addie

@addie@feddit.uk

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I support pluto⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  … and it’s been doing it for long enough that it, and all the other plutinos, have settled into a 2:3 resonant orbit with Neptune, which takes 165 years to orbit the sun by itself.

  Space is really big and the timescales are really long, in a way which doesn’t really make sense on human scales, except for things which are so fast that they also don’t make sense on human scales, like core-collapse supernovas.

  The good news is that we’re good at doing maths and we’ve built some big computers to do that maths, so we’ve no problems ‘popping a few zeros’ into the sums that we do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Happy American import day⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a Celt from Scotland.

  Rothe is correct; that’s not how we used to celebrate it. Our Hallowe’en involved carving a tumshie out of the vegetable we call a turnip, but which the rest of the UK calls a swede. A tumshie being a scary face - hollowing it for a candle is out of the question; a turnip is much too hard. Might involve reading some spooky stories and perhaps a fancy-dress party. Fireworks aren’t out of the question; we’ll have some ready for Nov 5.

  No trick-or-treating, no pumpkins - those are Americanisms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let's learn some words in the Finnish language⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  ‘Ty chuju jebany’, nice.

  Our Polish taxi driver does a very solid line in ‘kurwa’ every other word, but it’s always nice to expand your horizons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Minecraft is removing code obfuscation in Java Edition⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Indeed - most Java IDEs have FernFlower built in, so it’s dead easy.

  Decompiled Java is surprisingly close to the original, especially compared to eg. decompiled C++; good luck with that. You get all the class, function and variable names back on the original line numbers.

  What you do not get back is any comments. So you can see what and how, but not why. Admittedly, most comments are kind of useless and do not explain ‘why’ very well, but for weird-but-critical code they can be essential.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Indeed - I’ve seen more people recommend Hannah Montana Linux (apt-based) than any of those for newcomers recently.

  You are entirely right that a Linux distribution is really just its package manager, the default packages installed, and some remote repositories which may (or may not) have had some customisation applied, which will have been pulled and built from a source repository somewhere. All that’s really needed to swap between eg. Arch, Manjaro or Cachy is to update the repo files and issue a package manager update command, although I’d probably like to verify my backups and get a stiff drink first.

  The House of Linux is built out of bricks, and the bricks aren’t that scary - you can take them to bits and look at them if you like, they’re usually zipped-up folders of text files and the binaries you’d get from compiling them yourself. But if that’s not what you’re used to, then yeah - 🤯 .

  In all seriousness, I wish that most distros had art half as good as what Void Linux has - got some really gifted people, there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Strangely enough, “Windows always fucking up my dual boot setup” is what caused me to drop Windows for good about a decade ago. And Linux gaming has come on absolutely leaps and bounds since then.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  True, but network effects are important to that.

  There were huge numbers of people that wouldn’t move to Linux because it didn’t support all of their games. Now it does, and lots of people are moving.

  There are lots of people that won’t move to Linux because they have a random bit of hardware that’s not supported, or a highly-specific bit of software they need to do their job that only runs on Windows. The manufacturers wouldn’t support Linux because not enough people used it. Ah, but now we have all the gamers, so there are quite a lot of people using it.

  Each domino that falls encourages the rest. Steam Linux users are more than 3x Steam macOS users, and we’re not that far from overtaking it for general desktop usage. In some regions, that’s already the case, and while the Windows 10 exodus can move to Linux easily, they’d need to buy new hardware fo use the Mac operating system. Not many companies would question providing Apple support; once Linux has a comparable share, it would be foolish to leave that out of consideration as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Listen, there’s dozens of Linux users on Void, Slackware and Gentoo. Dozens! Especially the ones wanting to run the latest games. Can’t just leave all of them out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Strangely, the search page for ProtonDB shows the ‘proton rating’ for games which have a ‘native but abandoned / broken’ native Linux build, whereas the actual page for the game just shows ‘native’ and I can’t see the button to show the rest of the information. I’m sure it used to be there; they’ve started hiding a lot of stuff in favour of making the ‘steam deck’ results more prominent. But in some cases, ‘proton rating even with a native Linux build’ is quite important.

  eg. Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising.

