squaresinger
@squaresinger@lemmy.world
- Comment on he forgor 17 hours ago:
Friend of mine applied for a job where they asked for at least 5 years of experience with Angular version x.y.z (can’t remember the exact version). The friend responded that he had 10 years of experience with versions x-3 to x+1.
The HR person doing the hiring asked back “But do you have 5 years of experience with the exact version x.y.z?” to which he answered “Version x.y.z has only been out for 3 years so it’s impossible to have 5 years of experience with it.” HR wrote back saying that he was rejected because he didn’t have 5 years of experience of experience with that exact version.
- Comment on Acciracy 1 week ago:
We wasn’t exactly as nice about it as I was lead to believe a Canadian would be.
- Comment on We live in the future! 1 week ago:
Break laws and move things.
- Comment on ESL homework 1 week ago:
You are acting like you deliberately want to be offended.
- Comment on ESL homework 1 week ago:
Which makes my assertion correct.
Can you grow up in Wales never learning Welsh? Yes.
Can you grow up in Wales never learning English?
- Comment on Rayman 30th anniversary has save data bug and Ubisoft support says post launch support has ended 1 week ago:
There’s a ton of precedence for this.
We have accepted that our clothes don’t fit, that our non-fitting shoes ruin our feet, that our furniture all looks the same and doesn’t fit into the spaces we have, that consulting by knowledgeable sales people was replaced by product listings that can’t even reliably tell you if a printer is monochrome or color.
Enshittification is nothing new. It’s something that has been going on for at least the last 70 years.
I mean, just compare the fabric of clothes from 20-30 years ago to new stuff. I still got some clothing from the early 2000s that holds up just fine, while the newer stuff just falls to pieces after a year or so. You can even see that in the marketing. If you look at clothes ads even of cheap brands from the 80s, they all advertise with long-lasting quality. Pretty much no brand does that anymore.
So yes, AI will just make customer support, marketing and software quality way worse and we will just accept that like we have done for the last 70 years.
- Comment on ESL homework 1 week ago:
I’m not argueing that it isn’t the national language. I just said that you could grow up in Wales never learning Welsh, because English is just as much (if not more) the language used in every-day dealings.
That said, the farthest north I have been was Merthyr Tydfil.
At least in the areas I have been in and the time that I lived there, Welsh was a language you had to actively seek out and not a language that was necessary to know if you lived there.
And that’s the point of the 3rd category: That’s the language you need to know to get around well in that country. If you go to the doctor’s, if you want to talk to your coworkers, if you want to make friends with the locals, which language do you need?
I’m from Vienna and it’s a similar thing with the Viennese dialect. While there is a limited revival happening, it’s mostly a cultural relic more than a necessity in every-day life. 70 years ago, if you didn’t speak Viennese you’d be an outcast. Now it’s rare that someone speaks it.
While I was in Wales I got myself Welsh language resources and actively sought out Welsh speakers to try to learn the language, but of all the people I met there, I only met two adults who could fluently speak Welsh. The kids learned it in school as a second language, but by and large the adults didn’t speak it.
- Comment on ESL homework 1 week ago:
I lived in Wales for a year and I managed to learn some very basic Welsh myself. It’s been about 15 years now, but at least back then it was mainly old and very young people who spoke Welsh. Most people aged 20-60 didn’t speak Welsh at all, with the younger ones learning it at school.
But I guess with that generation being up to maybe 35 now, speaking Welsh is likely much more common than it was back then. So yeah, my chart above is likely outdated.
- Comment on ESL homework 1 week ago:
Not any more. It used to be, which is where the term comes from, but it hasn’t been for a long time.
- Comment on ESL homework 1 week ago:
Languages come in tiers. English is the global lingua franca. People use it to speak to anyone, no matter whether English native speaker or not. If someone from Norway wants to talk to someone from Japan, they’ll most likely use English since both of them likely speak it.
Then there’s regional lingua francas, languages like Spanish, Russian or Mandarin. These languages are popular in specific parts of the world and often used to get around there. Someone from Ukraine can speak to someone from Belarus using Russian.
