paultimate14

@paultimate14@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Driving game poll⁩ ⁨⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m interested, but I think the Dev woukd need to find a way to incentivize “normal” driving.

  I think back to my youth playing Driver on the PS1, and it was a lot of fun just… Driving around. Exploring the world. Even dealing with traffic was fun when I was only a kid who could nkt drive myself.

  I tried tk do similar in GTA3, and I even had a wheel and pedlas I would use for it. Unfortunately GTA3 is incredibly unlrealistic. The physics are cartoonish, the AI behavior is dumb, the pedestrians are dumb, the cops are dumb. The game incenvitcizes chaos.

  The question is: how do we make things likr speed limits and stop signs and pedestrian crossings fun?

  My instinct is to model off the real world to an extent. Could involve delivering things that are fragile and cannot handle a bunch of G’s. Could be fines or a karma system of some kind for rolling stops. Could be that a realistic damage modeling system makes dents and scratches look terrible and lead to rust, and repairs are just as expensive as they are in real life. Maybe a LOT of the car is consumable or wearable. Not just gas and tires, but all the fluids too, and brake pads. Maybe taking a turn too hard damages the suspension. Crashing into something means you not only need to repair your car, but also whatever you hit.

  The more I list this out, the more this seems like a punishing and tedious slog. It seems really hard to design a game that incentivizes something like this, at least with most of the current mechanics in games today. Maybe a multiplayer social component would help? Like a virtual parking lot and drag strip for people to meet up on the weekends and check each other’s virtual rides out? I would not be interested in that, but my uncle might be.

  Maybe it could be heavily story-based. I would go noir-style, where as you drive around either you see things or your driver character provides some narration. Something like “that abandoned building over there used to be an ice cream parlor. That’s where I had my first kiss. I wonder what ever happened to Suzie? I drove a '69 Cobra that night. Lovely car” and then the Cobra is available in the shop. Maybe there is a mystery about stuff going on in the world. Maybe it is a post-apocalyptic world and you’re scavenging, mostly alone and unchallenged, in the ruins of a city, slowly learning what led to this. I think about how Detroit’s population went from ~1.8 million to 0.6 million in ~50 years and what it would have been like to stay there and experience that.

  Maybe a parody of Crazy Taxi called Sane Uber where the main priority is ride comfort?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Game franchises you like, but wish were anothet genre of video game?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Similarly, what about wishing for another linear and stoey-focused 3D Zelda?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hee Hee Ho Ho Ha Ha⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  OK boomer

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some good, solid cables for charging and data transfer?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Anker owns Eufy, a security camera company. A few years ago people were able to access footage remotely, even thpugh Eufy claimed it was only stored locally. Anker, as the parent company, doubled-down and responded poorly at first.

  digitaltrends.com/…/anker-admit-eufy-security-iss…

  Now, that does not impact stuff like cables or battery banks at all. In 2024 when I was shopping for new battery banks, Anker had the best value so I bought Anker. But the corporate response is kind of sketchy so I’m never in a hurry to buy from them anymore. And I woudk never buy anything where security or privacy could be an issue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"You Were Supposed to Feel Lost": Metal Gear Solid 2 and the Shock of Playing as Raiden⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I liked it, but this was also the first Metal Gear game in ever played so I wasn’t as invested in Snake.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re just proposing a much more drastic and rapid change than I am. I agree that a wealth tax would be a more immediate effect. It is also much more drsstixnand far less tested. The idea is interesting and I am neither opposed to it nor calling for it. I do not think it it necessary.

  Increasing income tax rates and corporate tax rates would be a much slower approach. I didn’t mention them, but I would also add in property tax rates and capital gains. Luxury sales taxes, inheritancd taxes. In the US, make OASDI a progressive instead of regressive tax.

  For existing billionaires, there are plenty of laws they’ve already broken to get where they are that just need to be enforced. Wage theft, antitrust, union busting, fraud. The SEC should have buried Musk in a dungeon years ago. So I see the answer to eliminating existing wealth being fines rather than taxes.

  Of course, there is also room to increase the minimum wage and minimum benefits. That would hell redistribute wealth too.

  I don’t know Gabe Newell, or even anyone who works at Valve personally, but every account I have ever read about Valve is that they usually treated and paid their employees well. Investigate all of these megacorps and prosecute appropriately.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Taxing billionaires is not some new and untested concept. In the US throughout the 1900’s the highest income tax brackets were often in the 70%'s, reaching into the 90%'s at times, and we did not see what you are suggesting.

