a conclusion, we understand (or even misunderstand) that knowledge we’re using. We understand the meaning of our conclusion.
LLMs don’t understand. They programmatically and statistically combine data - not knowledge - to come up with a likely outcome. They are non-deterministic auto-complete bots, and that is ALL they are. There is no intelligence, and the current LLM framework will never lead to actual intelligence.
They’re parlour tricks at this point, nothing more.
- Comment on How does AI-based search engines know legit sources from BS ones ? 4 weeks ago:
In other words, “fancy auto-complete.”
- Comment on Are their any romance movies where there is a male protagonist who is a part of the manosphere? 4 weeks ago:
WTF do you mean?
- Comment on What games are just objective master pieces? 4 weeks ago:
Glad to hear it.
I’m tempted to add Red Dead Redemption 2 to the list, but it’s too new for me to decide yet.
I think it belongs. It was the greatest storytelling game I’ve played in a decade or more.
- Comment on What games are just objective master pieces? 4 weeks ago:
- Portal 1/2 of course.
- Grim Fandango. (Flawed yes, but absolutely a masterpiece)
- Psychonauts.
- Fallout New Vegas.
- System Shock (the original).
- The Longest Journey.
- Mass Effect. Maybe.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Short answer: easier than most people think.
Read Ken Thompson’s article Reflections on trusting trust for some tangential hacks.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
No thanks. They can either move here outright, or our (excellent) universities can expand to fill the need.
- Comment on What's the deal the miracles jesus chose to do? 4 weeks ago:
I said go there for some reliable sources.
You want evidence of the historical Jesus, that article contains almost 300 references and about 40 external sources.
The existence of Jesus of Nazareth is widely accepted. If you believe otherwise, you need to provide extraordinary evidence for your extraordinary claims.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
No. In fact, I’d say hardly ever.
We have books that are thousands of years old. Without explicitly copying and translating formats, media, etc., I wouldn’t count on any digital format to survive more than a century - and probably be undecipherable at the end of it anyway. Some scholars have suggested that we’re in the midst of what will be a digital dark age because of this very reason.
Let’s also consider the sort of degradation that can creep in. I’ve got a 110 year old document I’m deciphering at the moment, and there are parts of letters where the ink has faded or the paper has torn. I can usually make out from the remaining bits what the letter should be. You’ve probably done this on old letters: "Is that an ‘a’ or an ‘o’? On the other hand, if I have a lower-case f in UTF-32, its binary representation is “00000000000000000000000001100110.” If I have minor data corruption, one or more of those bits will flip (1–>0 or 0–>1). Since it could be anywhere in the sequence, I could end up with something totally unrelated to an ‘f’ either in character shape or alphabetic proximity.
Then there’s the reading, indexing, and searching abilities in a physical book - no “add a bookmark” feature compares to sticking a finger on the page you want to flip back to, or comparing a few pages side-by-side. Physical bookmarks, stickies, or earmarking (noooo!) are all ways that people reference books which don’t translate well.
Visually, lit displays are harder on our eyes than paper books in good ambient light.
e-books of course have some advantages, especially for technical material. Being able to hit “ctrl-f” and search for a single word or phrase is incredibly valuable. Constant updates of product documentation means not having to throw away books whenever a new version of the item/software is released. Linking to references (e.g. dictionary lookup) is much more convenient than going to get another book out.
But for just sitting down and reading, the tactile experience of a real book rules over everything else in my opinion. Sitting in a coffee shop with a book in hand is a profoundly human experience. Walking through the endless aisles of books at a library is both inspiring and humbling.
So in short, yeah - there is HUGE doubt that e-books are superior.
- Comment on What's the deal the miracles jesus chose to do? 4 weeks ago:
No, not true. Go read Wikipedia for some reliable sources on the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth.
- Comment on What's the deal the miracles jesus chose to do? 4 weeks ago:
There is actually a hell of a lot of evidence he did.
You can read a capsule summary with references on Wikipedia, but it is accepted fact among historians - not just religious scholars - that Jesus of Nazareth was born in Judea under King Herod, was baptised by John the Baptist, and was cruxified under the orders of Pontius Pilate.
Here’s a fun excerpt: “There are at least fourteen independent sources for the historicity of Jesus from multiple authors within a century of the crucifixion of Jesus such as the letters of Paul (contemporary of Jesus who personally knew eyewitnesses), the gospels, and non-Christian sources such as Josephus (Jewish historian and commander in Galilee) and Tacitus (Roman historian and Senator).”
