Nibodhika

@Nibodhika@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Today’s layoffs (Epic Games official post)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the moment where Valve should publicly announce they’re not laying people off, because they have enough cash to pay all of their employees by charging a fair 30% of every sale, which makes their business sustainable. Then point to all other platforms that charge 30% and say “they’re not firing anyone either” then get to the only one that charges 12% and say “they’re the only ones losing money on this business by trying to undercut the real cost of doing this business, if they had charged the same 30% as everyone else does they would have enough to keep those employees”. Probably a bullshit argument because Epic surely has enough money to keep them now and it’s just someone looking at a graph and making bullshit decisions, still a very strong point for Valves lawyers to make.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Phone do you guys use?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Stock Pixel, I do have Nextcloud and other stuff, but I usually don’t want to risk bricking my phone and I’m okay with some of the tradeoffs of using Google things, not okay with being shackled to it though so I do have some alternatives setup ready to switch but for the most part I’m okay with the tradeoffs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In the age of electronics, when is go to vote can I request a paper ballot instead of a machine?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This is not true at all, it’s much easier to falsify paper votes than it is to falsify any good electronic voting system. This is a fake news perpetuated by people who are finding difficult to falsify electronic voting systems and want to, for example in Brazil the last election held with paper ballots was in 1994, and it has been demonstrated that those results were frauds, one of the elected candidates in that election has been one of the most vocal opposers to electronic voting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there any story ripoffs that are actually good?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t remember of any particularly great mission descending onto a city, there are some segments that could fot the description, but honestly Spec Ops: The Line is not memorable for its gameplay, it’s just average and it’s meant to be, the point of the game is in the story. Although I think that playing it now might not be as impactful as when it first released and every other game was a third-person shooter, but it still I strongly recommend it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there any story ripoffs that are actually good?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The Grim brother tales were always meant for children, they even did some early edits to make them more child friendly such as changing evil mother for evil stepmother. I guess we just had more tolerance for exposing children to violence back when they were released.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As a Chinese American, if I wanna travel internationally, is it better to just say I'm American, or pretend to be a Chinese National (to hide from Anti-American sentinments)?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In that case you are a Chinese who immigrated to the USA very young. While you probably think and behave more like an American than a Chinese, that doesn’t erase where you were born, even if for a technicality you no longer have a passport from that place. I would say that you’re one of the few people that are correctly described by the term Chinese-american, as you grew in both cultures. Unfortunately the popular use of that term is for Americans who have some ancestor from China.

  Not even planning to travel soon, just like to imagine traveling… it’s like window shopping but for travel xD

  That’s cool, where are you imagining traveling to?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As a Chinese American, if I wanna travel internationally, is it better to just say I'm American, or pretend to be a Chinese National (to hide from Anti-American sentinments)?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t.

  First of all, Chinese are not that well viewed abroad either, a lot of the Chinese tourists we get in Europe are the top earners kids and are entitled as fuck.

  Secondly no one judges people from their country, sure there are a lot of obnoxious Americans and Chinese tourists, but I imagine that’s just survivor bias, you don’t notice the non obnoxious ones which I assume to be the majority.

  Thirdly, and maybe most important, you won’t be able to do it. This question is proof that you think and act like an American, you have some ancestor who came from China so you think you’re Chinese-american, and that that somehow means you’re Chinese, but you grew in a different culture, eating different food, watching different TV shows, etc. In short, you are an American of Chinese ethnicity, you are not a Chinese who was born in America.

  Do you want to know what’s one of THE most obnoxious bullshit American tourists do? Teaching Italians about Italy because they’re Italian-American, or thinking they know all about Ireland because the grandpa of their third-cousin once removed came from Ireland, so they’re Irish-American. Unless you spent a significant chunk of your life in China, especially during the formative years, you will not behave Chinese, you have an “Americanized” image of what a Chinese is, and at best you would have fooled someone who doesn’t care about your nationality as long as you treat them with respect. There’s a song that I think sums out this feeling www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq0_yCNSV-c it is a very common one, I’ve lived both in Italy and Ireland which is why I use them as examples, and every so often you’d get the X-American thinking they’re X, and you could tell them apart from across the street.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Native: Spanish Fluent: Portuguese, English I can understand almost everything and can sort of speak it very badly: Italian, Catalan I know very basic things and could probably have survival level communication (although I would have to think hard since I haven’t used either in years): Russian, German Know how to say random phrases, generally “Excuse me, I don’t speak <language>, do you speak English?”: Finnish, French, Dutch.

