Bougie_Birdie
@Bougie_Birdie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- Comment on My Beans :( 1 day ago:
Oh, beans…
- Comment on What do we think will be GoTY and which game do we think should be? 2 weeks ago:
Well of course the victim is going to play the victim. That’s just good marketing - and what is marketing if not propaganda?
Your comment reads as though the invading state’s actions aren’t propaganda. This is the whole reason why I came here to warn people to be skeptical of what they read online.
In an ironic twist, here’s an online source about the Russian disinformation campaign telling citizens that if you play Stalker 2 you’ll be drafted to fight in Ukraine against Russia.
Again, you should be skeptical of what you read online. In a vacuum, I’m inclined to believe the victim of invasion. In reality, I know that the situation is more nuanced - although the credibility of the aggressor is extremely suspect.
For what it’s worth, my impression on the game is that it’s yet another over-hyped game that couldn’t possibly live up to its expectations. The developers are financially incentivized to deflect that criticism through any means available to them. But that doesn’t mean I don’t acknowledge that malicious actors are also trying to discredit the game.
- Comment on If billionaires and CEOs feel like they need to start paying for large security details, would that be an example of trickle down economics? 2 weeks ago:
They’ll pay you peanuts to protect their gold. The only gold trickling down is a shower
- Comment on What do we think will be GoTY and which game do we think should be? 2 weeks ago:
I haven’t played Stalker 2 so I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but it’s very politically charged and has Russian state sponsored disinformation campaigns running against it. I’m not sure that you can get a truly accurate read of it online.
The developers are Ukrainian, and development had to be paused because their office literally turned into a warzone. The fact that the game came out at all is extremely based, and that certainly adds to the mythology around the game. But again, I haven’t played it, and gameplay-wise that doesn’t actually indicate anything about the game.
I want the game to succeed because of the developers’ existential struggle. The people causing that existential struggle want the game to fail. Neither of us have actually played the game, so again, there’s all this bias around it and we haven’t even looked at gameplay yet.
Be skeptical of anything you read online
- Comment on Spotify suddenly cut off app developers from a bunch of its data 2 weeks ago:
Spotify has vaguely attributed the need for the API changes to improving security:
- In its blog post, Spotify says that it rolled out the changes with “the aim of creating a more secure platform.”
- In a community forum post, a Spotify employee says that “we want to reiterate the main message from the blog that we’re committed to providing a safe and secure environment for all Spotify stakeholders.” The post has many pages of replies from frustrated developers.
- In a statement to The Verge, Spotify spokesperson Brittney Le Roy says that “as part of our ongoing work to address the security challenges that many companies navigate today, we’re making changes to our public APIs.”
This is fairly disingenuous. The affected endpoints are all GET requests, which are read-only requests that provide some data about the track/artist/playlist/etc. There isn’t really very much potential to do anything insecure here.
The only thing they’re securing is their hegemony.
- Comment on 'Dark Patterns' became normalized: When asked to build web pages, LLMs use manipulative design practices they learned from web pages generated by humans, study says 3 weeks ago:
I learned it by watching you, dad!
- Comment on This is you tomorrow 4 weeks ago:
God, that’s a mood and a half.
When my depression advanced, I was hopeful that not having feelings would mean not being sad anymore. I was disappointed, turns out feeling something is better than feeling nothing. Talk about a devil’s bargain.
Good luck out there, stranger. Tomorrow’s another day
- Comment on I just watched the wrong version of Drive (2011), and didn't realize until the last 10 minutes. Any similar stories? 4 weeks ago:
I spent longer than I care to admit waiting for David Bowie to show up in Pan’s Labyrinth, does that count?
- Comment on Hackers breach Andrew Tate's online university, leak data on 800,000 users 4 weeks ago:
“Hustler’s University”
I’m sure the intention is a play on Hustle culture and it’s supposed to teach you that grindset mindset, but it wasn’t too long ago that “Hustler” meant “con artist” and, well, it’s his university
Surely that’s not what paragon of humanity and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Taint meant when naming it. He’s got the ego, but I’m not sure he’s clever enough to flaunt it
- Comment on Whomp-whomp: AI PCs make users less productive 4 weeks ago:
Lack of familiarity with AI PCs leads to what the study describes as “misconceptions,” which include the following: 44 percent of respondents believe AI PCs are a gimmick or futuristic; 53 percent believe AI PCs are only for creative or technical professionals; 86 percent are concerned about the privacy and security of their data when using an AI PC; and 17 percent believe AI PCs are not secure or regulated.
