cerebralhawks

@cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why I uninstalled ublock origin, this is WAY better!!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago⁩:

  Watched this and I agree with him. I’ve disabled (not uninstalled!) uBlock Origin and installed Ad Nauseum on both my home computers. At work I still use uBlock Origin since our data is limited (and we have a lot of computers online) so I try to work to reduce my bandwidth usage where I can. uBO helps with that. AN does not.

  At home though, I’m on gigabit cable and it’s only my wife and I, so no worries there.

  I like what he says about ad blockers just making advertisers shift tactics while spending some high amount on ads and getting a $0 ROI will make them think twice about how ads are done.

  I think, if you’re looking at the bigger picture, this more direct attack on ads will lead to more sites being paywalled. I’ve never seen paid search until 2025, and I’ve been online since 1994. AltaVista, Yahoo, and later Google were always free. But now you have search companies saying “pay us and we won’t track you, since we will be working for you.” I think in this day and age we’re already subscribing to so many things that the free options will continue to be good enough, but Proton has the right idea, bundling a lot of services people might want to use, like email and VPN and storage. They may not be the best at any of those things, but they are pretty good and they want you to be the customer rather than data brokers being the customer and you being the product, and I think that is admirable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘We had to stop focusing on those who hated us’: Ubisoft says it won the battle against Assassin’s Creed Shadows backlash [VGC]⁩ ⁨⁨56⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh yeah, I heard people didn’t like the idea of a Black guy in the Japanese AC game. Is that the one Shadows was? So yeah, that person may not have existed in history. Then again, neither did Robin Hood. Stories don’t need to be based in fact, and as much as the original Assassin’s Creed was all about historical accuracy, the whole Animus thing placed the game entirely within the realm of fiction and fantasy, which tells me any artistic liberties they take with the history you dive into is A-OK in my book! So I don’t care if that guy existed IRL or not. I was intrigued by the idea of a Japanese AC game… but put off by the developer.

  And racists are idiots, just, full stop on that count.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Three prisoners charged with murder of child killer Kyle Bevan⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Charged? From the article, it seems like they should be given awards!

  The guy beat a 2 year old girl to death, systematically torturing the toddler over six hours. Who does that? Someone who shouldn’t be breathing, even in jail.

  I identify as a humanist, and I shouldn’t be saying I support bad people being killed, but if a person is so far gone that they lack any kind of humanity whatsoever… then they don’t qualify. A mere difference in opinion does not qualify that, it’s the act and the choice of doing something that terrible to someone that small and helpless and likely enjoying it that disqualifies the individual from humanity and the sympathy or empathy of humans. Like how we all basically love dogs until one mauls a baby, then that dog has to be put down, because that’s not “Man’s Best Friend,” that’s a predator that is out to do harm and you have to stop it before it does it again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘We had to stop focusing on those who hated us’: Ubisoft says it won the battle against Assassin’s Creed Shadows backlash [VGC]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Cool, but I wish they’d look at why people hate them, ignore the bullshit reasons, and focus on the good points — and work to improve them.

  I haven’t cared about Assassin’s Creed since the first one. The fights are like playing Guitar Hero blindfolded, but on Expert, except if you fail, you die and have to start over. QTEs where you can’t even see the prompts are dumb. They had a cool vision for the game, but the actual implementation sucked.

  Another game, I forget which one, had forced inverted X-axis and you couldn’t un-invert it. Bonus, the Y axis couldn’t be inverted like I like. So the game was completely unplayable.

  I feel like they don’t give a shit about gamers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If animals could speak English in what foreign accent do you think that a certain species would certainly have ?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would expect roos to sound very stereotypically Aussie.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If animals could speak English in what foreign accent do you think that a certain species would certainly have ?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Bears might sound like Nick Offerman (Ron from Parks & Rec)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's your favorite case of a game making fun of you?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The “Plenty of Fish in the Sea” achievement.

  In Shadow Complex, a shameless ripoff of Super Metroid in its game mechanics, you play a guy who drives a girl out to a remote location in the Pacific Northwest and she gets kidnapped by a military organisation. You’re cut off from your vehicle, but fairly early on in the game you are able to return to the start point. You are able to get in the car and drive away and an achievement pops saying “Plenty of Fish in the Sea.” So you win but your guy gives up on his girl, leaving her to her fate.

  Hack/NetHack had a similar thing where you could just leave without completing the main objective (retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, which has a random chance of appearing at the 35th level and below, and make it back out with the Amulet). I remember it saying something snarky on the Amiga version, but I don’t recall exactly what. Like it said you went on to live a boring life or something like that. Any time you felt like you were locked out of the objective or outnumbered by enemies without the means to fight through them, you could backtrack and leave (though, things like disease, hunger, and thirst could take you before you got out) and you’d “win” (as in, you get to keep living).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I figure it’s either because they don’t think joking about human rights is funny, and/or satire is a form of protest. Like there’s nothing funny about treating people as equals despite them being gay or having brown skin or calling their god something like Allah (Arabic for god), or that people should be able to eat.

