turmacar

@turmacar@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New article says #StarCitizen will release in 2027-2028, we contacted the author to ask for clarification on the source and he quoted Chris Roberts himself as saying "1 or 2 Y probably after S42"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I mess with SC and S42 every few years, have access from the kickstarter from way back when.

  They’re fine. They’re even neat. But Elite Dangerous gives 90+% of what their original promises were and has much more demonstrable development progress. Planetary systems without a loading screen is not as impressive as it was in the early 2010s. KSP has been created and died in that time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem with AAA games is the development time is longer, the time spent working on the final game is not.

  Time and time again when a game as been “in development” for 5/7/10+ years, the game that shipped was only really being worked on for the last year or two, once they finally got the design and gameplay nailed down and worked on the final game. Anthem is one of the more egregious examples in that some of the developers working on the game learned at the E3 presentation a year before launch that the game involved flying.

  There’s an iceberg of effort and only a fraction of it gets released.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨To install a new outlet with a dedicated circuit do they have to cut the drywall all the way from the electrical panel to the outlet?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  * if there’s conduit, or a basement, or an attic

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Harvard dropouts to launch ‘always on’ AI smart glasses that listen and record every conversation⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Google Glass purposefully made it obvious what they were. The newer glasses without cameras from Meta et al basically look like regular glasses if you can’t see the waveguide in the lenses.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mozilla warns Germany could soon declare ad blockers illegal⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  German copyright laws?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Quantum alternative to GPS navigation will be tested on US military spaceplane⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Who knows.

  Special relativity was a niche branch of interest until we needed to correct for time signal differences between moving satellites. Quantum mechanical understanding of electrons was a weird quirk of math until they used electron buckets to make SSDs.

  Publically funded general research leads to unexpected uses.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Picture of the Century... Nature defeats Technology⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Just looked up the episode (2015, Ep8).

  They’re investigating whether it would be deadly by cutting through your neck. Drone tech has also changed significantly in the last decade. They literally have trouble flying straight and level and hitting the neck of their dummy. But their main problem is the drone hits something and falls away. They put the same smaller prop on a stick and saw into a plucked chicken. Their bigger one did actually slice the neck open before falling away.

  Modern drones have much more powerful motors. Do not randomly assume they will not cut you, especially if you grab them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What game sequel ruined a beloved franchise or character for you?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I spent a ton of time on LotR II and it’s expansion. I distinctly remember finding the box for 3 a few years later and just being confused that they didn’t seem to know what was good about their game.

  Had a complicated time trying to get 2 running a few years ago, I think I ended up setting up a Win95 VM specifically for it. But now it looks like they’re just on GoG and Steam. Might have to grab it there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Chatbots Remain Overconfident — Even When They’re Wrong: Large Language Models appear to be unaware of their own mistakes, prompting concerns about common uses for AI chatbots.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I find it so incredibly frustrating that we’ve gotten to the point where the “marketing guys” are not only in charge, but are believed without question, that what they say is true until proven otherwise.

  “AI” becoming the colloquial term for LLMs and them being treated as a flawed intelligence instead of interesting generative constructs is purely in service of people selling them as such. And it’s maddening. Because they’re worthless for that purpose.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Star Wars is an ode to the stupidest use of battle lasers⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  “Real” lasers also show up sometimes in the old EU. They’re mostly explained away as outdated tech and “blasters are better” and that even the wimpy-est of force fields will stop them. There’s not nothing to that either. A laser you either need to hold it exactly on target for a measure of time or have a massive amount of cooling in the emitter. If you can just “send plasma” in that direction instead it solves those problems.

  “Slugthrowers”, i.e. ‘real guns’, also show up and “blasters are better” because the bolt is faster and doesn’t suffer as much from aerodynamic effects. But a lightsaber user is going to have problems if a bullet is now just molten instead of being reflected away.

  That’s leaning a lot into the older EU though which is much more a universe like 40k where tech just “is” and people maybe don’t understand the mechanics of how it works anymore.

  And of course it’s significantly much more about the rule of cool than real physics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: Do you have documents to prove you are a US citizen? If not, here's how⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  * banned drivers licenses that don’t meet the requirements that have had their implementation date pushed back repeatedly for a decade+. We will do anything and everything but have an actual national ID.

  I don’t think any drivers licenses count as proof of citizenship though. (Even before, as noted, factoring in that they’re not looking.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Signatures skyrocket for Stop Killing Games campaign after big youtubers take up the cause, resulting in 100k signatures in 2 days. (Details on how to help in text body of post)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Have also been out of the loop too but went through the know your meme’s page.

