alyaza
@alyaza@beehaw.org
internet gryphon. admin of Beehaw, mostly publicly interacting with people. nonbinary. they/she
- Comment on Risks to children playing Roblox ‘deeply disturbing’, say researchers 8 hours ago:
it’s been very strange to watch this game i grew up on–pretty innocuously, i should note–gradually morph into one of the most exploitative, undignifying, generally dangerous spaces for children online. the worst stuff i got into on Roblox in 2010 was online dating and learning about 4chan. now the company seems to openly revel in exploiting the labor of children and ripping them off
- Submitted 1 week ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 40 comments
- Submitted 1 week ago to technology@beehaw.org | 12 comments
- Comment on have positive reviews destroyed games? 1 week ago:
What you mean? Have you seen all those articles publisher website just giving out 8-9 on every damn game they get early access to?
this has been an issue people have complained about in gaming journalism for–and i cannot stress this sufficiently–longer than i’ve been alive, and i’ve been alive for 25 years. so if we’re going by this metric video gaming has been “ruined” since at least the days of GTA2, Pokemon Gold & Silver, and Silent Hill. obviously, i don’t find that a very compelling argument.
if anything, the median game has gotten better and that explains the majority of review score inflation–most “bad” gaming experiences at this point are just " i didn’t enjoy my time with this game" rather than “this game is outright technically incompetent, broken, or incapable of being played to completion”.
- Comment on have positive reviews destroyed games? 1 week ago:
no, obviously not; is this a serious question? because i have no idea how you could possibly sustain it
- Xiaohongshu’s global pivot: The surprise winner of the TikTok ban wants to keep its new usersrestofworld.org ↗Submitted 2 weeks ago to technology@beehaw.org | 0 comments
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to technology@beehaw.org | 1 comment
- Comment on Like to drive fast? Virginia has an anti-speeding device for you. 2 weeks ago:
Then we slap a random-ass speed limit sign down and say “job’s done.”
we don’t actually–the basis we derive most speed limits from is actually much worse, if you can believe that. from Killed by a Traffic Engineer:
Traffic engineers use what we call the 85th percentile speed. The 85th percentile speed is whatever speed 85 percent of drivers are traveling slower than. If we have 100 drivers on the road and rank them in order from fastest to slowest, the 15th fastest driver would give us our 85th percentile speed.
Traffic engineers will then look 5 mph faster and 5 mph slower to see what percentage of drivers fall into different 10 mph ranges. According to David Solomon and his curves, the magnitude of the speed range doesn’t matter as long as we get as many drivers as possible into that 10 mph range.
and, as applied to the example of the Legacy Parkway, to show how this invariably spirals out of control:
North of Salt Lake City, the Legacy Parkway parallels Interstate 15 up to the Wasatch Weave interchange where these highways come together. It’s a four-lane, controlled-access highway with a wide, grassy median and more than its fair share of safety problems.
So how did the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) respond?
It increased the speed limit from 55 mph to 65 mph. It said the speed limit jump will “eliminate the safety risk” on the Legacy Parkway.a
UDOT conducted speed studies up and down the Legacy Parkway. It found that most drivers were going much faster than the 55 mph speed limit. Channeling the ghost of traffic engineers past, the safety director for UDOT said, “We decided to raise the speed limit to a speed that is closer to what drivers are actually driving. In doing so, we hope to eliminate the safety risk of speed discrepancy, which can happen when you have a significant difference between the speed most drivers are actually traveling and those who are driving the posted speed limit.”
In the case of the Legacy Parkway, the 85th percentile speeds ranged from 65 mph to 75 mph. Based on that and what it deems engineering judgment, UDOT originally proposed raising the speed limit to 70 mph. After community pushback, it settled for 65 mph.
According to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), this slight adjustment is acceptable. The MUTCD specifies that speed limits “should be within 5 mph of the 85th percentile speed of free-flowing traffic.”6
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to technology@beehaw.org | 0 comments
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 16 comments
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to technology@beehaw.org | 9 comments
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 0 comments
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to technology@beehaw.org | 8 comments
- FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies: LLM scrapers are taking down FOSS projects' infrastructure, and it's getting worse.thelibre.news ↗Submitted 3 weeks ago to technology@beehaw.org | 1 comment
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 1 comment
- Fragpunk is the competitive first-person shooter finally brave enough to declare that balance is overrated, and that's why it's my new go-towww.pcgamer.com ↗Submitted 4 weeks ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 7 comments
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 1 comment
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 0 comments
- Comment on FTC asks to delay Amazon Prime deceptive practices case, citing staffing shortfalls 4 weeks ago:
Except it’s likely on purpose so they won’t have enough people to look into this and other large cases against corporations that might impact the people buying out the government.
this is exactly what has happened; previously, the FTC was aggressively pursuing anti-trust against Amazon, Google, etc.
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to technology@beehaw.org | 3 comments
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to technology@beehaw.org | 14 comments
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 9 comments
- After two hours, open world shooter Atomfall is far more Far Cry than S.T.A.L.K.E.R.www.rockpapershotgun.com ↗Submitted 5 weeks ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 7 comments
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 0 comments
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to technology@beehaw.org | 12 comments
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 23 comments
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to technology@beehaw.org | 8 comments
- Pokémon games have become consistently ugly, and it's alright to wish they weren'twww.eurogamer.net ↗Submitted 1 month ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 23 comments
- Comment on Nigerians are building affordable alternatives to AWS and Google Cloud 1 month ago:
Isnt nigeria basically the only african country right now that isnt a shithole right now?
Nigeria probably has the most theoretical wealth available to it because it’s super rich in oil, but there are definitely other countries that have it better than Nigeria (South Africa, Cape Verde, maybe Namibia or Kenya if you want some deeper cuts). Nigeria also has a metric fuck ton of problems (religious tension and sectarianism, terrorism, an openly corrupt political system which likely stole the last presidential election, and constant economic turmoil) that severely rob its capability to exploit its riches. and yes colonialism is a big part of that, it has fairly bad deals with major corporations to exploit that oil
- Submitted 1 month ago to technology@beehaw.org | 12 comments