SparroHawc

@SparroHawc@lemmy.zip

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The best thing about it was all the functions that existed for string manipulation, since every data record was just a big string with demarcations for columns (and values and subvalues, making it technically a 4D database). You could use it to consume nearly any data format and throw together a quick-and-dirty parser in minutes. Really good for rapid proof-of-concepts, but occasionally challenging to maintain data integrity when you have all the rope in the world to hang yourself with.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Anticompetitive behavior is tolerated much more from companies that aren’t the market leader, and Apple Books is far from the market leader.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  ffs, you do not own the games you bought.

  You haven’t owned the games you buy since software licenses became ubiquitous.

  Any business that has over 4% market rate should be forcibly split.

  My dude, 4% is insanity. If you did that, there would be - at absolute bare minimum - 26 different companies for any given market, including distribution. No one would be able to scale to serve global demand in any way, shape, or form. You’d have to route packages through three different companies in order to get a product to your friend in Switzerland. Any product that got popular would see its parent company split. If someone wrote an OS that was too good and everyone decided it was fantastic, the company would somehow have to split in such a way as to divide the OS share between two companies, which would then negate the point of having the same OS as your buddy.

  The problem isn’t market share, it’s enforced market share. Anti-competitive practices. Lobbying. Buying out competition. These are places that Steam demonstrably is more ethical than its competition.

  All Epic had to do in order to capitalize on Fortnite was to make a launcher that was better than (or at least approaching the quality of) Valve’s. Instead, when the starting gun went off, they started walking backwards.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem is that, allegedly, there are threatening emails from Valve to developers who tried to sell for lower prices on other platforms (NOT Steam keys). If this is true, then there is actual ammunition against Valve.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Switch 2 demand appears to be flagging as Nintendo reportedly lowers production⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I was tempted to get it for the Metroid Prime game, but after reviews (and having to lower my discretionary budget because EVERYTHING COSTS MORE) I’ve decided to hold off. The Mario Mafia is definitely souring my opinion of the Big N, and the fact that their titles practically never go on sale means I wouldn’t buy many games for it anyways. Meanwhile my PC (and by extension my Steam Deck) continues to be my favorite gaming platform.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Conservatives: Libz don't even know what a woman is. Also Conservatives: *constantly engage with purely synthetic creations thinking that they are women.*⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah. My mistake! Learn something new every day…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Conservatives: Libz don't even know what a woman is. Also Conservatives: *constantly engage with purely synthetic creations thinking that they are women.*⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s mirrored. You can tell because the US flag patches are backwards. So it’s actually U.RA.LHY

  …yeah okay, it’s slop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic Games needs Fortnite players to "help pay the bills" as the multi-billion-dollar company raises V-Bucks prices while making Battle Passes and Crew way worse in value⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Their launcher is so bad that I use my web browser instead to get their free games.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I heard you like pointers, so I put pointer to pointer in your pointers⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I love how “Three-Star Programmer” is a perjurative term in C/C++ circles.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨spoopy figs⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You could, but bees overproduce honey. There’s literally no drawbacks to taking the surplus besides maybe preventing the colony from sending off new queens quite as often, and mildly disturbing the hive when it’s done. (A lot of honey bees are pretty chill about it, even without a smoker.)

  I don’t jive with the wing clipping though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plan ahead⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  'Tis such a beautiful day that
  thou wilt not wear undergarments
  in case thou meetest John in the meadow

  Better?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨spoopy figs⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The fact that some vegans think honey is exploitative really says a lot about their lack of knowledge.

  They DO know that if bees don’t like a place, they’ll just … leave, right?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fascism bad.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It may have been for something else, but it’s weirdly applicable here…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Remember when car controls weren't complicated⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem is that it’s fighting against gluing a giant iPad to the dash, which just hides all the complexity behind a pane of glass so that it -looks- simple when the car is off.

  With this setup, once you learn how it works, you can do just about anything with only a cursory glance away from the road to double-check your proprioception.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is a PC gamer⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem is that the crypto miners and AI servers run on purpose-built hardware now that can’t be repurposed for gaming.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Two women, in their own driveway, had assault rifles pointed at them. ICE agents broke their car window with a rifle stock and dragged them out.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  How do you know they don’t regret it? Because they don’t whimper on every comment ‘Oh it was terrible and I wish I had never joined the armed forces’ on every comment about their time there? Don’t presume. Also, ad hominem attacks are dumb and you shouldn’t use them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Two women, in their own driveway, had assault rifles pointed at them. ICE agents broke their car window with a rifle stock and dragged them out.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re just going to insult someone for making a reasoned, informed reply to a comment?

  There are many reasons someone might join the armed forces, and whether or not you are a conscientious objector, you might consider thinking before calling someone a war criminal without knowing what they actually did during their time in the military. Plenty of people went into combat zones without committing any war crimes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cake baking sounds easy until you try it⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Everything reminds me of her…

• ⁨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?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s because they can’t intimidate Bethesda with an email.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨the public demands ANSWERS⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, I’m touching a shark right now. Rubbing it every which way. No direction is off limits. It’s smoother than the finest silks

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do you need a launcher? (asking older gamers actually)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The controller integration is probably the #1 reason I prefer to keep Steam going in the background.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's easy⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay, fair.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's easy⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s…
  That’s literally middle class…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you think Google execs keep a secret un-enshittified version of their search engine and LLM?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some secret Google search engine that still has decent search results instead of the paid-for mess that us plebs get.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trying to find a messenger bag at Amazon⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Amazon is a service. That service is becoming materially worse (I have a harder time finding what I’m looking for because of the flood of substandard products, and even when I do find what I’m looking for, there’s a sizable risk that it’s a fake). This is very much enshittification; they captured the market share, and now they’re squeezing it. Anything that makes them more money but is worse for the consumer, they do. Anything that is better for the consumer but costs them money, they don’t do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trying to find a messenger bag at Amazon⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are two factors necessary for a truly free market that prevent any capitalist system from actually being a free market. They are:

  1. Consumers need to have perfect information about the products and the companies that make and/or sell them.

  2. There needs to be zero friction for new entrants into the marketplace, whether that is from costs to start up a business, or anti-competitive behavior from other companies with money to throw around.

  It is impossible to achieve either of these in the real world.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Personally, I wouldn’t include Proton in the costs of the Steam Machine. The Deck already is benefiting from it immensely, and I would consider it to be a cost of expanding into Linux gaming in general - especially with the Lenovo handheld and other devices starting to jump on the bandwagon as Microsoft continues to take repeated dumps on their userbase. Its R&D costs are being won back by the market % Steam takes on any games bought and played in Linux, which means that it can benefit from that continued revenue stream rather than the one-off hardware sale.

  The hardware has to break even. The software already has.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t forget aggressive rent-seeking behavior.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re buying the parts directly from the manufacturers though, so cutting out the retailer middle-man could offset the R&D costs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We have one at home⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have that and an ‘OnLive founding member’ T-shirt that I wear to tech events. Especially when I suspect there’s going to be something tone-deaf getting launched.