Nibodhika
@Nibodhika@lemmy.world
- Comment on Mastercard release a statement about game stores, payment processors and adult content 1 week ago:
Steam remembers my card, so I don’t have to input it there everytime. I get that you wouldn’t want to put your card info somewhere shady, but Steam is not that. Also, most banks nowadays have virtual cards you can use for that sort of thing, some even have one use cards that self destroy after a single purchase. So the safety that PayPal used to offer is not that important anymore.
- Comment on Whatever happened to the blockchain/smart contract 'revolution' we were told about? 1 week ago:
It’s not though, in the current system everything must go through those shitty companies, so they can dictate anything, and if Steam disobeys they essentially block them from receiving money, and it’s impossible to jump ships because creating a competition is essentially impossible, no one will be able to handle the Volume of Valve’s transactions and it needs to be all done by one entity. Ñ
In the system I’m describing once you’re in the crypto space no one can dictate anything. The same people could try to act as gatekeepers, but it’s almost impossible because anyone with Ethereum can sell them to you, so if an exchange threatens to not buy Ethereum from Valve they can simply go to any other exchange, hell, they themselves could sell Ethereum to users who would then use the Ethereum to buy games returning the Ethereum to Valve to be sold again, and if not anyone with enough capital can start an exchange selling Ethereum to users and buying it from Valve, even with small initial capital you would likely grow very quickly doing this. And the best part is that Valve can sell their Ethereum to different exchanges in any ratio they want to, so it’s essentially impossible for one of them to dictate anything because 1 big exchange can be replaced by 10 smaller ones in a heartbeat without any disruption to the system.
- Comment on Whatever happened to the blockchain/smart contract 'revolution' we were told about? 1 week ago:
So? Just use another exchange, that’s the same as saying paper money is bad because pawn shops might ban specific users.
- Comment on Whatever happened to the blockchain/smart contract 'revolution' we were told about? 1 week ago:
You’re thinking on a very narrow definition of a contract, here’s a simple contract example that’s currently being censored and wouldn’t be censorable on Blockchain: Buy NSFW games.
A simple contract could sell you NFTs for game keys that could be redeemed on Steam/Itch/GoG or even the own dev site. So there’s no middleman who could oppose this transaction and say which sort of games can or can’t be sold. This whole thing would be completely automated, secure for every part and non-censorable.
You’re hearing contracts and thinking on paper legal documents, whereas smart contracts usually refer to programs acting on tokens, the code that acts on those tokens is the contract, in the example above the generation and transfer of the tokens would be the contract.
- Comment on Mastercard release a statement about game stores, payment processors and adult content 1 week ago:
Ah, if that’s the case then MC statement is kind of pointless, so it’s not them putting the pressure, but you still have to go through the people putting the pressure to get to them. I thought that if you put your card number on steam it had some more direct form of charging than going through stripe.
- Comment on Whatever happened to the blockchain/smart contract 'revolution' we were told about? 1 week ago:
Why less certainty? It’s more certain and less censorable than any other digital payment method.
- Comment on Mastercard release a statement about game stores, payment processors and adult content 1 week ago:
If this is true then I honestly hope Steam and Itch go “ok, then, PayPal and Stripe are banned from the store as payment forms until we can figure out a way of limiting content you can pay with them”. Honestly I don’t think enough people use either of those payments forms, and even if they do currently they almost assuredly have a card they can use instead, and are more likely to switch payment methods than to stop buying games.
- Comment on RPGs that are optionally pacifist? 2 weeks ago:
There are lots of games where combat is not even an option, like Life is Strange, Before your eyes (do play this one with a camera and a box of tissues nearby), or Firewatch. But games where you’re expected to fight but can find ways around it the first example that comes to mind is Metal Gear Solid 3, you can beat that game without killing anyone, there’s even an achievement for that and one of the bosses will be particularly easy if you go this route.
- Comment on RPGs that are optionally pacifist? 2 weeks ago:
Spec Ops has no “pacifist option”
I mean, the whole point of the game is that you could have not killed anyone, you could have stopped playing, you choose to keep playing, you choose to kill all those NPCs, the game never forced you, turning off the game was always an option.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
If you look at most popular streamers today you will notice that they have years of doing it, and the reason is that it’s difficult to gain followers, and even if you to viral for some random reason it’s difficult to maintain the followers engaged. And without followers ads or sponsors are not going to give you too much money, and trying to charge your followers is more likely to lose you followers than earn you money.
In short, take a “normal” job that’s okay with you doing that as a side gig, and with time you might earn enough on your streaming that you might be able to quit your job. Good luck, it’s a hard market to get into.
- Comment on Is Mexican food uniquely good with alcohol or have I just been conditioned? 2 weeks ago:
Sorry I don’t live in Germany, so I don’t know the chain, but are you sure it’s a chain and not some random restaurant? When I was in Germany I remember seeing lots of random restaurants selling Pizza + Kebab, with no apparent name, just the sign saying what they sold.
- Comment on Is Mexican food uniquely good with alcohol or have I just been conditioned? 2 weeks ago:
What chain? Doner Kebab is the name of the food, it’s served in several places, it’s like saying Hot Dog chain should make it to Europe.