  Increasing the taxes on Gabe Newell’s profits from owning Valve would not suddenly cause him to lose money, just to gain less money. If corporate taxes and income taxes were increased across the board, then it is not as if he would benefit from selling Valve stock to invest elsewhere, and Valve would not be a more or less attractive place to invest relative to other options either. I am not sure why you think this would cause Gabe Newell to back out or investors to jump in. Heck, these rates have all changed pretty frequently within Valve’s existence and have not had a significant impact.

  Also just to say, there is also the matter of jurisdiction as he lives in New Zealand while Valve is a US based company.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
  1. Taxing those outside investors too
  2. Taxing Valve as a corporation more, making them less profitable and less attractive to said investors.
  3. I’m not even convinced this would be an issue at all really. Remember Valve is not publicly traded. I suspect Gabe would hold on to controlling ownership as long as it was profitable, and remember that taxes are usually on profits.
  4. Even if outside investors move in and enshittify, the moment they start doing anticompetitive you hit them with antitrust suits. Not to mention the industry can also be regulated even before all this: a lot of governments are cracking down on lootboxes already.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Even if Valve’s offering sucked, I still have not seen anyone point out a business practice I would call anticompetitive. They are not buying up studios or publishers, or even paying for timed exclusivity. I have not seen any hint that they are colluding with competitors on prices or fees. I haven’t seen then accused of stealing IP or poaching personnel. They readily welcome Microsoft and Sony to release games on Steam, and they have released their own games on consoles including the Switch. They let you install Windows or whatever else on the Deck, if you want to for some reason.

  Billionaires should not exist, and Gabe Newell is no exception. He should be taxed more. I don’t love one company having so much control of this space. But I also don’t want to have a dozen different crappy launchers from different companies to deal with. There are a lot of benefits to the user to having everything centralized in one place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PlayStation Store Dynamic Pricing Is Real⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s also known as Price Discrimination, and depending on the details and jurisdiction sometimes it IS illegal.

  Laws need to be updated to keep up with tech, and ENFORCED.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Phone do you guys use?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sony Xperia 1 IV. Their naming scheme is terrible.

  Main reason is because I wanted a future-proof, flagship phone with a headphone jack and micro SD card slot. Both have proven very useful, and I am still kind of in shock that most manufacturers have dropped them.

  Stock android. Still using the NoVa launcher because I haven’t had the free time to try out others, plus my pi-hole seems to block the ads they have been introducing for now.

  The Xperia has a weirdly narrow screen. I like it in a vacuum better than todays phablets, but I think the occasional webpage scales weirdly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Human experimentation, one way or the other.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I honestly am starting to think the anti-vaxx crowd has been astroturfed by pharmaceutical corporations in order to convince the general public that anyone who questions Big Pharma is some loomy who thinks vaccines cause autism wants to drink raw milk.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jensen Huang says gamers are 'completely wrong' about DLSS 5 — Nvidia CEO responds to DLSS 5 backlash⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s why in rooting for a small mom and pop competitor to the space, like checks notes … Intel.

  We’re fucked aren’t we?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Streaming didnt exist in 1970⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What about 1870 then?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨18-26 year olds, How do you plan to dodge the draft?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The US government has been investing billions into AI, drones, and other autonomous and remote weapons systems.

  Sending a bunch of young men to the opposite side of the world would be not just unpopular, it incredibly expensive. Food, clothing, equipment, healthcare costs. I highly doubt the end goal is to actually annex Iran, so they’re much better off trying to find a local group to support in taking over the country and establishing a US-friendly puppet state. There’s no need to have Americans in guerilla warfare for that.

  The only way I see them doing that is if they WANT to kill off a chunk of the male population in that age group. Which… Maybe? I could certainly see Trump and Hegseth trying to send “undesirables” overseas to die, but they’ve also made moves like banning trans people from military service. Unless they reverse policies, it looks like Trump will prefer to cozy up to the military rather than use it as a tool for getting rid of people.

  Maybe Trump will just do what Netenyahu tells him to. But I think this is more about trying to manufacture a reason to cancel mid-term elections like they outlined in 2025 than anything else. With the added benefit of funneling more government money into the military-industrial complex.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Make sure you know what your kid is getting themselves into⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I was a good boy who didn’t do drugs until adulthood, and I have medical marijuana now. The feedback I’ve gotten from pretty much everyone who did drugs in the 90’s and 00’s vs today is the same as your experience. The “weed nerds” have spent decades in their labs and the state-by-state legalization has greatly accelerated their progress.

