Aceticon
@Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on 16 hours ago:
Almost all of the “Top 10 most replayable games” I have are Indie games, especially in the last 10 years.
They’re games like Factorio or Project Zomboid which I keep getting back to a year or two after I last played so much of it that I got fed up.
Glitzy AAA open-world-ish games have beautiful visuals but their replayability is near zero, worse so for games which seem open-world but are in fact linear.
Mind you, some older AAA jewels in that style (such as Oblivion) do get me to come back eventually, but it takes something like 5+ or more as I basically have to forget most of the story before it’s interesting to play such a game again.
If price matched “hours of fun”, the AAA stuff would be way cheaper whilst many Indie games would be far more expensive.
- Comment on I work long hour and make little money 23 hours ago:
I grew up in a country which is weird: it’s a mix of people from the old generation who mainly have basic education and then the next generation over has a high proportion of University educated (this, by the way, applies to my extended family).
The latter simply have a higher tendency for thinking before reacting (even though they’re older) which is much rarer in the former. Doesn’t mean the latter don’t have emotion, it means they’re less prone to unthinkingly react on emotion alone.
I’ve also seen a similar effect in other countries I lived in.
In my experience and as you say, Education doesn’t negate emotion, what it does is make people more prone to first think (which might mean they stop themselves) rather than immediatelly react on emotion alone.
In addition to that it also gives people a larger based of information to, when they think, judge things in a more informed way.
So, repeating myself, the more highly Educated are not immune to being scammed, they’re just more resilent to simpler scams because there’s they have a higher tendency to think rather than just blindly react. If you want to scam people who tend to think and have a broader base of information, you have to be more subtle (hence, as I pointed out, using techniques like a lot of the “progressive” Press like The Guardian or the New York Times uses in their Gaza coverage such as subtly portraying Israel and Israelis as more important and trustworthy - they “are killed” and their authorities “say” - and Palestinians as less so - they “die” and their authorities “claim” - the kind of subtle manipulation anchored on modern psychology technique which you don’t see in less highbrow media.
By the way, life experience (emphasys on “experience” - merelly being old doesn’t count) confers the same effect of tending to stop and think before plunging into things.
That said, I’ve seen plenty of highly educated people react in stupid ways driven by emotion, it’s just less likely.
- Comment on I work long hour and make little money 1 day ago:
People who have a higher level of Education and have to think for a living are less prone to fall for pure lies + strong displays of emotion and instead tend to fall for context/information-control scams + pushing of subconscious buttons, and as it so happens the Republicans tend to use more the former kind of scam whilst the Democrats the latter (none of which “my” “team” as I’m not even American).
As it so happens, outright lies and emotional raging are far more accessible for foreign scammers than the more subtle kinds of manipulation (which are more common in the Press: for example how in most of the Press in the Israeli Gaza Genocide, Israelis are “killed” whilst Palestinians merely “die”).
I totally agree with the rest of your post. Widespread scamming is a natural thing in Capitalism.
The whole emergent property element is how, due to in the modern age external scammers that aren’t even directly involved in US politics and thus don’t gain from side A or side B being able to still make money from view alone, as a group they have had a systemic impact in the use politics - those individual actions of individuals who aren’t actually organized (as they’re not even in those political parties) combined to do (or at least accelerate) a systemic change in the politics of the US.
Maybe (probably?) scams around politics in Capitalism also do combine in an emergent way from bottom up to shape each nations’ politics as a whole, but this is the first time a large fraction of the actors in that don’t directly gain from being in politics or receiving political patronage, and instead merely gain from using rage to get attention (more specifically, clicks), and I believe that has caused something else to emerge from it at a systemic level than what there was before since these people care even less about the possible destruction that their actions might cause since they themselves will never suffer from it.
- Comment on I work long hour and make little money 1 day ago:
Por qué no los dos?