  I do think comedians have clowned on the Democrats for pushing Bernie out in favour of Hillary Clinton. There’s a funny joke about Hillary Clinton that goes something like, Bill and Hillary are traveling through Arkansas (where Bill is from and was governor) and after leaving a service station, Hillary confides in Bill that she used to sleep with the service station attendant. Bill says “yeah imagine where you’d be if you wound up with him,” to which she replies, “yeah he’d have been president,” implying that Hillary was the kingmaker and Bill’s charm alone wouldn’t have gotten him elected. So even the shitty way I told it, I think it’s pretty funny, but I’ve heard it told better. I’m just not a comedian.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are Michelin Stars so highly revered when they originated from a tyre company?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  And tyres aren’t cheap, which was the whole point. The Michelin Stars program was to show you what was worth wearing out your tyres more for as opposed to local stuff.

  I would always advocate for finding local businesses to support, but that wouldn’t help a tyre company sell more tyres, now would it?

  As for why other tyre companies didn’t do it, they didn’t need to. You don’t need to buy Michelin tyres to visit restaurants awarded Michelin Stars. The restaurant doesn’t check. They don’t even care. It’s not about the tyre brand for them. Certainly people with other tyre brands will go to places with Michelin Stars… but if you can’t afford Michelin tyres, you probably can’t afford to eat at places with Michelin Stars, either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When kids come trick-or-treating, what happens if I choose trick?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I grew up in the 80s and we never had any tricks. Older generations did, it wasn’t nice. Like they’d break stuff. Decorations, pumpkins, nothing major. But we never did

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My friend got hacked and of course microsoft will not even try to help⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  They tell you to just pay again because most people will. Most people will just roll over and put up with their shit.

  Not that I care about Minecraft, but it’s been out like 15 years and it hasn’t come down in price. What are they still paying for with its sales? It’s straight profit at this point. They could comp the guy a key and they would lose absolutely nothing and only gain goodwill, but they know people are hooked on it and will just pay again. Or at least enough people will just pay again to cover the few who won’t.

  If your x86-64 machine still runs well, dump Windows and put Linux on it. If it’s starting to show its age, consider the Mac mini. $500 gets you a lot of power. If you do buy another machine capable of running Windows, don’t buy a pre-built one that comes with a Windows license. Either build, or find a seller that doesn’t include the OS or doesn’t include a Windows license. Hell, even consider a used business workstation. They’ll take the volume license for Windows off of it (it probably wasn’t capable of running Windows 11) and you can put Linux on that. If you’re intimidated by Linux, Mac is super easy, but the truth is… so is Linux. Start with Ubuntu, it’s dead simple, and if you really like the way Windows looks and feels, start with something running KDE. I recommend Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE instead of GNOME) but Linux Mint is pretty popular too, and that uses KDE by default. And KDE is more than “the Windows-like frontend.” It’s actually a lot nicer than that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Judge Skeptical Over Trump Administration Decision to Suspend Food Stamps⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s the idea. The plan is basically, starve the poor, wait for violence, declare martial law, suspend elections.

  They’re deathly afraid they will be voted out — at this point, they probably can’t recover from this. So they’re moving to ensure they can’t be voted out.

  They also have an exit strategy in case it doesn’t pan out. But at this point they are going full steam ahead with their plan.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Never buying milk from Walmart again⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah that’s what I’m saying. We have the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) which is supposed to look out for us on things like that. But they can’t be trusted, especially under Trump.

  So, for all the bad things you’ve heard about Trump, not being an American — he does tend to have a certain pattern to who he places in charge of what organisation. For example the FCC (Federal Communications… Commission? Council?), he appointed a former Verizon (national mobile carrier) executive, someone who would regulate in favour of business. So if he installed someone at the FDA, they’d likely be a former Walmart executive — not very keen on enforcing Walmart’s lax expiration dates!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Never buying milk from Walmart again⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Walmart milk expires a few days before the date. Been that way for a while. Some agency should look into it. I mean under a less fascist regime

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft's decision to axe Windows 10 is driving Apple PC sales growth — users buy Macs instead of AI PCs despite Microsoft’s push for Copilot+ PCs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s really no good reason to buy a new laptop that isn’t a MacBook. If you’re gaming on a laptop you have no real good options. None of them are real portable laptops, they’re desktop replacements and they’re just worse than a desktop in every way and cost more. Unless you’re streaming (e.g. GeForce Now) and then you can do that on a MacBook. I don’t think Macs lead laptops in affordability, but the value is there — they last for years, and they last a long time on a charge. And hey, I can run Cyberpunk on mine, so that’s neat.

