Infrapink
@Infrapink@thebrainbin.org
Hi, I'm Infrapink! I used to be @infrapink, but that instance is down. I'm also @infrapink and @infrapink
- Comment on Is there a website that can tell you the new names to I guess "classify" people? Like the R word, or the N word or skin color or nationaility? For ex. Is African American still acceptable and so forth 2 days ago:
He's an Indian American. An American Indian would be an Indian of American descent.
- Comment on Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Cons Officially Have A Pay-To-Press Button 3 days ago:
But you can rebind it.
System settings -> Accessibility -> Button mapping.
- Comment on Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Cons Officially Have A Pay-To-Press Button 3 days ago:
Get out of here with your facts and rational thought, if Nintendo does something it's automatically uniquely bad.
- Comment on is there any language that doesn't have four basic directions? 1 week ago:
That's Guugu Yimithirr, spoken by the Aboriginal Australian nation of the same name.
- Comment on Why can't I change the terms and conditions in a pre-signed contract with a corpo? 2 weeks ago:
I can't find it, but I seem to recall back in the day this one absolute legend of a chanced got a contract from his bank. He wrote a new contract, which he carefully designed to be visually similar to the one he received, but which gave him incredibly favourable terms with massive penalty fees on the bank should they try to renege on it. Nobody at the bank noticed the signed contract wasn't the one they had sent out, leaving them on the hook. And since they had freely agreed to it, a judge ruled it was valid and enforceable.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to [deleted] | 4 comments
- Comment on Lemmy or Piefed? 2 weeks ago:
Oh wow, I thought I was the only mbinaut here.
- Comment on The hill I will die on: Games are the opposite of fun, and I’d ban them for anyone over 12 | Emily Watkins 2 weeks ago:
Watkins is specifically complaining about people playing games socially.
She also isn't talking about video games. She's talking about physical sports, card games, parlour games, and pub quizzes.
It's also absurd ragebait.
- Comment on The hill I will die on: Games are the opposite of fun, and I’d ban them for anyone over 12 | Emily Watkins 2 weeks ago:
Wine is a grown-up thing for grown-ups, don't you know.
- Comment on Sony doubles down. Only responds to their investors, not the consumers. I've never bought a digital console title. That will continue. 2 weeks ago:
Of course Apple weren't thinking about video games. But they still dropped optical drives, which led to everyone else dropping optical drives, hence no more physical PC games.
- Comment on Sony doubles down. Only responds to their investors, not the consumers. I've never bought a digital console title. That will continue. 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, I have a copy of Half-Life: Blue Shift on CD somewhere, from before Steam was a thing.
Two things happened in parallel. This wasn't a conspiracy and there was no collusion, it was just businessmen making canny decisions which worked out. Fair warning, this post is longer than I expected.
In 1998, Apple released the iMac, the first PC without a floppy drive. In 2008, they released the MacBook Air, the first PC without an optical disc drive, for the sake of making it really really thin. A few subsequent Macs did have optical drives, but the last one was the MacBook Pro, released in 2012. On both occasions, people predicted that Apple was DOOMED, because who would want to buy a PC without basic hardware?
But people did. Some people depend on Mac-exclusive software, and come Apple fans are just cultists. In any case, removing components didn't adversely affect sales, and so other companies concluded they could make cheaper PCs by dropping floppy drives and optical drives, which they did. As such, you can't get a computer with a floppy drive at all any more; you can get one with an optical drive, but you have to know where to look and specifically ask for one.
Meanwhile, Valve were doing pretty well with Half-Life and its expansions. Releasing updates and patches was very much a fuck at the time, because Windows didn't have a package manager (and I'm not sure it has one even today). Valve's programmers started work on Steam initially as a way to distribute updates easily and automatically, but its potential as a DRM system quickly became apparent.
In 2004, Valve released their long-awaited and highly-anticipated new game, Half-Life 2 both physically and digitally... and all versions required Steam. No, you couldn't just put the DVD you owned into your PC, install the game, and play it. You needed to also install Valve's own DRM system, which would regularly call home, in order to play a copy of a game you physically own.
(Pedants and lawyers will say you only license, not own, the game on the DVD. This is true. However, you do own the DVD that the game is on. You don't own the game itself, but you do own that specific copy of it).