  Even my pharmacist warned me when I first got my medical card “if this is your first time using medical marijuana it’s a lot stronger than what is usually on the street, so watch out”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Make sure you know what your kid is getting themselves into⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that article is just typical fear mongering BS. It keeps the eyes of parents glued to the screen and consuming ads. Doesn’t even say what “spice” is. Articles like this are basically broiler-llate and come out every few months. Notice how they manage to blame social media, and how they don’t mention any adults using it at all.

  I found the wikipedia article on these things more useful and less biased. Spice seems to mostly refer to a designer drug that is similar to THC, but is not THC. And while it is often used to lace marijuana or mixed with weed vapes, it isn’t just weed.

  It’s like hearing about people adding PCP or LSD to weed and freaking out about how dangerous weed is. Like… Yeah you shouldn’t buy drugs from some random guy on Snapchat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨the two party system is just one big party⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  DOGE would not have happened under Biden or Harris. Millions of people are dying because of cuts to US AID.

  Venezuela would not have happened. Like, how crazy is it that you lost a handful of the most egregious things Trump has done recently and yet somehow invading another country and kidnapping their leader a couple months ago doesn’t make the cut? I don’t mean that as a criticism of you, just how much insane shit Trump has done.

  Cuts to Education have been and will be devastating for years. Shutting down tons of science and information-gathering agencies. Economic data is going to be non-existent or useless for the foreseeable future. All the lovely anti-trust action Lina Khan was starting to do under Biden has been erased. All the work Jessica Rosenworcel was doing to restore Net Neutrality under Biden has been erased. The Republican party is about to pass a bill that will disenfranchise both trans people and women. The EPA has been gutted. Trump has given and cut off funds to states, both for regular projects and disaster relief funds, based on how they voted for him, while Biden (and no other president I am aware of) has done anything like that before.

  So-called “communists” have a tendency to become EnLiGhTeNeD cEnTrIsTs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Make a note⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You need to wait ~45 minutes, then loudly complain “these edibles ain’t shit!”

  That’s the activation phrase. The THC in your metabolism needs to hear that to start working.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨29 years since our homecoming queen was taken from us⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  My wife and I just started watching this a couple months ago. We’re partway through Season 3.

  Over the weekend we saw Nine Inch Nails live. To our complete shock, once the band left the stage and the lights came on the house music that played while everyone left was… The mysterious and sad piano theme from Twin Peaks.

  A bit of research later revealed that David Lynch directed a NIN music video, and he has featured their songs in movies. And perhaps more notable… NIN appeared on the show in season 3, just two episodes ahead of where we were. It was a wild coincidence.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Wandering Bard > Bad Dragon

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Game preservation only works if people care" As GOG doubles down on its commitment to saving old games, it's asking players "who give a s**t" to support its crusade⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  What incredible hyperbole. It is superisleading to describe that as going “All-In on AI”. It’s a change to the disclosure rules Valve requires for publishers, not that Valve is using AI themselves like GOG is.

  I would prefer if they required disclosure of the use of any AI tools involved, but at this point AI has been so thoroughly shoved into every piece of software you can really just assume that some AI somewhere touched anything made after 2022. Generative AI is the bigger problem and this move focuses the attention on that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Video games are losing the "attention war" to gambling, porn, and crypto, according to industry report⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s being mean to gas station sandwiches, but otherwise I agree

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Video games are losing the "attention war" to gambling, porn, and crypto, according to industry report⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  For a the past few years, I had wondered why videogames, movies, and TV shows nowadays feel so… Bland. Meaningless. Soulless. Corporate. Like, I know they ARE corporate, but these industries have all been dominated by gigantic corporations for my entire life. What changed recently? Am I just getting old and curmudgeonly and preferring content that was made back when I was younger?

  Then I was watching DoorMonster talk about some show (I could be wrong, but I think it was the video about how Arcane had a great Season 1 that was largely ruined by Season 2) where they kept joking about not accusing them of using AI to write things.

  Then it clicked. The Writer’s Strike from May-September 2023. On paper, the Writer’s Guild secured restrictions on the use of AI. And I can’t point to anything specific and say “that was clearly written by AI”. But I can say that for the past few years everything put out by pretty much every company has felt very… “Meh”. Nothing new has grabbed me and said “wow I need to watch/play that”. Could be a coincidence, but I also have to wonder whether AI tools involved in writing and visuals have cost us something intangible that I can still feel.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elder Scrolls 6 Is Powered By New Version Of Creation Engine⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This may be unpopular, but I think this is great news.

