frog
@frog@beehaw.org
- Comment on Self-balancing commuter pods ride old railway lines on demand 2 hours ago:
They’re definitely trains. I live next to a similar one. It is physically a train, with exactly the same hardware as trains on busier lines (though typically only hauling 1-2 carriages instead of 4+). It’s just more fuel-efficient for a train to keep going through a station if nobody is getting on or off, so when passenger numbers are low, the practice is to let the driver know if you need on or off.
- Comment on Self-balancing commuter pods ride old railway lines on demand 3 hours ago:
I live next to a railway line in the south west that is similar. A single train runs up and down the line. If you’re on one of the stations, you wave to the train so it’ll stop for you. If you’re on the train and want to get off, you ask the driver to stop.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s Neuralink reports trouble with first human brain chip 5 days ago:
Yeah, I’m surprised as well. I assume it’s a reflection of how weakened regulators have become that no one was able to say “no” to Musk.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s Neuralink reports trouble with first human brain chip 1 week ago:
I mean, I’d like to be surprised that a technology driven by a techbro with the “move fast and break things” mentality has broken because of moving too quickly into human trials, but…
I guess we should just count ourselves lucky that the poor human
test subjectpatient wasn’t permanently harmed by Musk’s raging arrogance. - Comment on Am I the only person that feels that retro games are better? 1 week ago:
For me the biggest problem with modern games is the obsession with high fidelity graphics. The dev teams that create games without a focus on photo-realism or jaw dropping visuals are often the teams creating the best games in my eyes.
I think this is very much down to personal taste. While I don’t think a great game needs photo-realistic graphics, for me a game’s graphics do factor into my enjoyment of it, so it should at least feel like the devs put some effort into making the game visually appealing. That could be focusing on making the graphics beautiful, or stylised and quirky, or just incredibly cute. But if I’m gonna spend hours looking at something, I want it to look nice.
- Comment on Why do mobile games suck nowadays? 2 weeks ago:
You get what you pay for. If you download a free game, then of course it’s going to be full of pay-to-win microtransactions. Although there are issues with greed in some larger games run by big companies, the reality is that game devs deserve to earn a living too, and that means at some point a game needs to be paid for.
There are still plenty of good quality mobile games out there, they just don’t tend to be free to download. Back when I had more free time, I actually got good usage out of the Play Pass on Android, which was £5 a month and gave me access to a catalogue of excellent mobile games with no microtransactions at all, the vast majority of which were single-player, offline games. Literally the only reason I’m not still subscribed is I just don’t have time to play mobile games at the moment - the chances of me subscribing again over the summer when I’m not at uni is high.
- Comment on What do you personally use AI for? 3 weeks ago:
I pretty much only use it for brainstorming ideas.
- Comment on It's finally up! Please sign it if you're in the UK :) Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state. 4 weeks ago:
I thought about this too, but then I checked the end date of the petition. It’s in October, as petitions have to run for 6 months in order to give them enough time to get to the 100,000 signatures. So by the time this petition ends, and then rises to the top of the list of petitions to be debated, we’ll definitely have a new government. 😉
- Comment on It's finally up! Please sign it if you're in the UK :) Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state. 4 weeks ago:
Of course they wouldn’t, and they shouldn’t. Releasing the source code doesn’t absolve them of a responsibility to make sure the game is actually working when they end support. “We fucked over all our players, but here’s the source code so someone else can fix it for nothing” would be a really shitty thing to do and they shouldn’t avoid penalty for fucking over the majority of their players (and the unpaid people who will have to fix it for them).
On the other hand “we patched the game so it’ll continue to work for everyone who bought it” benefits most players, and “we patched the game so it’ll continue to work for everyone who bought it, AND here’s the source code so others can expand/modify it if they feel so inclined” would satisfy everybody. It just shouldn’t be a legal requirement.
Also keep in mind that in the UK system, if a petition reaches its 100,000 signature minimum in order to be considered for debate in parliament, that’s only the beginning of the process. It doesn’t just get put into law exactly as the petitioner words it. It goes through multiple debate stages, where the MPs consider all the options, and then the law gets written - and then it usually gets amended a few times. So I would expect that if this petition did lead to a change in the law, the resulting legislation would have considered multiple options for what “leaving the game in a working state” would look like. A surprisingly large amount of UK legislation on this kind of stuff sort of goes “this is what we want, but companies have freedom to choose how they will implement it”.
