Zagorath
@Zagorath@aussie.zone
- Comment on Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE 3 hours ago:
Devs have numerous options for how to address the SKG initiative. The top three that come to my mind are:
- Release server binaries (along with modifying clients to have a setting to connect to the right server)
- Modify multiplayer to work over LAN (good when the server’s only/main job is matchmaking)
- Modify the game itself to no longer require online connectivity
In the case of live service games, I would suggest option 3 is the most appropriate. If the main gameplay is singleplayer, but it’s online so you can dole out achievements and gatekeep content, the answer is simple: stop doing that. Patch it to all work in-client. And keep in mind that this will be a requirement at end-of-life from the beginning. If it’s an unexpected requirement, that’s going to be a huge development cost. If it’s expected, making that EOL change easy to implement will be part of the code architecture from the start.
- Comment on Grok got a Nazi patch 8 hours ago:
Happy cake day!
- Comment on At the local Bunnings today 13 hours ago:
Believe it or not, this is how I found it.
- Comment on At the local Bunnings today 13 hours ago:
It was already perfect.
- Submitted 14 hours ago to ausmemes@aussie.zone | 6 comments
- Comment on Political donations banned in South Australia 7.30 1 day ago:
no public inquiry and a secretive consultation process
Ick. Always a bad start.
- MPs and political staffers can still pay a “levy” to their party. Historically, these levies have been worth more than the large political donations coming from vested interests and wealthy donors.
- Nominated entities that can continue to donate to the major parties.
Ok the points the article was making up until here were, in my opinion, unconvincing. But this is huge. As Professor Twomey said about the federal bill this enormously favours the big established parties.
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 1 day ago:
If guys like this are good at getting whole generations of people interested in science, more power to them
That’s the problem here though. He might be good at getting a certain kind of STEM bro into science, but his smart attitude turns away heaps more. He contributes to the perception of science as being hostile to women, at the same time as reinforcing the perception of science as elitist and exclusionary. He might’ve fit in well in the '90s and '00s, but unfortunately he’s around in the '10s and '20s.
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 2 days ago:
So, to be clear, you’ve decided on the basis of…precisely nothing, that I’m a fan of Trump?
- Comment on Political donations banned in South Australia 7.30 2 days ago:
On its face, this is shockingly good legislation that does a much better job than what is being done/talked about at a federal level of truly levelling the playing field, not giving the two major parties a huge advantage over minor parties, independents, and yet-to-be-established parties.
Still, this is just one interview with someone obviously biased. It’ll be interesting to see analysis of this from less partisan figures.
- Submitted 2 days ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 3 comments
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 2 days ago:
No, seriously. Who are you talking about?
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 2 days ago:
Who exactly is “they” in this comment?
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 2 days ago:
He’s more than just “a bit of a lolcow”. He discredits science by being an arsehole and inserting science into places it obviously does not belong. He’s the epitome of that stereotypical “STEM bro” that looks down upon the arts and humanities. Here’s one anecdote about him I found:
Just saw a clip of his on Instagram about whether “fahrenheit units are better for the weather” as opposed to Celsius.
He starts off with “well, the weather doesn’t care about how we measure it. It just is what it is, regardless of our units. What you mean is that fahrenheit makes it easy for us to understand the weather…” And then goes on to discuss it.
Like… Fuck off man. Everyone knows what the person meant, and he’s just being a smartass about it.
He’s also gone on “proving” that Santa can’t be real with real physics. That’s not stuff that makes people interested in science. It’s just dickish and does exactly the opposite.
Here’s an anecdote from someone who admits to overall liking him:
I still listen to [his podcast], but I’m gonna spoil it to you: just listen how often he interrupts people. Every question being asked he needs do change or add something and then “complains” that the section or question takes too long.
There’s also a clip with Joe Rogan where he’s not even listening but just rambles on, and keep interrupting.
And finally, I get annoyed by his words of wisdoms where he’s recycling the same sentences in his genius complex voice.
The claim there is that this is just one “side” of NDT and that his “real” side, when it’s allowed to show through, is a much better communicator of the wonder of science. My take is that we don’t get to see this “authentic” version of him nearly often enough to give him credit for it.
He has that bad habit that a lot of smart people (particularly physicists, for some reason) have, which is to think that because they’re smart in their one area, they must also be smart in others. He is certainly nowhere near as bad as some (looking at you, Sabine Hossenfelder), but he does have a nasty habit particularly when talking about the history of science (which, first and foremost, is history). One point that he’s particularly fond of (having repeated it regularly online as well as including it in his Cosmos remake) is the mediaeval flat earth myth.
As for the sexual misconduct allegations, they weren’t proven, but even if you take NDT entirely at his own word…it might not rise to the level of criminal misconduct, but it sure is creepy as fuck behaviour. Grabbing under someone’s dress straps? Inviting a subordinate home for a private meal?
But it’s not clear to me that we should just take him at his word. His own post defending himself, particularly the 1980s case, spends an awful lot of time attacking the character of the accuser. Whereas in the other cases he at least attempts to play it in the respectful “oh I can see how you might have gotten the wrong impression and I’m sorry” manner, here it’s just “no, you’re clearly my intellectual inferior and therefore why should anybody believe you?”
