unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov
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- Comment on Charging to tour rental properties... 3 days ago:
5x the property tax rate for all vacant housing?
- Comment on The curse of ‘Disco Elysium’, the greatest RPG ever made 1 week ago:
This is the clearest explanation for Disco Elysium I’ve ever read, thank you.
- Comment on What would this list look like for your generation? 3 months ago:
Only if they receive the message that the left offers solutions, and not just more chaos.
- Comment on You are not living in reality if you do not see the huge difference between THEN and NOW 4 months ago:
I’ve found it effective to follow this with, “yes, now you’re starting to understand the problem”
- Comment on Physicists vs Normal People 4 months ago:
I loose my mind with this kind of thing too. Do these people have a screw lose? What kind of rational would a rationale person use to decide to just use similar looking words with different meanings?
It was almost painful to write that out actually, but don’t worry I’ll add it to the list of things to review in therapy 😂
- Comment on AI will replace us all... trust me 4 months ago:
Being held accountable for outputs provided
- Comment on Wayback Machine Saves Thousands of Federal Webpages Amid Purge of Government Data Under Trump 5 months ago:
Bow down before my great powers to link to a change log, you imbecile. Now that this error has been revealed to you, certainly you will be less of a useless piece of shit. Enjoy your newfound knowledge and prosper!
- Comment on Wayback Machine Saves Thousands of Federal Webpages Amid Purge of Government Data Under Trump 5 months ago:
Are you being intentionally dense? It has gotten multiple updates every day for the last week?
- Comment on HP to build future products atop grave of flopped 'AI pin' • The Register 5 months ago:
Omg same. There are literally dozens of us.
- Comment on Skyrim teaches a Lemmy user about fascist propaganda 6 months ago:
Skyrim was released in 2011, originally designed for the PS3 and XBOX 360. According to Statista, over 60 million copies have been sold as of June 2023. Regardless of any subjective feelings we might have, let’s agree that the game couldn’t have been this popular based on hype alone, so there must be something that makes it special.
I suspect that what you’re experiencing is not an overrated game, but the source material for a broad swath of games that have improved and iterated on many of the mechanics and ideas that were presented in Skyrim (and Morrowind, Oblivion, etc).
It’s like saying that you’re a fan of sitcoms, but you hate Seinfeld and Friends. Those shows weren’t perfect, but they created demand for a new type of show that has been modified and improved in numerous ways since they were aired.
Similarly, Skyrim is far from perfect, but when you put it into context, it is easier to see why it was successful. In 2011, Skyrim was THE option for an open world rpg with skill progression, decisions matter, and a crafting system. It was released in the same year as the original dark souls, Portal 2, battlefield 3, and Minecraft. If I’m completely fair, the Witcher 2 also came out in 2011, but had a more linear storyline, and was also one of the first games where your decisions mattered.
The fact that we’re even having a discussion about this game in 2025 should be a testament to its success. While I haven’t played it in years, I’d have a hard time agreeing that it is overrated. It certainly isn’t underrated, so maybe we could agree that it is appropriately rated, given the relevant context?
- Comment on Luck be a Landlord Might Be Banned from Google Play 7 months ago:
The more I hear about regulations in Australia, the more certain I am that their leaders lack the ability to distinguish nuance in any capacity.
Otoh, maybe it’s the rest of us who are out of touch and need to do more to protect the children.
- Comment on Assassin's Creed Shadows Will Feature Denuvo & Account Linking + EULA also requires you to allow Ubisoft to "monitor" your RAM 8 months ago:
Yeah Susan, I’m sure Microsoft TOTALLY learned their lesson from the Crowdstrike incident. Y’know, since they’ve never had an anti-malware company cause worldwide outages because of a configuration error before.
- Comment on Why does the PC gaming industry still use such deceptive pricing? 10 months ago:
Nintendo does have sales from time to time, they’re just rarely great discounts. If you have a switch and you wishlist games they will email you if your wishlisted game goes on sale.
- Comment on [deleted] 10 months ago:
Good seems pretty subjective tbh but if you’re interested in “research”, f95zone is probably your best resource.
