SabinStargem
@SabinStargem@lemmy.today
- Comment on The rich convinced us that taxing them is too complicated but everyday people can be taxed pretty easily 6 days ago:
I think that a completely reworked economy, can make it much easier to tax the wealthy. Specifically, by using fixed incomes according to job rank, and having leadership roles change pay grade according to what workers vote for. Each worker can vote for who holds a leadership position, alongside their job ranking.
As to the fixed incomes, by having all job types assigned a rank with a fixed income throughout the entire nation, that prevents leadership from coercing changes in worker pay. They can’t underpay, nor overpay the workers, which makes it easier to assess and collect taxes. If everyone falls into very specific tax obligations, it is harder to game the system.
Alongside UBI, universal benefits such as guaranteed shelter, food, transport, utilities, and healthcare, money becomes optional. This allows workers to not be blackmailed into working for bad employers, which also puts a stick in the wheels of the wealthy. Coercion is the great power the elite uses to abuse ordinary people, so we need to eliminate that.
Also, absolute caps on wealth and assets, both for individuals and corporations. No one should be able to hoard resources that would allow any single entity to manipulate society. Sure, it would suck if someone can’t have dozens of vacation homes and yachts, but realistically, most folks won’t need more than one vacation spot with a nice boat.
- Comment on An 82-year-old YouTuber grandma was raided by police and SWATs during her live stream last night where she plays Minecraft to raise money for her grandsons cancer. Authorities brought 20 police cars 1 week ago:
Call people in the neighborhood, ask if anything is off? Send in a single car to scope out the scene, while keeping reinforcements in the wings? Ask 911 where the call originated, and adjust expectations based on that?
At least two of these things can be done while the police begins to move towards the destination, as intel gathering doesn’t require policeman to be making the inquiries, just support staff.
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Fact of the matter, is that American police are the same breed of ‘warrior’ that Pete Hegseth is: Bloodthirsty, undisciplined, incompetent, and in service to powers of capital and hate, not the citizens they are supposed to serve.
- Comment on An 82-year-old YouTuber grandma was raided by police and SWATs during her live stream last night where she plays Minecraft to raise money for her grandsons cancer. Authorities brought 20 police cars 1 week ago:
I still believe that “defund the police”, is the correct choice. The whole damn thing has to go.
- Comment on 60% of PC gamers have no plans to build a new PC in the next two years — AI pricing crunch on RAM and other components paralyze enthusiast market 1 week ago:
I try to make it a habit to build a whole new machine when a new AMD socket to accommodate a major memory standard comes out. Way I figure, many people will dump their older hardware, so I can get a bargain on top-shelf stuff of the older standard. So when DDR6 is out, I pick up a 1024gb of DDR5 and a Threadripper of the generation.
While I don’t like the FOMO from not adopting the latest platform, my wallet much appreciates the mercy.
- Comment on 60% of PC gamers have no plans to build a new PC in the next two years — AI pricing crunch on RAM and other components paralyze enthusiast market 1 week ago:
If there are economic bubbles, I am figuring on picking up some gear on the cheap after the big companies start falling apart. For now, I am just buying stuff that aren’t fairly generic and not prone to aging. In this case, a THOR NAS desktop tower. My older THOR V2 chassis isn’t quite right for modern GPU lengths, so hopefully the THOR NAS would be able to accommodate my older hardware while permitting the new stuff.
I got about 20tb of SATA SSD and a optical drive, so I needed a tower with front bays to accommodate those. Plus, I will be trying out this newfangled “M.2” stuff with my next build for the OS & Gaming drives, which takes up further case space.
- Comment on Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California 2 weeks ago:
I hope that we get a Star Trek Offline from this. I want to play the game, without FOMO and humanity making me feel miserable.
- Comment on Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California 2 weeks ago:
“It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It.”
- Comment on Boop Snoots 3 weeks ago:
A total conversion for the FreeSpace Open engine. Freespace is an excellent series of flight games for PC, similar to TIE Fighter - but the source code has been released to the public, resulting on many massive overhauls. Someone decided to make a Starfox game in it, and apparently it is shaping up nicely. You can use the Knossos mod manager to download the mod, and buy FreeSpace 2 from Steam or GOG.
- Comment on Boop Snoots 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on Charlie Kirk commemorative PEZ dispenser 3 weeks ago:
That Pez cartridge should be bullet shaped.