  Currently I’m focusing on learning Catalan.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Sóc un home simple: veig català, dono un upvote.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nvidia Announces DLSS 5, and it adds... An AI slop filter over your game⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, that’s precisely my point. The difference is in what the algorithm is trying to do, traditional DLSS uses the image rendered in resolution X as output and scaled down to X/2 as input (for example), so it’s trained to upscale images, whereas this new thing uses who knows what as either, and clearly outputs something that is not an upscaled version of the frame.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nvidia Announces DLSS 5, and it adds... An AI slop filter over your game⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Because a pixelated circle being upscaled is a circle, but a pixelated circle being turned into a high definition pie is no longer a circle, and that’s especially problematic if the circle was just a cross hair or some other random circle like thing the AI thought was meant to be a pie.

  Yes, both things are the same, but that’s like saying you had a tiny spider in your house and you were okay because it killed mosquitoes in your house, so you should be okay with having a colony of bats since they are also animals and eat mosquitoes. Yes, both are the same, but the scales and the amount of intrusion are completely different.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to I prove to someone that the U.S. moon landing wasn't staged?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  a) Explain why the US hasn’t gone back in so long,

  Why would they? Nothing of value came from any of those missions and the risk is enormous.

  and why with modern technology it seems so difficult? (especially given that NASA has been experiencing numerous delays in the Artemis missions, that certainly hasn’t given them a good impression…)

  Because transistors are a lot more sensitive to EM than valves. Our current technology miniaturized lots of things, but that also means that a single piece of conductive material (like moon dust) or a single electron (from an em pulse) in the wrong place can wreak havok to it. Old computers required lots more electrons and space for their actual function so they were a lot more resistent to random variations. And we can’t make old computers anymore because we don’t have the factories for them, and you’re not going to create an entire factory just to produce a couple pieces for one mission, so they have to focus on isolating and making things more resistent.

  b) How do you verify moon rocks without having actually been on the moon? How did scientists figure out what a moon rock looks like?

  The moon is constantly being bombarded by unfiltered radiation because of its lack of atmosphere. This makes it so they’re composed of minerals that rarely occur on earth (they usually bind with oxygen or nitrogen in the atmosphere), have different isotopes (because of the radiation) and are much older (because no interference from tectonic movement/rain/wind/etc)

  c) Why aren’t the old Apollo designs being reused for a moon landing? (by either the Americans or the Chinese)

  Because they can’t for the same reason the US can’t, they don’t work with modern electronics, and no one can produce old electronics.

  They say that there isn’t strong evidence either side (but believes that it is false, saying that “we will see” once someone else lands on the moon)

  There is very strong evidence, your friend can corroborate for himself by spending a few thousand dollars (or he can understand that if anyone wanted to they could). First you need to buy a very powerful laser, then a very sensitive sensor, you hook them so they very close together and fire at the moon, you will never get a reading back, because the moon surface is a difuse reflector with a rough surface the light will scatter and go everywhere. However, when the astronauts went to the moon they left retroreflectors in specific locations, so if you pointed at one of those you would get the signal back approximately 2.5 second later.

  And what other points can I bring up to definitively say, yes, the moon landing wasn’t faked?

  I guess it’s easier to ask them “what evidence would convince you” because the answer will be none, of there was any evidence that would convince them they would have been convinced already.

  Another thing, they also can’t believe that astronauts could bring and ride the little moon buggies. I am also partially interested in how that was achieved to be honest!

  Not sure what’s there to not understand about this, so I’ll just say same way cars get to a dealership and you ride them afterwards.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is #FFFFFF white, but mixing red green and blue paint is black?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  One curious thing if you understand this is to think on purple. Purple is blue+red, but like you pointed out 2 colors should give you the average wavelength, which in the case of blue+,red should be green. So why the hell do we see purple as something different? Well, that’s because humans have 3 sensors for colors, roughly corresponding to Red, Green and Blue, triggering both Blue and Red without triggering green at the same time gets interpreted differently than green, even though it shouldn’t. Which means that purple is not a color, but rather a mind trick your brain plays on you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some out-of-the-box ideas you've heard of?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sort of, you can install it as a PWA and it is local first.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some out-of-the-box ideas you've heard of?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What’s wrong with silverbullet.md ?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘This shouldn’t be normal’: developers speak out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s biggest PC gaming storefront⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That review is no longer there, probably someone reported it. I think lots of these suffer from bystander effect, where people see it get indignant about being there but don’t report them, so they stay there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discord will restrict your account next month unless you scan ID or face⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s overkill, a couple of passes with dd and it’s irrecoverable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where do I find cool stickers?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Curious no one mentioned www.stickermule.com/unixstickers which is where I got the stickers for my current laptop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Hardware: Launch timing and other FAQs - Steam News⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If only they explained why I’m the article snippet posted…

  I guess If I were an article snippet I would also like an explanation

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta progression in roguelites was fun for a while, but it's starting to feel unrewarding⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  While I understand what you’re talking about, I would argue it’s bad metaprogression that you dislike. I liked Rogue Legacy when I first played, but didn’t enjoy the second one even though it’s essentially the same. Let me give you an example of good metaprogression: Dead Cells.

