WolfLink

@WolfLink@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GOG seems to be considering paid membership option⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:
  • a tool for backing up offline installers

  This really should be something they offer for free, and there are already some FOSS options that do this, although they aren’t as good as I’d like.

  • ability to install previous versions of a game

  This is a feature they already have for free and there would (or at least should) be backlash if they were to lock that behind a subscription

  • extra insight into the preservation work they’re doing.

  Sure, neat.

  • voting rights on games to bring into the preservation program.

  Sure but said votes better have an actual impact.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Virgin Physicists⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Grab a box full and test a bunch until you find one that works well for your use case. That way you end up with a resistor that’s much better than the rated tolerance you’d get if you just grabbed one resistor at random.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Javascript/Linux is what I call it⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yo I miss all the great in-browser shockwave games

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some old games that are hard to revisit, because a more modern and superior version exists?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah the controls in the OG Mario Bros (and even the OG Super Mario Bros, to a bit of a lesser extent) are very clunky compared to modern entries. I’d say SMB3 holds up well though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Definitely didn't waste half an hour making this⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  2 although 6 is also pretty good from my experience.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Half Life: Alyx is Five Years Old Today⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Here’s a list of VR games I’d 1000% recommend:

  • Half Life: Alyx
  • I Expect you to Die (James Bond themed virtual escape rooms - 3 games in the series so far, all of them are good)
  • Super Hot (slo-motion first person combat puzzle game)
  • Beat Saber (a unique rhythm game)
  • Pavlov (CS:GO but in VR with extensive modding support)

  There are other good ones out there but that’s the list that justifies the headset to me.

  Also there are some good VR ports of non-VR games out there such as Myst and The Talos Principle. Also there are some good Minecraft mods that add VR support (Java edition of course). Stay away from the Skyrim port though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Assassin’s Creed Shadows is as dark as that infamous Game of Thrones episode⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeesh sounds like your monitors color output is badly calibrated :/. Fixing that requires an OS level calibration tool. I’ve only ever done this on macOS so I’m not sure where it is on Windows or Linux.

  Also in general I wouldn’t use the non-hdr to hdr conversion features. Most of them aren’t very good. Also a lot of Linux distros don’t have HDR support (at least the one I’m using doesn’t).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Assassin’s Creed Shadows is as dark as that infamous Game of Thrones episode⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t really understand the benefit of HDR until I got a monitor that actually supports it.

  And I don’t mean simply can process the 10-bit color values, I mean has a peak brightness of at least 1000 nits.

  That’s how they trick you. They make cheap monitors that can process the HDR signal and so have an “HDR” mode, and your computer will output an HDR signal, but at best it’s not really different from the non-HDR mode because the monitor can’t physically produce a high dynamic range image.

  If you actually want to see an HDR difference, you need to get something like a 1000-nit OLED monitor (note that “LED” often just refers to an LCD monitor with an LED backlight). Something like one of these: www.displayninja.com/best-oled-monitor/

  These aren’t cheap. I don’t think I’ve seen one for less than maybe $700. That’s how much it costs unfortunately. I wouldn’t trust a monitor that claims to be HDR for $300.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The gentrified forest near me removed the bins. .. From their café/picnic area⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I will absolutely pick up other peoples trash if it’s somewhere like the wilderness. They should have picked it up themselves but I’m there now and that trash shouldn’t be there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon builds a new PC⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The purpose of fancy PCs is to run Minecraft with shaders and a bunch of mods

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a way out?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of this is kinda already happening.

  Score could be kept with citations.

  This is already something people brag about / look at as a measure of success. There are plenty of free websites to keep track but the most popular one is Google Scholar.

  Perhaps competing labs could both receive citation credit if their results essentially showed the same thing.

  When I find multiple good papers that have the information I need, I cite all of them, and even feel happy about it because citing a lot of papers can make your paper look like you put in more work.

  If nobody could scoop anyone else’s work, then cooperation may be encouraged over competition.

  It’s a bit hard to completely do away with scooping. A possibly more practical way to increase cooperation would be to eliminate the idea of the “first author” getting the majority of the credit. It’s really annoying when like 5 people heavily contributed to the paper but whoever’s name is listed first ends up getting 90% of the credit because that’s what people look for.

  The idea of doing things in a wiki format is interesting though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"You should probably just throw it away"⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s assuming the user knows that and didn’t just buy a prebuilt tower from Costco, and that it isn’t a laptop or something where changing the motherboard is much harder if not impossible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I left negative feedback on ebay for dropshipping and the seller has messaged me four days in a row asking me to change it⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly when I’m dubious of the quality of a product, I look for the negative reviews. If the only negative reviews are people clearly being dumb or really minor gripes, I take that as a good sign. If there are very few or no negative reviews, that’s a red flag that something fishy is going on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Thinkpad for the win⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There should be options avoiding AC depending on your scenario. Most laptops charge off of DC.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨conferences⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My favorite loot is an NSA-branded webcam cover

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨mass⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Left is correct. The center of mass of a donut is inside the hole, which is “outside the donut”.