- Comment on Scifi question about time travel: 4 weeks ago:
First of all this is not a paradox, unless you’re not explaining something, there are two yous past and future, if past self turns off the machine before seeing the numbers nothing happened, if he turns it off afterwards the information has already been transferred so nothing happens either.
I have a feeling you might have recently watched Primer and are thinking of a similar working tome machine, where the machine needs to be powered on from past until future. But if this situation happened in Primer it wouldn’t be a problem either because you’re not in the box after you leave it. It’s a bit weird, but if you imagine time as horizontal lines, the box allows you to travel diagonally, so you only exist inside the box in that timeline at the moment of exiting, before that you were in a different timeline, so if you exit the box, wait a while and turn it off you’re only preventing yourself from using the box again. In fact that’s one of the big reveals of the movie, except it’s said in passing by mentioning that the boxes are multi-use.
- Comment on How does AI use so much power? 4 weeks ago:
Your answer is intuitively correct, but unfortunately has a couple of flaws
Supercomputers once required large power plants to operate
They didn’t, not that much anyways, a Cray-1 used 115kW to produce 160 MFLOPS of calculations. And while 150kW is a LOT, it’s not in the “needs its own power plant to operate” category, since even a small coal power plant (the least efficient electricity generation method) would produce a couple of orders of magnitude more than that.
and now we carry around computing devices in out pockets that are more powerful than those supercomputers.
Indeed, our phones are in the Teraflops range for just a couple of watts.
There’s plenty of room to further shrink the computers,
Unfortunately there isn’t, we’ve reached the end of Moore’s law, processors can’t get any smaller because they require to block electrons from passing on given conditions, and if we built transistors smaller than the current ones electrons would be able to quantum leap across them making them useless.
There might be a revolution in computing by using light instead of electricity (which would completely and utterly revolutionize computers as we know them), but until that happens computers are as small as they’re going to get, or more specifically they’re as space efficient as they’re going to get, i.e. to have more processing power you will need more space.
- Comment on Bethesda is allegedly working on ‘multiple Fallout games’, including Fallout 3 Remastered, teases report 4 weeks ago:
I never said they were good, and you didn’t complain about them being bad, you complained about killing the franchise, and whether a franchise is dead or alive IS measured by popularity.
- Comment on Bethesda is allegedly working on ‘multiple Fallout games’, including Fallout 3 Remastered, teases report 4 weeks ago:
Oh yeah, they absolutely killed Fallout, the first game released by Bethesda (Fallout 3) was such a franchise killer that only sold 20 times more than the original game, and their latest game fiasco only doubled that. And let’s not talk about that fiasco of a TV show, that couldn’t even make it to most watched on Amazon, had to settle for the 2nd most watched show on Amazon, with only 4 times more viewers than Fallout 4 sold copies… In short, yeah, the new direction is such a fiasco that only managed to bring 165 new customers for every 1 that the original had.
Sources:
- Comment on What are your favourite single-player games without much fluff, grinding or difficulty spikes? 1 month ago:
Good luck, and let me know how it goes, it should be just that really, just don’t touch the controller until you’re through
- Comment on What are your favourite single-player games without much fluff, grinding or difficulty spikes? 1 month ago:
That’s weird, that’s the solution, does your controller has some drift that could cause it to still be firing some thrusters?
- Comment on What are your favourite single-player games without much fluff, grinding or difficulty spikes? 1 month ago:
Obvious spoiler ahead is obvious: Just let go of the controller when you enter that area, you’ll float peacefully (albeit very close to them) until the exit portal.
- Comment on Why do people especially men care if someone forgives a cheating partner 1 month ago:
No, you’re not, you cheated that’s the most fundamental thing not to do, that’s like saying “I’m a great cook, I would argue better than the majority of cooks, I only put rat poison in my food once!”, would you eat in the same restaurant where a cook intentionally put rat poison in your food once already?
- Comment on Hesitating getting a Switch 2 (1st game console in 15 years)... 1 month ago:
Honestly, I’m absolutely happy with my Steam Deck, I think it ticks most of your boxes (it even runs Linux, so it’s essentially a portable Linux computer designed for gaming), so I think it’s the better option that you’re looking gor. To your points specifically:
it’s really geared towards family/party gaming
There are plenty of party games on Steam.
it’s Nintendo, so you get the whole usual games (Mario Kart, Zelda, etc.)
This is the only reason to get a switch, if you want a Nintendo console and Nintendo games this is the way. Everyone who gets a switch understand this is the reason they’re getting it. If this is as strong a point to you that it makes you overlook everything else, then get the switch.
like most consoles, it’s plug and play and can be enjoyed in the living room (I kind of gave up trying to set up a proper gaming experience with my Linux PCs, given that I don’t have the hardware for it)
Steam Deck also has a Dock that you can plug to your TV, you’ll need controllers but even so it should be much cheaper in the long run since games are extremely affordable compared to Nintendo.
the battery life is not great to say the least (2.5 hours takes me back of the Game Gear in early 90s!)
