teawrecks

@teawrecks@sopuli.xyz

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pornhub is urging tech giants to enact device-based age verification⁩ ⁨⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Because they know the “party of anti-regulation/anti-nannie state” will never trust people to police themselves. They acknowledge either they will have to do a bunch of work and be liable when it fails, or some middle man will. So they choose the middle man.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Smaller makes it more expensive. I hope it’ll be under $1000, but I think I wouldn’t be surprised if it were $1200.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The ‘Great Meme Reset’ Is Coming: From Jack Dorsey to Gen Alpha, everyone seemingly wants to go back to the internet of a decade ago. But is it possible to reverse AI slop and brain rot?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Why not 2012?

  For Kony.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The simple test that blew up the FTC's case against Meta⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If they were required to leave all meta platforms, then what would the experiment show? It sounds like the intention was to see where people shifted their time when they stopped using one meta product. If FB users primarily went to IG and vice versa, then it would indicate they held a monopoly. But it sounds like IG users primarily switched to TikTok and YouTube, not FB, indicating they are different products from each other and have different competition.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Alberto Mielgo defends the Marathon cinematic as "not AI," denies his team touched Bungie’s plagiarized material and calls the art theft incident a genuine mistake that was "blown out of proportion"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  How does one even accidentally steal a texture someone else made?

  The fact that you’re asking this is almost like…maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about? And should defer to an actual creative who does?

  First off, it is a famously non trivial problem to compare every texture to every piece of art on the internet. It is trivial to add a bit of impercievable noise to deliberately foil even the best reverse image searching methods.

  I think you may be taking for granted the number of artists and the level of autonomy they are given over their craft for a project of this complexity.

  It’s actually more weird to me that you don’t understand why this is easy for a single dev to get away with. This is what happens when a studio trusts its artists to create something. No one is excusing it, but stop acting like Bungie did it on purpose. There’s no evidence of that. The only thing they’re guilty of is making a mediocre extraction shooter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash — "the fact that people are unimpressed ... is mindblowing to me"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  No, we think it’s great, keep going.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 11 to add an AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders, warns of security risk⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If sufficiently advanced malware can break out of a VM, then it’s only a matter of time before an AI breaks out of a measly container 🍿

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Roblox to block children from talking to adult strangers after string of lawsuits⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Roblox is making absolute bank. They have the resources to actually solve this if they wanted. They just believe the inevitable slap on the wrist will cost them less than they stand to make in the meantime.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Machine is huge for indie development⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Steam hardware has so far been pretty niche, though. If the user experience is smooth enough, a SM could replace many people’s xbox/playstation.

  We’re like 5y into the PS5/XBSX, new games are jumping up to $70-100 each, and hardly any are platform exclusives. Msft have all but canceled the next Xbox, and if Sony tries to push the PS6 in a few years, I think there’s a world where a good chunk of people say nah.

  And with the amount of attention Linux is getting from the win10 eol, we could be at the beginning of an historic inflection point in gaming.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valves first title with a 3 in it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, and the best jokes are famously the ones you need to explain. Sometimes the audience is wrong and they need to be set straight.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Proton Offered Me Money... Then It Got Weird⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Very not weird behavior. Not worth the watch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Then Minecraft is what you’re looking for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Differentiation comes from role play, which is the least interesting part of the game for me.

  Can you explain why you would play a TTRPG if you’re not interested in role play? Seems like a battle sim like warhammer, or just a video game might be the thing you’re looking for.

  As a DM, the cooperative story telling IS the interesting part. D&D has never been an airtight game system, it’s a bunch if hand waving to give just enough illusion of structure and randomness so you don’t feel like you’re just arbitrarily deciding everything yourselves. But at the end of the day, you are. The characters and story you’re left with is the only thing of value.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For those of you who enjoy open-world games, how big of a world is too big?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There are space games with procedural large scale galaxies to the point that the entire playerbase can only ever hope to see ~15% of the systems, but that’s why I put the >50% qualifier in there. That’s TOO big. Anyone can generate an effectively infinite procedural world, I want a large world.

  When I had originally conceived of this, it was in the context of a pokemon MMO. You would have your home town, and as a trainer, or researcher, or rocket member, etc, you’d travel at a real-time pace akin to the show.

  Alternative IP that it could work with are dragonball (imagine the playerbase on a months long search to find/fight over the dragonballs so they could awaken the dragon and make a wish to the devs), or Avatar (each player would have a chance to spawn in as a random bender. One player at any given time is the Avatar. Events happen to strengthen some benders and weaken others. Players make war and peace at will).