  This may seem unintuitive, but the center of mass of an object does not have to be inside the object.

  This is the mechanism behind these toys:

  Image

  Image

  The wings of the bird and poles of the clown extend below the main body, but are weighted so that’s where most of the weight is. So the center of mass is below the main body, so it will easily balance on the main body. However, your eyes will naturally focus on the main body, which would be unstable without the extra weight hanging off the side, making the balancing look surprising.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨fireflies⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Only time I’ve seen them was in the suburbs around Chicago.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What really separates a PC from a server? Mainly the hardware, but I guess software too.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Server hardware is usually designed with quick swapping of parts in mind, and also will often support more CPUs, RAM, and drives than a desktop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon feels an urge⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  • In professional mode: highly competent, carries out a mission with no backup, spontaneous genius in combat.
  • In day to day mode: complete ditz, subservient to anyone who talks to her, barely understands the world around her. No it’s not an act.

  There’s plenty of real people who are highly competent at their job but very socially inept. We might call such people “nerds”, “a gifted child”, or even “autistic” depending on the specifics and severity.

  Oh and the west is objectively better in every way

  The show makes it clear both sides are propagandized to assume they are better than the other side regardless of how true that is, and it avoids making specific comparisons to keep that vague.

  The message is literally just "hi we’re unconventional, but we’re a team, and also dad is the boss and mom is pretty – root for us for some reason.

  The point of the show is presenting 3 people (or 4 if you include the dog) that have some special talent but are socially awkward, and showing them work well together as a family despite frequent comedic mishaps. Honestly not even that out there for a show premise.

  But hey, people have different tastes. If cute unconventional family comedy isn’t yours, just don’t watch it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon sees a happy couple⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  When someone genuinely likes you they will listen to you talk for hours about anything just because they like hearing you be passionate about something.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why doesn't phones numbers have a "DNS" servet so we can just type in words like we do with the internet?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Related: this is why the audio quality of phone calls is so bad. It’s using what’s basically a predecessor of mp3 compression at a very low bitrate. Originally because that’s what the bandwidth limits were like, but now just for the sake of backwards compatibility. That’s why making a VOIP call sounds so much better: it’s using modern audio codecs and a higher bitrate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why doesn't phones numbers have a "DNS" servet so we can just type in words like we do with the internet?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of these are true about IP addresses as well

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For different game store, legally, what happens if they close?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Some programs monitor the system clock for purposes like this.

  But in the case of Steam games, many of your games would work just fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chatgpt refusing to believe Trump won lol.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  LLMs will often assume any information you give it that isn’t part of its historical training set is fictional or hypothetical.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon removes a fence⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I did this once as a kid just to see if it works. Yes, it works.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Poetic take" on the state of the US⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I read a bit about the Iroquois history. It sounds like as soon as they found strength in their political structure, they started conquering neighbors, a pattern that seems pretty much unbroken throughout human history :/

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon cheats through college⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Any competent modern IDE or compiler will help you find syntax mistakes. Knowing the concepts is way more important.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal with Signal?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Signal is an open-source privacy-focused end-to-end encrypted texting platform (so competing with SMS, WhatsApp, iMessage, Telegram, and similar). It’s developed by a donation-funded non-profit organization.

  Signal is quite good compared to the competition, but it faces a lot of scrutiny because they make big promises about privacy and security so the people who care will really get into the details on that. Also IIRC there was a period when one of their competitors was trying to slander them more or less.

  In general there’s nothing wrong with Signal and it’s quite a good option. If you really care about the privacy details you can always host your own instance (but that would require you to convince your friends to use your instance … it’s not federated).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite board games? I'm looking for games that are satisfying and lead to a sense of accomplishment or fulfillment or connection.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It depends on the group. Sometimes you have people intentionally cutting you off, revenge robber placements, and politics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite board games? I'm looking for games that are satisfying and lead to a sense of accomplishment or fulfillment or connection.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’ll never perfectly solve the “no pissing people off” issue because in competitive games you necessarily have people benefit at the expense of others and in cooperative games you’ll fall into the trap of backseat-driver players telling you what to do on your turn.

  That being said, here are some of my favorites I’d like to suggest:

  Cooperative:

  • Time Stories (kinda like a time-travel themed mystery-solving role-playing game where the pre-built deck is your DM. 1-4 players. You can buy more decks, each with a different setting and story.).
  • Pandemic (Stop COVID a deadly disease from killing off the planet. Work together to limit the spread and find the cure before it’s too late) (1-4 players)

  Competitive:

  • The Settlers of Catan (claim resources and land strategically to build the most prosperous kingdom) (2-4 players but there are expansions and spinoffs so this could be like 1-6 players)
  • 7 Wonders (draft cards to build the most prosperous kingdom) (3-8 players IIRC)

  In-Between:

  • Betrayal in the House on the Hill (explore a haunted house until you find a dark secret that turns one of you into a villain the rest have to fight) (3-6 players)