rollin
@rollin@piefed.social
- Comment on Video games, random friend requests, and scammers! 12 hours ago:
I am a bit of a worrier I guess, & overthink things too much. It’s definitely not a crime to send requests to people just after playing online together, actually I think I should probably do it more.
I also like to get friend requests from randos, it helps you get more involved in the game, especially co-op games like DRG. Plus it’s not like there’s a limit to how many friends you can add.
Before writing this post, I realised I’d given away my DOB - first by saying my age, and then when they correctly guessed my star-sign (!), I told them the day & month. That made me worry that maybe I need to be more careful and so posted this here.
- Comment on Video games, random friend requests, and scammers! 15 hours ago:
I do already have a discord account & if that’s all they want to use, it wouldn’t be an issue at all. Only if it’s something weird they want me to install, like Team Viewer or some shit 😅
- Comment on Video games, random friend requests, and scammers! 15 hours ago:
I hadn’t heard of that one, a kind of social engineering attack. Definitely something to keep in mind!
as a result I don’t add randos
This is generally my attitude, and it sucks really that ignoring random friend requests is usually the sensible thing to do. Anyway so far this person does seem to be genuine and hasn’t tried to get me to add a load of their friends or anything like that.
- Comment on Video games, random friend requests, and scammers! 1 day ago:
conceal your IP in non peer to peer games based on the settings under “Steam / Settings / In-Game / Steam Networking”
Good tip thanks! Here’s the Steam page about it. The upshot seems to be that Steam itself won’t reveal your IP to others, but games might depending on how multiplayer is implemented.
“Steam doesn’t share your IP address with other players. Whenever peer-to-peer networking is needed, for example in a voice chat, that communication is always relayed. However, we don’t control what games using peer-to-peer connectivity do.”
- Comment on Video games, random friend requests, and scammers! 1 day ago:
They do appear to be an actual human yes, and one who does enjoy playing online games (because we play together and they are getting on with the game just like every other player). I’ve just looked at their account - thanks for the tip - and while they don’t have loads of games, all appear pretty normal paid-for things, and all are kinda similar in appeal - e.g. The Forest, 7 Days to Die. Actually there are a couple of what could have been giveaways/freebies - but all those have zero hours on.
So that does look very normal lol
- Comment on Video games, random friend requests, and scammers! 1 day ago:
Yeah I am talking with them, they do seem legit so hopefully I’m just being paranoid/overly cautious.
The reason I thought I’d post here is to make sure I’ve not missed something obvious and to understand what the risks are. I guess “something shady” would be asking me to do something weird like install unknown software, or asking lots of personal questions out of the blue.
- Submitted 1 day ago to games@lemmy.world | 18 comments
- Comment on Video game company stock prices dip after Google introduces an AI world-generation tool 1 day ago:
Hey don’t be so quick to dismiss it! The article says that apparently Elon Musk has promised “Real-time, high-quality shows and video games at scale, customized to the individual, next year.”
Next year man! He promised it!! It’s gonna be like, just any game you dream of will be instantly created, exactly matching what you imagined and with fantastic world-building and beautifully complex interwoven story-lines!!! It’s gonna be amazing bro!!!!
- Comment on How to avoid bird droppings while birdwatching 1 week ago:
Where do I purchase whatever this guy was smoking?
- Comment on Keir Starmer abandons plans for compulsory digital ID 2 weeks ago:
Drop the OSA, free all the non-violent protesters, drop the threat to Jury trials, and publicly apologise for being a complete fascist cunt. Then, maybe they deserve a second chance.
- Comment on How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral 3 months ago:
This requires someone to spot the AI stuff, but for less common languages, there are fewer people who even can read an article. Thus AI articles in rare languages are more likely to slip through unchecked, and if other AIs are training themselves on wiki articles, this could cause a feedback loop where rare languages become distorted. Something like that I think, didn’t actually read the article sorry.
- Comment on GOG: We’re thrilled to announce that the Crysis Remastered Trilogy has joined our catalog, and the original Crysis is now part of the GOG Preservation Program! 3 months ago:
Thanks for the info. I’ll look into that. The issue with shutter glasses is, in addition to the wire, the fact that you are only seeing every other frame, alternating in each eye, making the image appear at half brightness. Still workable though, if you’re a 3D fan like me. I had a pair of shutter glasses ages ago, when Nvidia drivers used to support them - you could turn any DirectX game into 3D. VR has surpassed that now, by a long shot. I’ll def look into the projector though, it sounds more practical for watching movies with more than one person.
- Comment on GOG: We’re thrilled to announce that the Crysis Remastered Trilogy has joined our catalog, and the original Crysis is now part of the GOG Preservation Program! 3 months ago:
Projectors still mostly support 3D
These require glasses I assume?
I’m one of the few people who actually love 3D for movies. I’d heard of the TVs but not projectors. I’d watch all movies in 3D if I could, particularly on a large screen like a projector’s. It’s especially great IMO for movies with lots of computer-generated effects - I saw the first Avatar in 3D at an IMAX and it was amazing. - Comment on Parental controls on children’s tech devices are out of touch with child’s play 5 months ago:
The other approach is not to try to block out all non-approved internet sources, and instead teach your child about the dangers out there, and how to handle them.