- Comment on It's unacceptable that people like Jeff Bezos exist. 3 weeks ago:
If I had the money, I would fund an EVE Online spinoff that existed to compare different socio-economic models against each other. Year 1 would have the shards separate, so that each community would develop in isolation and master their respective styles. Year 2, the shards are linked together to that each ‘galaxy’ can visit each other for trade and conquest.
The way I figure, our world is so used to feudalism and capitalism, that things like genuine socialism or communism would be ‘noobs’ when their governments spawn, and thus be killed or corrupted not long after appearing. Giving time to become equals with infrastructure and experience would be useful for evening the playing field of the experiment. Plus, we can look at each society at isolation before mixing in the complications of competing with other models.
To me, it would be preferable to study these models in a virtual environment, before trying them in the real world. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that we will have to fly by the seat of our pants and hope for the best.
- Comment on It's unacceptable that people like Jeff Bezos exist. 3 weeks ago:
I think the Universal Ranked Income concept that I put together can address at least some of the issue. The basic idea is that everyone receive basic UBI and benefits, such as free healthcare, food, fuel, and so forth. A job is for earning money, which in turn is used for luxuries and upgrades. In effect, money is a non-essential currency.
Aside from that, each type of job falls into a category of rankings. This rank gives a fixed amount of money. Assuming a full year of work after mandated vacations and whatnot, that would be $40k for a basic job like waiter. An astronaut gets the highest ranked job, which brings in $100k. Mix this with an absolute cap on wealth and assets ($100k for each category), and that will limit the power of a person over society, while allowing for a reasonable level of liberty and prosperity for a person. Plus, companies can’t commit wage theft or use bad terms.
However, this doesn’t entirely address companies by themselves. Each worker should have the ability to vote for the leadership within their own establishment, and also be able to cast votes for leaders that are above the establishment. Say, WalMart managers - you can vote for your store’s manager, the city’s manger, the state’s manager, and the nation’s manager, ect.
Still not enough. Companies also should have restrictions on how much total wealth and assets they can hold. What I propose: the cap is 50% of the staff payroll, based on each employee. An waiter adds $20k to the company’s capacity, while an astro is 50k. If a company needs capacity without increasing headcount, they can instead participate in a government lotto program. The lotto gives an annual income to a winner, and each winner only can have one income at a time, which can replace basic UBI. To qualify, they have to be without a job and not have any benefits to draw upon. (Each day worked, gives 1 day of income as retirement benefits.) This allows companies using AI or not needing people, to still contribute to society while improving their fiscal potential.
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I know, a long list of stuff. Unfortunately, economics are wooly and there are many, many issues to sort out, if we go down the route of an egalitarian society.
- Comment on Really incredible. I want a set. 1 month ago:
- Comment on Star Trilogy 1 month ago:
Marry, fuck, kill…
Marry: TMP. Fuck: Stargate. Kill: Star Wars.
- Comment on Google's Gemini will make its way into Dragon Quest X to power a "Chatty Slimey" AI companion, Square Enix has announced 2 months ago:
No, I didn’t use AI for that. Humans tend to come in many flavors.
- Comment on Google's Gemini will make its way into Dragon Quest X to power a "Chatty Slimey" AI companion, Square Enix has announced 2 months ago:
Keep in mind, a 122b (Qwen3.5 family), is high end for consumer machines, but it is likely that DQX would be using a much smaller model. Currently, we have Qwen models that are 8b, 9b, 27b, 35b, 122b, and 397b. Plus, ‘quanting’ can reduce how much memory a model takes up - at a tradeoff, o’course. I am guessing DQX would have multiple local models, and use the player’s hardware metrics to decide which model to deploy.
Alternatively, the Chatty Slime could rely on cloud AI. Depending on Square’s strategy, that could be a freebie or a paid service. If the Chatty Slime gave options to the player - say, trading a potion for a stat seed, or responding to a quiz, Square could sell player behavior data.
…Anyhow, my room has a mini-split AC. One of the best purchases in my life: my room lacked insulation in the first place, so it becomes toasty during summer. The side effect is being able to just run my GPU and not become a human slushy.
- Comment on Google's Gemini will make its way into Dragon Quest X to power a "Chatty Slimey" AI companion, Square Enix has announced 2 months ago:
On my system, I can play a RPG Maker game and use a 122b LLM at the same time, alongside to a podcast. A model in that parameter range takes up about 70gb of DDR4 RAM and 36gb of VRAM. However, it used to be that a 120b AI would take a larger footprint, bringing the system to the brink. The hardware requirements are going down, and the quality also increased, alongside speed. I believe when the next major sea change of hardware happens, AI will become very practical for gaming.
