it_depends_man
@it_depends_man@lemmy.world
- Comment on [US] How are so many people able to protest? (Logistically) 1 day ago:
If you work 10 hours a day and sleep 8, that’s 6 hours left over for protesting. If 40 adults are going to a protest 2 can watch the kids. 2 1 can make soup for everyone. Same for transportation to and from protests.
You can make it work if you prioritize.
- Comment on Is anyone else having a hard time sympathizing with Americans? 1 week ago:
The population of countries are not single minded monoliths.
The people fighting ICE now are largely the same people who have also been opposed to the US military doing the bad things they did.
Even or particularly, among members of the military and veterans, you have hardcore loyalists of course, but you also have plenty of people who join the military because it’s their ticket to a little money and an education. They know it’s bad, do it anyway, and while they do have a respect for their comrades, they also know fully well that what they did was wrong and that the military is treating veterans pretty badly.
So, there are people in the US, who ignored reality for a good while, and if and when they get hurt, I feel no sympathy.
But there are also plenty who have been opposing or trying to improve and refrom the negative aspects of US society and culture their entire life, and when they get hurt, I do feel sympathy.
Some are still ignoring it. Prominently, former president Obama still behaves as if he’s safe. Of course, I wish no harm on anyone. I do wonder if his approach is too hands off though and if it turns out it is, the best I will be able to say is “told you so”.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
Pretty insightful. Key takeaways:
- linear growth didn’t really happen like that
- pre-planning would be good
- experience of tax collectors skimming the surplus, plus hazards of rural life.
- Comment on How do you build revolutionary optimism in these dark times? 2 weeks ago:
The fediverse is a good example. There are performance improvements happening at the language level, so even old code runs faster. More essential services are online, online banking isn’t weird and niche anymore. We have so many different messengers to choose from, it’s no longer just skype that can do video calls.
Did you know we have reproducible builds now? reproducible-builds.org
For a long time, you could make software from one piece of code and you got working software, but it wasn’t guaranteed to be identical. That made security and verification a lot harder, because you need to check for behavior instead of just comparing a check value. Now we can just compare the check value.
There are things like better testing and CI/CD pipelines now. We can measure that stuff. More projects have moved to git.
The micro computing sphere is very mature now, you can just buy a raspi or a comparable device and do home automation projects with them.
The only area where things are still messy is some areas of web technologies, because they’re constantly being rewritten.
- Comment on How do you build revolutionary optimism in these dark times? 2 weeks ago:
There are still many things happening that are objectively improving. You just have to look a bit harder.
One definitive field is software. It continues to get faster and better and more reliable.
It’s not the way I wanted it to happen (my country fucked it’s industry), but China understood the issue with transition to green energy and built so much production capacity for solar and wind energy, solar energy is properly exploding. Exports to Africa increased by 500% in the past 5 years. ember-energy.org/…/the-first-evidence-of-a-take-o…
- Comment on Anon files a lawsuit 2 weeks ago:
There are three reasons against incest:
- culture
- genetics
- it is impossible to rule out power dynamics and grooming. If they were freely consenting adults it wouldn’t be bad from this point alone, but you can never be sure that they are actually freely consenting.
- Comment on How to vote? 3 weeks ago:
You are supposed to upvote things that:
- you like
- belong in the community it’s posted in
- upvoting favors it for the algorithm, ranking it higher and making it stay longer. If you want others to see the stuff, you upvote.
With comments, you are supposed to upvote things that contribute to the discussion, even if you disagree with it, but in practice people often just upvote what they like and agree with and downvote what they don’t agree with and there is pretty much nothing anyone can do to change that. So do what you think is right.
- Comment on as a young person, what must one look for when it comes to finding a new country to live in? 3 weeks ago:
To enter, you need a visa. They’re timed permits to enter countries for a specific purpose.
There are travel visas for a short time and there are work visas that are longer time and allow you to work. (you are not allowed to work with just a travel visa).