  Skyrim became one of the best-sellign games of all time in part BECAUSE of how great it is to see your character get ragdolled into the lithosphere by a giant, or to watch the chaos of spawning thousands of wheels of cheese on top of the throat of the world and watching them roll down.

  An Elder Scrolls game that was built around having realistic physics, or being restricted to more cinematic movement and knteractions, would lose a key essence of what made the earlier games great.

  I don’t want engaging combat in Elder Scrolls. If I want combat that I have to pay attention to, I’ll go play a Souls game or a fighting game or one of the thousands of games that have tried to be “Skyrim with better combat” that have languished in obscurity because they miss the point.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Find what you like and stick with it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times

  • Bruce Lee

  If you make the same meal repeatedly you get really good at it.

  I eat egg cups almost every day for breakfast. Line muffin tins with sliced ham, crack an egg into each one, add seasonings and toppings, back. Let them cool, store in the fridge, microwave for 30 seconds and add a splash of sauce to eat.

  Protein smoothie for lunch. I’ve got it down to the point where I optimize what order the ingredients should go into the blender in so that they blend smoothly. Orange juice, protein powder, banana (optional), peanut butter, ice, peanut oil (optional).

  I also love various kinds of meal prep for dinner. Doing things in bulk and in advance is usually more efficient for both time and money. And such deliberation usually leads to better nutrition too.

  I also enjoy experiencing new flavors. I love seeing new restaurants pop up nearby, immigrants bringing flavors from their homeland I’ve never tasted before. But that’s an expensive (and often unhealthy) treat for special occasions.

  Eating to live vs living to eat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI is destroying open source, and it's not even good yet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A problem is that a lot of the companies that make consumer hardware cannot survive in the meantime.

  The flash manufacturers are expecting shortages through 2030. GPU’s have been a shit show for years now, and RAM and SSD’s are following. Now HDD’s are following SSD’s.

  It’s getting too expensive for anyone to build a PC or small home server. So what’s going to happen to the other companies? It’s going to be hard to stay in business making ATX desktop cases and power supplies. Demand for consumer CPU’s will fall and lead to AMD and Intel shifting their capacity to enterprise on that front too. Motherboards will follow as well. Some of that is more flexible than others, but even if the AI bubble pops it’s going to take years for the markets to recover.

  Think of the housing market. Real estate developers in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and a lot of the rest of the world have spent decades focusing on building large single-family luxury homes at high profit margins. To the point where they would rather keep building large homes and leave them empty over building apartment buildings or duplexes or smaller homes. I see a similar trend in the consumer PC space, and it’s going to take government regulation to stop it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘This shouldn’t be normal’: developers speak out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s biggest PC gaming storefront⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The article is behind a paywall. Do they have any statistics or evidence backing that sentiment or is it just vibes?

  You can find articles and reddit posts claiming this same exact thing going back years, and yet personally when I go through the store and look through reviews it’s really hard for me to come across hate speech, especially if you don’t specifically look at reviews that have been downvoted to hell. It’s never going to be perfect, but I encounter less hate speech on Steam than most other platforms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘This shouldn’t be normal’: developers speak out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s biggest PC gaming storefront⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They also have guidelines for “user generated content” which includes reviews, and you can report people for violating those guidelines.

  Sure Valve does not pay for moderators to check things proactively. I quite like that they don’t have AI or some other half-assed attempt at “moderation” like other platforms have. I hate the way that the whole Internet has moved to censor “fuck” and made up the word “unalive” because the automated systems of platforms I don’t even use have decided they are the arbitora of what language is allowed.

  I think the responsibility to monitor reviews should lie with whoever controls the Steam page: I would assume the publisher most of the time? The publisher and developer should be looking at reviews anyways. Add in the ability for users to vote reviews as helpful or unhelpful and I think it’s one of the better systems left on the internet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘This shouldn’t be normal’: developers speak out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s biggest PC gaming storefront⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are guidelines on Steam that ban such content, and you can report people for violating them.

  So no, Steam does not do “nothing” as you claim. A very basic Internet search can confirm that.

  Even better, users can rate reviews as helpful or unhelpful. Which is great for a wider variety of reasons, but is also good for reviews that get into a grey area or use dog whistles to hide their true intentions.