Haven’t seen many benchmarks of the switch to be honest, but that does sound bad, the Deck only gets that bad battery life if you’re playing Cyberpunk or something, for more casual games it can get upwards of 6h. Plus you can get power banks that fast large it while playing, which I assume is also possible on the switch although the switch 1 used to have some issues with power banks.
the screen seems to be pretty bad too (at least it’s a step back from the OLED one of the Switch)
All but the cheapest Deck models now use a 90Hz OLED panel
the joycons are still not using a Hall effect sensor, meaning they might still be prone to drifting
While the Deck’s default sticks are not hall effect, they are easily replaceable and Valve sells hall effect replacements on ifixit, so if you ever get drift in your sticks it’s fixable.
most of the games will not be sold as proper cartridges but as download codes
If you’re going down this rote Steam sells download codes for much cheaper
the whole thing (console, additional gamepads, games) is quite pricey
The Deck is about the same price, but like I said you’ll end up saving in games since you start with your whole Steam Library and can get more games much cheaper.
it’s Nintendo, famous for their anti-everything (anti-homebrew, anti-emulation, anti-piracy)
The Deck is by far the most open console you can get, you can even replace the entire OS if you want to, but StramOS is great and you shouldn’t need to.
- Comment on What are your favourite single-player games without much fluff, grinding or difficulty spikes? 1 month ago:
Both are good games, but they’re very different from each other. Also neither is made by Bethesda.
- Comment on What are your favourite single-player games without much fluff, grinding or difficulty spikes? 1 month ago:
Trying not to spoil too much, there’s a timer but it doesn’t really matter, you will almost never run out of time and retrying is encouraged. There’s almost no time pressure in this game, and the amount of time in that timer is over 20 minutes, which should be plenty of time to do what you have to, and if not you can reset the timer and try again.
- Comment on What are your favourite single-player games without much fluff, grinding or difficulty spikes? 1 month ago:
You probably missed one entry that told you they were blind but not deaf
- Comment on Can an American go to Europe just for cheaper healthcare? 1 month ago:
Yes, but most Europeans tend to underestimate how expensive medicine is in the USA, from personal experience here in Spain an ambulance ride to the hospital + consultation + x-ray is free for residents and costs €200 for tourists, whereas the same stuff in the USA can cost around $5000 even for residents.
- Comment on Can an American go to Europe just for cheaper healthcare? 1 month ago:
As a general rule yeah you can, however the price for stuff if you’re not insured is very expensive, but it will likely still be much cheaper than the USA, and also if it’s not an emergency you might have trouble being able to get to a doctor. Let me give you an example, we were visiting Spain when my wife fell and twisted her ankle, we had to call an ambulance, she had an emergency consultation with an X-RAY (luckily she didn’t broke anything), and because we had forgotten our sanitary card we had to pay foreign prices, i.e. €200. That looks expensive to us because if we had brought that card it would have been free, but that same thing in the US could cost us $5000 so overall lot cheaper.
That being said, in Ireland for my wife to go to an Endocrinologist we had to:
- Register with a GP
- Book an appointment for that GP
- Pay that appointment
- Convince the GP you need to see an Endocrinologist. If he disagrees you won’t get to an Endocrinologist.
- The GP books the Endocrinologist appointment for you, or sends an email to the endocrinologist allowing you to book it
- You pay for the Endocrinologist appointment
- You go there and explain your symptoms, he’ll likely order blood exam and ask you to return on another day
- You book and pay the blood exams
- Do the blood exam
- Book and pay the return consultation to the endocrinologist
Overall cost was around €1000 and took us over a month to go through all of that. And again this might feel cheap for you, but to us feels expensive. And because of the initial requirement to register with the GP tourists can’t do it. Not sure how other countries work, in Spain we book stuff through our insurance and just show the insurance card and haven’t paid anything in over a year.
- Comment on One gamer got so tired of waiting for Valve, he made his own 'Steam Controller 2' out of Steam Deck parts, and it even splits in half like Switch Joy-Cons 1 month ago:
- It lacks a d-pad
- It lacks a right thumb stick
- The thumb stick it has is not capacitive nor drift free
- It only has one back paddle for each side
- Ergonomics of the deck are way better, at least for me
- It lacks the
…button (although this is minor because Steam+a opens the same menu)
Don’t get me wrong, the SC 1 is a great controller, but the Steam deck is better, getting a Steam deck like controller would be awesome.
- Comment on How is spontaneous betting (as portrayed by comics and movies) supposed to work? 1 month ago:
Damn you, you started to say that hacking is not portrayed realistically and I was going to reply with Mr. Robot, then you said about programming and I was going to mention Silicon Valley. Which goes to show that those are likely the only two realistic examples out there hahaha
- Comment on What's the best way to respond to a family member who says the COVID vaccines are being used to depopulate? 1 month ago:
If you click the source for the graph above and scroll down you’ll have it there.
- Comment on How do you think early humans survived without water bottles? Did they just live next to water sources all the time? 1 month ago:
The answer should be fairly obvious to anyone who’s looked at an European map, there’s a reason why the oldest cities are always around or near rivers. Also humans had bottle-like technologies since essentially forever, it’s probably one of the first tools to be developed after “pointy stick”.