- Comment on I work long hour and make little money 1 day ago:
It’s fucking foreign grifters, because in the present day you can make money from being an “influencer”: all that fucking shit in the US has attracted every Techology savy, English-speaking scammer in the World because every fucking asshole with a computer and an Internet connection in his mother’s basement in bumfuck shitty-shit town in frigging Romenia can make more money in a day as an “influencer” feeding prejudiced, socially inept, delusions-of-grandeur-holding Americans with outrage that they can in a month working whatever job is available for them in shitty-shit nowehere-ville.
(Ditty for American grifters, by the way)
It’s targetting mainly the MAGAs because they’re the less intellectually capable population segment in the US, hence make for much easier marks.
Populism-dominated America together with the ability for “remote work” on the Internet and how one can make money from views has led to a fucking freeding frenzy for every tech-abled scammer with an internet connection and decent English-speaking skills in the World.
I bet this whole phenomenon is mainly a “emergent property” of the rewards and access structures in place in Social Media and that the top-down organised ops from state actors are but a tiny fraction of this shit show.
- Comment on I work long hour and make little money 1 day ago:
Foreigners are just the “others” used by the elites to point the tribalist weak minded morons towards somebody else whilst the very much local elites pillage the place.
And this is not just done to the MAGA muppets: notice the whole bitching and moaning about “foreign interference” from the rest - guess what, the influence of the likes of Russia and even China have in countries like the US is fucking nothing next to that of the local traditional fatcats owning the Press and Tech-bros owning social media or even in relative terms that cultivated by the kind of Propaganda ops we see in action here in the most popular Lemmy.world forums.
Fuck, if you want to worry about Foreign Actors, look at how Israel got most of the West, especially the US, to basically destroy in non-aligned countries at least half a fucking century of cultivate image of being Rule Of Law abiding and Freedom Promoting, which amongst other things resulted in some of those now turning towards Russia or China - all this shit to protected the fucking modern day Nazis whilst they get off from murdering little brow children.
The supposed Leftwing of the US (but not really: in World terms the Democrats are a hard Right party, just ultra Capitalist Neolibs rather than Fascists) are just as much doing the whole “it’s those scary foreigners” smoke and mirrors show to turn the mob eyes away from their sponsors as the Fascists, it’s just that in their propaganda the cartoonish bad guys are “state actors” rather than “immigrants”.
And all the fucking shit in the US (not just the propaganda but its use to distract the crowd from the pillaging by the likes of the Finance Industry, “realestate investors” and other parasites) is leaking to the rest of the World and accelerating the shitstorm elsewhere.
- Comment on Ahead of her time 5 days ago:
Let me be more precise: the Defrauding Of Investors for which she was convicted in Court was that her company was getting people’s blood samples and claiming to be analyzing them on their own special machines, whilst in reality they were sending those samples to labs to be analyzed in the traditional way and their machines never worked.
Maybe amongst her various claims she made one as you said (frankly, I don’t remember anymore), but that was not what landed her in jail.
I supposed one could say both things were part of her con.
- Comment on Ahead of her time 5 days ago:
Her con was that her company had machines that could do all the analyzing automatically in seconds, it wasn’t than blood analysis had predictive value for at least some diseases.
I don’t think that even back then anybody disputed that at the very least doing DNA sequencing of the cells found in blood could predict the likelihood of certain diseases for a person, as the concept of some people having a genetic predisposition for certain diseases was already accepted at the time.
The scam was the “magic” machine that could do it fast and cheaply, not the concept that it can be done.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Surely the “capital investment” mixed in with the supplies should be accounted via depreciation rather than directly as an expense.
- Comment on Female tourist takes down phone-snatcher in Argentina 1 week ago:
Love the detail of how the driver of one of the car that stops, comes over and after seemingly hearing what’s going on starts kicking the thief.
- Comment on Sony cracks down on Concord custom servers, issues DMCA takedowns on gameplay videos 1 week ago:
Fuck, maybe they went down in quality again 😬
In my own experience, the original QCs were great tech for the time, the QC 2.5 (or maybe I had a QC 2?) had issues and lasted much less and then the QC 3.5 were again great (the battery lasts way longer, build quality is nice and that the user interface is decent).
The QC 3.5 was launched almost a decade ago, so plenty of time for later models to have been enshittified.