I guess we don’t have to worry about our data because the people selling us the machines tell us that our concerns are a misconception.
Also kind of the manufacturer to tell us that their gimmick is not, in fact, a gimmick
- Comment on Google AI chatbot responds with a threatening message: "Human … Please die." 4 weeks ago:
Sure, but underestimating the scope is how you wind up with a Scunthorpe problem
- Comment on Valve must address swastikas and other hate on Steam, writes US senator in a letter to Gabe Newell 4 weeks ago:
Pepe has been sensationalized for a while now in the media as being a hate symbol. I think it’s because you see it largely on 4chan which traditional media demonizes.
I’m not on 4chan, but it seems like it has similar problems to Steam: a large userbase and poor content moderation gives insufferable people a platform to spread hate from. These problems aren’t unique to either platform, but the news likes to latch on to them.
I hate that some people consider Pepe to be a hate symbol. He’s just an expressive frog, dang it
- Comment on Google AI chatbot responds with a threatening message: "Human … Please die." 4 weeks ago:
I don’t disagree, but it is a challenging problem. If you’re filtering for “die” then you’re going to find diet, indie, diesel, remedied, and just a whole mess of other words.
I’m in the camp where I believe they really should be reading all their inputs. You’ll never know what you’re feeding the machine otherwise.
However I have no illusions that they’re not cutting corners to save money
- Comment on Google AI chatbot responds with a threatening message: "Human … Please die." 4 weeks ago:
With the sheer volume of training data required, I have a hard time believing that the data sanitation is high quality.
If I had to guess, it’s largely filtered through scripts, and not thoroughly vetted by humans. So data sanitation might look for the removal of slurs and profanity, but wouldn’t have a way to find misinformation or a request that the reader stops existing.
- Comment on I ❤️ Plants 4 weeks ago:
Mother-in Law’s tongue looks like a plant that I know of as Snake Grass
They must have named it after my MIL
- Comment on Now is the best time to start that thing 4 weeks ago:
…I guess I better go do that thing I’ve been putting off.
No wonder people hate Clippy
- Comment on Petition calls to ban Elon Musk's X in Europe 4 weeks ago:
Ah, I’m still waking up, so I must have misunderstood.
I hadn’t considered political spending, but I didn’t get the impression we were talking about super PACs. Those are abhorrent, and undemocratic.
My stance was that if a person wants to buy something that’s stupid, ineffective, but gives them some small degree of hope and doesn’t harm others, then they should be able to. However, I’m also of the opinion that regulators need to remove those products from the market because they’re lying to people about their efficacy.
Ideally we’d be teaching people that snake oil doesn’t work. But the current political climate suggests that Big Snake Oil has captured the regulation, so I don’t see that happening either.
- Comment on Petition calls to ban Elon Musk's X in Europe 4 weeks ago:
Are you defending snake oil? The pseudoscience con so uniquituously used to deprive the desperate from their money that it became the term used to describe “harmful bullshit sold for profit?”
Freedom of choice or not, I suppose you should be able to spend your money however you want.
But if someone is selling people lies under the promise of medical miracles, we need to throw the book at them.
- Comment on AI slop animal abuse 4 weeks ago:
Isn’t chemistry all a matter of scale though? I admit it’s not my field
I mean, if the cat pees on the rug and you clean it up right away, that’s probably not a big deal. I imagine it’s a different story if you’re cleaning out a hoarder’s cat colony in a poorly ventilated area and don’t dilute the bleach because you wanted something stronger
- Comment on AI slop animal abuse 4 weeks ago:
Friendly reminder that using bleach to clean cat pee can fucking kill you and your cat
I mean, I’d be kind of surprised if it did kill you, but ammonia and bleach mix to make an extremely toxic gas
- Comment on Can someone explain this to me? 5 weeks ago:
I haven’t played the game, so I’m not sure how accurate my help would be. It would be helpful to be able to look at some tooltips from these skills. But to my eye this looks like a talent / build system that’s fairly common in ARPGS.
