AnimalsDream

@AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As you are doing it you never realize⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think that’s true. I have a 20+ year old iBook G3 that I keep around to tinker with Mac OS 7-9. The usb slots either don’t work, or at least don’t support newer usb drives, so it’s only a matter of time before I hop over to the Macintosh Garden and start burning discs again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grieve with me⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I was happy when usb c came out because it looked like it had to be a significant improvement over micro usb, in terms of longevity and reliability.

  It’s looking like it’s only a slight improvement though, which sucks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨$80 for Borderlands 4 too costly? Randy Pitchford says, "If you're a real fan, you'll find a way to make it happen"⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, the way to make it happen is adding it to my wishlist and waiting for the price to drop to at least $40.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo warns that it can brick Switch consoles if it detects hacking, piracy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Joke’s on Nintendo, they already lost me as a customer back in the 3DS days, and I do not own a Switch for them to brick. 🖕

  But if any Switch games look interesting enough to play, I’ll be happy to emulate them on my Steam Deck or PC. 🙃

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vitamin technology has advanced so much over the years⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, and lifehack I guess: Just keep a supply of frozen veggies and add those to your ramen.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vitamin technology has advanced so much over the years⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I had to stop eating ramen. I tried my hardest, but I could not for the life of me find a whole grain ramen that was affordable (the whole point of eating ramen). So instead I use whole grain spaghetti noodles and veggie broth. I miss the squigglies. 🥺

  I have learned that even whole grain noodles can be microwaved though, so that’s cool. Works a lot better for penne, cause spaghetti noodles tend to clump together more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon blames millennials⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It started roughly around the ps3/360 era, when corporate devs began prioritizing turning their games into skinner boxes that were designed to motivate players to keep playing, so they would be more likely to engage in microtransactions, see more ads, or continue paying subscriptions. Of course gacha garbage is a fuller expression of this kind of manipulation now days.

  Still plenty of great games out there, and in some cases we have a real renaissance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is raising prices on Xbox consoles, controllers, and games worldwide⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That was somebody else’s point. I just chimed in with my own take. :D

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is raising prices on Xbox consoles, controllers, and games worldwide⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  On my laptop I switched from Debian to Fedora and that had a distinct impact on gaming performance, though I think it had more to do with how I had it set up previously. For instance I used full disk encryption for Debian, but skipped that on Fedora, because it does seem to impact games noticeably.

  But it also might be because Fedora is more bleeding edge, so the OS itself might actually play a role here.

  On my desktop I’ve been running Bazzite and that’s been pretty great so far.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is raising prices on Xbox consoles, controllers, and games worldwide⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The tariff situation makes it a bad idea to release or even announce new hardware right now. What they should do is finish Steam OS so they can officially release it for all platforms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is raising prices on Xbox consoles, controllers, and games worldwide⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I prefer the symmetrical sticks, calling it outdated is just cult of inevitable progress vibes. Also the touchpad is hardly a gimmick when we’re talking about PC as a gaming platform. If anything a touchpad should become standard on all controllers.

  My biggest complaints with the dualsense controller is that the shape of it starts to feel uncomfortable after long game sessions, the ds4 was better. Also the dpad sucks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is raising prices on Xbox consoles, controllers, and games worldwide⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  We all, all of me. I don’t have to care about what others are buying, because Steam and Linux is an amazing gaming experience and they’re the ones missing out. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bethesda Gifts Everybody in the Skyblivion Mod Team a Copy of Oblivion Remastered⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I am looking forward to playing the Remaster. It sounds like they’ve fixed pretty much everything I didn’t like about the original Oblivion - like the awful level up system. Hopefully they rebalanced the “difficulty” in a good way too. Last time I played Oblivion I remember higher difficulties being boring because it mostly meant even the weakest enemies would take a billion hits to kill.

  Skyblivion will be fun to play too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This will never happen.

  15 or so years ago people were saying the same thing about decentralized social media. Yet here we are.

  The problem with decentralized stuff is that anyone can put anything, so piracy will be omnipresent there

  This isn’t unique to decentralized platforms. Piracy is omnipresent. Yet people still buy stuff. But to address your question more concretely, imagine the store system is designed to be federated. Any instance owner can decide to what degree they would enforce anti-piracy measures. DMCA law requires a good faith effort on the part of a site owner to stop piracy, so any instance owner who wants to run a legitimate shop must properly vet game submissions to make sure they aren’t infringing copyright, and aren’t plagiarizing. They would also have to defederate from all pirate instances, but they would not be responsible for instances that have nothing to do with their own. People who choose to use the instances for piracy would be off on the margins of the internet, just like they are now.

  why would you pay for a game when the seller next store is giving it away for free (or much cheaper)

  Good question, since you already have that option for virtually all games, why do you pay for them? My reasons are because I generally do want to support the creators I like, as well as because a lot of pirated content is questionable in quality (ie., potential malware). Why do people pay for Red Hat Enterprise Linux when they can get the same OS for free, even legally? Continuing support in that case. Point is, people buy because they believe the value of buying is greater than what’s available for free, whatever reasons those might be.

  and how would you distinguish between “EA” selling the Sims 1 there and “TheRealEA” selling the Sims 1 there for the same price.

  I dunno dude, how do we do this now? A stupid checkmark? There’s gotta be better ways than a stupid checkmark. PGP signatures would probably be a good start. Maybe incorporate a web of trust implementation? How does Valve do it? I’m not an expert on the subject, here’s a Wikipedia page about the topic.