  Pirate Software made a video a year ago criticizing the initiative on a very surface level and has continued to do so in streams. Guy who created/sponsored/however-that-works the initiative posted a counter-argument video talking about what the initiative would actually do. Pirate Software did the ol’ Internet Doubledown and in general was kind of an ass and kind of revealed some ignorance. Cue Drama.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla Robotaxi Freaks Out and Drives into Oncoming Traffic on First Day⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lifeguards take breaks every ~20 minutes, not just to look down or zone out, to get up and move around. And again, are in an extremely controlled environment looking for a very small number of specific problems.

  Elon is making programmers sleep at their desks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla Robotaxi Freaks Out and Drives into Oncoming Traffic on First Day⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lifeguards have very short periods of diligence before they take mandatory breaks. Train conductors operate on grade separated infrastructure. Security Guards do not have to take split second action or die.

  Putting a warm body in a mind-numbing situation and requiring split second response to a life or death situation at a random time is a recipe for failure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The emulator that lets you play NES games in 3D has left early access on Steam⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Duck Season is pretty fun too FWIW.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla Robotaxi Freaks Out and Drives into Oncoming Traffic on First Day⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Expecting people to be able to behave like machines is generally the attitude that leads to crash investigations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It is what it is⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Incognito mode (Chrome) and Private mode (Safari/Firefox) and InPrivate Browsing (Edge/IE) have had disclaimers/explanations for years, Chrome just expanded the disclaimer after settling the suit. Unfortunately for them the judge didn’t know how the internet works any better than the plaintiffs. Winding back the odometer on a car doesn’t mean toll roads don’t know you drove there, it just means “you” have no record of it.

  Opera / Vivaldi offer an integrated VPN, but they’re about the only ones other than stuff like the Tor Browser.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google killed Maps Timeline, so I self-hosted a better one [OnTracks]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Same, been kicking myself since I found out it was all gone a few weeks ago. Don’t know why I didn’t make a ‘just in case’ backup / export.

  Still infuriating they can just go “oops all gone”. It came through the roll-out fine, I remember looking stuff up in February. As far as I can tell it was a later unrelated glitch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google killed Maps Timeline, so I self-hosted a better one [OnTracks]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Google also accidentally deleted a random amount of user’s timeline data if you didn’t immediately catch it and restore from back up last March before the affected backups were overwritten. If you didn’t keep a close enough watch on your timeline to know that that happened, everything before ~Feb 2025 is gone now.

  Ask me how I know. Yes I kept up on permissions. Yes I had backups on. No I didn’t have a new device. I even have dozens of available gigabytes of paid storage on Google One.

  I’m sure it will only get more stable due to maps and timeline being revenue generators that encourage investment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk has done more damage to the Tesla name than Thomas Edison could have ever hoped to do.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Popularized definitely, he was working off an at the time recent pop history book about Tesla.

  Tesla’s been the subject of a lot of weird counter-cultural co-opting since his death. Kinda like Che but for electricity instead of marxism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Millions of Americans Who Have Waited Decades for Fast Internet Connections Will Keep Waiting After the Trump Administration Threw a $42 Billion High-Speed Internet Program Into Disarray.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sure that there are examples of actually wasted money, but just putting it out there that planning is fucking important. There have been several high profile projects, like Texas high speed rail, where planning was the hard part and the project got canceled as they were ready to break ground because “there was no progress”. Queue Republicans “the government does nothing” after they stopped anything from happening. Infrastructure cannot operate on election cycle timelines.

  Digging in the ground and integrating with existing infrastructure isn’t just a plug and play operation. Leases and liens need to be sorted out. Estimates of current and future demand needs to be sorted out so you don’t install useless networks. Fibre isn’t that heavy, but “can the existing conduits under bridges support it and/or do they have room to without a complete replacement” isn’t a trivial question for backbone lines.

  Winging it just causes more problems as you find things you didn’t anticipate and cause delays while having to continue paying contracts so work can resume once the delay is cleared. If you don’t, the contractor is on to their next job and unavailable for an effectively random amount of time.