- Comment on Community solves homelessness... By paying cops over 3 million dollars 11 months ago:
So what happens if you try to sleep outside? Do the cops pick you up and bring you to a shelter where they provide a bed, meals, and a roommate named Bubba who thinks you’re purdy?
Conservatives are so short sighted - this is just giving handouts with extra hands and limited humanity.
- Comment on "giving a tax cut to the Nobles will open up new opportunities for the Commoners" 11 months ago:
People forget a lot of things like this, thanks for the reminder.
- Comment on Can anyone suggest some good co-op games for two people? 11 months ago:
Ah, well I’m sure it will still be here if/when you escape from Elden Ring. Have fun!
- Comment on Can anyone suggest some good co-op games for two people? 11 months ago:
They just added a bunch of new missions, planet modifiers, and ship call downs, which was a pleasant surprise. Also, there is a lot of speculation that they’re going to introduce the third enemy race pretty soon, so if you were enjoying it before, now might not be a bad time to dip your toe back in the pool.
- Comment on Walmart's use of digital price tags signal the future of retail shopping, but consumers are worried 11 months ago:
“Gross profit” is a meaningless number in this context. Their net income was $15.5B. If you do the same math to try to determine profit per location, ($15.5B/10500) it’s about $1.48M. Not bad, but still about 90% lower than your estimate.
Since I was already estimating seemingly random profit ratios, I also looked at their profit per employee, which came out to $7380/person ($15.5B/2.1M employees).
Unfortunately these numbers are also inclusive of, for example, Walmart’s e-commerce program, so calculating the profit per location doesn’t indicate anything meaningful to me, though I’m morbidly curious about what insights you are hoping to get from it?
- Comment on MW2 remastered multiplayer mod shut down by Activision day before launch 11 months ago:
If you don’t play games why are you in this community? What do you think your perspective adds to this conversation?
- Comment on Russia wants to ban Last train home 11 months ago:
Not just for the joy of pissing Russia off more, but I’d recommend the game for fans of tactical strategy games. The overall story arc is pretty interesting too, especially when you remember that it is based on a true story.
- Comment on 0.0.0.0 Day - 18 Yr Old Vulnerability Let Attackers Bypass All Browser Security 11 months ago:
I didn’t realize DEFCON was this weekend already, but this is a solid point 😂
- Comment on Youtube replaced unicode emojis with fucking images 1 year ago:
This was a great explanation, thanks.
- Comment on Court ordered penalties for 15 teens who created naked AI images of classmates 1 year ago:
I disagree, these children are minors and the their behavior, while abhorrent, belies a fundamental lack of perspective and empathy.
I’ve been a teenage boy before and I did some bone-headed things. Maybe not this bad, but still, I agree with the judge in this instance that it would be inappropriate to impose permanent consequences on these kids before their life even gets started because they were stupid, horny, teenage boys.
Even if we assume that these kids don’t all have well-meaning parents who who will impose their own punishments, having a probation officer in high school is not going to help with popularity. Then, mandatory classes that will force these boys to evaluate the situation from another perspective seems like a great add-on.
I know it doesn’t feel like justice, but our goal as a society shouldn’t be to dole out maximum punishment in every instance. The goal is to allow all of us to peacefully coexist and contribute to society - throwing children in a dark hole somewhere to be forgotten isn’t going to help with that.
Having said all of the above, it feels like a good time to emphasize that we still don’t have any good ideas for solving the core problem here, which is the malicious use of this technology that was dumped on society without any regard for the types of problems that it would create, and entirely without a plan to add guard rails. While I’m far from the only one considering this problem, it should be clear enough by now that dragging our feet on creating regulation isn’t getting us any closer to a solution.
At a minimum it feels like we need to implement a mandatory class on the responsible use of technology, but the obvious question there is how to keep the material relevant. Maybe it’s something that tech companies could be mandated to provide to all users under 18 - a brief, recurring training (could be a video, idc) and assessment that minors would have to complete quarterly to demonstrate that they understand their responsibilities.