Then the process is different per country. The next step is “residency” and then the next is applying for citizenship. Each country has different conditions for when that’s possible and how quickly.
As a rule of thumb, if you can get a stable job, or you’re rich they usually let you in and let you stay. Sometimes there are special recruitment programs that you can look up at the local embassy or under search terms such as “migrating to [country]”. Those that are looking for immigration usually advertise the ways to do it.
- Comment on …but why male models? 5 weeks ago:
Don’t confuse how you think it works, what people say how it works and how it actually works.
Funnily enough, there is a harry potter fanfic “…and the methods of rationality” that put it very succinctly:
- observe that you are confused by a situation
- detail what the confusing contradiction is, exactly
- observe precisely what is happening and adjust your world view.
I don’t understand the government coverup.
In corporate (or democratic) America, everyone is expendable at anytime.
The coverup protects people, but if everyone is expendable at any time, they would not need to do that.
If they are doing it anyway, to protect people, that must mean those people aren’t expendable.
If people in corporate or democratic systems are replaceable and these people aren’t replaceable, the actual system at work can’t be corporate or democratic.
Put differently, even if Trump is a figurehead and replaceable, the structure behind him ultimately isn’t. It’s very specific people in very specific positions of power and wealth, who want to increase their power and wealth. Having one of them replaced (forced to give up power or wealth or both), is the opposite of what they want to achieve.
- Comment on What do other languages use for "magic" words; or names and titles in fantasy and sci-fi novels or cinema? 1 month ago:
Anime and japanese (and chinese?) culture often uses German or French imagery or words in ways that either lack some context and sometimes it’s complete gibberish. The “Frieren” anime uses German words for names that would not be names in German. (Frieren is a verb means, “being cold”, but actually not the kind of emotionally cold that the character Frieren is either, it just means being physically cold).
The use of latin is actually deeper rooted in mysticism and religion. Nobody really used it as a spoken language after the fall of the roman empire, but the chatholic church still used it it’s ritualistic language until the bible was translated to German by Martin Luther. That’s not the only case of that happening either, if you look into the sumerian and related languages, they shared an alphabet, but the actual grammar and pronunciation and use shifted and it evolved in a way that the older language grew to be exclusive for religious rituals, while the more common language was a different one.
Another example that might have slipped your attention is mathematic’s use of Greek symbols. We don’t speak Greek. We don’t have those symbols readily available on keyboards or anything.
Programming languages of course. They’re basically exclusively in English. Some of the concepts in programming are actually cumbersome to translate and make the most sense if you have an understanding of English.
- Comment on What unique thing bothers you about politics in general? 1 month ago:
Not sure about “unique”… but it bothers me how bad lots of people are with their documents and tools. In my country we have transparency laws for financing and it’s going to say like [xyz department] - 15 million. And I have no idea what that department does. No website, no documents, the projects they do are not public, etc… How am I supposed to decide if I am happy with what they do?
And how lenient some institutions are when something that needs to deliver proof of something doesn’t actually deliver that proof.
The assumption of innocence is great when it comes to individual people need to defend themselves against injustice. It’s awful for fighting systematic problems that stare you right in the face, but as long as you don’t have proof of intention, it’s just “oopsie woopsie”.
- Comment on I think there's an imposter amongus 1 month ago:
If you write something that you base on your previous work, but you don’t cite your previous work, that’s a problem.
How is the peer reviewer supposed to know who the author is, I thought obfuscating that was the whole point…
- Comment on What are your gaming highlights of 2025? 1 month ago:
Highly recommend it. Although slight warning, you go to 4 new planets with different mechanics, and one is a “hate it or love it” situation. I loved it, but clearly a significant number of people didn’t.
- Comment on What are your gaming highlights of 2025? 1 month ago:
- factorio space age: it’s the best for a reason, but there are a few things that irk me. There is a “pick any of 3 paths to go first but you have to do all 3” kind of choice. And unlike RPGs you don’t really get all that much from each choice, so there isn’t much to optimize in that way, it doesn’t result in different builds. Space age 2.0.X still has a few issues, the UI for the actual space part is pretty bad and while that’s not a space age feature, the way they do logic programming is easy for simple things but takes up too much space and is too difficult to set up for slightly smarter setups, so there is no reward for doing those.