  There’s the metaprogression that allows you access to new areas and new mechanics, but that’s fairly quick compared to the length of the rest of the progression, and I would argue it’s not the sort of thing you’re complaining about.

  What could be similar is the way you unlock equipment, although you don’t become stronger with each run, you unlock more weapons. This gives you variety, but the vast majority of the progression happens in your head. If you have enough hours in Dead Cells and think the metaprogression is what made you so good at the game that you couldn’t finish one level when you started and now you play for hours, do me a favor and start a new save. After being on the second cell I bought the game for a different platform, on my first run I got to the first cell.

  Which brings me to the second metaprogression in the game, cells. They make the game harder, not easier, and it’s the way to progress, you have to purposefully make the game harder to progress. IMO this is how metaprogression is supposed to be done, you need to be better, and when you think you’re good enough to beat the game it lets you know “you’ve only just started”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you had native-level fluency in a language, and don't talk in that language for a while, can you develop an accent later-on when trying to talk in that language again?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, I speak 3 languages fluently and have accents in all of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the definitive way to play certain games?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Also with a rumble enabled controller, but you need to wipe your memory of that feature so the magic becomes real.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, but that’s more about Valve not pursuing violations than anything else (in other comment I also mentioned how they turn a blind eye to Humble Bundle as well). But legally they could go after silent hill f and demand it be sold for a similar value to $31.49 since some time has passed and stem users have not been offered a comparable offer. I think what’s in the clause they make people sign is more important than whether they enforce it or not, because if it was about price parity with other stores then it would be abusive (even if they didn’t enforced it always), but if it is about selling something they provide then it’s not abusive even if they do enforced it always.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not true, it only applies if you’re selling a steam key. Devs are free to set the price on any platform they want, want proof? Check out the currently free game on epic which has never been free on Steam.

  Steam provides developers with infinite steam keys that they can sell outside of steam for 100% profit, however those keys cannot be sold at a lesser price than what it’s sold on steam. Which honestly sounds like common sense.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  How does it do that?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Owner Valve Faces $900 Million Lawsuit Over PC Monopoly Claims, Following UK Tribunal Ruling - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  What?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Owner Valve Faces $900 Million Lawsuit Over PC Monopoly Claims, Following UK Tribunal Ruling - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Except that’s not what their terms say. Their terms prohibit you from selling a steam key cheaper than on Steam, they don’t regulate your game price on a different store if you’re not offering a steam key together.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do you need a launcher? (asking older gamers actually)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  All of my systems are Linux, launching Windows games on Linux is not trivial, Steam takes away almost all of that complication. It also provides an excellent ten foot interface for me to use on my TV and buy/install/launch games from my couch without any hassle. Speaking of controller usage, Steam provides excellent support to remap controllers even if a game doesn’t support it, and provide amazing features at that (for example multiple layers, gyroscopic mouse)

  Games getting updated automatically is a great feature, I still remember having to download patches and applying them one by one after a fresh install. Similarly Steam also provides a workshop that allows you to install mods and keep them synced across different systems automatically.

  Finally, the convenience of cloud saves for someone with multiple systems or who uninstalls a game and reinstalls it later is not easy to achieve without a launcher (I still have a saves folder backed up somewhere from before).

  Besides all of that Achievement and other social features are important for some people. And for some games being able to easily play online with friends is amazing (if you’re not old enough to know what GameSpy is you don’t know what it was back then), although I don’t play too many online games so this one is not that important for me, but when I need that feature it is very handy.

  In short there are many reasons, but if you’re playing old single-player games with mouse+keyboard on only one windows PC, then none of my reasons apply to you. Still I would argue that buying games on steam is easier than pirating them, so there’s the convenience factor still (e.g. at a friend’s house and they mention a game, open my phone, and in 5 min with a very intuitive flow I have the game downloading on my home PC so when I come back it’s ready to play).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would happen if a person proved in a lab they're gaining weight while in a verified calorie deficit?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Same thing that would happen if someone proved in a lab they’re filling a cup while removing more water than what they’re putting in. I.e. it won’t happen.

  In reality the body is a lot more complex than a cup of water, and it’s possible you gain weight on calories deficit by accumulating water or feces. But you WILL be losing fat and/or muscle, otherwise we will use you as an infinite source of energy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do babies learn languages at different rates depending on how hard the language is?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, I agree, learning to write English is harder than to write Spanish, in fact Spanish has the most phonetic writing of all the languages I know. But your question was about babies learning, which is solely spoken language, you only learn writing after you’re already a fluent speaker.