Naia

@Naia@lemmy.blahaj.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New York sues Valve for enabling "illegal gambling" with loot boxes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The point is that this is not the first time that Valve has been singled out for things widely done across the industry and they’ve also been falsely accused of doing things that the rest of the industry is doing.

  If they wanted to go after Valve specifically for gambling they should not have linked it to kids. It’s invoking “think of the children” BS while diluting what they claim is the core argument.

  Gambling is also harmful for adults. They are M rated games. If a child is playing the game that is a parental issue, not a state issue. It’s not illegal for kids to play M rated games, nor do I really think it should be as that is something parents should decide. The issue is that a lot, if not most, parents have no idea what their kids are doing online.

  The argument that “mostly kids play these games” is unsubstantiated at best. Might have been true in the 90s and early 2000s, but there are people in their 50’s that have played games for the majority of their lives.

  Also, PC gaming tends to skew older. They might have more of an argument if they were talking about Call of Duty on a console, but an M rated game is still not targeted to that age group.

  Again, if they want to go after Vavle for gambling, then do that. But they are jumping around with what exactly the accusation is which makes it seem like they are grasping at straws at best or trying to hide the real reason at worst.

  That we have all the age verification crap happening at the same time is too much of a coincidence to ignore. Like, How about going after anyone implicated from the files?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New York sues Valve for enabling "illegal gambling" with loot boxes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  None of this is exclusive to Valve. Yeah, people can technically buy hardware and sell it, but they can also gift games or whatever and people were already using third party websites to sell their items for cash.

  And MMOs with random drops have historically always had an RMT market that is against the TOS where people sell in game currency or items for real currency.

  I’m not saying that valve should be let off the hook when it comes to loot boxes, but this lawsuit kind of stinks because it is all over the place and again, valve isn’t the worst example of what they describe.

  The fact that it’s framed as “protecting children” and claims that valve is intentionally targeting children despite the games in question being rated M and old enough that I seriously doubt there are that many minors playing is putting a ton of red flags up for me. They also add the 90s era “violent video game” rhetoric that was always nonsense.

  The conspiracy part of me thinks this is going to eventually lead to more age verification BS and they are targeting valve because it is the only company that is complying in a way that still protects user privacy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New York sues Valve for enabling "illegal gambling" with loot boxes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Which actually makes in simple to me. They are throwing things at the wall to see what sticks while also muddying the water as if they are trying to hide something.

  They are throwing very convoluted logic around for this, and I immediately distrust anyone in government who makes wild leaps to “protecting kids”.

  First off, I don’t like loot boxes. Specifically paid loot boxes, because if you don’t signify that something like this could effect any game with random drops.

  Second, all the games in question are rated M. They are very much not targeted at kids. Obviously kids still play them, but that is on the parents.

  That they also added “violent video games” nonsense that could have come out of the 90s is absurd. Is it about gambling or violent media? If it’s about violent media, why not go after any of the other shooters that are likely going to have way more kids on them. Counterstrike is old enough that I would be surprised if it isn’t a majority of millennials and gen X. At the very least I seriously doubt there are a ton of minors playing.

  If it is actually about gambling targeted at kids, The Pokemon trading card game is probably the best example of “gambling aimed at kids”. Sure, digital loot boxes can be more insidious, but that isn’t how they’ve framed this and if you’ve seen how TCG players buy packs it’s very much looks like gambling.

  The framing of this is very suspicious because it doesn’t make sense to go after valve exclusively for any of the things they are claiming. And the 3x fine is ridiculous. I’m all for fines actually being based on profits, but you can’t tell me they would do the same for any other company.

  And part of me feels this is a strong-arm tactic because valve is not publicly traded which lets them be very pro user/consumer and is the one company that is complying with age verification in a way that still protects user privacy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New York sues Valve for enabling "illegal gambling" with loot boxes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Assuming that they are seems like a leap, but since we don’t really know exactly what consciousness is,

  Which is no different that trading card games and also not valve’s fault.