  For a desktop, it’s a bit dicier. It’s hard to argue with the M4 Mac mini at $500, with 16GB RAM, but I think you can do a little better with miniature PCs. I don’t think $500 of PC beats the M4 Mac mini though, I’m just saying you can get one cheaper. Like there are mini PCs on Amazon for like $200-300 that look decent for most of what the Mac mini does. They do tend to come with Windows, but you can easily put Linux on it and then I can’t say anything about Windows and its bullshit.

  Honestly, if you’re not a gamer, consider a Mac. It’s nice over here. Just go to an Apple Store and play with one. They’ll let you. Best Buy has them too. And if someone does come up, don’t worry, they aren’t pushy, I don’t think they get commissions, or at least they don’t act like they do. Feel free to tell them what you want out of a computer. See what they have to offer. I just think it’s a cleaner OS, and as someone who has 30+ years of Windows experience, I’ve been a Mac user a little over 2 years, and I took right to it, and I love it. It really is joyous to use. But they’re more for creative types, and not really for gamers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition - Reveal Trailer⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  According to the Nintendo community here, it is.

  I just warned them of how the next-gen patch broke the game on consoles and Bethesda refused to fix it even after modders showed them how. Did they ever fix it? It was so bad that some stores (like GOG) refused to carry the next-gen patch, or at least they made it optional. I still have Fallout 4 SPECIAL pre-next-gen. And I can play it on Mac. ;) (I also own it on Xbox, but it’s unplayable there.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Everyone Who Worked On A Video Game Needs To Be In The Credits [Aftermath]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes.

  But let’s be real, most of us aren’t going to read all of them.

  I really tried with Cyberpunk. I love that game. But the credits just went on and on and on and…

  I did it with Animal Crossing though! But every time I ask K.K. Slider to play a song, the credits roll. And there’s an achievement for doing it 50 times. It takes a year. He shows up once a week. I mean it takes a year if you play Animal Crossing every Saturday after 6pm.

  I can’t wait to roll credits on Blue Prince. One dude made that game. Like Stardew Valley.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox ditching hardware and exclusive games "makes sense," former Microsoft exec and Blizzard boss says, as "only a moron would continue" making consoles as games go third party⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Apple announced the transition in 2005 but began using Intel chips in 2006, but still, PowerPC is best known as the chips that powered Macs for a little over a decade.

  I’m not the person you responded to — I actually did not know that the Wii U used PowerPC. I did know that the Xbox 360 did and have made that argument.

  It’s a big egregious to call it a Mac (though I do, mostly in jest), but, that is the connection.

  Of note, the PowerPC chips were made by IBM (and Motorola according to the article I linked — I did not know that before). So, a former Apple competitor. And now (since mid-2020) Apple competes with Intel, which they switched to from PowerPC. So, bit of a tangent at this point, but these rivalries we have as users are partnerships that come and go in the business world.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does Coke Zero taste different in the UK vs. the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have another reason for cutting out soda, but as far as artificial sweeteners go, one is the devil you know (sucrose/sugar) and the other is a bunch of maybes (sucralose). Maybe someday they discover something wrong with it and invent something better. Or humanity just turns on sugar like we’ve turned on tobacco/nicotine…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Women’s urinals to be at more UK events after £1m funding boost⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Spoiler: long article with no mention of how they actually work.

  Anyone know? It sounds cool. I imagine it’s like a man’s urinal except longer to reach between the thighs; she stands over it, pulls panties to one side, and it catches everything. But, that’s only a guess.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I can think of two reasons the scene doesn’t use GOG when the GOG version is always available. One, the Steam version is likely to be updated more recently. Two, the pride of breaking a lock rather than going in the unlocked door.

  Third, and this is just unfounded speculation, but since you have to trust the crack anyway and let it by your security software, maybe it’s doing something on the side? Scene don’t work for free. You’ll never really know until it slows you’re computer down, or does someone obvious.

  On the other hand, technically Mac software is also DRM free as you can just copy the .app, but they do work stuff out so this can be defeated. But ideally Mac stuff is super simple. The .app is basically a container (like a zip file) that contains everything the application or game requires. It’s a fundamentally better system. Windows users souls be asking why they don’t get the same treatment. Portable apps and games have always existed but it’s not standard on Windows. And it’s a shame.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If a girl asks you if you're big, are you supposed to lie or not?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I would say I’ve never had any complaints. Then, depending on context I might add — but let’s be honest, probably not — “only one way to find out.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does Coke Zero taste different in the UK vs. the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I was confused by the wording of the question. Wasn’t trying to weasel around the comment as much as I was trying to make sense of it.