  Also decentralized card information is a bad idea, so you would either need a centralized paying hub, setup your card with every seller, or only be able to use crypto to pay, all of those are bad in their own way.

  Yeah, let that be a problem for the person who wants to decentralize payment systems. A more practical solution? Just include the popular payment methods that already exist. Except crypto currencies, that shit can fuck off.

  You gave all these explanations for why a decentralized game shop couldn’t work, but all of them are not only not especially hard to solve for such a platform, but are also just common challenges for all of the internet. It’s like the 90s all over again when people insisted that open-source software itself couldn’t work. Yet, again, here we are.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lol. All I’m trying to say is that Vi at least tries to adhere to the Unix philosophy, and knows it’s a text editor. Emacs is more of an Eldritch creature.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d like to see an open-source decentralized game store, like a competitor to Steam, GOG, etc. However, I think it should also target emulators. There’s still an unfounded stigma toward emulation even though emulators themselves are legal, and even though the big AAA game companies themselves are now using them as a lazy way to repackage and resell their old games on new platforms.

  One of the biggest barriers to entry into emulation is the setup. Even with super user-friendly frontends like Emulation Station, people are still required to either go out of their way to either legally backup the games they already own, or told to “do some searches,” because of legal issues. Nevermind how this exposes new users to potential malware.

  But people still make new games for these old systems. It’s entirely possible to make a store that can sell ROMs legally - one already exists, itch.io. But imagine a federated open-source game store, one where game makers can choose to legally sell their own games, and then create plugins for the emulation frontends to allow people to buy roms directly from those interfaces. It would turn emulation into a fully complete console-like experience, all while being available on more platforms than any console could ever hope to be (including those same consoles when they’re jailbroken!)

  I also think it would be the final puzzle piece that legitimizes emulation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I get the joke, but does it really make sense to even begin comparing Emacs to Vi(m) anymore? It’s almost like comparing a full Linux distro to nano.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know how it compares, but I’ve been meaning to give Zettlr a try. The thing about notes apps is, to me at least, few digital tools are more personal. For some people it’s their diaries. Because of that I would consider privacy to be such a critical feature that I would never even consider using a proprietary app no matter how many bells and whistles it has, or how many people swear by it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I love Godot even though I still lack the skills necessary to actually make a game.

  If I remember correctly, Blender began it’s life as a closed source commercial product, but then later went open-source under new stewardship.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨this is not satire this is not satire this is not satire⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I’m sorry but none of this seems to add up. I read the book you linked, the entire thing, and I didn’t really learn anything new from it. In my own searches I’ve found a number of competing image generation systems, most of them just use Stable Diffusion - including Horde, which makes sense as it is open-source and readily available. But others have their own solutions, and some even use their own datasets. I’ve also done other searches and found a variety of instructions on how people can put together their own datasets. Between all of the options, it seems pretty clear to me that even now it is entirely possible for people to use these AI tools without ever needing to come into any contact with “stolen” (ie., copyright infringed - it’s not theft) artwork.

  But I’m not going to link to any of these things because I don’t want to endorse or promote anything without taking sufficient time to be really sure that they are in fact ethical, which honestly I’m probably not going to do at least for the time being, since I have no need to use any of these anyway. But yeah, ethical ai art is entirely possible, no copyright ever needs to be infringed, and this is something anyone can do today if they’re inclined to make the searches and assemble free source images themselves.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨this is not satire this is not satire this is not satire⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When you say, “However what you’re hypothesizing cannot exist, due to the nature of a diffusion model. The source that the images are generated from, all of that was stolen in 2021. It was illegally scraped.”, are you referring to Laion-5B?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨this is not satire this is not satire this is not satire⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No offense taken. It is still a strawman though, because regardless of the realness of what I’m talking about, they’re still referring to something different and then attacking that as if it is the thing I’m talking about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨this is not satire this is not satire this is not satire⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I haven’t looked into it too much, because I don’t bother to use these things myself. But if I remember, there are some systems that are open-source, can be run locally, and then a person could train those systems on only public domain and freely licensed works. That is the kind I’m talking about, so bringing up the systems I’m not talking about is just a strawman.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨this is not satire this is not satire this is not satire⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No, it’s not. Why are you like this?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨this is not satire this is not satire this is not satire⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  None of the hypothetical methods I described would do that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨this is not satire this is not satire this is not satire⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Also wanna add that in theory I’m not against AI art generation, only the way it’s usually implemented. All creativity is derivative, and as long as the user is remixing free and public domain content, I think the gained accessibility for far more people to bring their expressions to life where they otherwise would not have been able to, is worth far more than the perceived threats felt by a stagnant copy monopolist industry.

  But the key thing here is proper implementation. It’s like every time we get a new toy, we forget all over again that software freedom is a moral imperative in all forms of software.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨this is not satire this is not satire this is not satire⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair, sourcing vegan-friendly art supplies is often significantly more frustrating than finding vegan food. But as others have said, doing - do I call it ‘traditional digital’ art? - is going to have a much smaller environmental impact than AI generation systems that are dependent on servers. A used Thinkpad x230 > Midjourney?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hades 2 will be a Nintendo Switch 2 console exclusive at launch⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Having already purchased the Steam early access version, I was ready to be pissed off until I read further in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is worried about men⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Unless you’re doing mainly proxies, MTG is anything but cheap these days. 😐

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some old games that are hard to revisit, because a more modern and superior version exists?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Completely agree. I almost said something about PoE, but then I remembered how within a few areas explored I had quickly turned my character into a flying meat grinder who could bonk explosive materials out of monsters.