it_depends_man
@it_depends_man@lemmy.world
- Comment on What do other languages use for "magic" words; or names and titles in fantasy and sci-fi novels or cinema? 2 days 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? 3 days 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 5 days 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 2 weeks ago:
the interview that was mentioned:
- Comment on Shout out to my engineering homies. 2 weeks 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 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago:
Most MMOs are that btw., if you haven’t played any. Lots and lots of minigames.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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] 4 weeks 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 If dark matter doesn't emit, absorb, or reflect light, what happens when light hits it? 5 weeks 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 If dark matter doesn't emit, absorb, or reflect light, what happens when light hits it? 5 weeks 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. 5 weeks 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? 1 month 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.
- Comment on What are the most popular conspiracy theories? 1 month ago:
Depends.
Birds aren’t real is fake, but pretty popular, because it’s funny.
Flat earthing is also fake but somehow has a huge following.
- Comment on Why do video game leaks (such as the huge GTA VI videos leak) cause "low morale" for the staff working on it? 2 months ago:
Besides, it’s GTA, it’s not like they’re gonna break much new ground in terms of gameplay mechanics that need to be kept secret.
Why Would You Say Something So Controversial Yet So Brave?
Honestly, I think it’s relatively simple: eeeeveryone and their dog signs an NDA. The people working on it are excited and have to bite their tongue every. single. day. and they are waiting for the release where they can just talk about it.
Then some douche with access leaks it and so all that effort goes to waste, and they still can’t talk about it, because that would make things worse. Also, if someone says something negative, they can’t show the positive and defend their work.
- Comment on Was the fall of Rome this stupid? 2 months ago:
Kind of.
Mostly yes. As others have written, it involved some money issues. There were also problems with logistics and agriculture, Rome had an absurdly high population for that time. That stuff just has to be managed and managed well.
And also you had some external factors.
And also the religious shift from the old greek gods to christianity, were suddenly a whole bunch of stuff was “against god” the way you would think it is now. It is unclear how much knowledge was lost and exactly why, but the facts remain that you have relatively skilled military doctors in one century and then that disappearing into thin air in the next.
The thing you can observe at the moment, the question of loyalty from universities, into giving positions to loyal or just compliant people over skilled people is roughly the same process.
- Comment on Why does information want to be free 2 months ago:
Information is an abstract thing, like 1+1=2, it doesn’t exist like physical things. Physical things can be arranged to represent it and be used to communicate it, but the information itself is something different and other.
The natural state of things is entropy. Every data carrying medium will decay, and break or die. But if that’s a guaranteed, constant problem, the only way for information, that different, other thing to continue to exist, is to spread. Spreading is easier when it happens without barriers: freely.
- Comment on Can you think of any now? 2 months ago:
The “tongues have taste zones” thing is the only thing that comes to mind.
- Comment on 9 months after its 1.0 launch flopped, an indie dev just learned that Steam never emailed the 130,000 people who wishlisted its game 2 months ago:
And to reward you, we’re giving you 24-hour visibility
(which is nothing special; there are 6 slots available for this visibility every day of the year for various Steam invitations).
He has no clue what he’s talking about Steam in 2021 had 69 MILLION daily active users. WTF do you think is a bigger number 130.000 wishlists or getting even 1% of 69 million people to look at something in the reel?
People don’t understand the size of steam or the value of that space (that one of six slots) sometimes. It’s wild.
And also, THEY noticed, THEY informed him, THEY apologized, and THEY offered some form of compensation, which they legally don’t have to.
I am soooooooooooooooo tired of indie devs blaming everything from the constellation of the stars to the quality of the donuts on a different continent for their game not doing well, except that maybe the game isn’t that good, and also those 100.000 already sold units is the actual size of the market for that game.
- Comment on yeah everything is probably made of like, idk, earth water, fire and air or something idrk 2 months ago:
The thing that always gets me about the renaissance is Galileo:
He did those experiments with things falling down? Measuring speed?
Yeah. Without a clock.
The theory for how to build those came later, based on what Galileo did.
- Comment on What is a federated alternative to Wikipedia? 3 months ago:
First of all, there is the problem of senior editors being in control and if you do anything, they just revert it, or delete it. There are reasons why there are already many different wikis and not just one.
Then as the other commenter shared, they have the goal of a neutral point of view, but that’s an idealistic goal that can’t be reached. The neutrality with which something is presented is sometimes a problem. For example in political spheres it can make more sense to read two very biased articles from opposing sides, than one that tries to present both sides objectively.
So it would be really helpful to see side by side comparisons or disambiguation pages that lead to different perspectives.
And you can sort of do this already, but the point of federation is also that it’s more tightly integrated than “you can have your own forum” which was true before as well.
- Comment on Video game addiction in teens likely stems from preexisting mental health issues 3 months ago:
I think it’s fundamentally bad science to say:
Sometimes, however, gamers become fixated, compulsive or — worse — spiral into a full-blown gaming disorder marked by isolation, distress, interpersonal conflicts and severe neglect of responsibilities.
And actually talk about mostly kids.
The abstract of the actual paper is very clear and much better:
Key Points
Question Is preexisting psychopathology associated with subsequent gaming disorder among adolescents, or is compulsive gaming associated with the development of psychopathology?
Findings In this cohort study of 4289 adolescents, longitudinal models revealed that higher baseline levels of psychopathology were significantly associated with an increased risk of developing gaming disorder 1 year later. However, there was no significant association between gaming disorder and the development or worsening of psychopathology.