scratchee

@scratchee@feddit.uk

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Owen Jones: This column does not express support for Palestine Action – here’s why⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I really think we need to distinguish between terrorism in the sense of “are they going to keep blowing people up?” and “terrorism” in the sense of “are my taxes going to go up because of this?” I feel like the word is being stretched for the second example…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨European game publisher group responds to Stop Killing Games, claims 'These proposals would curtail developer choice"⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, “I don’t like this proposed change to the law because it has an effect” is not the compelling narrative they seem to think it is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam now generates three times more revenue for Capcom than PlayStation⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There are 2 schools of thought. Those that are against the entire concept of software that tries to control how you use it, drm/anticheat/etc in any form is malware to them. And those that accept it might be acceptable in principle (eg for anticheat especially), but believe denouvo and certain other drm programs go too far and cross a line (especially when they hook into the kernel or start tracking things outside the game that they have no business tracking).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨All babies in England to get DNA test to assess risk of diseases within 10 years⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds like they need to speed up the test, if it takes 10 years then they won’t be babies anymore by the time they get results.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British passenger in seat 11A survives India plane crash, reports say⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  people improbably survive plane crashes all the time. It’s not likely in a crash like this, but there was 241 opportunities for it to happen, 1 seemingly got lucky.

  People survive falling out of planes or getting struck by lightning sometimes too. Shit happens in both directions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Outer Worlds 2 - Official Story Trailer | Xbox Games Showcase 2025⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  On the one hand, the ship was one of the most fun parts for me, but on the other, I do wonder if it was a mistake because it makes the game so much more frustrating for anyone who hasn’t been trained on kerbal space program or some other Newtonian space control game to get the hang of it.

  It’s like riding a bike, if you know how to do it you have trouble even imaging why it’s hard, but nobody can do it at first, and it takes ages to get the new instincts to actually enjoy it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨observer 👀 observed quantum state⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you sure? I don’t think the Nomai would stand for scientific inaccuracy…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wolf Reboot⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not, the lack of wolves caused the elk to become a problem. Returning the wolves is (according to the infographic) fixing the elk problems.

  So it’s more like the wolves are policing the elk, it’s the wolves “fault” that the elk are not a problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BioTechbros⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Meh, let Dr Ian Malcom come in and worry about the ethics after we’ve published.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Raid on Quaker Meeting House, mass arrests by London Metropolitan Police of Youth Demand members⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Seems like an awful waste of police resources, if nothing else.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Prospect of £5 pint leaves bitter taste for some pubgoers⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Londoners looking at this article in utter confusion

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨poor little mousecell⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Our society runs on our stomachs

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨poor little mousecell⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It sort of still works if you imagine they’re talking about the descendants of the dinosaurs which form the primary meat of human society (chickens)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anti-acknowlegements⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve certainly been there, shocked to realise my personal slice of reality was unusual. At least in this case, it’s a good problem to have.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anti-acknowlegements⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  But surely equality has been achieved in the last few months, this all feels so very January. People are so much more open minded now than in those dark days of the past. Why waste time even discussing such outdated attitudes that totally and completely disappeared in February and are certain to never return?!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anti-acknowlegements⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It may be in a scientific paper, but this is more of an anecdote about the various issues the author encountered, rather than something intended to be actionable and clearly delineated as you’d expect in the body of a scientific article. Therefore a more literary style is appropriate for this section.

  My mental model is that bullet points are for when you expect a reader to go over the points with a highlighter, prose for when you want to produce an emotional response. This feels more like the latter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Police admit arrest of anti-monarchy heckler in Oxford was unlawful⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ironic that his polite human-scale protest wouldn’t have gotten much attention if the police hadn’t turned it into national news.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨👁👄👁⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re not actually wrong. The Goa’uld were indeed far too slow moving, and it was their ultimate weakness, they weren’t able to keep up with the pace of change around them, even despite a lack of competition in their evolutionary niche.

  Or possibly because of a lack of competition. Another object lesson in the dangers from having a lack of biodiversity in our ecosystem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GARBAGEOLOGY⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I once had to stay in Birmingham after a cancelled train. On leaving the station I was accosted by a drunk demanding cigarettes, who started swearing at me after I admitted I didn’t smoke. That’s my only experience of Birmingham, I have to assume it’s typical.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bloodletting recommended for Jersey residents after PFAS contamination⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I imagine they can’t because their blood is too ironic

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨IEEE 754⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, rules like “all integers can be represented up to 2^24” and “10^-38 is where denormalisation happens” are helpful, but I often have to figure out why I got a dodgy value from first principles, floating point is too complicated to solve every problem with 3 general rules.