  It could be done faster, but it would cost more. Because planning is really important to keep multi-million/billion dollar projects accountable and on track.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The "standard" car charger is usually overkill—but your electrician might not know that [32:26]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure. But they’re not driving syncro-less transmissions. They’re driving tricked out sports cars in a straight line and somehow having about 14 gear changes in a 6 speed manual.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple just proved AI "reasoning" models like Claude, DeepSeek-R1, and o3-mini don't actually reason at all.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And what I mean is that prior to the mid 1900s the etymology didn’t exist to cause that confusion of terms. Neither Babbage’s machines nor prior adding engines were called computers or calculators. They were ‘machines’ or ‘engines’.

  Babbage’s machines were novel in that they could do multiple types of operations, but ‘mechanical calculators’ and counting machines were ~200 years old. Other aids like abacus’ are obviously far older. They were not novel enough to cause confusion in anyone with even passing interest.

  But there will always be people who just assume ‘magic’, and/or “it works like I want it to”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple just proved AI "reasoning" models like Claude, DeepSeek-R1, and o3-mini don't actually reason at all.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “Computer” meaning a mechanical/electro-mechanical/electrical machine wasn’t used until around after WWII.

  Babbag’s difference/analytical engines weren’t confusing because people called them a computer, they didn’t.

  "On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

  • Charles Babbage

  If you give any computer, human or machine, random numbers, it will not give you “correct answers”.

  It’s possible Babbage lacked the social skills to detect sarcasm. We also have several high profile cases of people just trusting LLMs to file legal briefs and official government ‘studies’ because the LLM “said it was real”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple just proved AI "reasoning" models like Claude, DeepSeek-R1, and o3-mini don't actually reason at all.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think because it’s language.

  There’s a famous quote from Charles Babbage when he presented his difference engine (gear based calculator) and someone asking “if you put in the wrong figures, will the correct ones be output” and Babbage not understanding how someone can so thoroughly misunderstand that the machine is, just a machine.

  People are people, the main thing that’s changed since the Cuneiform copper customer complaint is our materials science and networking ability. Most of things people interact with every day, most people just assume work like it appears to on the surface.

  And nothing other than a person can do math problems or talk back to you. So people assume that means intelligence.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The IRS Tax Filing Software TurboTax Is Trying to Kill Just Got Open Sourced⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s what config files are for. It would be a nightmare to hardcode weight and balance and have to recompile the HUD every time you change the loadout or refuel the plane.

  Most code, algorithms, etc are not any more sensitive than the concept of desks and file cabinets. No, guidance programs for missiles probably shouldn’t be put on GitHub, but there’s a reason RSA and other encryption algorithms were open sourced. It’s better to have more eyes looking for inefficiencies, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities than to just assume it’s good because no-one on the team responsible is smart/engaged enough to find them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The IRS Tax Filing Software TurboTax Is Trying to Kill Just Got Open Sourced⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of functionality can be decoupled from anything that needs to be classified. A HUD is a HUD and no one should be hard coding in performance characteristics of the F-35 into it for example. I’ve also worked on government projects and holy crap does the code quality vary wildly, even before you get into “it’s still working so deal with the problems, it doesn’t have the budget for updates”.

  Using ‘off the shelf’ parts/code can save significant time and money. There’s a reason subs use xbox controllers. Government websites and data interfaces at the very least should have the audit-ability that open source provides.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Most of us will leave behind a large ‘digital legacy’ when we die. Here’s how to plan what happens to it⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In theory yes, but not a lot of people are uploading their family photo albums AFAIK.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Most of us will leave behind a large ‘digital legacy’ when we die. Here’s how to plan what happens to it⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it would be interesting to have some kind of global archive. Even if descendants don’t care “now” has the potential to be the beginning of the best documented era in history. Historians would kill for photographs by random average people from any other time.

  A lot of people thought that that’s what the Internet would be, but that’s obviously not the case. And I know the “right to be forgotten” is a thing, and deservedly so, but at some point you’re throwing out the wine with the amphora.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Every toddler becomes a hackerman when they find a tablet⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Some of that’s cultural momentum right? Like I don’t know how many Pickles it takes to make a Peck of Pickles despite hours singing about it as a kid. There’s not a lot of reason sans-nostalgia to read an analog clock or drive a manual car. (I love my manual, they’re not getting any less niche with EVs on the way.)

  And everyone’s going to learn something the first time, some time. But it is just nuts that for some people that is apparently after getting a job with a Bachelor’s, somehow. So much time, money, and energy was spent in the 90s/00s having computer classes in schools and now so much of it has been cut because the people in charge are so out of touch that watching youtube on a device designed to be easily usable is indistinguishable from “technical skills”.