People hated this. PC gamers already found it intolerable that they had to have the CD in the drive to play games they owned as if it was a PlayStation, but having to register over the Internet? That was a bridge too far!... but this was Half-Life 2, and gamers™ will talk a big game about boycotting up until it's time to actually boycott. Everybody wanted to play Half-Life 2, because it's the sequel to one of the best, most influential games ever made, and it honestly really did live up to the hype. So they sucked it up, installed Steam, and had a blast with Half-Life 2. Steam also had a storefront grafted on top, allowing people to buy Valve's back catalogue through it, and would also serve as
The next year, Valve figured that hey, if they can sell their own games, why not those of other devs? So they started selling a selection of smaller games, and this is what really led to indie games becoming viable. Without the expense of packaging and distribution, smaller groups and solo devs were able to release smaller, cheaper, and more niche games and passion projects that didn't need to sell like gangbusters to make a profit without having to set up and maintain their own online shops. Steam became the standard vector for selling indie games, and over time, bigger and bigger games started being sold on Steam until it morphed from a major shop into infrastructure. It's no longer just a shop/DRM system, it's now The Thing That People Use For PC Games.
Just three years after Steam started selling third-party games, Apple started phasing out optical drives. Two years after the MacBook Air, Valve released Steam on Mac. As Steam grew and expanded, PCs with optical drives faded away, leaving PC gamers with no choice but to buy digitally, and that meant using Steam, which [https://www.xda-developers.com/valve-steam-monopoly-real-gamers-chose/](does have a monopoly in the PC gaming space).
And that is how the independent parallel actions of Apple and Valve killed physical PC gaming.
- Comment on Sony doubles down. Only responds to their investors, not the consumers. I've never bought a digital console title. That will continue. 2 weeks ago:
Yes, Apple were the first to make PCs without floppy drives, and also the first to make them without optical drives. Mac users kept buying Macs; other PC manufacturers saw that people were willing to buy PCs without optical drives, so they copied Apple, and now you can't buy any PC software (including games) physically.
- Comment on Sony doubles down. Only responds to their investors, not the consumers. I've never bought a digital console title. That will continue. 2 weeks ago:
We used to be able to do that with PC games, too. But then Valve and Apple killed physical PC games.
- Comment on When Stephen Colbert had The Colbert Report did the right ever realize he was doing a parody of them? 3 weeks ago:
A few thought he was serious. Most understood he was making fun of them. Some thought he was making fun if how liberals and lefties view the right.
- Comment on Why does Australia tend to ban or censor video games? 3 weeks ago:
Australia was historically a smaller market that is physically far away from America and ( and had fewer trade links with Japan). Australian TVs were PAL while America and Japan used NTSC, which added a whole other layer of complexity. This meant that PAL production lines were geared towards the European market, with Australia getting the excess. Those copies then had to be shipped across the Pacific Ocean, which is expensive. Combine a smaller, lower-priority market with longer, more complex shipping, and manufacturers charged more to make a profit. This set a standard price for Australia which persists even today.
- Comment on Just got arrested for a supposed DWI even though I blew a 0.0000000. Don't cops need to read your Miranda rights to you? I asked for a blood or hair follicle test and I was denied. WTH is happening? 3 weeks ago:
Others have answered the questions about getting arrested. Here's a specific answer about Miranda rights.
Miranda rights are not read to you when you are pulled over on suspicion of breaking the law. They are read to you when you are being formally interrogated. Ask "Am I being detained?" or "Am I being interrogated?" If they say "no", keep quiet. If they say "yes", that's when they are required to read you your rights, at which point you say "I want to speak to my lawyer".
- Comment on Nintendo Responds To Tariff Refunds Lawsuit, Tells Customers They "Got What They Bargained For" 4 weeks ago:
You are consistent and I respect that.
- Comment on Is a black hole spherical? How come it looks different each way you view it like on it's side or up and down? 4 weeks ago:
Mu.
This answer is based on watching a bunch of PBS Spacetime videos. I am not remotely an astrophysicist.
When you delve into black holes, the concept of "sphere" eventually becomes ambiguous. A black hole is an infinitely-dense region of spacetime, called a singularity, which has only three properties: mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.
What most people think of as a black hole is a region bounded by the event horizon. The event horizon isn't an actual thing, it's a mathematically-defined radius around the singularity. You would no more notice crossing the event horizon than you would crossing the boundary of a timezone on Earth. If the black hole's angular momentum is 0, then the event horizon forms a sphere, because all points on the event horizon are by definition the same distance from the singularity.
But things get weird when the black hole is rotating. Because of some stuff I don't quite understand, rotation causes the singularity to turn into a ring rather than a point, so you could theoretically drive a spaceship through the hole in the middle (you could not actually do this because by the time you get there your spaceship will have been vaporised by the accretion disk and torn apart by gravity). In this case, the event horizon forms a sphere that is squashed along its axis of rotation, kind of like Earth.