  • search page shows 'gold’
  • actual page says ‘native’, but ‘loads of rendering issues, really slow, broken on multi-monitor setup, use proton instead’.

  Mark of the Ninja: Remastered:

  • search page says 'platinum’
  • actual page says ‘native’, but ‘frequent deadlocking issues makes game unplayable, use proton instead’.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Emulating the Impossible' - my interview with a developer of RPCS3⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s fascinating stuff, thanks!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If it works it works⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Speaking as someone with a chemical engineering degree and twenty years in industry:

  • we have some really complicated computer programs and simulations for all the important stuff, then we add ten percent for safety and round it up to the next standard size. We don’t buy 292 mm pipe, we just use 300 mm, because that’s what’s on the shelves.

  • you need to be able to decide quickly whether results you’re seeing are sensible, usually to order-of-magnitude, and whether eg. it will take an hour to fill a tank, or a week. We usually don’t care whether it’s 55 minutes or 56. You need to be able to do those sums in your head, though.

  3 is more than accurate enough as an engineering approximation for pi. In fact, 5 is close enough, and much easier to work with.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Republican? Democrat? There is a third option:⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, that’s UK. We’ve a million streets like that, those trees in the park-looking bit opposite. I’d imagine the house with the bins is a hotel or a B&B, something like that, because otherwise it would be odd to have so many the same colour - green is compostable and black is ‘bottles and cans’ where I live, and you normally just get one of each.

  Don’t know what the green stripe on the road is. Our cycle lanes don’t look like that, aren’t that colour. I’m guessing it’s some “who’s allowed to park where in London” thing, residents-only or something like that. They’re a strange bunch, Londoners.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Steam Controller's stick is upgradeable!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, nice. I destroyed my first one playing Sekiro; the trigger buttons are really awkward to get to pieces to replace the internals, and my replacement Steam controller is almost too valuable to use, since I can’t replace it any more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon achieves new heights⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And having to buy shoes and trousers from specialists, and having your feet hang off the end of the bed in hotels, and wandering into spiderwebs that no-one else has disturbed yet, and not being able to adjust the shower high enough away from home. Gift that keeps on giving.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Former BioWare lead writer reads the runes on EA-Saudi deal and speculates that 'guns and football' are in, 'gay stuff' is out, and the venerable RPG studio may be for the chop⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  InXile did Wasteland 2/3 and Torment: Numenara. All fine RPGs.

  Completely agree that the talent needs to go elsewhere - this deal is the death knell for creative works at EA. I’d be careful about what you promise on Kickstarter, though. Signing up to lots of stretch goals is likely to burden your game with lots of tickbox features that don’t make any sense.

  In fact, I’d say that Bloodstained (while generally excellent) would be improved by cropping out some stuff. The crafting, cooking and crop farming could just be chopped out whole, and put all the upgraded gear in the place where you find items. Would swap out some of the enemy and boss count for a bit more variety. And ‘hard mode’ could have done with some playtesting and a general rebalance, or just be renamed ‘infrequent crazy difficulty spike’ mode. But someone paid for those tickboxes and so we’ve got them.

  Letting RPG designers run completely free from publishers can be a recipe for disaster, too. Pillars of Eternity? Excellent. PoE2? Unbelievably unfocussed and sprawling, disrespectful of your time, goes nowhere fast. Could possibly have made two games out of it if someone had told them to chop it in half and then polish the bits, but was a bit of a studio killer instead, could never sell enough to cover the costs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Everyone thinks the Deus Ex remaster looks awful and they're right: 'They really turned those 1999 graphics into 2003 graphics'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t ask for this.

  The original looks fine; it’s gone from ‘okay for 2000’, through to ‘dated’ and back to ‘retro charm’ again. Plus you can turn up the resolution and fps to silly levels, which wasn’t the originally intended effect but is pretty nice.