- Comment on Hacktivists release two gigabytes of Heritage Foundation data (Project 2025) 1 year ago:
They were never really hiding it, we just all assumed they were insane fringe ideas and nothing would come of it. Things have changed…
- Comment on 'LLM-free' is the new '100% organic' - Creators Are Fighting AI Anxiety With an ‘LLM-Free’ Movement 1 year ago:
Is there any chance you’re at a kbbq or hotpot restaurant? Because then you get to cook the meal yourself, which is arguably chef-like.
Jokes aside, I see the comparison you’re making and it’s not a bad one. I’d counter by giving the example of a menu - when you get to a restaurant you’re given a menu with text descriptions of the food you can receive from the kitchen. Since this is an analogy and not an exact comparison, let’s say that a meal on the menu is like the starting point of the workflow I described.
Based on that you have an idea of what the output will be when you order - but let’s say you don’t like mushrooms and you prefer your sauce on the side. When you make your order you provide those modifications - this is like inpainting.
Certainly you’re not a ‘chef’, but if the dish you design is both bespoke and previously unimaginable, I’d argue that at the very least you contributed to the creative process and participated in creating something new that matches your internal vision.
Not exactly the same but I don’t think it’s entirely different.
- Comment on 'LLM-free' is the new '100% organic' - Creators Are Fighting AI Anxiety With an ‘LLM-Free’ Movement 1 year ago:
Not OP but familiar enough with open source diffusion image generators to be able to chime in.
Now I’d argue that being an artist comes down to being able to envision something in your mind’s eye and then reproduce it in the real world using some medium, whether it’s a graphite pencil, oil paint, a block of marble, Wacom tablet on a pc, or even through a negotiation with an AI model. Your definition might be different, but for the sake of conversation this is how I’m thinking about it.
The work flow for an AI generated image can have a few steps before feeling like it sufficiently aligns with your vision. Prompting for specific details can be tricky, so usually step 1 is to generate the basic outline of the image you’re after. Depending on your GPU or cloud service, this could take several minutes or hours before you get a basis that you can work with. Once you have the basic image, you can then use inpainting tools to mask specific areas of the image and change specific details, colors, etc. This again can take many many generations before you land on something that sufficiently matches your vision.
This is all also after you go through the process of reviewing and selecting one of the hundreds of models that have been trained specifically for different types of output. Want to generate anime-style art? There’s a model for that, want something great at landscapes? There’s a different one for that. Surely you can use an all-purpose model for everything, but some models simply don’t have the training to align to your vision, so you either choose to live with ‘close enough’ or you start downloading new options, comparing them with your existing work flow, etc.
There’s certainly skill associated with the current state of image generation. Perhaps not the same level of practice you need to perfectly represent a transparent veil in graphite, but as with other formats I have a hard time suggesting that when someone represents their vision in the real world that it’s automatically “not art”.
- Comment on Magnets are switching up the keyboard game with an additional keystroke setting 1 year ago:
I have one of these, and while the switch tech is certainly neat, I haven’t really come up with many good ways to use it.
Their implementation doesn’t seem to support changing resistance or being sensitive to multiple levels of pressure on the key, but one way I do use it is by changing the activation distance for certain keys that I tend to press by mistake when gaming, like caps lock, so that you really need to bottom out the key to activate it. This seems to help a bit but I suspect that if I wanted to get the most out of it, I would probably need to be a much more intense gamer.
- Comment on Can we please unpin the proprietary off-site/off-network promotion of discord 1 year ago:
For some reason I was convinced they had sold out, but it looks like you’re right, they’re still independent for the time being. Thanks for the note!
- Comment on Can we please unpin the proprietary off-site/off-network promotion of discord 1 year ago:
Everyone wants your phone number now because it’s a decent approach to combating spammers. Note that I said decent, not perfect. It’s relatively easy for a company to determine if a phone number is owned by a specific person vs. a voip company that enables spammers to use hundreds of new numbers, so now we’re asking everyone for theirs. SMS is also used for the lowest form of multi factor authentication, so they get to claim that it’s a security decision, not one for marketing, etc and because of network effects, we all have to choose to either go along or miss out.
Agree that it’s super annoying and certainly not privacy-centric, but Discord is owned by Microsoft, what can we expect? Innovation?