As for him being “cleared”:
According to Watson, the so-called “investigations” Tyson was referring to consisted of the following: “I had one 30-minute sit-down with a Fox HR representative and a 45 minute-hour sit-down with a man from a private company. I gave them both lengthy lists of extremely reliable people who could corroborate my story, text messages from that time, emails NDT had sent to me, etc. None of the people I gave contact info for were ever contacted by these companies.”
In his defence, I will say, I’ve seen a lot of people accusing him of also getting the physics wrong on certain things. And at least one case of him getting into a conversation with Richard Dawkins where he supposedly got something wrong about DNA. My read on most of the situations of this sort that I’ve seen are that they’re either minor errors that are naturally going to occur in off-the-cuff discussions, or stem from an imprecision of language where the actual point he is trying to convey was totally reasonable. Maybe, given he’s a science communicator, he should try better to get these things right, and be ready to correct them in the comments or in editing when they happen and are pointed out, which is something he seems not to do. But I don’t consider this a slight on him as a person at all. Not at the scale that I’ve seen.
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 2 days ago:
Fwiw Nye does seem to be very chummy with Neil de Grasse Tyson, and that guy’s issues are far more well attested to. From the smug poor media literacy, to reports of being professionally hard to work with, to his sexual harrassment allegations. I’m not especially inclined to give Nye the benefit of the doubt given the company he chooses to keep.
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 2 days ago:
How so?
- Comment on Kanye West blocked from entering Australia over Hitler song 3 days ago:
Hey it’s not the first time!
We banned Novax Joker from entering the country doing COVID. (Pay no attention to the fact that the following year we ignored our own laws which would have meant his first ban resulted in an automatic ban for 3 more years.)
- Comment on Fixed speed camera toppled hours before switch-on 3 days ago:
I get it, but is there an ideological cause?
There’s an ideology behind drivers who terrorise cyclists try to force them off the road, for sure. They should be labelled terrorists.
But vandalising a speed camera could just as easily be a selfish wish to not get fined.
- Submitted 3 days ago to ausmemes@aussie.zone | 2 comments
- Comment on I honestly think they're impossible to understand 1 week ago:
I legitimately think they’re impossible to explain. Not impossible to understand, mind you, but to explain. The only way to ever learn to play a board game is by playing it, preferably open-hand, and learning it step by step in practice.
- Comment on Might be time to find another job 1 week ago:
Who can be bothered to steal someone else’s semi-skimmed milk anyway‽ Full cream or bust.
- Comment on Donald Trump dominated extraordinary NATO summit that saw European defence spending increase 1 week ago:
No no, I’m not asking maybies. I’m asking you. Why do you think this post deserves to be downvoted, since you’re arguing so hard in favour of it.
- Comment on Donald Trump dominated extraordinary NATO summit that saw European defence spending increase 1 week ago:
Ok then, explain to me why you think this post deserves to be downvoted.
- Comment on Donald Trump dominated extraordinary NATO summit that saw European defence spending increase 1 week ago:
The point of the voting system is to decide which posts are seen by more or fewer people.
If you downvote a perfectly good post, you’re stopping people from seeing it. You cannot try to justify that by pretending it’s harmless.
- Comment on Donald Trump dominated extraordinary NATO summit that saw European defence spending increase 1 week ago:
Oh, and if you’re downvoting because “they don’t like op”, that’s definitely not a valid use of the downvote. Use the block function.
If you don’t like the source, you’re right, that’s valid. But given it’s the ABC we’re talking about here, I very much doubt that’s it for enough people that this post got down to -3.
- Comment on Donald Trump dominated extraordinary NATO summit that saw European defence spending increase 1 week ago:
You know that downvotes aren’t harmless, right? Your downvotes affect everyone.
- Comment on Donald Trump dominated extraordinary NATO summit that saw European defence spending increase 1 week ago:
What a dumb take. If you downvote a post that clearly belongs in a community just because you don’t like the news, all you’re doing is preventing others from learning about it. You’re not sending an anti-Trump message.
- Comment on Donald Trump dominated extraordinary NATO summit that saw European defence spending increase 1 week ago:
Guys, downvotes are not for cases where you don’t like the news being reported. They’re for when the actual quality of reporting is poor, or when the topic doesn’t belong in the Community where it’s being posted.
I can’t see anything obviously wrong with the ABC’s reporting in this case, and this is pretty obviously “overseas news”, with an Aussie bent (it mentions Australia 7 times, and Albanese once), so it definitely belongs.
- Comment on U.K. to Ban Palestine Action Group as Terrorist Organization 1 week ago:
This is an incredibly serious action.
express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation, reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation
You literally cannot say anything that could even be construed as support for the organisation. This incredibly mild video, were it uploaded after the proscription instead of shortly before it, would be potentially illegal, even though it is primarily focused on criticising the government for its authoritarian overreach.
It’s the first time this has been done to an organisation that isn’t even causing bodily harm. The only thing they’ve ever damaged has been property. It’s an extreme McCarthyesque overreach. Do not think of this as “just more of the typical UK government support for Israel’s genocide”. It’s a huge escalation of that support and an abuse of power.
- Comment on Carnivory in Plants 1 week ago:
An interesting theory, but there are good reasons to doubt the claim, including the fact that woolly sheep are a recent product of human breeding, and that wild sheep are not even native to the same areas blackberries grow.
- Comment on How do you do? 1 week ago:
Turns out they basically did the marshmallow test. So we’re talking toddlers.
