umbraroze

@umbraroze@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The grass is happy to see you ⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Ooh, don’t make me link to That One CGP Grey/Kurtzgesagt Thing. Well I might as well do it. Existential Crisis One! Existential Crisis Two!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The grass is happy to see you ⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  True, the plant as a whole doesn’t die.

  But this particular slice of grass on the microscope slide?

  Dead.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The grass is happy to see you ⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course this gets a lot more grim when you realise the grass had to be sliced to put under the microscope.

  So they sliced a smiling organism and captured the expression at the moment of death.

  I know I’m supposed to be strong, but I’m shedding tears. 😢

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨But but but⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  As a young nerd, I was happy that the national broadcaster decided to show history documentaries every week.

  I was kind of disappointed that it devolved into a World War 2 Hour. But I guess it was inevitable.

  (At least we don’t have the History Channel, otherwise known as the H—)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨IT’S THE FEDS!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There definitely have been a case where the police, observing things with thermal cameras from a helicopter (for it is in the US where this tale happened), observed some house with a highly suspicious heat signature. …Some dude’s crypto mining operation.

  Well, that was definitely indirectly drug related.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Techno feudalism, here we come⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve found them useful for very broad level stuff (e.g. asking “I’m trying to do X in programming language Y, are there any libraries for that and can you give me an example”). Copilot has been good at giving me broad guesses at why my stuff isn’t working.

  But you have to be very careful with any code they spit out. And they sometimes suggest some really stupid stuff. (Don’t know how to set up a C/C++ build environment for some library on Windows? Don’t worry, the AI is even more confused than you are.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨negative rizz⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wanted one!

  …In Forza Horizon.

  Real life, not so much. There’s a bus stop right by the street

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Speak American⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  At this point point, people who speak English as second language usually go “awww, how cute, the native speakers really think this is the biggest controversy of English orthography.”

  (Instead of, you know, everything.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GeoGuessr Map Makers Make Most Popular Maps Unplayable In Protest Of Saudi-Backed Esports World Cup - Aftermath⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Farming Simulator has an esport. Microsoft Excel has an esport. At this point it’d be weird if Geoguessr didn’t have an esport.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨$80 for Borderlands 4 too costly? Randy Pitchford says, "If you're a real fan, you'll find a way to make it happen"⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, Randy, I find a way to make it happen, it’s called Xbox sale. That’s how I bought Borderlands 3. Which I haven’t played yet. And don’t get me wrong, Randy, Borderlands 2 is one of the most fun games I’ve played, I’m definitely a real fan! I’m definitely a video game enthusiast, I have a ginormous backlog on both Xbox and Steam.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨And sir cumference, the sphere⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sir Cumference the sphere

  Oh yes, and the monastery near Camelot also a nearly spherical oblate

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo reserves the right to brick your console following "unauthorised use", in bid to prevent piracy⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s it, I’m going to get a Steam Deck next. And I’ll stick to stuff that can run Dolphin.

  (Learns that Xbox Series can also run Dolphin without modding) Well shit, I’m set for life

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The clueless people are out there among us⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And in the big touristy cities in Europe, there’s so many scam currency exchanges, while if you just take the time to go to official government exchanges, you get reasonable exchange rates. The problem isn’t the locals, the problem is that you didn’t do the research and you did a dum-dum. (Also fuck the people who are scamming tourists, that’s just low.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is your favorite indie game?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Can’t really add much to all of the great games already mentioned. But I’ll add one, because it was one of the best games I played in recent memory. Chants of Sennaar. Where to even start? Point-and-click adventure/puzzle game that is all about language puzzles. With great visuals and music. Really dig the eurocomics inspired style. I don’t know why, but this game really touched me - maybe it’s because the game is about uniting people in an age of discord.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Game prices have nothing to do with inflation (or even production costs) and everything to do with arbitrary price points the industry just settles upon. Nothing forces them to charge that much, yet they do it because they think they can get away with it for now.

  Rising prices have had an effect on me - I’m definitely not buying as many games as I used to, least of all impulsively on hearsay, and I’m not trusting any publisher enough to preorder stuff anymore. So they went past my pain point, sorry. If they keep doing this, they’ll run over everybody. I don’t think this is a sustainable direction.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Liquid Trees⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Insert random copypasta about biotech breakthrough that turns water and CO2 and nutrients into building materials which sounds like space age technology but it’s just trees

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Don't be Evil⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Parody account

  …Basically indistinguishable from any regular Twitter account. Why did Elon want these accounts labeled, again?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Recommendations for "girly" games?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you like puzzles, and greenery instead of pink:

  Botany Manor, which is fundamentally about the feminine urge to go alone into a giant mansion and grow some cool flowers

  Terra Nil, which is about going to a desolate planet and using the power of technology to grow some cool flowers

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you're a broke vampire, just say that⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m an amateur writer. One of the worldbuilding things I wanted to explore for my fantasy/steampunk word was the fact that the life of vampires who originate from commoner class must really suck, pun very much intended. You’d end up as a “high functioning” undead who gets even the few rights you previously had stripped from you. Fertile ground for social commentary.

  So in this setting there’s an autonomous vampire state that’s essentially communist. In other nations, vampires are, if not persecuted outright, at least constantly struggling for recognition, and are exploited as night shift workers in the emerging industry.