  All early 3D games look so bad that the slight year-on-year improvements are nearly irrelevant now. A hideous AI texture ‘upgrade’ doesn’t bring it to to modern standards, and distracts from the truly amazing game behind it all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox invests big into indies, signs Game Pass deals with over 50 studios⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  48 studios will be closed before they get a game out, and then the other two will be closed after making something award-winning and genre-redefining, and the IP will never see the light of day again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Piss off!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m subscribed to oxygennotincluded@lemmy.ml - seems dead, though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ladies get urself a mothman⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I prefer to pretend that Dune and Dune Messiah are the only books in the series, and in particular that his son never wrote anything. Makes for a much more satisfying tale.

  Also works for ‘underground worm film’ Tremors. Done perfectly after the first one, no sequels.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'An embarrassing failure of the US patent system': Videogame IP lawyer says Nintendo's latest patents on Pokémon mechanics 'should not have happened, full stop'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Or ‘love hotels’. You want to rent a room by the hour, Mario gets his cut.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hollow Knight Silksong Patch Version 1.0.28497 Now Live⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The harpoon works just fine too, one-hits the stick insects and does her some damage as well if you can line it up. She’s not very dangerous if you know her moveset, but that’s an education learned by many runbacks.

  Doesn’t say they’ve fixed the comedy bug where if you look at the map while on one of the collapsing platforms, then when you fall through then the game stops accepting input, Hornet just stares at it forever. Only glitch I’ve found, quite impressive for a day one purchase.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'An embarrassing failure of the US patent system': Videogame IP lawyer says Nintendo's latest patents on Pokémon mechanics 'should not have happened, full stop'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The time for “collaborate and listen” has passed. Now, the time for Nintendo to bring down hammer go hammer mc hammer yo hammer and the rest can go and play has arrived.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US panel releases over 33,000 pages of Epstein files⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Open to abuse, unfortunately. If even the most trivial of cases takes a week to resolve, then you could shut any company down by filling fifty suits.

  The real solution would be for the judge to actually do their job and to penalise companies for doing that kind of bullshit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘A new frontier of potential abuse’: Is it legitimate to charge someone flying to a funeral more than a leisure traveler?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Exactly this. I needed a day return on short notice the last time I had to take a flight for a funeral, so that would be business price for tickets rather than leisure price. About 10x price difference, but there was no alternative if I was going to be there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Living the dream⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Was expecting it to be “vodka without beer is just waste of money”, in that case.

  Looking it up, most sources seem to have it the other way around - “beer without vodka”, as in there’s no point wasting money on drinking unless you’re going to do some hard drinking?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Living the dream⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I am intrigued. Most of the cultures I’d expect to have that proverb have neither definite nor indefinite articles in their language.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I love a good fractal⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Think if the GNU project had spent less time working on ‘clever’ recursive acronyms and fitting Scheme into everything, and more time hacking, we might actually be using their kernel.

  Linus locked himself in his bedroom for the summer and got almost all of POSIX working on 386. That’s the level of geek to aspire to. If RMS had just decided to name his kernel after himself rather than messing, we’d all be be using Stallix instead.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Uhm⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve seen that rectum before…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Electricity Consumption⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Visited a traditional water-powered flour mill recently. Very cool, beautiful building, and the end product makes really delicious bread and pasta. Wholemeal, not too fine, nothing in it but grain. Perfection.

  From the water flow, drop and wheel turning rate, I made the maximum possible power as about 5 kW. Probably optimistic to think you’d get a quarter of that in practice. Still, that’s a huge amount compared to what a person can produce, and it’s ‘on tap’ 24 hours a day. That kind of thing does explain why, in the days before electrification, that having ‘the right landscape’ made some areas really wealthy and some others not. Exploitable renewable energy, what a concept.

  So yeah, your proposed map would be really interesting. The Romans burned down whole forests to make steel - you simply couldn’t refine it in a place without. It would be fascinating to see the map of “power resources” and the resulting industries, even if it would be very hypothetical.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Begun the kernel wars have⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Seeking a technical solution to a non-technical problem. Rather than having one set of company-hosted servers that they then struggle to police, just let everyone host their own, and they can be responsible for banning anyone that doesn’t follow the community rules.