umbraroze
@umbraroze@lemmy.world
- Comment on Cotylorhynchus, a genus of late Permian synapsids. It's herbivorous and it's huge gut was possibly necessary to digest the nutrient-poor plant life it fed on. 16 hours ago:
I don’t know where this particular fella fits in the history, but turtles evolved from similar quadruped reptiles. Basically, their ribs evolved flat and wide so that their chests could support them better while burrowing tunnels. That turned into the turtle plastron.
- Comment on PEGI gives Balatro an 18+ rating for gambling imagery 6 days ago:
Hngh. Balatro already had a bunch of hassle on Switch eShop due to the PEGI ratings change.
Earlier, Nintendo somehow got a PEGI 12 rating for 51 Worldwide Games, which includes poker and blackjack. I wonder what they argued to avoid the 18 rating. “Sure, this compilation has poker and blackjack, but it’s not like we made it fun.” (It’s adequate but compared to Balatro it’s very much a non-frills experience.)
- Comment on It's all a little bit mathy. 2 weeks ago:
There was some 1990s documentary about fractals, narrated by Arthur C. Clarke (I think), where he said something along the lines of “I’ve not tried this myself, but I’ve been told there’s certain illegal chemicals that can cause hallucinations that look like fractals”.
(I have this on VHS tape somewhere. Should probably digitise it.)
- Comment on Blizzard is delisting the OG Warcrafts from GOG, but GOG says it's gonna preserve them forever anyway, hands out a discount, and announces new policy for its preservation program to boot 2 weeks ago:
I have them on CD-ROM.
I also think I have the final patches for them on floppies that I stuffed in the boxes. Not sure if they’re readable (or in fact the final patches)
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to videos@lemmy.world | 0 comments
- Comment on Plasticccc 4 weeks ago:
Authors have to submit manuscripts to publishers individually (or, in some markets, agents who work with multiple publishers in the same niche).
Publishers get showered with manuscripts. Very small percentage of them are what publishers deem will meet market goals.
In standard publishing contracts, the author gets paid an advance. This is basically the royalty percentage for the entire first print run. It’s not refundable. It represents the trust the publisher puts on the author, and if the publisher can’t sell all copies, well, tough for them. (They’d probably just not work with that author again.)
Getting to that point is a pretty massive hurdle to clear for first time authors.
So no, authors don’t really get to pick their publishers. The only scenario where people get to pick their publishers is some celebrity deal bullshit.
- Comment on Plasticccc 4 weeks ago:
The way publishing industry has been for a very long time, authors (especially first time ones) don’t get to pick whoever pays the best deal. Just whoever pays the first.
- Comment on Frog's Gift 4 weeks ago:
Anyone remember the early days of Musk’s Twitter takeover?
“I don’t know what this ‘microservice’ nonsense is, I’m gonna remove it”
“…Sir, everything is fucking broken now, could you please stop messing with the system”
“Ur fired lol”
…Expect more of that.
- Comment on It's fire... Maybe concerning but fire still 4 weeks ago:
Why hello! 🙋🏻♀️
I think I saw some quip by Linus Torvalds about how Finland has such long winters with nothing to do, so it’s no wonder we have so many great information technology nerds.
- Comment on Young Frankenstein is not available for streaming 5 weeks ago:
I have the DVD. It’s somewhere in the pile.
I need to one day develop a DVD/BR/book catalogue app to get even vague idea about what exactly is on my shelves and boxes. It has long since gone unmanageable. At least I know what’s my next major project after NaNoWriMo.
- Comment on Half-Life 2 is currently 100% for its 20th anniversary 5 weeks ago:
[old woman memories mode]
I remember registering my CD key of HL1 on Steam and was surprised when they gave me the expansions for free. Cool, because I didn’t have them.
I remember buying The Orange Box on Steam. I remember it because Steam gave me a warning because I already had Portal - it was free at some point. Was a bit miffed when TF2 went free to play later on.
And I somehow still haven’t played HL2 on Steam, I think? I played it about 1/3 way on Xbox 360. Played the shit out of Portal on 360 though.
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to videos@lemmy.world | 0 comments
- Comment on critical latex mod 1 month ago:
Does PDF actually allow some objects to be invisible on screen but visible on print? Because that’d be cool.
