lvxferre
@lvxferre@mander.xyz
The catarrhine who invented a perpetual motion machine, by dreaming at night and devouring its own dreams through the day.
- Comment on RimWorld - Odyssey will bring spaceship building, exploration and a lot more content 2 days ago:
So, basically: Save our Ship, vanilla version? Awesome.
I’m actually excited with this DLC.
- Comment on Duolingo CEO on going AI-first: ‘I did not expect the blowback’ 5 days ago:
He vomited an assumption on how people would react, and acted on it. The outcome of his actions proved the assumption wrong. At this stage, a sane / rational person would step back and say “…perhaps I should inform myself”. But no, this bloody muppet had to vomit yet another assumption - why their reaction was negative. *rolls eyes*
- Comment on Caption this. 1 week ago:
Stages of carcinisation in primitive/non-crablike animals.
- Comment on TechCrunch: Reddit sues Anthropic for allegedly not paying for training data 1 week ago:
“We will not tolerate profit-seeking entities like Anthropic commercially exploiting Reddit content for billions of dollars without any return for redditors or respect for their privacy,” said Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, in a statement to TechCrunch.
“WAAAH! HOW DO YOU DARE? WE CALLED DIBS ON THAT!”
…cut off the crap. You give no fucks about returning shit to those muppets or respecting their privacy. You care about money.
I’d tell you to go back to Reddit but you’re Reddit so… fuck off back to yourself.
I want to see those big corpos DDoS-ing the internet going the way of the dodo. And Reddit too. A plague in both houses. Let you fight until mutual destruction.
- Comment on what is north? 1 week ago:
Yeah… probably “between Antarctica and the South Atlantic” would be the best reference here.
[Now it’s probably not the time for me to ramble on how the Atlantic should be considered two oceans instead of one, right?]
- Comment on what is north? 1 week ago:
If “north of Antarctica” isn’t enough to narrow it down, here are a few tips: it’s also south of the Arctic, further from the Sun than Venus, closer to the Sun than Mars. Now it’s easy to find it!
- Comment on In a world first, Brazilians will soon be able to sell their digital data 1 week ago:
As I mentioned in beehaw, I’m completely opposed to that; privacy should be seen as an inalienable right, not a commodity.
But hey, the current gov is an alliance between neolibs and centrists, so… if they can put a price tag on your dignity, they will.
- Comment on The Gmail app will now create AI summaries whether you want them or not 1 week ago:
Then it’s either unavailable for people using it in Portuguese, or I disabled it too and I don’t remember.
- Comment on The Gmail app will now create AI summaries whether you want them or not 2 weeks ago:
If the customer doesn’t want the feature:
[user]“I don’t want it.”[corporate]“Trust Us, We know what you want better than you do. You want it.”[user]“Stop it. I don’t want it. Consent you wanker, do you understand it?”[corporate]"Since you aren’t using the feature, We assume you’re an ignorant unaware of it, so let Use smear it a bit more on your face until you swallow it. "[user]“Sod off. And stop putting this bloody shit on my face.”[corporate]“We understand that simple concepts like obedience might be a bit too complex for something like you, but We are fairly tolerant and helpful, so We shall remind you of the feature again. And again. And again.”
If the customer does want the feature:
[user]“Okay, I want it. This is cool.”[user, later]“What happened with the feature? It was amazing, why did they kill it?”[corporate, lying]“We’ve replaced it with something better, bigger, flashier. Trust us. It’s better.”[user]“It’s completely different. Now it sucks.”
Then proceed as in the first part.
Seriously, the way GAFAM handles AI is just like the first part for plenty people. And it’ll be like the second part, once their marketing teams find another trend to chase. Fuck this shit. I’m glad my email my email is not from Google, but if Yahoo pulls off the same shite I don’t care if my address is 25yo, I’m migrating.
- Comment on Right?! 2 weeks ago:
My cat almost barfed on my bed yesterday. Thankfully I noticed she was going to vomit before that, so I picked her up and put her on the floor. She wasn’t exactly happy.
