cynar
@cynar@lemmy.world
- Comment on The RTS genre will never be mainstream unless you change it until it's 'no longer the kind of RTS that I want to play,' says Crate Entertainment CEO 5 days ago:
I think the key difference is that it’s “easier” to apply a meta to a RTS game. In shooters, the meta often involves quick reflex decisions, where to hide, where to shoot etc. This is hard, and requires practice. It also means there is a significant number of players not applying it, or doing so sub-optimally.
With RTS games, the metas are easier to apply. This means that, in human Vs human games, the newer players often get flattened. It also means that far more complex metas can be developed and applied.
Shooters tend to back load the difficulty curve. It’s easy to get into them, and not do badly, but hard to do well. RTS games tend to front load the difficulty. You need to get over the initial hump to get “ok” with it. Once over the hump, the curve smooths off and you get good fairly rapidly.
One of the big differences between nerds and normals is that nerds enjoy punching through that wall. The difficulty is seen as a challenge, not an impediment. Most people want a faster feedback loop on the dopamine reward. FPS type games deliver that extremely well.
- Comment on Moon dust 1 week ago:
It’s sand that has never been exposed to water or oxygen. This leaves various reactive chemicals on the surface that would normally be broken down. The lack of water also means the particles haven’t been smoothed off as much. They are sharp and spiky.
The combination of these effects makes the dust quite unique, compared to earth dust.
- Comment on Gender-specific toilets to be required in non-residential buildings in England 1 week ago:
The Tories are desperately trying to find something to appeal to voters. Based off of the recent council elections, they are looking at being devastated in the next general election.
Unfortunately, when you corner a wounded animal, they tend to lash out at whatever they can, before you kill them. Unfortunately, they can still drag it out till January 2025.
- Comment on Checkmate, science 1 week ago:
Then you have the same mechanism used in toy wood trains.
- Comment on Best BBQ on the block 1 week ago:
I can easily see a specialist restaurant, aimed at the rich, that lets you eat a steak made from your own cells. Provide a swab, and have it served 6 weeks later.
- Comment on Wave Particle Duality 2 weeks ago:
I’m massively simplifying, and a lot of the interesting stuff gets lost with that. Unfortunately, when you try and maintain that, the analogy gets so convoluted that it’s useless.
The actual answer for understanding quantum mechanics is to chunk the maths, again, and again… and again. It also involves working almost entirely in the wave dominant domains. Trying to simplify that down to a quick comment is basically impossible.
- Comment on Wave Particle Duality 2 weeks ago:
It’s the Young’s double slit experiment. It proves that light (or electrons, or even small bacteria) is both a particle and a wave.
There is a quirk of quantum mechanics. When you observe a system, you fundamentally change it. In scientific terms “observe” has a very different meaning to layman usage. This leads to a lot of woo around the topic. In practice, observing is measuring. In quantum mechanics, the measurement system is of the same scale as the system being measured.
Imagine observing a good train, by bouncing BB bullets off it with a gun. That is classical measurement. You can assume the BBs had no effect on the train.
Now imagine the same measurement. However you are measuring how a bunch of glass playing cards are balanced in a house of cards. You can tell a lot still, but the BBs will smash it up doing so. This is quantum measurements.
In the first, the observer is independent of the system. In the second, the observer is a fundamental part of the system, and so can change its way of functioning.
- Comment on Manor Lords is off to a flying start on Steam, just hours after its early access release 2 weeks ago:
Early access is extremely effective, when used correctly. It lets smaller studios get an income stream a lot earlier, which helps significantly. It also lets them form a tight feedback loop with fans. They can find out what works and what doesn’t. Some examples of it working well would be Rimworld, Kerbal Space Program, and Factorio. All released as amazing games, primarily due to early access.
Unfortunately, a lot of companies seem to be abusing the idea right now. Particularly bigger studios.
- Comment on WHERE ARE YOUR COSHH FORMS, MR. FREEZE?? 2 weeks ago:
Isn’t it canon that he does that a lot already?
