firadin
@firadin@lemmy.world
- Comment on We're not going to terraform Mars, but we're doing a good job of venusforming Earth. 5 days ago:
No, it would be cynical to say that all talk of space colonization is actually a lie to spur interest in government funded space technology, which gets contracted out to one major company owned by the richest man in the world who has become that rich off the back of other government subsidies.
Wait–
- Comment on Amazon's Monopoly of the tech industry is ruining the US economy 1 month ago:
You need to read The Amazon Anti-Trust Paradox by current FTC head Lina Khan. She argues that the consumer price oriented monopoly definition is old and outdated in the modern setting. Price is not a sufficient proxy for market competitiveness, and in fact, price is often used to kill competitiveness by undercutting new and innovative products.
- Comment on Civilization 7 dev on Ages system and series shakeup: "It's going to be the hardest thing for fans to get adjusted to" 2 months ago:
Hard disagree. The district system of Civ 6 was half-baked, and the new one for Civ 7 seems way more interesting with districts growing more organically. Civ 6’s world congress was garbage. The eras system needed serious work as dark/golden/heroic eras just didn’t feel impactful enough aside from getting a monumentality era early. The new map generation with navigable rivers is a huge plus as well. The climate system in Civ 6 was a dud too, not nearly impactful enough. I think they could’ve made a Civ 7 which fixed all the broken Civ 6 systems and made a great game.
- Comment on Civilization 7 dev on Ages system and series shakeup: "It's going to be the hardest thing for fans to get adjusted to" 2 months ago:
I don’t think Firaxis would agree with any of my feedback because I think I disagree with them in a fundamental sense about how the game should be oriented. Mandatory disasters appear to be a fundamental part of the Civ 7 game philosophy: you build your civ, face the crisis, reset your civ in a new era, and start over with some amount of carry-over. I get the motivation: by forcing these soft resets, Firaxis is making it so you can’t snowball so far ahead that the mid/late game is a chore of uninteresting gameplay: an advantage in the first/second eras won’t put you in so far of a lead in the third era that it’s just a rush to hit the next turn button. On the other hand… that also means that everything you do in the first/second eras counts way less, and that feels bad.
Granted I obviously haven’t played the game yet, this is just my read from demos and press around the game/design philosophy. We will see if I’m right or not.
- Comment on Civilization 7 dev on Ages system and series shakeup: "It's going to be the hardest thing for fans to get adjusted to" 2 months ago:
The crisis system, the era system, and the changing civilizations system all feel especially game-y to me. I get it, Civ is first and foremost a video game. Still, the idea that there are pre-defined eras, and that you have to hit a crisis at the end of each pre-defined era, feels artificial and unnatural. Why can’t I lead my civilization through into a new era unscathed? Why is that disallowed?
Don’t get me wrong: I like the idea of eras and crises. If, instead, eras were triggered by hitting certain milestones or accumulating enough points (e.g. hit some combination of weighted tech/cultural/religious/economic development) - I would be down for that. Different civs would hit those at different times and you would strategize around hitting your new era at the right time. Crises are also totally valid: if your civ is too large and there’s too much corruption you could have a civil war. If too much of your civ is following another religion there could be unrest. Those are all interesting and fun ideas, but the important part is that the goal is to avoid/mitigate them and play around them - not that they’re some kind of inevitable occurrence that you’re forced into even if you play otherwise perfectly.
It feels like Firaxis decided to lean hard into “Civ is a board game focused around balance” and completely away from “Civ is a game about growth and optimization”, and I don’t know if I’m here for it. I guess we’ll have to see.
- Comment on Cars Are Now Rolling Computers Now. So What Happens When They Stop Getting Updates? 3 months ago:
Great, lmk when there’s a regular train from Boston to my office in Boxborough, which currently requires it’s residents to drop off their own trash at the facility. I’m sure that’ll be frequent and efficient right?
- Comment on Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs 4 months ago:
You’re the type of person who would call universal healthcare “socialism”, and it really shows.
- Comment on Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs 4 months ago:
What point? That you’re a corporate bootlicker?
- Comment on Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs 4 months ago:
They would rightly be raked over the coals. But they won’t make such a dumb fucking move because it’s a dumb fucking move.
What a wild thing to assert without any reasoning.
- Comment on Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs 4 months ago:
By charging 3% instead of 30%? Do you really think their servers cost $8.5b? Does the work to distribute a game and process payment equal 30% of the labor required to make a game?
- Comment on Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs 4 months ago:
Me: “Rent seeking is an illegitimate practice, landlords steal money from laborers by extorting them for a necessary good!”
