Flatfire

@Flatfire@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time to bring back physical media on PC?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I am biased, I admit, but that stems from lived experience. I was, for a time, pretty invested in the concept of cryptocurrencies, blockchain cryptography and NFTs. I don’t like traditional payment processors or banks, but I don’t think NFTs themselves are the solution. In general, I think applying physical restrictions to digital content is a bad idea, and ultimately that’s what NFTs and smart contracts aim to do. It sounds nice to be able to validate ownership, but all it does is prop up existing licensing schemes by building a framework to enforce them.

  And if you don’t see a problem with that, then we’ve got different perspectives on the world and that’s fine, but don’t assume I’m not willing to listen.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time to bring back physical media on PC?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The first question is kinda encompassed by the rest of the structure, so I’ll work through the others and come back to it.

  Legitimate currency, is admittedly a nebulous term, so I’ll revise this to match something closer to what I meant: minted, regulated currency held to an economic demand. I believe there’s merit to this system, though its benefits have been substantially eroded by modern aristocrats.

  By my statement, I meant to say that the most popular use-cases are frequently that of investment, rather than good-faith application of cryptocurrency as currency. I recognize this isn’t true of all currencies, but as long as it remains the case, crypto will continue to be utilized as an investment vehicle for national currencies rather than as something I could go buy my groceries or pay my bills with. One of the biggest fundamental problems that have been a challenge to solve for cryptocurrencies is the overall stability of its value. For some currencies, the idea was that a limited supply would lead to a fixed value, or that proof of work systems would mitigate speculation. This hasn’t proven true. It cannot be tied to someone’s needs, and instead floats based on wants or hype. This is remedied by stable-coins, but at this point you’ve only recreated a national currency with extra hoops to jump through to use it. That said, I do recognize its value as a means to ensure some personal liquidity in nations where the currency at home is more volatile than not, but I think the flaw in this is that no matter what you end up pinning your personal wealth to someone else’s economy.

  And believe me, I agree people should be able to spend their money how they please. No few should have complete power of the many, especially not in how the many may accumulate or redistribute their wealth. Robinhood, stock exchanges and their third party brokers should not have power to affect this. In a well-regulated context, they would not.

  Now let’s talk about money laundering and fraud. I wasn’t referring to an old mafia outfit. Organized crime has evolved well past that, though I’m sure a shell company with some shady accou ti g is part of the process. Cryptocurrencies are weak for the same reason they are strong. Wallet addresses are at worst, pseudnonymous. It is possible to track them through transactions to exchanges or services with KYC requirements, but not all blockchain services expose transactions transparently. This makes currencies like Monero a popular option for anyone looking to hide the sources and destinations of their payments without needing to worry about how to balance their books for a nail salon. Add in tumbling services for popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins and now you’ve got yourself a very convenient pipeline for shady dealings.

  As a privacy advocate, I believe in the ability to make a cash deal with someone without the scrutiny of the bank, payment processor or other entities, but many of those guiding principles have led to the design of systems that directly facilitate scams, fraud, human trafficking and espionage. The fact that there is no oversight means there are no repercussions until that money re-enters a national currency. It’s an immensely popular way to hide wealth for those who are already rich beyond their means as well. Everything about it requires trusting the individual, and that’s rarely the correct choice.

  As for decentralization. I agree here, that’s a better approach. The web should be a collection of nodes, with each reaching to the other to properly describe its namesake. Instead, we have the problem of consolidation among services, where large entities with the means to do so have become immovable conglomerates of critical infrastructure, developing a hub and spoke design instead of the web it was first called. However, blockchains by nature risk the same eventuality. A blockchain relies on redundancy. It needs to be able to point to its own history, and then it needs to have copies of that history redistributed among the entire network of users. The problem is that this requirement becomes exponentially more difficult to fulfill as its use and history extends further. Mining needs to be performed to validate transactions, but mining becomes more time consuming the longer the chain. As a result, the ability to perform these tasks is directly tied to the person able to afford the hardware required. There’s an initial or ongoing investment required no matter what. Not to mention that the validation of these transaction requires energy. It needs to be done computationally, and the cost of that computation also increases as the chain does. The environmental impact may be overshadowed by present AI training datacenters, but it’s still a present and largely unsolved issue.

  I hadn’t heard of arweave mind you, but nothing in their documentation about hosting a node or being part of the chain itself leads me to believe they have found a solution to this, which is a must, if you are to rely on it as a stable, distributed storage medium. That said, its permanent storage design is intriguing, since it has the potential to address common problems with the bittorrent protocol.

