Nibodhika
@Nibodhika@lemmy.world
- Comment on Scifi question about time travel: 1 week 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? 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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? 3 weeks 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? 3 weeks 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? 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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)... 3 weeks 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? 3 weeks 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? 3 weeks 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? 3 weeks 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? 3 weeks 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? 3 weeks 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 4 weeks 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? 4 weeks 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? 4 weeks 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? 4 weeks 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”.
- Comment on What's the best way to respond to a family member who says the COVID vaccines are being used to depopulate? 4 weeks ago:
The growth rate is a better chart for that, because you can see the population growth drastically diminishing (because more deaths = less grow) until vaccines where made available and then it immediately goes back to normal. If someone wanted to depopulate all they had to do was prevent the vaccines from reaching people or have people not take the vaccine.
- Comment on What's the best way to respond to someone who says "transracial is just as valid as transgender"? 5 weeks ago:
The best way is asking: what’s your point? Is it that transgender shouldn’t be accepted or that transrace should?. And proceed from there to either defend transgenderism or criticize transracism accordingly.
First let me start by saying I strongly dislike the race therminology, but I’ll use it here for consistency, although normally I would call it ethnicity.
The difference between those lies in that gender is a social construct, and race is not. Race has some biological meaning, just like sex, people can’t change their sex (yet), they can’t change their race (yet).
Gender is a social construct, it’s things that have nothing to do with biology but that we as a society attribute in general to a specific sex. A similar concept for race would be culture, a person can be of the sex male but prefer to wear clothes usually associated with female sex, just like someone can be of the white ethnicity but prefer to hear music usually associated with black ethnicity. I wouldn’t call Eminem or Michael Jackson transrace, what would that even mean?
- Comment on What's the best way to respond to someone who says "transracial is just as valid as transgender"? 5 weeks ago:
I get your point, but you’re missing the point of what the person is saying. They said that if no one cared about gender or race transgenders or transrace wouldn’t be an issue, it would be seen similarly to people who dye their hair or undergo plastic surgery to change something they don’t like on themselves, i.e. cosmetic changes that society in general doesn’t give a crap.
If society treated race the same way we treat shoe sizes, i.e. they exist, we recognize them when it’s needed but understand that outside of picking a shoe you don’t care about it (there are no toilets for people who use size 6, or a special door that only people with size 7, and people certainly don’t require your shoe size in your CV and use that as a decision point as to whether they will hire you). IF we could get everyone to think like this, then we wouldn’t need to worry about the plights of any group because they would be in the past. That being said, this is not realistic because people are habit creatures, and if you grew up being taught to be racist and are never confronted about it you will keep those beliefs, that’s why it’s important to break stereotypes, that’s why affirmative actions are important, not because it helps the individual break through a societal barrier (although that’s important as well) but because they help society break from the preconceived notions that have engrained in most people’s minds through centuries of oppression.
The ideal future is one where gender or race doesn’t matter, but the road there goes through recognizing the plights that each gender and race has to face and adjust society to compensate for them so they can live “similar” lives and that on the long run society walks towards a more diverse and inclusive group. It’s easy to have a prejudice against someone different from your “normal”, which is why it’s important to break “normal” views and extremely important to normalize taboo behavior.
- Comment on A game you "didn't know it was bad 'til people told you so"? 5 weeks ago:
Me too, didn’t even know people thought it was a bad game until recently. Honestly I don’t get why, I wasn’t expecting anything different from what I got, there were definitely some dialogues that made me chuckle, and a lot of storylines were very tongue in cheek, and while gameplay was nothing to write home about neither is fallout and this was sold as “fallout in space”, and definitely delivered on that.
- Comment on What game has the best tutorial, in your opinion? 5 weeks ago:
Dead cells, there are people out there with hours of gameplay that haven’t completed the tutorial.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
I can’t believe no one mentioned Maemo and MeeGo, I stand to this day that my Nokia N9 was the best smartphone I ever had because of the OS, I only switched because Nokia abandoned it in favor of Windows phone which made apps stop supporting it and no new apps being released for it, if it hadn’t been for that I wouldn’t have switched to Android.
- Comment on is white light "white" because that's what our start emits? 1 month ago:
No. Red is a single wavelength, we call red to anything that emits light waves with length between 625 to 750 nanometers, green anything between 500 to 565 and blue anything 450 to 485.
White is not real, white is what your eyes percebe multiple wavelengths together, if we had evolved near a red dwarf, there would probably be less blue light so out white would likely be independent of blue, just like it is independent of UV currently (because we don’t see those wavelengths).
Curious thing is that purple is also not real, purple is what your brain interprets blue+red, which are two separate wavelengths, so it’s not a color like red or green, but rather an illusion that your brain creates to show you red and blue at the same time.
- Comment on Is this genocide denial? 1 month ago:
This is the dictionary definition:
the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group
And this is a quote from Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant:
We will eliminate everything - they will regret it
He also said:
We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly
And here’s a quote from Amit Halevi, a Likud member in parliament:
There should be two goals for this victory: One, there is no more Muslim land in the land of Israel … After we make it the land of Israel, Gaza should be left as a monument, like Sodom
Those are just some examples that I could find with a quick search, but they clearly show a will to perform a deliberate and systematic destruction of the Palestine people. Therefore since they act on those wishes I would definitely define it as a genocide.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Hahaha, I had a friend around college time where we had the exact same dialogue every time:
- Hey, wanna go watch a movie?
- I can’t, I don’t have any money
- How many times have I told you, I’m asking you if you want to, not if you can, I’ll pay for you
I wasn’t rich or anything, but paying for that extra ticket or meal wouldn’t break my bank and he was my friend, I enjoyed hanging out with, so I would gladly spend that money to hang out with him.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
So we would have gone full circle on Mainframes.
- Comment on Do you think a story that mixes magic with super advanced technology can work? 1 month ago:
Sure, and by that definition it’s also not magic in LoTR
- Comment on Do you think a story that mixes magic with super advanced technology can work? 1 month ago:
So? It’s still super advanced technology from our point of view. Next you’ll tell me that Dune, Warhammer 40k or the Empire trilogy by Isaac Asimov are not advanced technology either because they’re stagnant too.
Technology is not the main focus of Star Wars, but they do have super advanced technology.