You: “Oh yeah? Why don’t you just buy your own land and build your own apartment building?”
You’re a dumbass.
- Comment on Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs 4 months ago:
This is a thread about how Valve makes over 8 billion dollars despite basically all their revenue coming from an in-game store that sells other people’s content. Of course its too much.
- Comment on Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs 4 months ago:
Because they don’t pay any of their actual workforce: the game devs they steal 30% from for every game sold.
- Comment on Judge mulls sanctions over Google’s “shocking” destruction of internal chats 6 months ago:
No, it’s shocking that the destroyed evidence after being explicitly instructed not to.
- Comment on Judge mulls sanctions over Google’s “shocking” destruction of internal chats 6 months ago:
It is for us plebs, look up adverse inference
- Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say 6 months ago:
Not US corporation good, just US corporation = US controlled. This isn’t a morality play, it’s a national security play.
- Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say 6 months ago:
Well China is refusing to divest, i.e. sell it to a US owner so clearly that’s not an option for them. If it was about the money they would have.
- Comment on YouTube Tests Showing Ads When You Pause a Video, Calls it ''Pause Ads'' 6 months ago:
For now
- Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say 6 months ago:
You’re assuming its a profit-focused endeavor rather than a propaganda arm of the Chinese government.
- Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say 6 months ago:
Apparently TikTok sent out push notifications telling users to call their representatives. Minors were being provided instructions with their representatives’ phone numbers and contact info, but didn’t even know who they were calling and were asking basic questions like “What is Congress?”
Kind of shows the amount of power TikTok has over American youth.
- Comment on Tesla stops cybertruck deliveries—accelerator pedal may be to blame 7 months ago:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton…
Libertarians think they’re smarter than everyone else and never wonder why the fence is there in the first place.
- Comment on Judge rules YouTube, Facebook and Reddit must face lawsuits claiming they helped radicalize a mass shooter | CNN Business 8 months ago:
Not just “remain visible” - actively promoted. There’s a reason people talk about Youtube’s right-wing content pipeline. If you start watching anything male-oriented, Youtube will start slowly promoting more and more right-wing content to you until you’re watching Ben Shaprio and Andrew Tate
- Comment on Disney+ has started cracking down on password sharing in the US 9 months ago:
Netflix recently stopped me from casting to my tv from my phone, which used to work fine
- Comment on Mercedes-Benz debuts turquoise exterior lights to indicate the car is self-driving | A visual indicator for other drivers 11 months ago:
How about we:
- Don’t let random customers test it and instead use heavily trained, specialized test drivers
- Require permitting and, e.g., an obstacle course before letting a company’s software be randomly updated and thrown on the road?
Why is there this constant false dichotomy implying that the only way to test self driving cars is a wild west of no regulation?
And also who said that self driving cars are safer than humans? Tesla’s numbers are all statistical lies (in fact Teslas were recently shown to have the most accidents), Cruise just shutdown in SF because they were a liability, and Waymo is heavily limited in its time/weather/areas for driving.
- Comment on Samsung is planning a 400-500$ foldable for 2024 1 year ago:
How do you use it as a laptop replacement? What tasks are you doing on it that would otherwise be done on a laptop? I feel like its too small, it would only replace phone tasks for me.
- Comment on Interesting how artists don't make enough money from their creations, so our solution is to make certain information illegal to share, rather than give them a universal basic income. 1 year ago:
Not when work takes a large amount of time to produce the original, and very little work to produce a copy. An original and a copy of a digital artwork are identical.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 year ago:
Look at 80s sex comedies and realize they were made by people who learned what they knew during the 60s. You’re not wrong.
- Comment on Netflix is planning to raise prices… again 1 year ago:
So like what’s the actual deal with pirating content nowadays? I remember in the early 2000s it was don’t seed and don’t torrent just-released content and you won’t get caught. Are the companies more rigorous nowadays? Are they going after people and you really do need a VPN? Can you torrent content at a human-watchable pace (like a show or two a month, maybe a movie or two a week) and no one’s going to notice you?
- Comment on Netflix is planning to raise prices… again 1 year ago:
They used to do that for a handful of shows due to streaming contracts, but last time I checked (~2019) it was literally two shows. Is it more now?
- Comment on Amazon Has Turned Into an Monopolistic Shithole Littered With Pay-to-Play Ads, FTC Lawsuit Solemnly Argues 1 year ago:
Lina Khan is staking her career on this one, but the way the US judiciary looks there’s no way Amazon suffers.