- Comment on It's finally up! Please sign it if you're in the UK :) Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state. 4 weeks ago:
“Release the source code” isn’t going to be considered a reasonable thing to ask a government to legislate on. “Make sure the game can still be played after support ends”, which in practice means patching it so it doesn’t require an internet connection to servers that no longer exist and/or allowing players to self-host their own servers, is far more likely to succeed. It’s a reasonable request that someone who has bought something should be able to continue using it for as long as they want, no matter what happens to the company that sold it to them.
It’s a request that stands a decent chance of success if a politician can be made to understand what the problem is, because it is an easy extension of existing consumer rights law. Requiring game studios to hand over their source code to gamers would be considered excessive and unreasonable, and is therefore much more likely to be denied outright.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. For the majority of gamers, the changes proposed would be more than sufficient, so that’s a good reason to push for it even if it isn’t what an open source idealist would want.
- Comment on It's finally up! Please sign it if you're in the UK :) Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state. 4 weeks ago:
A requirement to leave a game in a “working state when support ends” doesn’t mean continuing support (ie, running the server). It means the game should still work when the server is gone, which means either fully offline play, or a means for players to run their own servers. That’s the whole point of this campaign, which is taking place across multiple countries.
- Comment on It's finally up! Please sign it if you're in the UK :) Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state. 4 weeks ago:
Ah, it’s active! I saw this a few weeks ago when the petition had been created but was being reviewed by the petitions team. Been waiting for it to be open for signatures, so thanks for the reminder. I have signed it.
I don’t expect the government to do much about it, though. I’ve signed a number of these petitions over the years and the government response is always very non-committal. They can get more traction when an MP can be inspired to care, so if anyone has a youngish MP who might actually be capable of understanding what the problem is, it could be worth writing a letter to them directly (regardless of what party they’re in - a 35 year old Tory MP isn’t a complete write-off and may be more sympathetic than you’d expect.)
That said… could be the kind of thing the next government could be pushed to act on. We’ll likely have a cash-strapped Labour government that’ll be looking for stuff they can do to make things better for normal people which also don’t cost the government any money, and this is a simple adjustment to consumer rights that would achieve that.
- Comment on Let's discuss: Journey 4 weeks ago:
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it. I loved Abzu, and Journey went on my wishlist because so many people had said how similar they were. I’d have probably played it already if I wasn’t ill - I can barely hear anything right now, and that’s not the best time to play a game where the music is a big part of the experience!
- Comment on Let's discuss: Journey 4 weeks ago:
I haven’t played it yet, but it was on my wishlist for a while, so when I saw it on sale a few days ago, I snapped it up and immediately installed it. I’m really excited to play it as soon as I have some free hours.
- Comment on Humans are not perfectly vigilant 1 month ago:
A good read from Cory Doctorow, as always.
- Comment on Windows users don't want copilot on their taskbar 1 month ago:
Yep, I agree with that breakdown. It’s the people in the middle: tech literate enough to need their computer to do a lot, but not sufficiently interested in tinkering to spend time arguing with their OS, that are often better off using Windows or MacOS.
- Comment on Windows users don't want copilot on their taskbar 1 month ago:
That is kind of the problem with Linux though. I definitely had hardware-distro compatibility issues, and I get how for some people, trying out a dozen different distros to find the one that works best for them is a lot of fun, and that’s totally valid. It’s just not a good fit for everyone. I think fans of Linux can overestimate its stability, ease of use, and suitability for all use-cases. It’s right for some people, but not everyone.
- Comment on Windows users don't want copilot on their taskbar 1 month ago:
My relationship with my Linux installation was disfunctional in its own way. It was that partner that went into a meltdown when presented with any new, slightly complicated situation that was outside of its extremely limited comfort zone. I guess that works for people that have the time and patience to hold its hand and convince it that it can actually do everything. But Linux definitely isn’t suitable for all people in all situations.
- Comment on “Job Creator” Elon Musk Has Fired Over 6000 Employees in the Last 4 Years, Some for Trying to Unionize 1 month ago:
That’s what I was thinking. A multitude of small businesses are less efficient, so need more people to do the same amount of work as a single large company. And I would imagine that the competition created by many small companies all chasing after the same pool of employees would have a lesser ability to suppress wages: if one business won’t pay their employees well, those employees will just go and work for someone else instead.
- Comment on “Job Creator” Elon Musk Has Fired Over 6000 Employees in the Last 4 Years, Some for Trying to Unionize 1 month ago:
I’d really love to know if “job creators” are actually job creators, or if many small businesses actually create more jobs than one large one. Are “job creators” actually job destroyers?