  I wish I could find the urban fantasy story that inspired me to explore this. It was also based on the “hey, not all vampires live glorious lifestyles” premise. I think this was in some Humble Bundle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Getting mixed signals from Reddit. Furthermore I shall henceforth be on Lemmy full time.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  These days both Twitter and Reddit have wacky UI messages written by completely different teams. One team is all business-like “Here’s some stern warnings you’re not going to like.” The other team is all casual and wayyy too friendly and fellow-kidsy, like “Did someone say MEMES?” (to which most reasonable people respond “fuck you Elon/Spez, you’re not funny”)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TIL about dating⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a random amateur fantasy writer. One day, long ago, I was working on an interactive fiction game which was billed as a dating sim where you get to have a night out with one of my characters, who is an alchemist.

  Bulk of the game was supposed to involve helping her examine various ingredients on the shelf of her shop and seeing which had gone bad. You know, dating the stuff can be crucial.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For all you inked people⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  “Showing up on time” is the lowest possible bar, isn’t it?

  Recently I found an old school yearbook. My entry was written by someone who barely knew me. Said something about me showing up on time all the time. Now, I was like “holy shit that’s cringe, I don’t want that on my tombstone”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  My immediate thought was that there’s some inconsistency with various types of metadata. For example most software will pull the date from the Exif DateTimeOriginal field. But there’s also XMP tags that have the same purpose. Or similar purpose. These standards have plenty of date fields for various uses, and while they serve a noble purpose, the software just craps all over them. (Don’t ask which software. All of them.)

  My guess is that at some point of time, one of those tags got updated, but not the other tags of similar purpose. So the program you’re using could be pulling the date from one field, and when you update it, you’re actually changing some other field.

  Of course all of this is wild because usually no one needs to touch the datestamp anyway (unless you, like, have to correct daylight saving time or clock drift or something). Software changing this to a batch import time? That’s weird and silly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Over the last few years I’ve been drawing stuff on Clip Studio Paint. Wonderful app, very powerful, the asset marketplace rules.

  But it has a bunch of really weird jank too. It’s as if it has all of the power in the world but you need to spend extra time digging through the app to do stuff.

  Krita, which I finally tried a few months back, feels really excellent. Stuff is configurable as hell. All of the stuff is easy to discover. I’m working much faster.

  Now, Krita doesn’t have all of CSP’s niceties, and I guess I have to see how to wishlist them.

  Similarly CSP’s 3D mockup tools are great, but nowhere as smooth and powerful to use as Blender’s. Which is weird because CSP isn’t a modeling program - you’d think they’d stick to what they actually do and at least polish the camera/pose controls and such. No dice. I wish I could just stick CSP assets in Blender, but they use a proprietary model format.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Joplin does have an automatic backup plugin. Which I recommend enabling for obvious reasons.

  Also, moving to different versions is kinda tricky sometimes. No matter the software, when moving from very old version to a new one, I always keep the old one around until I’m certain the stuff was moved over cleanly.

  But yeah, having the notes in a database is definitely not as robust as the plain text storage. Wish Joplin would just let you say “I have a git repository”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  One of the most frustrating programs for me is digiKam. On paper, it’s the perfect DAM/photo manager. But it’s kinda slow for day-to-day use. The user interface is janky in a lot of ways. It doesn’t see constant refinement either. It doesn’t even speak to me as a metadata nerd because I don’t want to turn my metadata into a janky mess. Yeah, you have a powerful metadata editor. It’s like a welding torch without any eye protection.

  I’m using ACDSee on Windows, because it’s operating on pretty much the same principle (image file metadata is canonical, app database is just for indexing), but it’s faster and smoother to use. Not perfect, it has its mild limitations (like why the hell doesn’t it support OpenStreetMap - Google Maps kinda sucks for nature trails, you’d think photographers would have pointed this out), but it’s just so much more efficient. If digiKam ever gets a huge UI overhaul, switching over will probably be fairly easy though.

  Also about a decade ago, I would have said that as far as novel writing software/large structured document word processors go, nothing beats Scrivener. Scrivener is still probably the best software in its niche, but it looks like a bunch of open source word processors in this niche have come a long way. Currently looking at novelWriter, which seems really rad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I sometimes still think about StarCraft: Ghost.

  Pfft, I’m sometimes hoping they’ll eventually make the WarCraft point-and-click adventure game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's a fun new game⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  ?OVERFLOW ERROR

  Some day, some day, I’ll be able to afford a 16-bit computer! I hear it’s the latest thing!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rock Auras - Not just for Hippies anymore⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Reminds me of an old RPG parody that had a spell like this:

  Gas Cloud: To prepare, the caster must eat two loaves of bread and as many plates of pea soup as they can…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anyone remember how popular the group Head Cleaner was?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Kind of sucks that my Commodore 1541 floppy drive (5.25" floppies) is giving me read/write errors, and I have no idea where I put my head cleaner floppy long ago. (Have to rely on SD2IEC on my Commodore 64, and it’s not compatible with some turbo loaders or other programs that do weird drive magic.) And, of course, while I might run into head cleaner tapes on specialty shops, good luck running into 5.25" cleaner floppies these days.