  I have no love for loot boxes, at least when real money is used to get them, but from what I’ve seen across the board Valve is far from the worst with them. Valve also doesn’t allow you to sell the skins you get for real money, only steam credit. That is still real-world value, but they are also not the only company that does that.

  Outside of real-world money for loot boxes, most of the issues with the skin market are not anything Valve did. It was third party sites popping up that allowed people to sell their skins for cash.

  Valve have even made changes to their side that crashed the market and caused a ton of “value” to disappear.

  The fact is that this lawsuit is pretty obviously not actually about gambling. If it was there are far worse companies they could go after.

  And I do want something to be done about them across the board, but this is not going to do that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New York sues Valve for enabling "illegal gambling" with loot boxes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Look, I don’t have any love for loot boxes in general, at least when it’s real money. But there are far more egregious examples that would work just as well if not better for going after the practice of loot boxes than what steam does.

  There’s a reason they are singling out steam, and they signal why in the statement, saying this “teaches kids to gamble and makes them violent”, repeating 90s BS about “violent video games”, when the games in question are rated M, meaning if a child is playing it then that is 100% on the parents… and still not illegal anyway.

  They are most likely singling out valve because they refuse to play ball with the privacy violating age checks. Valve did the bare minimum they had to: basically clearing anyone with a credit card registered as being over 18.

  Valve is also not a publicly traded company and is very customer focused, even with the loot box thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox 148 introduces the promised AI kill switch for people who aren't into LLMs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Which is one of the few things these things can actually do because they’re entire thing is language processing.

  Basically put in a vague or comprehensive description of what you are trying to do or trying to find. It can generate a few queries based on your input and do a handful of searches then give you the results and highlight which ones might be the most relevant to your input.

  But, that still require traditional, and specifically deterministic, search.

  The way people blindly trust it’s output without any actual search or additional context is the worst way to use it. Might as well ask a magic 8-ball.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox 148 introduces the promised AI kill switch for people who aren't into LLMs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I like playing around with them occasionally, but I only use local models. I cannot stand all the cloud stuff in general and with the way neural nets work you can get as good or better results out of a smaller/more narrow model and the same applies to LLMs.
  
  The massive models the big companies are putting out there are generally just bad. Even if it can occasionally give you accurate output, for whatever it is you are asking it to do, it uses way more power and resources than reasonable and you could have found what you were looking for with a simple web search.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft 365's buggy Copilot 'Chat' has been summarizing confidential emails for a month — yet another AI privacy nightmare⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Who could have seen this coming?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI | Fortune⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “You first.”

  Anyone who actually thinks this must not actually do a whole lot and probably could be automated really easily, AI or not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨California’s New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers That Report on Themselves⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The only way these things could be implemented is if they phone home to some “AI” model. Printers themselves do not have anywhere near enough power to do any kind of analysis like that. Mine crashes if my microsteps are too high.

  So its pretty obvious that the goal of this is to invade people’s privacy and will likely try to use it to block copyrighted material if it built. It’s the age verification BS all over.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨California’s New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers That Report on Themselves⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, not to defend that idiot because he was voting against net neutrality and obviously had no idea how technology works…

  … But we do call some connections “tunnels”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨California’s New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers That Report on Themselves⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Even if it was in good faith: 3D printed guns are not a problem. They are going to jam up very quickly due to softening and melting, if not just explode all together.

  It would be easier, faster, and more effective to build a gun from things sourced at the local hardware store.

  But also, even then. If someone is going to commit a crime with a gun they are unlikely to build it themselves. Most guns used in crimes are actually legally purchased, purchased at a gunshow, or purchased on the black market.

  Anyone 3D printing a gun is doing it as a novelty. Because of that I don’t see this as a second amendment violation. This is blantantly a first and fourth violation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨California’s New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers That Report on Themselves⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Even if this could actually be enforced you have the issue that if they go too far you suddenly have it blocking a cylinder because it thinks you are trying to print a gun barrel.

  Not that I don’t think they would care about that, but it would certainly cause even more of a backlash.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨California’s New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers That Report on Themselves⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What kind. Because I’m well aware of how bad democrats can be even if they aren’t as bad as the literal fascists.
  