But black holes are weirder still! Scientists say that they break physics, but it's even more fundamental than that. A bit below the event horizon, time and space themselves swap, so that the singularity changes from a point of irresistible attraction to an inevitable point in the future. The maths suggests that, if you were to hit the singularity, you(re atoms) would emerge in a universe with time instead of space and space instead of time.
It's bizarre is what I'm saying.
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to [deleted] | 15 comments
- Comment on Why are so many new programming languages being developed? 4 weeks ago:
A thin, bedraggled stranger came to the Temple one night and asked for master Kaimu. The master was roused and brought to the gate, whereupon the stranger said:
“For years I have wandered this pitiless land, seeking the perfect programming language. Name any one and I’ve given it a go, be it fast or slow, high-level or low, from Ada to Zeno. But whatever the pluses there are minuses too, so I pack my things and hit the road again—which in this case led me to your door.”
Kaimu asked the stranger to describe the language of his heart’s desire.
“It must be suitable enterprise-wide,” the stranger replied, “client-side and server-side, in scripting, in shells and in spreadsheet cells. I need it real-time, multi-threaded and optionally object-oriented; with garbage collection, deadlock detection, custom exceptions, auto-resizing arrays of things and regular expressions for matching strings. I want the simplicity of BASIC, the purity of Smalltalk, the brevity of Haskell, the speed of C, the consistency of Lisp, the readability of Python, the flexibility of Perl, and the portability of... Java, I guess, but with native code bindings that aren’t a mess.”
“Then tomorrow morning we shall assist you as best we can,” said Kaimu. “But tonight you must spend in the carpenter’s shed below the south wall.”
The stranger bowed and departed to make his bed amid sawdust and wood shavings. As Kaimu left for his own chambers a monk asked, “What is your design for him?”
“When dawn breaks,” replied the master, “our guest will see that on the walls of that shed are arrayed ten thousand tools, each crafted to serve a unique purpose. No one would mistake the hammer for the chisel, and no true carpenter would renounce one for the other.”
At the sun’s first light the stranger returned to the Temple gate, there to be greeted again by Kaimu and the monk.
“Do you still seek your heart’s desire?” asked Kaimu.
“No!” replied the stranger. “For in the shed I found a most marvelous dagger, no larger than my hand, whose hilt opened to reveal the most wonderous things: tweezers and toothpicks, pliers and drill-bits, wrenches and reamers and rulers and tiny blades too numerous to count! Holding it I understood that my destiny is to fashion the thing I have sought for—a language made of other languages, a tool to end the need for other tools!”
And with that the stranger bowed and departed.
The monk turned to Kaimu, whose jaw had gone somewhat slack. “What do the annals say on the subject of the Misunderstood Lesson?”
“That it too brings wisdom,” said the master, “If only to the hapless teacher. No doubt I would have been twice as effective had I been half as clever.”
“And what of the stranger?” asked the monk. “Surely he will fail in his endeavor, for that knife he prizes holds neither hammer nor chisel. And should he partly succeed then all the worse, for he will have added yet another language to a world that already drowns in confusion.”
“Let him try, and good fortune to him!” said Kaimu. “If not for fools of his fashion, we would not have Perl or Python, Bourne shell or Tcl, and the world would be a poorer place. I only grieve that you and I are not such fools, for since we will never attempt the impossible, we can never hope to achieve it.”
Thus master and monk left the gate, and went in to the Temple together to greet the morning.
--ibid
- Comment on Why are so many new programming languages being developed? 4 weeks ago:
A novice asked Java master Banzen, “What is the most perfect programming language?”
The master answered, “The one which accomplishes the desired task with the least effort expended by the user.”
The novice asked, “Is there a language which exceeds all others in this regard?”
The master answered, “Build me a garden of ten thousand stones!”
--From The Codeless Code - Comment on Which movie have you seen where an actor started as an extra prior to becoming famous? 4 weeks ago:
Jackie Chan is an unnamed martial arts student in Fist of Fury and a random mook who gets killed by Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. He mostly worked as a stunt double at the time, and was so good at stunt work he transitioned into credited performance.
- Comment on Weapons for defense only 5 weeks ago:
"An atom-blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways." — Salvor Hardin, The Merchant Princes (Isaac Asimov, 1944)
- Comment on What is with America and the #9? For example stuff cost something like 9.99 or 3 payments of 39.99 or 9 out of 10 doctors or dentists or whomever agree? 5 weeks ago:
I was sceptical about psychological pricing until I worked at a call centre and had this conversation multiple times a week.