It’s 2225. Archaeologists discover yet another long forgotten university library storage facility. Inside, they find stacks of Elsevier journals that have never been opened. They then find puzzling coffee stains that somehow appear to be result of the printing process, and conclude that the cultural significance of these markings was probably lost to the ages.
- Comment on "And now for some golden oldies!" 1 month ago:
Good thing about having a 80s/90s station in the region is that they have to dramatically rebrand before they can branch out to more recent decades.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
Most recent time I was awestruck by a thunderstorm in a game? Forza Horizon 5. One of the early missions involved heading out in the jungle during a massive thunderstorm and it was just legendary. Visuals, audio, everything.
- Comment on FAQ: Yes We Suppirt Kinect 2 months ago:
Kinect 2.0 is the one for Xbox One, right? That one has a proprietary plug and needs an adapter of some kind for PC. Finding one now needs some effort. Would have been neat if it supported the Xbox 360 Kinect because it has a standard USB connector.
- Comment on Fear 2 months ago:
I’m getting old. I get anxiety from phone calls if people don’t text me days in advance that they’re calling. But if they do, I’m fine!
(I used to have this one cheapo phone that worked fine on WiFi but would randomly stop working on cellular and there was no way to tell until I tried to use mobile data or whatever. So if I was expecting a call, I was constantly rebooting the damn thing.)
- Submitted 2 months ago to videos@lemmy.world | 1 comment
- Comment on Might as well go cyberpunk, I guess. 2 months ago:
Fuck, 2020 would have been so much more bearable if our food had been delivered by The Deliverator. You know, a highly qualified professional.
…Instead, in this region at least, the app economy bros employed a bunch of befuddled immigrants and also screwed them over contract-wise. So it’s the sad kind of cyberpunk, not the funny kind of cyberpunk
- Comment on I hope you don't have any plans this evening. 2 months ago:
Never mind the old flippediroo of the day and month. What I want to know is why is there a dash in front of the date. I thought the separators went between the things to be separated.
- Comment on Lawless society 3 months ago:
Anarchists do believe in board game rules. Just that they think that using house rules everyone agrees on is a great idea.
- Comment on Facial Recognition 3 months ago:
I had taken a photo of the pile of junk in my home.
AI facial recognition in ACDSee swore it could pick up my father’s face in the jumble.
I feel like I was visited by a ghost.
Rest in peace, dad. (sigh) No, I know you would not approve of this mess and would tell me to hurry up and clean the thing up.
- Todd Howard's exclusive 1,000G Xbox achievement appears after years of secrecywww.trueachievements.com ↗Submitted 3 months ago to games@lemmy.world | 6 comments
- Comment on perspective 4 months ago:
Somewhere in late 2000s I saw one of the most mind-melting GIFs I’ve seen that compared the Solar System objects to the largest known stars at the time. This kinda reminded me of that.
- Comment on LaTeX Master Race 4 months ago:
One of the reasons I love XeTeX, because it just spits out straight up PDFs and you can use any OpenType font. I can just typeset everything in Garamond, like how things are supposed to be typeset, dammit.
- Submitted 4 months ago to videos@lemmy.world | 0 comments
- Comment on Why do we put up with this crap? 4 months ago:
Meanwhile, me aboard a train: “Oh you can get whole massive meals on restaurant cars these days? No thank you, I’ll get a coffee and one of those overpriced naff sandwiches.” (Well, the Finnish train sandwiches are pretty good, but they are hella overpriced. Like 7€. WTF.)
- Comment on I didn’t know geese can own cars 4 months ago:
No, can’t have been written by geese. Geese cannot read or write, they just straight up honk.
This is a clown car. That’s the most reasonable explanation.
- Comment on I too love watching CP 😍 4 months ago:
Cyberpunk Edgerunners (the Netflix anime) is pretty damn great and well worth the watch.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a pretty decent game too. Not a masterpiece it was originally hyped up to be, and a lot of things in the game just painfully remind me of things that other games do better, but it’s still a pretty damn gripping game with pretty incredible atmosphere and style. Probably pretty high in my best games of the decade list.
- Comment on Animals are not gifts. 4 months ago:
One of my favourite tragicomical video game achievements was in Firewatch:
Adopted a turtle as a pet. The average lifespan of a box turtle is fifty years. It will outlive you.
And this is why I will not get a pet. I’m by definition incapable of taking care of them because they might outlive me.