  At best this is a grossly uninformed position. At worst she is pushing this to add it to the pile of privacy violations or because a system like this, if it could actually work, would have an end goal to block people printing copyrighted objects.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨California’s New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers That Report on Themselves⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And largely unenforceable. Like, it can only really block the sale of prebuilt, proprietary crap like Bamboo, but most of these things are built out of common parts that are used for a verity of applications and there are countless completely open source printers you can just built from sourced parts that this literally cannot apply to.

  Even for most of the prebuilt or kits you get you put open source firmware on it. They can boot lock the board that comes with it, technically, but the board is easy enough to replace on most printers and it’s a standard micro controller and/or raspberry pi nowadays.

  Half the time people who get those kits end up replacing various components to customize for their use case. I have a Sovol SV08 that I put stock Klipper on and want to do the multi-print-head mod someday. I’ve even considered replacing the main board with a more powerful one so I can run higher microsteps without overloading the processor.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨California’s New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers That Report on Themselves⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It also violates the first and fourth. And it does nothing about gun violence.

  It’s also impossible to actually implement and is no more than one more privacy violation to add to the pile.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨G-Assist is ‘real’: NVIDIA unveils NitroGen, open-source AI model that can play 1000+ games for you⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I could see a way for it to work, but this tech certainly isn’t it and you’d need to balance the size of the model for memory use and performance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨G-Assist is ‘real’: NVIDIA unveils NitroGen, open-source AI model that can play 1000+ games for you⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Except you don’t need a neural net to do this, nor would you really want one for it because it would be incredibly slow unless you use the GPU to run it which might be a bit busy running the actual game. It’s like a “make game run worse” option.

  In game AI can be pretty sophisticated even without the addition of neural nets which could be OK with determining strategy based on player action, but really isn’t going to be good for the entire control.

  This kind of thing is only useful as tech demo for playing platformers and the like with the same inputs a human player would, basically more like a bot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For stuff like dirt/stone/brick/etc textures I’m less strict for the use of generative stuff. I even thinking having an artist make the “core” texture and then using an AI to fill out the texture across the various surfaces to make it less repetitive over a large area isn’t a problem for me.

  Like, I agree that these things gernally are ethically questionable with how they are trained, but you can train them on ethically sourced data and doing so could open up the ability to fill out a game world without spending a ton of time, leaving the actual artists more time to work on the important set pieces than the dirt road connecting them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, as far as Lemmy goes most of the people who came over first are people who are technically and privacy oriented. Issues with Reddit causing several exoduses (I think I spelled that right).

  What has historically pushed people to use Linux is the same driver for pretty much anything fediverse/activity pub. It’s the early adopters that are going to shape the discourse for a while. I think Reddit was the same way at the start as was Digg.

  Your average non-techie is less likely to want to figure out how to use Lemmy over just dealing with the other things the corporate sites are doing. Not that there aren’t non-techies on Lemmy, but it will take time for them to overtake the techies by a significant degree, if it happens at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve seen so many Windows users come out of nowhere to shit on Linux when gaming comes up. There was the whole thing where a bunch of alpha testers got banned on Ashes of Creation a few weeks ago and the discord just had like half of people in their discord throwing hate around.

  Also accusing Linux users of being cheaters… as if game cheats are made for Linux.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Even if there is a slight performance loss, I feel like for the vast majority of games it’s basically irrelevant, especially since most of the examples I see are like maybe 5-15% worse if it’s worse at all.

  If you are still over 60FPS then I don’t really see why it’s that much of an issue. Even having 165hz monitors I don’t really notice much difference above 100, as long as the frame rate is consistent.

  And as far as I’ve seen for AMD performance will be equal to if not better than Windows. The only issues I’ve seen with performance are Nvidia, but it’s been improving and seems to be “good enough” from what I hear. Also, the more people who switch the more likely that will improve even more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are women who are also pro Linux.

  I’ve used it off and on since the early 2000s, but switched full time last year when they were threatening to put the AI stuff in windows.