- mindustry (purple planet): It does way better spacial puzzles than factorio. In factorio you have “too much” space or it’s too free form. You can pretty much build the way you want. Mindustry has more basic resources you have to mine in specific places, enemies are coming from a distinct direction and you have a lot less space to lay out your factory, so you have to make more choices. I liked that.
- hollow knight: I did see a playthrough years ago and was mad that I spoilered myself. Played it, and had forgotten enough that pretty much everything was new again. Great game, 10/10.
- hollow knight silksong: also played it, has it’s moments, ultimately I didn’t like it. Writing, mechanics, when stuff is available to find… there are some weird choices and imo regressions from hollow knight. Great soundtrack and it does deserve the goty award it got.
- Comment on What are some good games to play while sick? 1 month ago:
Games that are turn based or allow you to pause or control speed:
- xcom
- city builders
- sims
- anno
- paradox games (probably just stellaris since that has difficulty settings)
- cRPGs
- card games like slay the spire
- minecraft
- mmos that don’t require you to think, guildwars 2 just let’s you run around and auto attack that’s pretty effective…
- Comment on Why do you hate AI? 1 month ago:
Not sure about “hate”, but it’s clearly a bubble and all the billions are going into AI and not things that could prevent an economic downturn.
Even if you’re not opposed to it for copyright or environmental or social reasons, AI is currently wrecking markets and finances for the next decade.
- Comment on why is fossil fuel still used? 1 month ago:
Theoretically yes, but in practice nuclear is very complicated technology that requires a lot training, expertise, care, maintenance and oversight.
Putting it into military ships and ice breaking ships makes sense because of their unique circumstances.
With cargo ships there are a lot of additional complicating factors: cargo ships regularly break and sink. Not a lot, but frequently enough that it is a legitimate concern. We already have trouble regulating regular cargo ships sea-worthiness and issues like environmental pollution through ship breaking, notably in india. That’s another issue btw…
The biggest problem is the sheer number of cargo ships. Any risk of an accident gets multiplied by that.
You can browse the wiki page on nuclear propulsion. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion (btw, if it was economic to do it they would have done it already) It’s “obvious” that the number of ships with nuclear propulsion are in the low hundreds. Meanwhile we have more than 100.000 merchant ships in operation at the moment. www.ener8.com/merchant-fleet-infographic-2023/
Operating “a few” ships safely is one thing, doing it with literally hundreds of thousands is something completely different.
- Comment on why is fossil fuel still used? 1 month ago:
We can’t replace it fully.
We can replace it with cars. We can replace it with trains as well, but electrified track is more expensive than just plopping a diesel engine there and filling her up. Track for that is just steel+concrete and rocks and stuff.
We can not replace it with air planes, helicopters, rockets. At all. We could reduce air travel and stuff like fighter jets.
We can also not replace it for cargo ships. And that’s pretty bad news. Luckily ships are crazy efficient, so the actual CO2 and other pollution per ton and kilometer is very very low. If you get a delivery, that delivery comes in a fossil fuel truck to your doorstep, that truck will emit more CO2 than the ship will, going either from china to Rotterdam or the US westcoast. And also global transportation is probably more than necessary.
Anyway, the big problem we can solve are cars and planes.
- Comment on Ron Gilbert cancels RPG project due to lack of support and funding 1 month ago:
the interview that was mentioned:
- Comment on Shout out to my engineering homies. 1 month ago:
Doing engineering is more like an any% run to do something that eventually, even just statistically, hurts people.
So. Stop enabling us, scientists :P
- Comment on A cool feature/mechanic you want to see in games again 2 months ago:
I’m working on a game like that, but it’s far from completion.