- Comment on Are game studios suddenly abandoning Black developers? 1 month ago:
I mean, that’s kind of the point. For the vast majority of games, there’s no real reason why the protagonist has to be a straight white dude, yet 99% of the time, that’s what they are. I like it when devs do something different.
- Comment on Android users who have a keen eye for design and detail, how is the whole stutter/lag situation? Esp. after a few years of use? 1 month ago:
The only time I’ve noticed issues like this on an Android phone was the device I had before my current one. This was a phone that was great when I got it, and I started to notice issues after about 4 years of use. The reality was it was a mid-range device when it was released, it was already a year or two old when I got it, and after a couple of years, the hardware was just not powerful enough for the stuff I was asking it to do.
So I’m inclined to agree with the others who’ve said it really depends on exactly what device you’re using. If you’re buying a budget phone that’s not particularly powerful when it’s brand new, then it’s definitely going to be having issues 2-3 years later, because apps get more demanding as hardware improves, so if your hardware is subpar, you’re going to have issues.
While the allure of getting the cheapest possible phone is strong, if you use your phone for a lot of things, you may have to consider spending a bit more money. One consideration is instead of getting a brand new budget phone, get a second-hand model with higher spec: the price will be similar, but you’ll get better performance for longer. I’m actually trying to think now if I’ve ever had a brand new Android phone, and I can’t remember any of them being new, but they have all served me well, with only one notably having performance issues by the time it was ~5 years old.
- Comment on U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly 1 month ago:
So I’m actually going to agree with this, with a caveat, having learned from personal experience - because sometimes we do have to keep talking to these people for work/education/family purposes. When they start arguing about their choice of phone being better, ignore them. But do continue to respond to them about things you need to talk to them about. Or, in short, grey rock the hell out of them.
Method successfully deployed against a guy at university who picked fights about everything, including what phones people had.
- Comment on U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly 1 month ago:
The fact that Android lets you use F-Droid, or just install apk’s yourself, again means you’re not tied to a specific phone manufacturer. You can switch to a different phone and redownload all your F-Droid apps and transfer the standalone apk’s over. So even without autotransfer, it’s not difficult to keep everything.
- Comment on U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly 1 month ago:
Definitely iPhone’s. With all the other smartphone brands, if you want to switch, all your apps and data can be transferred over. For example I have used four different brands of smartphone, and the process of transferring everything was straightforward. In contrast, Apple makes if hard to transfer to a non-Apple device without losing all your data and apps, essentially creating a barrier to people changing to a different type of phone that simply doesn’t exist for people changing from, say, Samsung to HTC. Thus Apple effectively has a monopoly on customers that are trapped in its ecosystem.
- Comment on Are game studios suddenly abandoning Black developers? 1 month ago:
Slime Rancher’s protagonist, Beatrix LeBeau, is definitely not white. It’s not the most story-driven game out there, but I really appreciated how the main character is a PoC woman, with zero fuss about it. She’s just a lady with a ranch on an alien planet, and why shouldn’t she be a PoC woman rather than a white dude?
- Comment on New Kickstarter for a cool looking game: Starship Simulator 1 month ago:
Their Kickstarter page says they’re a husband and wife team (plus some help from freelancers), so the latter outcome seems more likely than the former. They do intend to distribute the game for free, which… can work to avoid getting sued, but then there’s all the money from the Kickstarter campaign.
I think it’s a really cool project, and it’s definitely the kind of thing I’d be interested in playing, but I would definitely hesitate to invest in the Kickstarer when a lawsuit seems pretty inevitable.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 10th 2 months ago:
Yeah, it’s definitely more of a horror game if a lot of the setting fills you with primal dread! I’m definitely enjoying it, just… only in small doses.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 10th 2 months ago:
Playing Subnautica this week. Having the slight problem that I find all the small fish so adorable that I feel bad about cooking and eating them. It’s also worth noting that I have thalassophobia, which is impeding progress a little because underwater caves are scary, deep water is scary, not being able to see the bottom is scary, and not being able to see the surface is scary.
- Comment on You're Not Imagining It: Google Search Results Are Getting Worse, Study Finds 3 months ago:
Back in the early 00s (I think), there was a running joke about how the search engine Ask Jeeves had one purpose, and one purpose only: to amend any search to “where can I buy…?” Because no matter what you searched for, it would inevitably prioritise adverts and online shopping.
That’s what Google is now.
I also use Ecosia now. It’s powered by Bing on the back end, I believe, but the results are consistently better than what I get from Google. And it’s like… okay, yes, this is the world we live in now, where Bing is more useful than Google.