  There would obviously be challenges in running these types of experiences, but currently it feels like the cost of standing up an MMO is so much that no one ever does anything interesting. Instead they just copy WoW.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For those of you who enjoy open-world games, how big of a world is too big?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t consider NMS to be an MMO. If everyone went to the same location, at best, you’d most likely only see a handful of players you’re instanced with (up to 32 from what a cursory search gives me). That’s kinda the sad state of what passes for an MMO these days, but I don’t accept it. That’s not even a full raid group in WoW.

  But yeah, you could squint and say that that otherwise effectively produces the experience I’m asking for. I am looking forward to LNF for sure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For those of you who enjoy open-world games, how big of a world is too big?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think that means it didn’t work, I think that just means it’s not for everyone. I’m a firm believer that, “given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”. Small indie games take firm stances on their gameplay all the time, not every game is for everyone, and that’s ok, that’s how you get unique and interesting gameplay experiences. But that’s easy for and indie game to do because making an indie game is cheap.

  MMOs have the unfortunate reality that they’re architecturally complex, and expensive to operate, and thus need to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible to justify their existence to investors. They don’t have the luxury of making the experience they want, which is why they all end up just copying WoW’s enshittified gameplay, but with less polish.

  My hope is that this indie revolution we’re in expands to “large scale” multiplayer games. Not so massive that it’s prohibitively expensive to run, but not so small that it’s a ghost town. I think that’s when we’ll start to see interesting MMO experiences again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For those of you who enjoy open-world games, how big of a world is too big?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  WoW is objectively huge, but they made it feel tiny by putting fast travel options everywhere. I would guess that any two points in the world are no more than 5m from each other if routed perfectly.

  I want there to exist one MMO where you “live” in a city, and traveling to another city is actually so inconvenient that you only do it if you have to. Not because I want to make the trek, but because I want there to be a world just large enough that any one person has usually seen only ~1%, but the playerbase in entirety has seen >50%. I don’t know if any such game exists.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite games from a worldbuilding standpoint?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hah, I had thought, well it’s not quite reincarnation, because you don’t come back as something new, you come back as yourself with the same memories. But I’m just noticing that it does seem like “the Big Problem” is very similar to what [my rudimentary understanding of] the Buddhist quest for transcendence is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[RANT] Why is so much coverage of "AI" devoted to this belief that we've never had automation before (and that management even really wants it)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  People or LLMs?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[RANT] Why is so much coverage of "AI" devoted to this belief that we've never had automation before (and that management even really wants it)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hold up, what did I read into it? I directly quoted you and asked for clarification on whether you currently believe that is the state of AI, or whether you’re saying that’s what automation used to be.

  If you’re saying that’s what automation used to be, then we agree. If you believe that modern AI can only do the “tedious bullshit no one wants to do”, that’s literally not the case.

  Sora 2 is generating realistic video of anything you want given just a text prompt, rivaling the best VFX artists.

  Hollywood is currently clamoring to “work with” AI celebrities who don’t exist, with a synthetic voice, singing songs no one composed with lyrics generated by an LLM. Why give a cut to a pop artist or band if you can synthesize it from nothing?

  The education system has been completely upturned because every assignment can be completed by an AI, and there’s no way for the teacher to detect it. And it’s having a measurably damaging effect on students’ intellect.

  A popular quote floating around right now is, “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”

  And right now I literally can’t know if someone is running an AI with the prompt: “respond to this comment as though you are an out of touch older American who still thinks the capabilities of generative AI are limited to simple automation of tedious tasks no one wants to do anyway.” And you don’t know if I’m an AI with the prompt, “respond to this comment like a condescending tech literate young adult who is afraid of the impact that generative AI owned and funded by an oligarchy is going to have on every aspect of their future.”

  I honestly feel stupid even bothering to type any of this out. I’m surely being had.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[RANT] Why is so much coverage of "AI" devoted to this belief that we've never had automation before (and that management even really wants it)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And it’s worth noting that you can’t automate the interesting parts of a job, as those are creative. All you can tackle is the rote, the tedious, the structured bullshit that no one wants to do in the first place.

  Are you saying that this used to be the case and acknowledging that it’s no longer true with modern AI? Because it’s demonstrably not true for modern AI and is the entire reason people are fearful.

  Honestly, this post is so far out of the loop, part of me is wondering if it’s AI generated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite games from a worldbuilding standpoint?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Rainworld

  spoiler

  All living things are trapped in “The Cycle”, and no one likes it, they all want to die and be free of the burden of living. They called this “The Big Problem”. To try and find a solution to “The Big Problem”, people* built 3 AI that would constantly be running to try and compute a solution to The Big Problem. This requires a ton of energy, and an ocean’s worth of water to keep them cool. The AIs are generating so much heat that it evaporates oceans worth of water, resulting in periodic violent rainstorms (thus the name of the game). People moved to structures built above the clouds to be safe from the rain. One day, one of the AI finally solved The Big Problem, notified the other AIs that it was solved…and promptly died before sharing it. The remaining two AI (named “Looks to the Moon” and “Five Pebbles”) continue to iterate on solving the problem, but both have all but given up hope. You play as a Slugcat, a species specially evolved by the AI to squeeze through pipes and keep their systems clean.