- Comment on A cool feature/mechanic you want to see in games again 2 months ago:
To add to what the other guy said, Supreme commander allowed your units to synchronize shots, for example for the big guns on battleships, useful for punching through shields.
They also allowed you to queue orders, display them and then edit them. So you could set up one big patrol path for 100s of helis and fighters and defend your territory that way, and when you want to expand you can drag the patrol points and all of those 100s of units would automatically adjust.
Also there were heli transports with lift and drop points and you could use that to ferry units quicker than they would walk. So you could set the drop point closely behind the frontlines and advance the drop point with the front line, allowing for quicker resupply of troops.
Quite a bit more advanced than you would see in starcraft or AoE2 overall.
- Comment on A cool feature/mechanic you want to see in games again 2 months ago:
Most MMOs are that btw., if you haven’t played any. Lots and lots of minigames.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
I mean there are four possibilities:
- you’re making this up
- you genuinely think this happened, but it didn’t somehow.
- this did happen but it was a really odd coincidence, which can happen, we’re 9 billion people after all
- there is a cabal of time travelers who saved you specifically. Which would be cool.
Not that weird all things considered. Don’t worry about it.
- Comment on We have just released a grand DLC, War Sails, for our game, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord 2 months ago:
That looks amazing.
I wish I liked the overall experience. I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, quite the opposite, it’s just not my genre. I think I got the the first mount & blade on gog and the core loop of the battles just didn’t click for me.
The website mentions:
“Realistic Economy
See the availability of goods ebb and flow in a simulated feudal economy, where the price of everything from incense to warhorses fluctuates with supply and demand. Turn anarchy to your advantage by being the first to bring grain to a starving town after a siege or reopening a bandit-plagued caravan route.”
But it’s relatively hard to find more material online about what that means, what it looks like (UI) and how it works. Can you maybe go into a bit more detail? On the website or maybe a feature trailer or something? Even a recommended creator content thing would be great. I care too much about economy and logistics.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Nothing. Nobody you could reach and tell, would fairly pay you what that info is worth. If it’s a trillion dollar tech, imagine the series of design, approval, oversight people you’re doing free work for.
Like, imagine it’s Lockheed Martin, and you’re giving a free tip that saves the the executive board’s neck. Laughable idea.
Except maybe it’s a medical thing and the “medicine” would a) not work and b) harm people. Then maybe.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Personally, I’m a big fan of “there are unknowns in the universe”, so imo they found lens, which could be a gravitational lens ;)
Cool nontheless.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
What physicists and astronomers do, is they look at how things work here on earth and where we can observe things.
For example, we can observe that the earth orbits the sun, we know that orbit takes a year, and it’s pretty stable. And from that and the speed and orbit of other planets, we can calculate the mass of each. And with the same math, we can do it for our galaxy.
But when we look way, way deeper into the universe, we can only see: electromagnetic things, that is light and radio. And by observing that or how it behaves, in the case of black holes, we can say where things are, what they’re like and how they move. Including how big they are, how massive, we can calculate how much mass is required to keep a galaxy together.
The problem is the movement we can see, doesn’t match the calculated weight and gravity of the things we can see.
The solution is that we assume that things do behave as we think it does, we just can’t see it. The weight that we can directly or indirectly observe accounts for about 5% of the effect we can see. So we make up the rest. That’s “dark matter”. Not because it’s different from what we know, but because we can’t observe or “see” it, we think it’s there.
Or we’re wrong about the rules that we use to calculate stuff or things are happening we don’t understand yet.
- Comment on How has there not yet been a leak of the Epstein files? Surely there is someone with access to them that could have been subject to worldwide pressure to let something out. 2 months ago:
Worse, Snowden did leak an absurd amount of gov details and documents and info and it did nothing to stop what’s happening. People barely acknowledged it.
Maybe someone would martyr themselves. But doing it for nothing? Not appealing.
- Comment on What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype? 2 months ago:
Very fair, I had a lot of fun with it as a casual game to relax with. Not so easy it’s trivial, not so hard it needs a lot of thinking.