Lastly, there’s local languages that are spoken only in a country (or even only a part of a country). People speak them because that’s what they were grown up with.
So in general, there’s 4 “language slots” of languages people speak:
- The global lingua franca
- The regional lingua franca
- The language of the country they live in
- The language they grew up with
One language can fill multiple slots.
So for example, if you grew up in Ukraine and moved to Germany, you might speak the following languages, according to the slots above:
- English
- Russian
- German
- Ukranian
If you are born in Wales and never moved away, it might look like this:
- English
- English
- English
- Welsh
If you spent your life in the US, it would be like this:
- English
- English
- English
- English
This is the reason why people living in countries with lower-tier languages frequently speak 3-4 languages, while English native speakers really struggle to even learn the basics of one additional language. Because the former group has an actual use for more than one language, while the latter one don’t.
- Comment on Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam? 3 weeks ago:
You have to differentiate between a monopoly in economics and a monopoly in law.
In economics a monopoly is the only seller of a good with no other competition. If I am the only one who owns apple trees, I got a monopoly on apples.
In law a monopoly is someone who owns so much of the market that they can charge unfair prices. If I am the only one who owns large orchards full of the best kind of apple trees, it doesn’t really matter to me that someone else has a couple mediocre trees in their backyard. I am not a economics-monopoly, since someone else is also selling apples, but I hold enough of the market that I can set the price to whatever I want.
(Ok, the analogy isn’t perfect, but you get it, I hope. Basically the “excess market power” thing you talked about is the legal definition of a monopoly.)
Customers don’t necessarily need to be end customers. If steam is charging their business customers too much, that counts too. (It also affects the end customers too, btw.)
So the question is: If I don’t release a game on steam, will that cause it to underperform significantly? If so, does steam charge a lot above market price? If both of these questions are answered with yes, a lawsuit could be successful.
- Comment on in all fairness italian cuisine is a relatively recent invention 4 weeks ago:
Tbh, british food is mostly just salt-deficient. Add salt to it and a lot of it tastes really good.
- Comment on Ubisoft target audience when they play a good game 5 weeks ago:
Tbh, that’s just the difference between someone who has nostalgia for a game and someone who doesn’t.
I played Pokemon Red as a kid. I replayed it dozens of times since and it’s always really fun. Just feels good.
I didn’t play Pokemon Gold as a kid. I tried to play it quite a few times and never got throught it. Objectively, Gold is a much better game than Red in every regard. But I don’t have nostalgia for it, so it’s just an old game with bad UX, outdated gameplay and weak graphics to me. Can’t get through it without getting bored and quitting.
HL2 was revolutionary, 22 years ago. Nowadays it’s just woefully outdated in every respect including gameplay.
As OOP says e.g. about physics: That stuff was amazing in 2004, but it really isn’t in 2026. Almost every shooter includes physics and in many cases better physics than HL2 did. In part because game designers have learned from HL2 and other games and improved upon it.
- Comment on MFW I wake up to find Lemmy feeds full of USA stuff 1 month ago:
I’d be fine with “no US politics”. It’s so annoying that !politcs@lemmy.world is specifically and only about US politics. Because apparently, US politics are the only politics relevant for the world.
- Comment on We all took foreign languages in school and none of us can actually speak those languages 1 month ago:
Yeah, that’s totally true. If you speak Serbian and you move to the Netherlands, nobody would (or could) switch to Serbian for you.
- Comment on We all took foreign languages in school and none of us can actually speak those languages 1 month ago:
That’s why I said, everyone needs (or has incentive to) learn the global lingua franca, the regional lingua franca, the language of the country they live in and their mother tongue.
As someone from the UK living in the Netherlands, these four languages are English, English, Dutch and English, so you’ll likely learn (at least to some degree) two languages.
If you are from the UK and stay in the UK, all four languages are English and thus you likely won’t have a need to ever get to fluency in a second language.
(Of course, there are some special circumstances, e.g. if you are from the UK and live in the UK but work as a French teacher, you do have a need to know French, but I’m talking about the general case.)
- Comment on We all took foreign languages in school and none of us can actually speak those languages 1 month ago:
Speaking multiple languages is a thing because you need it.