  As for complexity, it’s as described above. The infrastructure is the complexity. You’re right, it’s easy to deploy an NFT, but there is no move to standardize on a platform for them. No self-serving enterprise is going to set themselves up on a chain of custody they do not have control over. I admit this is a political complexity, not a technical one, but I think it’s a truth to contend with for the same reason centralized services exist to begin with.

  As for your last point: I don’t believe in NFTs because I fundamentally do not believe in DRM. Smart contracts, NFTs and blockchains on the whole are designed to track, verify, and validate the transfer of ownership in a way that describes and acts as an extension of existing DRM schemes. It goes beyond a certificate of trust, and introduces the limitations of physical property into a digital space. In fact, it doesn’t even solve the resale problem because there would be nothing to prevent a vendor from reintroducing some kind of SecuROM nightmare via a Smart Contract.

  I think the base technology is important. At the end of the day blockchains are actually a useful technology, with wide application. But the need to have visibility of the whole transaction is the flaw. You can mitigate it somewhat by chunking the chain and holding data in different places, but the data must remain intact.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time to bring back physical media on PC?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Imo they weren’t ruined by grifters. NFTs are built on a flawed system that caters to exactly the kind of libertarian, free enterprise assholes who ate it up. If they weren’t running the grift, they were getting scammed themselves. Crypto is a mirage of wealth, and everything built on top of it is either only a vehicle for legitimate currency or laundering ill gotten gains. It’s just an unregulated stock.

  Signed chains of custody already exist, they could be inplemented and nothing is stopping any of these marketplaces from doing so. They don’t need NFTs, which have a needlessly complex set of requirements, to validate a game’s license. Any service could leverage their pre-existing DRM scheme to let you sell your copy to someone else, but that doesn’t give them the same benefits as someone buying a new copy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 709 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t recall, was this the issue specifically related to RX 6000 series cards? I was halfway through the game when I happened to upgrade my GPU by chance, only later learning it was a problem for fhat gen

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic Games unveils Launcher V2 in re-attempt to topple Steam, says redesigned storefront is up to 6.5x faster — promises player profiles, user reviews, universal controller support, and much more⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had a great experience with Heroic for this purpose. Generally just as easy to configure as Steam, compared to Bottles or some strange Lutris script

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What’s your favorite video game that most people didn’t like ??⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I had a blast with WD2. It was just fun. Unlike the first game, if wasn’t taking itself too seriously and it came out at a time where Ubi was still sorta developing what would become their open world formula, so it still felt fresher than similar titles do now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Videogame pirates tell other pirates to shut up about it after Subnautica 2 developers are taunted with illicit copies⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Other way around. In a Windows VM on Linux

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve Releases Steam Controller CAD Files Under Creative Commons License⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In theory, yeah

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Controller: Reservations open May 8th - Steam News⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Cool, they’ve done effectively the same thing they did with the Steam Deck. I think they truly didn’t anticipate the volume of people interested in the controller.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Moral Dilemma Of Supporting SNK In 2026⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Financial boycotts are still boycotts. In this scenario, it’s not the material that’s problematic (presumably), but rather the financial ties of the parent organization.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Read red fast, thank me later⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Productive procrastination

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Godot gets a funding boost from Slay the Spire 2 devs Mega Crit⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This was the one where the dev had been working on it Unity but ended up rebuilding it in Godot after the licensing debacle, yeah?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I poured milk on my pussy but it didn't help⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And enemas, for when you’ve already made a mistake

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Borderlands 4's New $30 Expansion Pack Isn't Winning Over Fans⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I really enjoyed the writing in 4. And the DLC for 3 was genuinely very good, it’s just the core story that sucked. Gameplay was lovely, aside from the overabundance of legendaries.