  I read it again. You seem to think that Coke Zero in the US is made to taste like HFCS because that’s what the US puts in regular soda? Because that’s not the case. Sucralose doesn’t emulate the flavour of HFCS or cane sugar.

  Here’s a Wikipedia article on it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucralose

  As to whether it tastes different, I suppose it might. Coca-Cola prides itself on a “secret recipe” known only to a few, but like a few other products that claim the same, this is mostly marketing. The “secret” to Coca-Cola is that, in the US, the company has the exclusive right to import the coca plant and extract from it. This process can be used to make the narcotic cocaine, and in fact Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine. It doesn’t now, but it does still contain coca extract, which no other soda from another company can do. I do not know how the United Kingdom regulates the coca plant. If they don’t grant Coca-Cola the right to use it, they cannot make US Coca-Cola in the UK, and they probably can’t import the safe, cocaine-free extract from the US, either. It depends.

  So, I think your question should have less to do with how the beverage is sweetened or if the UK lets them make it the same way the US does. I assume the UK is your country, since Coke is made in the US (was invented there, in/near Atlanta, Georgia) so it’s kind of the baseline.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does Coke Zero taste different in the UK vs. the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Coke Zero is sweetened with sucralose, not HFCS or cane sugar. It’s a diabetic friendly alternative. It might taste closer to Coke made with cane sugar, but I’m not sure. I don’t drink soda anymore, but I do drink Gatorade Zero.

  I recommend sucralose sweetened beverages over HFCS and cane sugar ones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there video media (e.g TV shows, Movies, anime, video games, youtube videos, etc...) with a majority of the dialogue in an fictional language?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You covered all kinds of media but music, but Enya sings in a made-up language, but not exclusively. Just five songs are in Loxian, a language her songwriter made up for her after she did the song from Lord of the Rings (with some lyrics in Elvish or whatever the Tolkien language is). So she wanted a language that would suit her style and her songwriter made one for her.

  The cool thing is, they wrote this whole sci-fi backstory for it about how the Irish go to space, to the moon, and they jump to a faraway galaxy. Also, Enya only sings the water dialect of Loxian — they have a dialect for each of the four natural elements.

  The Enya songs in Loxian are:

  • Less Than a Pearl
  • The River Sings
  • Water Shows the Hidden Heart
  • The Forge of the Angels
  • The Loxian Gate

  The first three are on the album Amarantine; the last two are on Dark Sky Island. IMO Loxian Gate is the best of the lot, followed by The River Sings. If you listen on Apple Music or something that, you can watch the lyrics go by as she sings them, but it will not translate them. There are translations online, though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT will soon allow erotica for verified adults, OpenAI boss says⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you asking how to make em dashes? Hold dash on a phone, Shift+Option+Dash on a Mac, Alt+0151 on Windows.

  Shit, you might be able to blame me for LLMs using em dashes. Been using them forever. Maybe even longer than you’ve been alive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI couldn't create an image of a woman like me - until now⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s what the article said. I would opt-out as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT will soon allow erotica for verified adults, OpenAI boss says⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well no shit. You could also maybe stop a tank if you stand in front of it, but maybe it’ll just keep going.

  I mention King because he did a similar thing before. He wrote two books, one as himself and one as his alter ego Richard Bachman, and the two books — Desperation and The Regulators — mirrored one another. He also was one of the first nationally/internationally published authors to support ebook (he released a book online only).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT will soon allow erotica for verified adults, OpenAI boss says⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, Ao3 has existed for years, and literotica for years longer, but okay, if someone wants something personalised. Vague concerns of plagiarism aside, it’s interesting. The problem I see is that people will take it back to those sites and upload it as their own and not declare it as AI.

  We already have AI generated music that has fooled some people. I think AI generated stories will be harder to track. And it’s going to be divisive. One thing I’d like to see is someone prolific like Stephen King do it as an experiment. So King — or, more likely, a young intern working for him — prompts an AI to write a book in the style of Stephen King. And they prompt it to include certain things. Then, Stephen King himself actually writes the book, and the two are packaged together for the cost of the one book. You get the Stephen King version, and you get the AI version which has some ridiculous name. And it’s going to tell the same story, but it’s going to do it slightly differently. So you can read King’s version — I think most readers would either read this one first, or this one only — and then, if you’re up to it, you can read the AI version. This would do two things. One, it would (possibly) prove that AI cannot fully replace human writers. Two (and not mutually exclusive to the previous point), it would give you an alternate-reality version of the first story, and that could be interesting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI couldn't create an image of a woman like me - until now⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  TL;DR: Woman missing an arm couldn’t get AI image generators to generate an amputee. It apparently didn’t know how. Now it does and the woman says the representation is important. </tldr>

  I guess it couldn’t find enough art to steal of amputees for it to form enough of a basis to draw them? And so in reaction to the backlash (such as it was), they gave it more data?