- Comment on Google's Gemini will make its way into Dragon Quest X to power a "Chatty Slimey" AI companion, Square Enix has announced 2 months ago:
While I think AI will be good in games, the games in question should be built with the AI in mind, rather than just shoving the AI into an existing game.
Square-Enix was doing a remake of an old detective game called Portopia, with the idea of being able to converse with NPCs about the case. That made sense, but they have seemingly abandoned the project. They should have kept working on that, instead of doing this Chatty Slime scheme.
- Comment on I am an American. I used to be proud of my country. Now it feels like a turd circling the drain. Is there anything going on behind the scene that America is actually doing good in? 2 months ago:
The pessimist in me says the same thing that happened for many Confederates and Nazis: Forgiven and allowed to return into the folds of society, to fuck over humanity again.
I would like to be wrong. It is my desire to see them overflowing baskets and filling cardboard caskets.
- Comment on Lutris now being built with Claude AI, developer decides to hide it after backlash 2 months ago:
Throwing down better people is the easiest way to stand above them.
- Comment on Day 599 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing 2 months ago:
The Magic Tower genre is definitely that way, and Soulestination moreso, because it has a lot to consider from the mechanics. For example, the Soul system.
You have a capacity of Soul, and for each soul you collect, you increase your stats by 1%. When you get to your cap, you enter a state of Rage - doubling your strength, and being forced to attack any adjacent enemy. This can be good for bosses or removing multiple enemies at junctions from play. However, this resets your Soul pool to zero, and increases your capacity by 1. This means it takes longer to become enraged, but your power potential also increases.
In the Magic Tower genre, the timing of your actions is everything, despite being turn based. Changes in stats dictate which kinds of enemies you can afford to encounter. The defeat of enemies is both a price and reward, so you have to engineer bargains. For example, glass cannon enemies are exceedingly deadly, but if you can strike them down in one blow, everything behind them is a deluge of goodness. But emphasizing attack means that sturdy enemies can take their time tearing you apart.
- Comment on Day 599 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing 2 months ago:
On my end, I am playing Soulestination on Novice mode to develop my meta. The idea of the Magic Tower puzzle genre, is that there are finite resources. The order in which you use keys, kill enemies, collect resources, and the application of meta knowledge is fundamental to optimal routing. If you like numbers or exploring possibilities, this genre can be pretty neat.
Unfortunately, Soulestination has a trash translation. I recommend DROD RPG, which is also generally better balanced.
- Comment on there is a special place in hell for these scientists 2 months ago:
As it turns out, Doomguy is a robot clone of BJ Blazkowitz, who was deliberately smuggled onto Mars by scientists who knew about Hell.
- Comment on McDonald’s CEO’s awkward taste test sparks mocking online: ‘His aura screams kale salad’ 2 months ago:
I bought a twin pack of Nutella from Costco. The unopened one developed mold after awhile, but the opened jar in the fridge was just fine. If anything, I was expecting at least the reverse.
- Comment on McDonald’s CEO’s awkward taste test sparks mocking online: ‘His aura screams kale salad’ 2 months ago:
Food lasts way longer than what one would expect. I got a bunch of eggs in the fridge from CostCo from about a year ago. They still taste alright, much to my surprise.
- Comment on McDonald’s CEO’s awkward taste test sparks mocking online: ‘His aura screams kale salad’ 2 months ago:
It should be a rule, that a food executive is required to eat at least seven meals a week from the business they are running. Their attitude about food quality would fundamentally change.
- Comment on 'We Thought It Would Be Fun': Nintendo Has a Whole FAQ on Why It's Selling Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen Separately for $20 Each - IGN 3 months ago:
I liked Nexomon Extinction, and am looking forward to Nexomon 3D.
- Comment on 'We Thought It Would Be Fun': Nintendo Has a Whole FAQ on Why It's Selling Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen Separately for $20 Each - IGN 3 months ago:
$5 for a whole generation of games would be fair…and this certainly isn’t. Wario is the true representative of Nintendo.
- Comment on Two sides to every story 3 months ago:
Therapist: “Another rube to line my pockets…”
- Comment on Is it theoretically possible Trump and ICE are killing a very large number of immigrants (like 25% of those detained) and no one knows? 3 months ago:
My guess is that smaller media are investigating, but quietly. As we have seen in the Caribbean, the Regime is happy to sink “enemies” without warning. Investigators have a real chance of being fed to alligators, if they are caught by ICE.