It’s just that it’s like filling a sieve with a tap. Unless you block the holes, you’re never going to get anywhere.
- Comment on trains 3 weeks ago:
I’m English, and envious of your train network. ☹️
- Comment on Sunak accused of making mental illness ‘another front in the culture wars’ 3 weeks ago:
While I massively disagree with most of what she stood for, at least Thatcher was both competent, and had a spine.
- Comment on we are but a gravy train in outer space 4 weeks ago:
We don’t know. Right now, relativity and QM fundamentally disagree on what gravity is. Both are also hugely accurate in their predictions. QM treats it as a force comparable to EM or the strong force. GR says it’s space itself moving. The force we experience is just a reaction to us trying to stay still, as space moves through us.
Beyond that, defining anything as fundamental is a challenge. How are you using fundamental?
- Comment on we are but a gravy train in outer space 4 weeks ago:
Knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is still not putting it in a fruit salad.
Gravity isn’t a force. Its effects can be mapped to an equivalent pseudo force and used as such. Outside of general relativity, or Quantum mechanics discussions, gravity is a force.
- Comment on How is the hydrogen made? 4 weeks ago:
Natural gas is a byproduct of ancient organic material being buried and slowly cooked by the earth’s heat. The hydrocarbons of the plant break down, and the gas rises. Under certain conditions, it gets trapped below non-porous rock and builds up.
Basically, all fossil fuels are Carbon fixed from CO2 by plants, then trapped underground. The solid material we call coal, the liquid oil and the gas natural gas.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
You’re assuming the brain is still running entirely on wetware.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
Most of the more recent benefits have been by working smarter, within the boundaries, rather than pushing the boundaries. Both have diminishing returns.
There’s still room for improvement in both, but not infinitely. We likely already have a lot of the low hanging fruit for brute computing tasks.
- Comment on A new Matrix movie is in development with The Cabin in the Woods filmmaker Drew Goddard at the helm 1 month ago:
There is no 4th matrix movie.
There is either a complete abomination of a thing masquerading as a matrix film, or a wonderful bit of protest art mocking the big studios. Which it is depends on your view.
- Comment on My dachshund is trying to kill me 1 month ago:
I’ve got a lurcher. They have an annoying habit of doing extremely close, high speed flybys. It wouldn’t be an issue except he kept messing it up and you’d get a glancing blow from a 30kg+ bullet.
The solution was slightly evil, but effective. We started sticking a foot out in front of him. It took a few tumbles, but he learnt to leave a meter or so of clearance.
Unfortunately, despite 6 years of effort, we have yet to break him of the high speed mud skids (Running towards us, then slamming on the brakes. He then skids to a stop in the mud in front of us, before accelerating away. This tends to spray us with mud).
- Comment on How do you keep your homes clean? 1 month ago:
Most will still work without an internet connection, you just lose some of the QoL functionality. I believe some can also work with Home Assistant, for self hosting those functions. Unfortunately they generally require an initial internet connection to set up.
- Comment on How do you keep your homes clean? 1 month ago:
I invested in a self emptying one. It empties the dustbin and automatically cleans the mop. I just have to dump the waste water every week or so, and fill up the clean.
- Comment on Anon has a power fantasy 1 month ago:
My main point was that boats aren’t free to run. They require constant maintenance and care to remain viable. If you’re going to include the maintenance and running costs of a horse team, then you need to also include the equivalent for boats.
Don’t get me wrong, when you have a waterway, boats still win, by a large margin. Hence why Europe has so many canals etc.
- Comment on Anon has a power fantasy 1 month ago:
Someone’s never owned a boat.
There are 3 idioms that come to mind.
A boat is a hole in the water you pour money into.
A boat owner is only happy twice. When they buy a boat, and when they sell it.
“You don’t want to buy a boat. What you want is a friend with a boat!”