- Comment on Let's discuss: Donkey Kong 2 weeks ago:
Wow, the analysis is great - thanks for sharing it! For me Stickerbush Symphony always evoked some sort of loneliness or melancholy…
And yes, the whole series has great music. I agree DKC2 is the best in this regard; not just because the tracks are great on their own, but because they fit really well the mood of each level. Disco Train is on its own a rollercoaster, Mining Melancholy’s “mmhmm mmhmm” evoking winds and machinery, Bayou Boogie making the level sound m… mois… swampy. From other games of the series DKC1 Forest Frenzy and DKC3 Nuts and Bolts are also great. (Now thinking, the DKC3 soundtrack as a whole is a bit more industrial.)
- Comment on Let's discuss: Donkey Kong 2 weeks ago:
Hard level with all the wasps
So all of them? …sorry, I couldn’t resist. (This reminds me world 4, Krazy Kremland. The hive levels are awesome!)
- Comment on Let's discuss: Donkey Kong 2 weeks ago:
I remember being completely entranced by it and being unable to put it down (even though it was very difficult for me at the time).
That’s something I find great on so many old games: they were hard, and yet they encouraged you to keep on trying.
found it [DKC2] to difficult and didn’t really like the new protagonist as much
Playing with Dixie is easier, so perhaps both things are related.
- Comment on Let's discuss: Donkey Kong 2 weeks ago:
Donkey Kong Country was my favourite childhood game series.
The first game was a blast: fun gameplay, full of secrets and things to collect, good music, gorgeous graphics even for 2025 standards, the difficulty was just right. (A bit too hard for me back then, too easy nowadays.)
I remember when DKC3 was released in '98, I’d go to the cartridge rental shop once a week to ask the guy if they had it already. (He was extremely patient with me. That guy was a bro.) Once I finally got to play it, it didn’t disappoint me at all, I loved those puzzles and it was amazing to explore the map freely. Kiddy was a bit odd, but really fun to play with, and I loved how Dixie throwing Kiddy had different mechanics than Kiddy throwing Dixie.
But by far my favourite was DKC2. Everything was perfect - they picked the formula from DKC1 and expanded it: more collectibles! Better music! Better looks! The bonuses now aren’t just “find all bonuses in the level for +1%”, now you got something to find in them! I can literally play the first level of that game with a blindfold, it’s itched in my brain. (Fuck Bramble Blast, though. I had a hard time finding one bonus and the DK coin there. And by then my English was a bit too awful to get what Cranky said.)
Then… well, DK64. It killed the series for me. I didn’t get why it wasn’t fun, but nowadays I see what happened - early 3D games had clunky controls and camera, plus the whole “gotta remake the whole thing five times to get to 100%” was meh.
- Comment on Play as a virus inside Winnie the Pooh in Winnie's Hole - demo out now 2 weeks ago:
I played through the demo. It’s fun; you need to strategise a bit and think about the synergy of the power-ups you get, otherwise you will get yourself killed. (That sloth was specially hard.)
It reminds me a bit The Binding of Isaac, both in the overall “mood” and randomness of the power-ups you have to choose from.
- Comment on Or does and doesn't care? 2 weeks ago:
This shit is so widespread that it makes me automatically respect any dev [team] that puts a “no, and don’t ask me again” button.
- Comment on Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry 2 weeks ago:
Aah, cut off the crap Clegg.
Under the current IP and copyright laws across the world, your argument has as much merit as “let robbers steal; asking others permission before snatching their stuff would ‘kill’ the black market”.
And, if the idiotic laws are to be revoked, they should be revoked for everyone. This would allow you to train your bloody models on those artists - but it would also allow everyone to grab things from your “industry” and you should not be able to do anything against them.
Pick a choice. One of those two. Enough of this bloody Bob Dylan defence* - either everyone is a thief, or everyone is a king; your industry is not such special snowflake, and you are not a higher caste above the rest of us dammit.
* Steal a little and they throw you in jail / Steal a lot and they make you king
- Comment on My theory about the easy to spot bots in YouTube comments 2 weeks ago:
So, just for show? It sounds possible but implausible IMO; I don’t think YouTube cares about that cesspool of its own comments.
- Comment on Discord seeks to solve a problem that it created 2 weeks ago:
Let’s hope you’re right, and Matrix improves by a lot.
- Comment on Discord seeks to solve a problem that it created 3 weeks ago:
Yes but soon it’ll be better than Discord. Sadly not because Matrix would’ve improved, but because Discord went downhill really hard.
- Comment on Discord seeks to solve a problem that it created 3 weeks ago:
Discord is entering its second decade as a company and is seeking to go public.