  Also, being queer and the fear of how many companies are bending the knee to fascism I am concerned with privacy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For those of you who enjoy open-world games, how big of a world is too big?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  How have I not heard of this one?

  I did hear about Light No Fire from the No Man Sky devs. Looks impressive from what I’ve seen so far on it with it’s supposedly literal Earth sized world.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For those of you who enjoy open-world games, how big of a world is too big?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends on a lot of factors like what the actual game is.

  A sandbox game, bigger is better. Like Minecraft. If the goal is exploration and resource gathering you can plop me into an infinitely generated map and I will be happy.

  Outside of that, narrative games can be too big if there’s nothing to do in between points of interests. I don’t mean like side-quests, but more like random encounters or crafting/gathering stuff. There has to be something there I can either get distracted with or to “on the way” to the next location.

  I think a lot of games want their cake and eat it too. It’s not an open world game, but Final Fantasy XIV promoted the Heavensward expansion with the zones being like 5 times bigger than the base game…

  …but there were only 6 of them and between already being able to teleport to each zone there wasn’t any difficulty navigating the zones and they added flying which made them seem smaller than the base zones.

  1.0 XIV had impressively sized zones that were unfortunately very copy pasted and between the rushed release and the engine limitations enemies were very spread out.

  Again, depends on the game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘I’m a modern-day luddite’: Meet the students who don’t use laptops⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have ADHD and didn’t get diagnosed or medicated until after I was out of school.

  I basically had two options: pay attention in class or attempt to take notes.

  I had so many teachers in grade school complain I didn’t take notes, or do homework but that was a different complaint. The issue was that when I took notes I would miss chunks of information as I was writing and my writing was basically illegible because I was trying to put it down fast. If I slowed down to make it neat I would miss even more information. So any notes I took would be next to useless and I wouldn’t remember anything. And that’s without even determining what I needed to write down.

  Grade school was also slow passed and repetitive enough that most of the time I could sit and watch or doodle while listening and retain the information. Basically the only thing I struggled with was spelling because it was just rote memorization.

  College was a bit harder in some cases beyond general ed, but for the classes I needed to study for I was able to re-watch the recorded lectures and take the time to write stuff out since I could rewind and pause.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I think the more accurate title would be “mass marketing” or something. There are certainly marketing campaigns that work, but they are more catered to the audience.

  Valve markets to nerds all the time, but they have enough good will with their target audience so it’s more assumed to be “good faith” marketing, like they don’t misrepresent what they are trying to sell.

  Look at the Steam Deck. They made announcements and over then worked with creators in the PC gaming space to do interviews and reviews and it felt much more organic. Rather than reading some dry ad or annoying banners and interruptions. It was a marketing campaign of sorts that engaged with the audience and made them want to seek it out.

  Where I don’t know many people who are receptive to buzzword salads that are mass blasted over everything and just interrupt everything.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I would also bet that when the landscape decentralizes there will be a lot more cp, revenge and peep-videos and other illegal shit in the mix

  Oh, count on it. I remember the early days of the internet and file sharing. There was no validation or accountability and you really could stumble on some of the most terrible stuff without meaning to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Realistically, no one should love how easy it is for anyone of any age to go to any search engine and search for “boobs” and just get a million images of boobs.

  First. let’s not pretend the idea of a kid seeing “boobs” is in any way shape or form actually harmful. Pushing that taboo is why there is any issue in the first place.

  Second: This is always a slippery slope. Even if we gave the benefit of the doubt that these things are done in with honest intentions, someone will abuse the system eventually. At least in the US the fascists have already laid out intention to classify LGBTQ people as “porn” in an effort to both silence us online and ban us in public. And what of the countless queer kids in an abusive home?

  And even without someone explicitly exploiting it, there had already been instances where kids who were being actively sexually abused by the adults in their life were blocked from resources that could get them help because of content blocking like this.

  Thirdly: People can take responsibility for their crotch spawn and be a fucking parent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨no words, much feelings⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Living in an area with very hard water, yes.