  …but when you start the game, you are merely trying to survive and explore a living ecology full of hostile creatures. The game doesn’t care if you understand any of the lore, it doesn’t care if you “finish” the game, it’s just there to be experienced.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Valve does not get anywhere near enough criticism': DayZ creator Dean Hall says the 'gambling mechanics' of Valve's monetization strategy 'have absolutely no place' in videogames⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And you can build your own PC and peripherals, yet every aspect of the gaming industry is funded and driven by corporations. Always has been, and Linux gaming is no exception.

  I specifically acknowledged the FOSS efforts to eliminate depenence on valve, I think it’s great, but even Bazzite uses the SteamDeck UI. Do you know if there’s a FOSS deck UI replacement that unifies all storefronts/repos, and works as smoothly? I want that to exist.

  Steam is just objectively the smoothest linux gaming experience for the largest number of people right now. It’d be awesome if that wasn’t the case, but for now it is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk’s Grokipedia launches with AI-cloned pages from Wikipedia⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That is literally the opposite of Musk’s goal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Valve does not get anywhere near enough criticism': DayZ creator Dean Hall says the 'gambling mechanics' of Valve's monetization strategy 'have absolutely no place' in videogames⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll be the first to say I don’t like Linux gaming’s dependence on valve. I wish steam wasn’t the best experience, and I applaud all the effort that the FOSS community puts in to keep them honest.

  But for the “gambling” monetization in particular, this is really a “don’t hate the player, hate the game” situation. It’s on people/govts to regulate this. If Valve said tomorrow, “you’re right, we’re not going to monetize gambling anymore because we think it is unethical”, they would just lose to a competitor who is less ethical.

  It’s the same as saying, “if you’re rich and are pro higher taxes, why don’t you just choose to pay more? Nothing is stopping you.” Because that’s not going to fix anything, it’s just a losing strategy. What you need is a system where everyone is required by law to behave in a way that benefits the society.

  To that end, Valve’s most ethical move would be to lobby the govt to ban unethical monetization. I know they’re making bank, but whether they’re making enough to out-lobby all the others who are also doing this, I don’t know…also we all know the US is not exactly positioned for effective FTC policies right now…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US government uses Halo images in a call to 'destroy' immigration, Microsoft declines to comment⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Guaranteed, he’s going to count the Console Wars in his list of wars he’s ended.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Remedy CEO Tero Virtala steps down after nine years⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  AW2 was incredible, but I knew it wouldn’t do well when I played it, because it’s too niche. I love the Weird Fiction universe they’re building, but it’s just not pulling the Resident Evil audience.

  Firebreak I think was their attempt to monetize the IP, but oof, it’s just not fun. I feel like they could have gone more “friend slop” in tone and been much more successful. Imagine a game loop like Repo or Lethal Company, but set in the Oldest House, interacting with weird, goofy phenomena. Instead it’s a very dry shooting experience wrapped in a very dry upgrade system. I want to support them, but it feels like work to play this game…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox ditching hardware and exclusive games "makes sense," former Microsoft exec and Blizzard boss says, as "only a moron would continue" making consoles as games go third party⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  More accurately, PCs are becoming consoles, but yes, they want to converge it all into a locked down hardware as a service industry.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ex PlayStation exec says Sony can't keep "increasing the graphics power" with new consoles after tech plateau, but PS5 has already "made almost every game a better game"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The “paid more to work less” part is not tenable. The games that fit that bill that you’re thinking of represent less than 1% of their peers. They are outliers, not a sustainable industry; the exception, not the rule. For every Silksong there are maybe 100 that make just enough to make ends meet, and 1000 duds that will never pay for themselves that you’ve never heard of.

  What you’re saying is you want fewer steady incomes and more lottery winners. Sure, that’d be nice, but it’s not a sustainable strategy.

  Ex. Wildgate launched recently. They deliberately opted to sell the game for a flat $30 rather than going F2P/P2W. As a result, they regularly get reviewed negatively by people saying “dead game, greedy devs won’t lower the price to compete with F2P games” and “the cosmetics you unlock by playing look better than the ones you can buy” (yes, there are people unironically posting those as negative reviews).

  So at least understand why the most common strategy is often exploitative, and why it’s actually not a simple solution that a bunch of armchair experts have figured out in a comments section.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A player before me destroyed a bridge in [the Tides of Tomorrow] demo, so I had to build it again in this narrative adventure where your choices have consequences for others⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t give From ideas lol