I’m an atheist, but a historical Jesus almost certainly did exist.
- Comment on Where does technology come from in Star Wars? 4 weeks ago:
I absolutely love Star Wars - I saw the first movie four times in the theatre back in 1977/78 as a kid.
But let’s be clear: Star Wars is “cowboys and indians in space.” (Yes, that’s a dated and culturally inappropriate comparison - it is also perfectly appropriate for the era.)
Technology has never played a significant part in it - light sabres are magic swords, FTL travel is a well-worn convenient trope that ‘just happens’ (unless it doesn’t). Droids are servants.
Basically, tech has never been a core aspect of the SW world, mostly because the show has never been science fiction.
- Comment on Catchiest video game song? 5 weeks ago:
Everything from Grim Fandango.
- Comment on Catchiest video game song? 5 weeks ago:
You need to get out more.
The song is a masterpiece on it’s own.
- Comment on Why can I get a credit card for $2,000 at best buy for dumb shit but can't get a care plus card for dental work? 5 weeks ago:
Because you love in the US.
- Comment on How can Doge access critical government infrastructure and fire people if it isn't even a real department? 5 weeks ago:
The answer to ALL things going on in the US is simple:
Who’s gonna stop them?
The president and his (ex?-)boyfriend are doing whatever the FUCK they want, and they even have the backing of the Supreme Court, so the only way to stop them is active resistance.
You’d be surprised at how effective it is to absolutely ignore the law when you’re on top of the heap. I expect that Le Pen would do the same if she got a chance; as would Poilievre, the nuts in charge of the AfD, or any of the unrepentant fascists.
The truth is that the laws put in place to stop this sort of behaviour are like the velvet ropes for crowd control. They only work is people decide to obey them, and if someone were to stomp over them all, it’s only the other people who could stop that person from reaching the front of the line.
- Comment on Star Citizen’s new cash shop offerings provoked fresh pay-to-win and predatory monetization accusations | Massively Overpowered 5 weeks ago:
I don’t disagree, but I …don’t entirely agree either.
It’s absolutely true that devs are pretty bad at estimating costs, because it’s not their job. (And they’re usually good at estimating timelines, but bad at insisting on them.)
It’s also true that games blow over budgets and deadlines all the time, and yeah I remember when Duke Nukem Forever first became a joke and then a meme.
But consider that DNF was completed by a small handful of devs who ran with an almost-finished game that they knew they could make happen. In contrast, there is no finish line for Star Citizen. There is no path to success. As you say, they can’t drop it and be satisfied, so they make more promises and ask for more money. But here’s the key: They KNOW they cannot fulfill those promises - existing or future. It’s impossible at this point! The only thing they’re doing is delaying the inevitable, which would be fine if it was their own time and money; but since they’re constantly begging for money from optimistic gamers with promises they have no intention of delivering on, they are grifting. No excuses, no conditions, no “but maybe…” just pure con-artistry at work.
- Comment on Star Citizen’s new cash shop offerings provoked fresh pay-to-win and predatory monetization accusations | Massively Overpowered 1 month ago:
It’s possible that it wasn’t a scam to begin with.
But now? Now it’s impossible for even the most dewey-eyed dreamer to see it as anything less than a deliberate hustle, perpetrated by amoral grifters.
- Comment on Is Catholic dating culture often mistaken for incel-style pessimistic desperation? 1 month ago:
Swap Catholic for almost any Abrahamic religion here, and it would still hold true.
This is identical to what my relatives in the Dutch Reform church accept. It’s not Catholic dating culture.
- Comment on Does anyone else hate knowing stuff and looking "smart"? 2 months ago:
Nope.
For context, I’m in my late 50s and always want to know the right answer, and share it with everyone.
Buy sometimes, you need to let it go. You might be in a situation where someone is confidently stating something you know to be wrong. Correcting them can - depending on context - come across as insulting and know-it-all; and if it’s not important, maybe stay silent this time.
Now if you’re in a situation where the truth IS important, or where everyone is more interested in the truth (or even debate) than something cool but false, your knowledge will be appreciated.
You don’t have to always have the last word, even if it’s right.
- Comment on Who should america be more concerned about MS-13 or Russia? 2 months ago:
Trump.
- Comment on DoubleFine Celebrates 20 Year Anniversary of Psychonauts 2 months ago:
I am the milkman. My milk is fresh and cold.