If a young child becomes addicted to online porn for instance, it's an indication of deeper issues and it seems to be missing the point to put the blame on network operators for not blocking children effectively enough. I don't think a healthy well developed child would become addicted to porn in the first place.
That's the real challenge for parents: they don't need to be a part-time network über-wizard but rather a stable trustworthy figure for their children to rely on and who can guide them through the often difficult journey of growing up.
- Comment on Labour to abolish most short prison sentences in England and Wales 5 months ago:
Community service is a classic punishment which I think makes good sense for nonviolent crime.
It should be a good option, but it's more difficult to run effectively than it might appear. The ideal would be for it not to be purely punitive, but to offer in itself some level of rehabilitation. For instance, a bike thief might be sentenced to helping out in a community bike workshop, or someone who committed low-level fraud might be required to help poor people manage their finances.
At the moment the reality is quite different I think, and people end up being sentenced to pointless busywork. I know someone who was given a community sentence for fighting and he described it as a bit of a joke. Every Saturday, they were supposed to clean up litter from grass verges, but the main issue was no one wanted to be there, not least the supervisor. So they'd generally just mess around for a bit and go home early.
- Comment on 5 months ago:
If it was in Europe, people being made redundant are typically given several months pay, but it's America so he probably just got a t-shirt and a cardboard box.
- Comment on AGI is not coming! - Yanick Kilcher 5 months ago:
Intelligence and consciousness are not related in the way you seem to think.
We've always known that you can have consciousness without a high level of intelligence (think of children, people with certain types of brain damage), and now for the first time, LLMs show us that you can have intelligence without consciousness.
It's naive to think that as we continue to develop intelligent machines, suddenly one of them will become conscious once it reaches a particular level of intelligence. Did you suddenly become conscious once you hit the age of 14 or whatever and had finally developed a deep enough understanding of trigonometry or a solid enough grasp of the works of Mark Twain? No of course not, you became conscious at a very early age, when even a basic computer program could outsmart you, and you developed intelligence quite independently.
- Comment on AGI is not coming! - Yanick Kilcher 5 months ago:
I did say that I don't
- Comment on AGI is not coming! - Yanick Kilcher 5 months ago:
I think current LLMs are already intelligent. I'd also say cats, mice, fish, birds are intelligent - to varying degrees of course.
I'd like to see examples of LLMs paired with sensorimotor systems, if you know of any
If you're referring to my comment about hobbyist projects, I was just thinking of the sorts of things you'll find on a search of sites like YouTube, perhaps this one is a good example (but I haven't watched it as I'm avoiding YouTube). I don't know if anyone has tried to incorporate a "learning to walk" type of stage into LLM training, but my point is that it would be perfectly possible, if there were reason to think it would give the LLM an edge.
The matter of how intelligent humans are is another question, and relevant because AFAIK when people talk about AGI now, they're talking about an AI that can do better on average than a typical human at any arbitrary task. It's not a particularly high bar, we're not talking about super-intelligence I don't think.
- Comment on AGI is not coming! - Yanick Kilcher 5 months ago:
thanks for this very yummy response. I'm having to read up about the technicalities you're touching on so bear with me!
According to wiki, the neocortex is only present in mammals but as I'm sure you're aware mammals are not the only creatures to exhibit intelligence. Are you arguing that only mammals are capable of "general intelligence"? I can get on board with what you're saying as *one way* to develop AGI - work out how brains do it and then copy that - but I don't think it's a given that that is the *only* way to AGI, even if we were to agree that only animals with a neocortex can have "general intelligence". Hence the fact that a given class of machine architecture does not replicate a neocortex would not in my mind make that architecture incapable of ever achieving AGI.
As for your point about the importance of sensorimotor integration, I don't see that being problematic for any kind of modern computer software - we can easily hook up any number of sensors to a computer, and likewise we can hook the computer up to electric motors, servos and so on. We could easily "install" an LLM inside a robot and allow it to control the robot's movement based on the sensor data. Hobbyists have done this already, many times, and it would not be hard to add a sensorimotor stage to an LLM's training.
I do like what you're saying and find it interesting and thought-provoking. It's just that what you've said hasn't convinced me that LLMs are incapable of ever achieving AGI for those reasons. I'm not of the view that LLMs *are* capable of AGI though, it's more like something that I don't personally feel well enough informed upon to have a firm view. It does seem unlikely to me that we've currently reached the limits of what LLMs are capable of, but who knows.
- Comment on AGI is not coming! - Yanick Kilcher 5 months ago:
because they are non-sensing, stationary, and fundamentally not thinking
I don't follow, why would a machine need to be able to move or have its own sensors in order to be AGI? And can you define what you mean by "thinking"?
- Comment on Man carrying home his gardening tools arrested by armed police in Manchester 5 months ago:
Well. Some of those chaps were carrying knives - without a licence - so we had no choice really.
- Comment on Man carrying home his gardening tools arrested by armed police in Manchester 5 months ago:
Is violent knife crime a thing over there?
yes we've had spikes of knife attacks over recent years, a lot of it is gang related, with kids stabbing rival gang members in tit-for-tat spirals of violence.
Knife crime in general is nowhere near as bad as it is in America (and of course as you point out you guys have gun violence on top of that), but the UK is historically a peaceful country and our tolerance of friends and family being murdered in the street is a lot lower than yours.