- Comment on Sony cracks down on Concord custom servers, issues DMCA takedowns on gameplay videos 1 week ago:
This is totally different from my experience.
I use headphones, which cover the full ear so I don’t get any “tired ears” from those. Maybe you’re using a totally different model (no idea if they have earphones and if they’re any good).
If you’re using headphones, maybe you have the QC 3 (which are widelly seen as shit)?!
I have had over the years the original QC, QC 2.5 and QC 3.5 and still use the QC and QC 3.5 with none of those problems (funnilly enough, the oldest, an original QC, uses a single removable AAA battery, and I use rechargeable ones and even that will last around 3 - 4 days, whilst the built-in LiPo in the QC 3.5 lasts even more than that when using bluetooth, and even more when using an audio wire).
- Comment on Sony cracks down on Concord custom servers, issues DMCA takedowns on gameplay videos 1 week ago:
I’ve been using Bose Quiet Comfort noise reduction headphones for almost 2 decades now, ever since I had to do software development in a large open space office alongside the noisy business-side types (this was in Investment Banking - so whilst not a heavy-machinery-noisy environment, certain the top range of office noisy) and those they were very good already back then (I’m still using at home the first model I got, after replacing the ear-pads which is what gets damaged over time).
The QC 3.5 and onwards have bluetooth AND also a wired connection as fallback (which I have had to use with devices without bluetooth).
Of course, you pay for it (last ones I got were €250 if I remember it correctly), but then again they last a long time (as I said, the first ones, now almost 2 decades old, are still work fine even if the outside is all scratched up and they’re now on the 5th or 6th pair or earpads).
I very much doubt Sony one’s are anywhere close to that, especially given that the quality of Sony devices took a massive dive in the late 90s when top level management which until then was dominated by the Engineering side was taken over by the Media side took over (before they used to be known for the high quality of their electronics).
- Comment on Sony cracks down on Concord custom servers, issues DMCA takedowns on gameplay videos 1 week ago:
Once in a while Sony reconfirms my choice to boycott them since the rootkit CD scandal in the 00s.
- Comment on gabe³ half-life 3 confirmed 1 week ago:
Indeed. Any online store can go under or enshittify.
If you want to stay safe with GOG, download the offline installers for your games and archive them. If you don’t you’re running the risk of losing some or all of it.
Fortunatelly GOG has that possibility as standard, Steam does not make that option available - at best you can copy and zip existing installations of Steam games and hope for the best, a which is not official supported.
The point being that Steam could make something like that available, at least for games whose developers/publishers are willing and mark that as a feature in the game page in their store, but they have chosen not to.
- Comment on The House Of The Guy Calling You A Libtard 1 week ago:
The idea that being a “slut” is a character flaw is seriously backwards prudish moralistic shit that’s so long in the tooth that it’s the kind of shit you would hear in 50s.
Her husband is dead, so if she’s fucking other people, there isn’t even the ethical and moral consideration of by doing so she might (unless they were open with each other about it) be betraying a person she had commited to be faithful to, because that person is no more and is not going to get hurt by it.
So the whole thing is some fucked up regressive crap for moralist types with the social age of a child, even before one looks into the sexism of such last century moralism being mainly applied to women and seldom to men.
- Comment on gabe³ half-life 3 confirmed 1 week ago:
Billionaire fanboyism has got to be the stupidest most sheepish behaviour imaginable, possibly even worse than looking up to celebrities who are famous for being famous because billionaires are literally hoarding money which could be way more useful to billions of people.
- Comment on gabe³ half-life 3 confirmed 1 week ago:
however 20 years are more than enough time to catch up
I suggest you read about the Network Effect in business.
It’s not at all easy to reverse the market share of a business which benefits from a dominant market position in a market were such effects are strong, even when they turn complet shit (example: Twitter), which Valve hasn’t.
- Comment on gabe³ half-life 3 confirmed 1 week ago:
Yeah, well, somebody is going to inherit his share of ownership, and even if he goes out of his way and sets up a Foundation for the purpose of preserving the founder’s vision that will inherit his share, such Foundations tend to over time end up subverted and doing the very opposite of what the founder would’ve wanted.