  I wrote a float from string function once which obviously requires the details (intentionally low quality and limited but faster variant since the standard version was way too slow).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨IEEE 754⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In game dev it’s pretty common. Lots of stuff is built on floating point and balancing quality and performance, so we can’t just switch to double when things start getting janky as we can’t afford the cost, so instead we actually have to think and work out the limits of 32 bit floats.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vegan drink Oatly can’t call itself ‘milk’, judges rule⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly prefer it to milk in tea. I still use milk at home since I can’t be arsed to have fancy milk for porridge and tea only but at the office I’ll go for the oat milk by preference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The restrictions are pretty reasonable. The obvious “risk” of abuse is that this is a slippery slope and both the rules get relaxed and the safeguards lose their funding and attention over time, but the chance of that happening increases over time, there’s no way in hell they’ll be making a dent in the benefits bill for the next few years.

  So I don’t think your suggested link between this and the current governments goal of reducing benefits is the truth, or even particularly credible.

  Maybe there will be problems in 20 years, it’s certainly a reasonable fear and I don’t blame anyone who argued against it to avoid that risk, but I can’t seriously believe that anyone thinks the government is going to use this to start killing off benefit claimants in job lots.

  Tldr: your ”truth” is a pretty dumb take

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Guys, what did you buy during the Steam autumn sale?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Just be glad you don’t have to swap the cd every 20 clicks. Riven was basically 1 disc per cutscene when it first came out and I remember getting very frustrated as a kid when I accidentally triggered an island switch and knew it’d be 10 minutes until I could get back.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let me at 'em!!⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  How big was that knife originally?!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Campaigners tie baby slings to statues in call for better UK paternity leave⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  We’ve already lucked into a solution to the population boom, the numbers will level off around 19 billion. Given how intractable population control is, we’re very lucky we’ve found this without some dystopian shitshow.

  In the developed world we are approaching the opposite problem, we’re currently dependant on immigration to maintain our societies, but as the rest of the world stops growing we’ll have more trouble getting that immigration and won’t have the local young population to care for our elderly.

  Given that we should be trying to figure out how to encourage a sustainable population whilst we still have time to do so. If we can choose between 1.9->2.2 children per couple as needed then we’ll be in a healthy position to slowly reduce the population to a comfortable level.

  Right now our natural population decline in the developed world is too fast, probably because our society has made being a parent quite an individual burden. Of course, totally moving the costs to a societal model would be a disaster, but presumably there’s a middle ground where people are comfortable keeping the society going at a healthy rate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Protection zones around abortion clinics in place by October⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s exactly the answer given to you above - the line is murky and grey, there is no clear point that everyone agrees is the right point.

  In such a circumstance, the right answer is open to interpretation, and the right solution for a society is to accept that the best person to make that decision is the person involved.

  If you want my answer, it’s when brain cells develop enough to start looking like a functioning brain (somewhere around 16-20 weeks). Before that it’s just a brain dead mass of cells regardless of how it looks.

  Clearly you have a different moment, and that’s fine, but you don’t get to ignore that the issue is open to interpretation. Otoh, I admit that both sides are guilty of trying to railroad a “simple” interpretation as the only right answer, it’s always tempting to force a simple answer and declare the problem solved, it’s harder to let people decide for themselves what the right answer is, but that’s the right thing to do when we as a society cannot reach a consensus, and we certainly don’t seem to have a consensus on this one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can you trust Valve? Honest criticism of Steam.⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I trust Valve to be lazy and swim in their sea of profits rather than go searching for more.

  They have thus far avoided serious levels of enshittification because they don’t seem motivated in maximising immediate profits and killing their golden goose.

  The day they get replaced by a competitive non-monopoly is the day it becomes a race for the bottom, who can invent the most predatory way to drain profits from users? Nobody else will be able to compete, so they’ll all be copying each other on their way down.

  Streaming services all over again.

  Not all monopolies are bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Today's featured article on Wikipedia: Outer Wilds⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  On the one hand, if you don’t enjoy the game that’s fine. It’s a masterpiece, but that doesn’t magically mean that everyone will enjoy it.

  That said, if you want to enjoy it more, focus on one thing per loop, everything is designed to be completable in a single loop, (or maybe a few for the more complicated puzzles if you get stuck). And if something is frustrating, do something else.

  Things really go wrong if you keep smashing your head against a brick wall or if you keep jumping around and never manage to finish anything.

  We’re trained to think of death as a major failure by other games, it’s not in this one, it’s just jumping back home, repairing the ship, and starting from a central location and a known state.