  4’s gameplay is decent, the story is much better than 3, but overall it doesn’t have the same replayability and it feels like they’ve hurt the variety of the weapons. Overall I liked the game, but the DLCs will need to be pretty good to have me buying into it before they inevitably bundle it all in together for cheap

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PlayStation Store Dynamic Pricing Is Real⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah, Fakespot was a Mozilla effort. They shuttered it recently, which might be what you’re thinking of

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Confirmed: PS5 console prices are being raised by $100 | VGC⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is also from a period of time where manufacturing genuinely got cheaper over time. Die sizes shrunk for the CPUs, so you could make the system smaller with less waste heat. There pretty much haven’t been those kinds of revisions for modern consoles

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like it was the right length so as not to overstay its welcome. It’s a nice narrative experience, with a unique dialogue, but had it kept going I think I would have grown tired of it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube sponsorship starter pack⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  PCBWay, the Raid Shadowlegends of electrical engineering projects

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gaming PC with Chinese-made x86 CPU and Nvidia graphics goes on sale, but you probably wouldn't want to buy it even if you could⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  These Zen-esque chips have come up before, though it sounds like this might be the first time they’ve been used in a marketed product. A couple other companies born out of the remnants of Centaur also seemed to have borrowed architectural notes from the early Zen CPUs, potentially as a result of their competitors like Hygon making that deal with AMD almost 10 years ago. It’s the first time one seems to be almost a boilerplate 1700x though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Since 2013, both Sony and Microsoft have been using custom variants of AMD’s consumer chips for CPU and GPU. These consoles are basically just laptop boards with some custom architecture, but at this stage most of the “Console” design is some software level features and a consistent baseline hardware spec to shoot for.

  Sony still does seem to put mor effort into the hardware portion, but Xbox hardware has been little more than an SFF PC for a couple generations now

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rock Band 4 to be delisted on tenth anniversary following the expiration of its licenses⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For customs? Yeah. But pretty much every master used in the RB or GH games have been ripped and are available for use there too

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon buys a game for the switch 2⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hardly. If the only thing in the box is a code, then it ends up tied to an account. I know that’s not the case with the Switch, but it wasn’t what I had really directed the sentiment towards

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon buys a game for the switch 2⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh sure, that was more of an echo of the feeling of being tricked than anything else. Those are usually special/collectors editions anyways, and there’s reasons beyond needing/wanting the data that you’d buy that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon buys a game for the switch 2⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s been interesting, watching the lag here. This feeling was felt by many who played games on PC 15 years ago when DVDs were starting to become less common and games were expanding in size. I distinctly remember buying a game I was excited for only to learn now I had to spend part of my data cap on downloading it. What had even been the point of buying the boxed copy?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Borderlands 4 is a premium game made for premium gamers' is Randy Pitchford's tone deaf retort to the performance backlash: 'If you're trying to drive a monster truck with a leaf blower's motor, you're going to be disappointed'⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  While I have no desire to defend Randy, Twitter is as Twitter does, and unless you spend time looking at his whole timeline, it sounds like he’s saying only stupid shit like this. He did actually acknowledge the issues, and stated that they’re working on them but also that for now the best way to play is with FSR/DLSS and frame gen.

  I disagree with this deeply. He makes arguments about the imperceptibility of latency in frame gen, but that’s only true when the base framerate is high enough. DLSS is probably fine, but it’s also pretty fair for those who are using an 80 or 90 class card to complain about struggling at 1440p native, let alone 4k.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ethical alternatives to Spotify⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not sure about the coins but I’ve been using it for a few months now and have been thoroughly enjoying the service. I think the coins are literally just their store wallet, and whether you keep some store credit there or not doesn’t matter. It’s equivalent to buying an iTunes gift card or something. You can just pay for whatever you want outright.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Borderlands 4 Launches To Mostly Negative Steam Reviews Over Performance Issues And Crashing⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  BL3 had some fantastic DLC though. Loved that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's going on with imgur right now?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This would explain why my 11 year old account got banned out of the blue despite me only using it to post videogame screenshots. Cool.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Emmet Bar in Toronto, Ontario introduced coasters made from the scrap metal of cars that were involved in DUIs as a reminder to the effects of impaired and drunk driving⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Someone listened to Lateral recently

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Public transit in Chengdu, China versus Toronto, Canada⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think I’d almost consider it the same as starting with nothing when they began the next phase of construction in 2002. The map then vs now demonstrates that, and mostly follows China’s industrial/modern expansion in urban environments in recent memory. I think it’s still difficult to comprehend what a massive shift they’ve had in urban construction since the mid-90s as they’ve become the economic center for trade and manifacturing in the last couple decades. The transit still can’t keep up with demand, even with a subway system so extensive. It’s also still a very car-centric urban environment and I imagine now faces many similar civil construction challenges as in North America. It’s a good part of why I’m curious to see how things shape up in the coming decades for them and how they overcome those challenges at a scale Canada hopefully never needs to contend with.