Best avoid situations were your shit is hostage to the whims of a big company for whom you as and individual consumer are irrelevant.
- Comment on gabe³ half-life 3 confirmed 1 week ago:
I avoid buying from Steam and prefer GOG when I can because I don’t really want to have continued access to my games collection be dependent on Gabe eating his veggies, avoiding saturated fats and doing at least a 30m walk a day to keep the risk of a heart attack low and look both ways before he crosses a road so as not to be run over by a car.
In almost 4 decades as a gamer and a techie I’ve seen plenty of good companies turn into evil companies and start to leverage whatever dependencies customers had on them to pretty much blackmail them into paying more, sometimes after the founders died, others when the founders cashed out or just lost interest in managing the company’s direction and yet others because they were evil all along and just hid it whilst they built their customer base - enshittification isn’t ust a XXI century thing, what’s XXI century about it is that many companies nowadays already have it as part of their mid and long term strategy from the start.
Best avoid situations where you give power to some big company (for whom you as an individual customer are basically a nameless bacteria) over something you care about, unless you have no other choice, even if at the moment they’re basically a benevolent dictatorship.
Better safe than sorry.
- Comment on Contents of Queen's Purse 2 weeks ago:
Being prepared is why she lasted until she was 96 years old.
- Comment on The Perfect Picture of Helth 2 weeks ago:
Everybody needs a goal to aim for, so I make sure to keep well away from reaching it so as not to lose it as a goal.
- Comment on The Perfect Picture of Helth 2 weeks ago:
If it’s homemade (including the sauce) on thin crust of proper bread dough (again, homemade) and you’re generous and careful with the toppings (avoiding salty and/or highly processed stuff), the only inherently imbalanced thing is the cheese (which is excessive for something that high in saturated fats).
Then again, homemade pizza done from scratch including the sauce and the bread dough takes more than an hour to make, so people overwhelmingly buy pizza already make (or at least ready to bake), and then it’s loaded crap because you really can’t trust industrial food.
- Comment on The Perfect Picture of Helth 2 weeks ago:
Lots of saturated fat on the cheese.
Beyond that with tin crust, homemade pizza tomato sauce (which is delish, by the way) and properly chosen and generously added toppings, it can be pretty healthy.
- Comment on The Perfect Picture of Helth 2 weeks ago:
In the same spirit: “I’m a 2nd degree vegetarian because I only eat meat from herbivores”
- Comment on Fourier 2 weeks ago:
Hence why I formated my comment as a question ;)
- Comment on Fourier 2 weeks ago:
Wouldn’t that just be a single vertical line?
- Comment on Godot Engine – 2025 Showreel 2 weeks ago:
Unity has a store with a ton of useful user made libraries, frameworks and utilities most of which are generally not worth the time spent implementing it yourself when you can get the thing for something like 20 bucks.
Also, for gamedev shops which already have a lot of Unity experience in-house, it’s probably worth it to stay with Unity, though Unity so frequently changes their engine is profound ways, that existing Unity experience is less valuable than otherwise.
That’s mainly it.
- Comment on A hypothesis 3 weeks ago:
I’ve been pretty much upgrading my own desktop PC regularly since the 90s (though I did buy a brand new one 6 years ago).
In my experience the upgrade that’s more likelly to improve it the cheapest is RAM, then a graphics card if you’re a gamer.
However there were two transition periods were the best upgrade by far was something else: the first was back in the day when hardware 3D accelerator boards were invented (Quake with a 3dfx was night and day compared to software rendering) and the other one was the transition for HDD to SSD, both being massive jumps in performance.
- Comment on A hypothesis 3 weeks ago:
Exactly.
A background of tinkering with stuff without fear of the consequences of breaking it (which is a common mindset mainly amongst kids and teens) is the difference between a tool-maker and a tool-user, IMHO, and thinkering is far more natural to start doing and to do much further with an open system than with a closed system.