My most basic assumption is that every so often you’ll level up and be able to pick one of these skills. They’ll provide some kind of effect which is tied to an active skill (Red, Blue, and Purple appear to be likely), or a passive bonus (Orange, Yellow, and Green I’d guesss).
The arrows are throwing me off a little bit because sometimes they point in both directions, and other times they appear to loop. Usually these might mark a pre-requisite skill, so if it shows [A] <-- [B] then that implies that before you can acquire A you must first acquire B.
If I had to guess, [A] <–> [B] implies either you can freely choose between A and B, or perhaps once you select A you must select B before you can select A again.
The loops feel weird though (notably in the yellow block). I guess that means that whatever skill you start with, you must then select clockwise from there.
There’s a great variety in how games will implement this sort of thing, but in general there’s usually a way to get a tooltip with a more complete description of what each thing does. Usually that would be by hovering over the icon, but some games include an encyclopedia of effects if they’re particularly involved.
The order in which you acquire these skills often influences your playstyle. Some people are going to prefer to get abilities that seem powerful quickly, and other people like to strategically synergize their build. For my part, I tend to prefer acquiring passive bonuses that increase my experience/luck/currency to more easily game the system.
- Comment on If the EU uses online signature for European Citizen's Initiative, why isn't voting online for elections or policies not allowed? 5 weeks ago:
Yes, because surely all adults know better, that’s why they so frequently swallow propaganda and vote against their own interests.
It’s controversial and it has its own problems with enforcement, but it often seems like there should be some kind of civics and media literacy test before voting. Of course, whoever is administering the test is going to have their own biases and agendas, so it’s no magic bullet solution.
There’s a vast gulf in maturity between children at different ages, and everyone develops at their own pace. Some thirteen year olds are more mature than many eighteen year olds, and some forty year olds needed more time to cook but they still graduated anyway.
- Comment on New frog just dropped!!! 1 month ago:
He does not look happy to be discovered
Can we put him back?
- Comment on How many Nintendo Switches do I need for a family of gamers? 1 month ago:
Oh yeah, and if you want any online services, you’ll want to look up what those cost. I don’t know if they offer a family discount for multiple accounts
- Comment on How many Nintendo Switches do I need for a family of gamers? 1 month ago:
I guess ultimately it depends on what kind of games your family likes
As you mention, party games you only need one. If your family’s into single player or portables then each person needs one
How is it affordable? Well, it isn’t really. Although I guess a switch probably retails for about half the cost of a PS5
It’s funny though, if you compare it to other consoles, I think people are far less likely to buy an Xbox or Playstation for each family member. And yet, people would do that for the gameboy and DS without batting an eye. The switch is trying to be everything, for better or worse.
When we got ours, we were pretty content having just one and then playing party games or taking turns on single player games. Sooner or later though, we had to get another so we could play pokemon together. Which is a shame because my interest in pokemon seems to have suddenly fallen off a cliff and now my switch is collecting dust
So I guess all that to say: your mileage may vary
- Comment on If you're not serious about cheating then you're not serious about winning 1 month ago:
At what point do you think it becomes ethical to break the law for the greater good?
I don’t like the idea of destroying ballots either. It’s so undemocratic. It’s a shame that other actors don’t have scruples about it though.
Is it truly better to wait for the fascists to come to power before we resist them? It seems that would allow them to enact much more harm.
Anyway, I don’t endorse destroying ballots. But I do understand why people would be so disenfranchised with a system that’s working against the individuals that they would feel compelled to take some sort of action.
- Comment on Anon needs tips. 1 month ago:
Fake: anon has a female friend
Gay: anon likes the tip
- Comment on They're a different species, so it's cool to eat them 1 month ago:
Do you know how many microplastics are in a full grown human? No thank you.
Maybe we ought to throw them in a pit, chain them to a wheel, and let them grind their own meal. Like the serfs in the good ol’ days they long for.
- Comment on They're a different species, so it's cool to eat them 1 month ago:
That’s Richard, he just likes to keep things casual.
- Comment on Is china as bad as america makes it out to be? 1 month ago:
It’s not great to be queer in China.
Depending on how things go in the next couple weeks, we might say the same of the US though. It’s already true for certain parts of the country