Caller: Why is my bill £10 higher this month?
Me: I see you made a £2 call to a premium rate number
Caller: That's only £2.
Me: Yes, your bill is normally £19.99 a month. Add on the £2 and you get £21.99, which is what you paid this month.
Caller: (notices the other digits) Oh, so it is. - Comment on Xbox needs to make a choice, says former PlayStation leader Shawn Layden: be a publisher or a platform, but you can't be both 5 weeks ago:
Back in the 1970s, ActiVision sued Atari for the right to be a publisher but not a platform. The idea of being a publisher but not a platform was a new idea at the time.
But most gaming companies aren't, and have never been, platforms. The exceptions are Atari, Mattel, Commodore, Nintendo, Sega, SNK, Hudson Soft, Sony, Microsoft, Steam, and CD Projekt.
- Comment on Has there ever been a game whose name was intentionally suffixed with "2" despite no original game? lol 5 weeks ago:
Atari released Sprint 2 in arcades in 1976. It was followed by Sprint 4 and Sprint 8 in 1977, and then Sprint One in 1978.
In this case, the numbers refer to the number of concurrent players, not the order of release.
- Comment on Number of hours you need to work to buy GTA VI around the world 1 month ago:
Initial thought: My country is looking pretty good, quite a bit better than the Brits!
But then @plyth pointed out that the numbers of Russia and Türkiye are drastically different between the Euope and Asia maps, so I decided to do a bit of digging.
The Europe map just says they used "a mathematical formula that determines the working time", but the other maps indicate they used the median income rather than minimum wage, so let's go with that.
According to the Central Statistics Office, median weekly income in the first three months of 2026 AD was €1074.61, which works out to €26.87 an hour assuming a person gets paid for 40 hours each week. €26.87/hr * 2.19hr/GTA6 = €58.83/GTA6). Which, uh, considering GTA6 is going to cost €79.99, either these people aren't using the median. Someone earning the actual median wage would need to work just shy of three hours to afford 1 GTA6, and that's not taking taxes into account.
All right, let's check the UK. According to the House of Commons Library, the median weekly income is £767, which for a 40-hour week works out to £19.18 (that's €22.38, which is a fair bit lower than the Irish median. I wonder if Brexit has something to do with this). If the map is using median income and ignoring taxes, it means that GTA6 will cost £95.68 in the UK, which it fucking won't (because it's €111.62). The BBC reports that it will cost £70, which is about normal; the UK price is normally computed by taking the cost in yankeebucks, applying an exchange rate of 0.9 English lira per yankeebuck, rounding it to the nearest £10, and subtracting 1p. At the actual price, the map indicates that the median income in the UK is £14.03 an hour, which is just £1.32 above the minimum wage for people over 20.
(Some of the above figures have a discrepancy of 1% of the unit of currency due to rounding).
So yeah, I have no idea where these people are getting their numbers from or what maths they're doing.
- Comment on Number of hours you need to work to buy GTA VI around the world 1 month ago:
It's going to be €80.
- Comment on Physical disc production ending in January 2028 for new games releasing on PlayStation consoles 1 month ago:
yet all of the comments below their post prefer physical
Comment sections are not a representative sample. These are people who actively follow Sony news and care enough about physical media to leave angry comments.
I prefer physical media myself because I'm a middle-aged fogey, but if you want to see how PlayStation players as a whole are buying games, you have to look at Sony's financials. Since Sony are a publicly traded company, those are publicly available
The relevant data is on page 12 of this supplemental document
In FY 2025, Sony made G¥121,159 on physical game sales and G¥949,799 on digital game sales. Those numbers exclude DLC, which is listed separately (and combined with lootboxes). In short, Sony make 7.8 times as much on sales of digital games (excluding DLC and microtransactions!) as they do on physical games. To put it another way, physical game sales make up just 11% of Sony's revenue from game sales (again, excluding DLC and microtransactions). And that figure has been trending downward ever since the PS3.
The obvious caveat here is that lots of indie games never get physical releases, which skews the ratio toward digital. That's true, but the same page of the document shows that of games that get physical releases, 76% of sales are still digital.
The fact of the matter is we're a dying breed. Most people today either prefer the convenience of digital games or are just indifferent. Comment sections may say one thing, but actual data shows a massive trend toward digital games.
- Comment on Physical disc production ending in January 2028 for new games releasing on PlayStation consoles 1 month ago:
I'm mostly just surprised that Microsoft didn't do it before Sony.