Everyone needs to know English, because its the global Lingua Franca. Not only to speak with native English speakers but to speak with everyone. If as an Austrian I speak to someone from China, I will do so in English.
Everyone needs to know the local Lingua Franca, because it’s a massive career help and you will need it quite commonly. That’s why most people in Hungary learn German. They need that all the time, since the economies are tied so closely together.
Everyone needs to learn the language of the country they live in, because only if you know the language you can access the job market and all services without barrier.
Lastly, everyone needs to learn their mother tongue to be able to speak with their family.
If you are from Serbia and move to the Czech Republic, you will learn and frequently use four languages.
If you are from Germany and stay there, you will learn and frequently use two languages.
If you are from the US and stay there, English is the global Lingua Franca, the local Lingua Franca, the language of the country you live in and your mother tongue, and thus you will likely never learn a second language to fluency levels.
- Comment on We all took foreign languages in school and none of us can actually speak those languages 1 month ago:
I can speak English quite well.
- Comment on We all took foreign languages in school and none of us can actually speak those languages 1 month ago:
That’s because of the “language tiers”.
People don’t usually learn languages for fun, at least not to a point where they can actually speak it fluently. They learn it because they have an use for it. If you learn a language without having an use for it, you lose it quite quickly.
The highest tier language is the worldwide lingua franca: English. You learn English to talk to anyone, not to talk to English native speakers. For example, my company (a central European one) uses English as the work language. We don’t have a single English native speaker on the team. But if I want to talk to a colleague from Rumania, Egypt, Spain or the Netherlands I will talk English with them.
The next tier is the regional lingua franca. That’s e.g. Spanish, French, German, Mandarin, Russian or Arabic (and likely a few others, I don’t know the whole world). These languages are spoken in certain regions and can be used to communicate with people from neighbouring countries. You can get around with e.g. German in Hungary, because most Hungarians learn German. It’s also sometimes necessary since TV, books or other media might not be available in the local language. For example, a lot of Albanians speak Italian, because TV shows and movies are rarely translated into Albanian and instead broadcast in Italian. (Also, since Italy was so close, many people watched Italian TV while Albania had communism.)
The lowest tier are local languages. These are languages that are only spoken in their own country. For example: Rumanian, Serbian, Hungarian, Welsh, Gaelic, Dutch and so on. People speak these languages because they live in that country. For someone who doesn’t live in that country, there’s rarely any major benefit to learning these languages.
In general, people only really learn to speak languages that are on the same tier or higher.
If you live in Albania, you learn Albanian as a child, then probably add Italian to understand TV. In school you will learn English and once you go online you will use it. You might also learn Russian to be able to communicate with people in nearby countries and if you are from the muslim part of Albania you might also learn Arabic.
If you live in Germany, you’d just learn German and English. No need for any other languages. If you spend some significant time in France, Spain or Italy, you might pick up one of these languages.
If you live in the US or GB, you start with English, and there’s hardly any point to learn anything else. By default you can already communicate with everyone, read everything on the internet and watch all TV shows and movies (pretty much everything is translated into English, if it isn’t even refilmed in English). If you try to learn another language and try to use it with native speakers of said language, chances are pretty high they just switch over to English.
- Comment on Give me some good ones 1 month ago:
I don’t have one in English, but I have some in German for those who understand.
My Granddad had a female coworker that was higher in rank than him. He would always greet her with “Meine Allerwerteste”. It’s a word play because “Meine Werteste” is equivalent to a very formal version of “my dear”. “Aller” is a superlative form, so basically “My very dearest”. But “Mein Allerwertester” (so the male form of what he used) means “my ass”.
The other one is to use terminology like “Er versucht immer sein Bestes zu geben” (“He always tries to give his best”). In Austria, you are legally allowed to ask for a work testimony from your employer when you are looking for a new job. There is some legislation that prohibits negative speech in these work testimonies so that your employer cannot make you look bad in front of your potential new employer (which makes the whole concept pretty useless, but it is what it is). So to get around that, employers adopted a kind of “secret” code where e.g. “tries to” means “fails to”. So you can use the same kind of terminology to deliver something that sounds like a compliment, but for everyone in the know (which is most people by now) it’s clear that you deeply offended the person you are talking about.