- Comment on Staying for the week at an AirBnB in Rochester, MN. This is what I just found out I'm stuck with. 1 month ago:
The upload is likely more of an issue. I was stuck with an annoying ASDL setup for a while. Download wasn’t bad, but upload was extremely low. It also had no form of traffic shaping. As soon as one of our phones decided to back up our photos, the TCP return packets started getting lagged out. Basically webpages wouldn’t load/timeout while anything was trying to upload.
Long pings are annoying. Insufficient upload can break a lot of ‘modern’ websites.
- Comment on If you've been fooled, does that make you "a fool"? 1 month ago:
Apparently that quote was where a scriptwriter almost screwed Bush over.
The full phrase is “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Bush realised he was about to give the media a sound bite of him saying “Shame on me”.
Given the context, it’s far more understandable why he flubbed it.
- Comment on If the agreed upon age of the Universe is updated from 13 billion years old to 26 billion years old how does that affect Science and Astrophysics? 1 month ago:
The question is, how that trend develops. Right now, our footprint is dropping, due to efficiency improvements. At the same time, that might change again. E.g. large scale Comms between a home world, like earth, and other planets.
There is also the problem of older civilisations. Any approaching type 2 will be VERY visible, as the spectrum of their star changes. In terms of human history, we are a long way off. In ages of the universe scales, 10,000 years is practically a blip. We see no evidence of Dyson swarms or anything of that nature. An extra 13 billion years is a LONG time for no one to leave a detectable footprint.
- Comment on If the agreed upon age of the Universe is updated from 13 billion years old to 26 billion years old how does that affect Science and Astrophysics? 1 month ago:
To further add to this. The concern is related to what is nicknamed “the great filter”. The drake equation tries to estimate the number of communicating civilisations within range of us. Even with quite pessimistic terms, it still implies there should be lots of them. Therefore, a term is likely missing or wrong. This is known as the great filter.
If the great filter is behind us, that’s fine. E.g. abiogenesis being vastly harder, and so less likely, than we think. However, it could also be ahead of us. If it is, it likely won’t be far. We are already entering the era where we are detectable on an interstellar distance. Nukes and climate change have been raised as potential “great filters”.
An alternative idea is that we are not typical. If we are one of the first civilisations to reach this level, at least locally, then we would see very little. An older universe makes this significantly less likely.
- Comment on black holes 1 month ago:
There are 2 parts. At the center is the singularity. Theoretically, this is an infinitely small point of infinite density. This has no volume. Around this is the event horizon. This has volume, and is what we refer to as a black hole. Theoretically, you could have a black hole without a singularity, you just need an area dense enough that light can’t escape.
- Comment on The duality of particles 2 months ago:
As you read deeper, it’s more and more obvious. Light is neither. It’s a quantum mechanical object that has no direct analog in classical physics.
Under some conditions, the wave properties are dominant. In others, the particle. In most quantum mechanical problems, both are present.
My main point is that you get log jammed if you try and add the wave properties to a particle concept. There’s nothing it can properly connect to. However, a wave can look like a particle, if you set it up right, and squint hard enough. In graph form, it’s normal distribution with standard deviation close to zero. Basically a spike, with some slight rounding. It’s far from perfect, but it gives our limited brains an anchor to work from.
- Comment on No touchy 2 months ago:
Considering how little conflict we currently have, compared to our population size, we are doing extremely well. Unfortunately, the conflicts remaining are spectacular enough to counter that.
- Comment on No touchy 2 months ago:
I was curious and looked it up. Apparently it mostly happens between trees of the same species, with several causes.
Most are mechanical. The tips brush against each other, and damage new balances and leaves. Both trees divert growth away from the area.
Some also sense shading via red light. They focus growth away from shade. This means neither tree grows into the gap, since they are partially shading each other.
It also helps limit the spread of leaf eating parasites. Again, particularly useful in a forest of the same species.
So yes, the trees are social distancing, to avoid the spread of disease.