I’m going to laugh my arse off at the muppets who migrated from Reddit to Discord, yet another centralised platform enshittifying itself.
Told ya. I told you all.
- Comment on Nvidia’s RTX 5060 review debacle should be a wake-up call for gamers and reviewers 3 weeks ago:
Disgusting.
This would be sad and highly unethical if coming from some small, relatively new company, struggling to keep up. But since it’s coming from a large, monopolistic and 30yo old corporation it becomes way worse.
I’m glad I stopped buying their cards. My last one is an AMD, and I’m going Chinese for the next one (a decade or so from now).
- Comment on I cheat on as many people as I want to 3 weeks ago:
Dunno, but I don’t think so. Otherwise when we broke up she would throw it on my face.
- Comment on I cheat on as many people as I want to 3 weeks ago:
Then you get crazy people who make shit up, out of nowhere, that you’ve been cheating. Even when you did not. Like my ex-fiancée - goddammit it was one of the many reasons I broke up with her.
- Comment on The 'deprofessionalization of video games' was on full display at PAX East 4 weeks ago:
And by a modder turned dev, so, professionalisation? :)
Yup - Kovarex is a great example of how the indie scene is actually professionalising people, not the opposite.
- Comment on The 'deprofessionalization of video games' was on full display at PAX East 4 weeks ago:
And because this sort of big business often focuses obsessively on what can be measured, ignoring what cannot be. Even if the later might be more important.
You can measure the number of vertices in a model, the total resolution, the expected gameplay length, the number of dev hours that went into a project. But you cannot reasonably measure the fun value of your game; at most you can rank it in comparison with other games. So fun value takes a backseat, even if it’s bread and butter.
- Comment on The 'deprofessionalization of video games' was on full display at PAX East 4 weeks ago:
I played Factorio a fair bit, the fluid system was hell. But based on some LPs it seems Space Age fixed it rather nicely.
- Comment on The 'deprofessionalization of video games' was on full display at PAX East 4 weeks ago:
as Rigney defines it, deprofessionalization is […]
- The older games are not “overperforming”. The newer games are underperforming.
- Large studios are “struggling to drive sales” because customers take cost and benefit into account.
- The success of those solo devs and small teams is not “outsized”, it’s deserved because they get it right.
What’s happening is that small devs release reasonably priced games with fun gameplay. In the meantime larger studios be like “needz moar grafix”, and pricing their games way above people are willing to pay.
More than “deprofessionalisation”, what’s primarily happening is the de-large-studio-isation: the independence of professionals, migrating to their own endeavours.
Also: “deprofessionalisation” implies that people leaving large studios stop being professionals, as if small/solo devs must be necessarily amateurs. That is not the case.
Deprofessionalization is built on the back of devaluing labor
And he “conveniently” omits the fact that most of that value wouldn’t reach the workers on first place. It’s retained by whoever owns those big gaming companies.
And people know it. That’s yet another reason why they’d rather buy a game from a random nobody than some big company.
As A16z marketing partner Ryan K. Rigney defines it […]
Rigney offered some extra nuance on his “deprofessionalization” theory in an email exchange we had before PAX. He predicted that marketing roles at studios would be “the first” on the chopping block, followed by “roles that seem replaceable to management (even if they’re not).”
Emphasis mine. Now it’s easy to get why he’s so worried about this process: large studios rely on marketing to oversell their games, while small devs mostly reach you by word-of-mouth.
Something must be said about marketing. Marketing is fine and dandy when it’s informing people about the existence of the goods to be bought; sadly 90% of marketing is not that, it’s to convince you that orange is purple.
My PAX trip validated my fear that three professions are especially vulnerable in this deprofessionalized world: artists, writers, and those working in game audio or music.
Unlike marketing teams, I’m genuinely worried about those people. I hope that they find their way into small dev teams.
- Comment on Minecraft will finally let you craft saddles instead of hunting for them 4 weeks ago:
They should’ve made them craftable since the beginning. But hey, it isn’t like Minecraft follows any sort of design or logic, more like the developers say “ooohhh shiny” and add new features on a whim.
And this is likely associated with the happy Ghast mob. I’m not directly opposed to the idea of a flying mob that lets you stand on, to build stuff, but… come on, stop wrecking the theme of older mobs dammit.
- Comment on [DeliberatelyBuried] Ratatouille 4 weeks ago:
There’s a mini-Linguini controlling that amoeba.