- Comment on Clues by Sam 1 month ago:
I was stuck at the same one.
First take Peter’s hint. It says that one of Sofia and Wanda is innocent, one is criminal. That means in Column B we know there are two innocents, two criminals and Bruce.
Now take Gabe’s hint: there cannot be three criminals in Column B.
If Bruce were criminal, there would be three criminals in Column B, so Bruce cannot be criminal.
- Comment on Clues by Sam 1 month ago:
I was stuck on the same one.
Take Peter’s hint: It says that either Sofia or Wanda are criminals, so there’s exactly 2 confirmed criminals, 2 confirmed innocents and Bruce on Column B.
Now take Gabe’s hint: There cannot be 3 criminals on Column B, so Bruce needs to be innocent.
- Comment on World's Video Game Companies 1 month ago:
According to this source Microsoft has $23B revenue for gaming only.
- Comment on World's Video Game Companies 1 month ago:
Also, I’m not sure if they really fit the bill, since probably most of their revenue comes from providing infrastructure, not games.
- Comment on How Are You Guys Handling This? 1 month ago:
If you are buying new, $575 isn’t going to get you a lot.
But if you buy used and don’t mind lurking on second-hand platforms for a while to find a good deal, you should be able to get something decent for that amount.
- Comment on The Best-Selling Video Games Since 2020 1 month ago:
People look the other way with literally everything.
They happily shop at Amazon, even though they are the modern-day equivalent of slavery.
They play Minecraft even though it’s been developed by a white supremacist.
They use Windows even though Microsoft is complicit in a list of all sorts of horrible things too long to list here.
They use Whatsapp/Facebook/Meta VR even though this corporation has done more for the errosion of democracy than any other entity so far.
They buy Nestle, even though it’s going so far as to cut off local populations from their water supplies.
The list continues on and on. Name a single corporation where people en large have done a real, long-term boycott for moral reasons. The only thing I can think of that kinda happened was when Tesla sales fell a little bit for a few months after Musk did a literal Hitler Salute on the largest stage he could find, but even that wasn’t a lot and it’s pretty much over already.
People, by and large, don’t prioritize morals over comfort. They will always choose the best deal they can get, no matter what the long-term or moral effects are. People who put morals over comfort exist, but they are very rare.
And in most cases, people who shout for boycotts the loudest were never customers to begin with (e.g. me, who has never bought a Tesla, saying I will never buy a Tesla because of Musk. Well, I wouldn’t have bought a Tesla anyway).
- Comment on The Best-Selling Video Games Since 2020 1 month ago:
I guess you don’t care about a lot of the other categories either.
- Rank 1, 8, 11, 14, 15, 16 are developed/published by a patent troll that stifles the whole games industry with frivolous patent suits and milks their audience dry while investing hardly anything into their games.
- Rank 5 and 6 are published by a corporation widely known for their leadership being extremely misogynistic and exploitative.
- Rank 17 is published by a corporation that’s known for being extremely exploitative.
Btw, most of the corporations on the list donated to Trump, spy at their customers, use anti-competitive tactics, overwork and exploit their developers, employ psychologists to squeeze as much money out of vulnerable customers (e.g. those with psychological issues) and so on and so on.
And you apparently don’t care about any of that. The only thing you care about is that a game that actually includes a trans character is based upon a 20-30yo book series that contains no anti-trans content, but was written by an author who later went on to post some anti-trans garbage years after the series was done and dusted.
- Comment on The Best-Selling Video Games Since 2020 1 month ago:
If you ranked by budget, none of them would be on the list either. Monopoly Go would just take up rank 1-20.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s Optimus Robot shuts down after reproducing the gesture of its human operator removing their headset 2 months ago:
What’s being sold is the illusion that the robots are completely autonomous based on AI or something.
Buy it now, get the full AI self-walking update in
twothreesevenfifteensome years.It worked for Tesla cars, so why should the same strategy not work on the same idiots with robots?
- Comment on Women would rather do drugs than go to therapy 2 months ago:
Yeah, that sounds seriosly painful.