Excrubulent

@Excrubulent@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Obsidian is now free for work - Obsidian⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s the thing, thank you! I tried looking before and couldn’t find anybody doing it. Maybe I discounted obsidian because it wasn’t free or foss. If it’s free now and the format is open then that helps a lot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Obsidian is now free for work - Obsidian⁩ ⁨⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  So does obsidian support nonlinear spatially organised notes the way onenote does? I’ve been using joplin but without that onenote feature it’s been a bit underwhelming tbh, and I can’t find any software that does it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI whistleblower’s deemed suicide⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think that’s it at all. Wealth and power makes people stupid, and in order to keep believing in their own superior status, they have to believe we are stupider than them, which is very stupid indeed.

  Like it or not, even “monsters” have to have a model of the world and a theory of mind in order to operate. If they didn’t think about us, they wouldn’t be able to exploit us. If they didn’t treat us with contempt, they wouldn’t be able to exploit us. So, contemptuous consideration it is.

  It’s just that is a poor model of reality, so it’s going to be part of their downfall. They are going to keep treating us as idiots until we surprise them by suddenly not acting the part anymore. These abuses are clear and they are piling up. We remember the panama papers and what happened to those journalists. We remember what happened to Snowden, Manning and Assange. This has an undermining effect on the legitimacy of the system.

  You don’t see the termites until the house is already falling down around you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI whistleblower’s deemed suicide⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  They think we are so fucking stupid, don’t they?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI whistleblower’s deemed suicide⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  What info got spies killed exactly? Aspersions were cast but no actual information ever came out about that, and presumably if they’re already dead then it can be released.

  If that had actually happened, the government would have been howling from the rooftops about it, we’d all know their names.

  But the reports on what damage it did were entirely redacted, and the worst thing they could say was “likely to have lethal consequences”, which presumably means it *hadn’t * had lethal consequences. Pretty weak shit. Also they’re bitching and moaning about how it will weaken their ability to do spy shit and like… good. Why do we want them to do that shit? Everything we know about what they do is basically universally evil, so maybe Snowden is a hero actually.

  Nah, it’s bullshit, they’re just trying to assassinate his character and it sounds like you fell for it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Interactive Fiction Games Could Make A Comeback With This E-reader Handheld Console⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Then you are not the target market. Idk what to tell you, your personal opinion doesn’t invalidate the whole concept.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mastodon is working to add the controversial 'quote posts' feature | TechCrunch⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m curious about how they handle retracting the quote in an open source federated model where the behaviour of other osntances can’tbe ensured. Does the instance hosting the quote simply refuse to honour the quote link?

  And I suppose if an instance uses a hostile workaround like simply embedding a copy, that would be seen as a bad mark against the instance which could lead to defederation?

  I’m not saying it’s impossible, just interested in the specifics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Interactive Fiction Games Could Make A Comeback With This E-reader Handheld Console⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It should be trivial to run the software on other devices because it will be so low-powered, so that problem disappears.

  In fact you literally said so yourself. Is that a point in the system’s favour or isn’t it?

  If the physical device is also cheap then I think this could easily take off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Interactive Fiction Games Could Make A Comeback With This E-reader Handheld Console⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s like saying you could play PICO-8 games on anything, because it’s true, but the point is to impose limitations, not to make something you could never theoretically do with another device.

  Like think about the PICO-8 version of Celeste, which can run inside the main game, but which never would have been made if the PICO-8 didn’t exist, and all the other games made for that platform that wouldn’t exist if that fantasy console had never been invented.

  This is similar - by creating a console with very limited resources and I/O, you create a very limited set of expectations, and then it’s easy to make games for it because Skyrim or whatever just isn’t an option, so more people can make those games.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kid is having such bad luck⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You know being born into wealth isn’t a great deal either. Does Musk seem happy to you? Or any of the other ghouls in that orbit?

  There is plenty of evidence that large amounts of wealth has a similar effect on the owner as brain damage.

  No, you don’t want that. Having enough to be comfortable is good, but wealth is not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Cybertruck Appears to Be More Deadly Than the Infamous Ford Pinto, According to a New Analysis⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Right but the specific issue with the Pinto was that it would explode into flames on a rear impact, so this is the appropriate metric.

  Like deaths from other accidents would skew the numbers anyway becausd 70s cars were death traps compared to today, but even in that context, the Pinto’s explosions were alarming.

  Beating it on that isolated metric is a very special kind of achievement.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨White House Faith Office⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You know, laws? Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Those YouTube ads everyone hates made $10.4 billion in just three months⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not. Why do you want it to be? It’s one of the most enduring social media monopolies, and it should be brought down. The more they lose revenue, the more they are forced to squeeze, the more they enshittify, the more people are pushed to make and use alternatives, and the stronger those alternatives get.

  Honestly once youtube’s network can be usurped by something like peertube, I think that might be the ballgame for centralised social media. It is the hardest one to topple because of bandwidth costs, which means once it goes the case for needing a corporation to fund our networks kind of collapses with it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Uber Eats undercover: Delivering your food for $1.74 an hour⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a developer too, and I appreciate the offer very much, but I’m not really in a situation where I could work on something like this. It’s just an idea though, anyone could run with it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Choosing pink is chaotic evil?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you the person who keeps mateiralising in my home and screaming “DEFECATE” then disappearing in a puff of fart-cloud?

  I’ve had a leg injury lately and I can’t make it to my upstairs bathroom that fast. You have destroyed my stair carpet. The cleaner said it was “unsalvageable” and “honestly shameful”. You need to stop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Uber Eats undercover: Delivering your food for $1.74 an hour⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I maintain that it would be realtively simple to create an open source version of an app/protocol like this that serves people’s needs for this exact use case, and if it were designed for any community to use, it could be essentially free as you say and high quality, and be a single point of service for everyone.

  If this were done right it could put all these thin platforms out of business and allow delivery drivers to establish fair terms for themselves.

  This would be a really good fit for federation I think.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Too dumb to understand where the gas tank opening is⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I will have open solidarity with that person, thank you very much. Society should accommodate everyone. If it can’t, it’s a bad society.

  And if uou can’t tolerate people like this existing, you’re a bad person, and I don’t want anything to do with you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Half-Life 2 peaks at 52,000 concurrent players, 20 years after its release⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll be straight with you - I never played Ricochet. I was just doing the joke from that one guy who asked Gabe about it that one time. But the fact you ported it to the Source engine is honestly really cool.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Half-Life 2 peaks at 52,000 concurrent players, 20 years after its release⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean who hasn’t at least once?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bluesky says it won’t train AI on your posts⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I looked into it and the backend is proprietary, so the central owner can restrict features. Like for instance independent instances can only have 10 users.

  It’s “decentralised” except only in extremely limited scope, the code is centrally controlled and the network remains largely, functionally centralised.

  They’re capitalising on the decentralised, federated buzz while doing it so poorly they’re setting up users to say “oh people tried decentralisation, it doesn’t work, look at Bluesky”.

  If it’s not open source, it’s not decentralised.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Half-Life 2 peaks at 52,000 concurrent players, 20 years after its release⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ricochet hasn’t recieved the love it deserves. We’ve been waiting on Ricochet 2 for decades. The fans need closure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I put on my robe and my wizard hat⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nerds can be so freaky.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'My personal failure was being stumped': Gabe Newell says finishing Half-Life 2: Episode 3 just to conclude the story would've been 'copping out of [Valve's] obligation to gamers'⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The combat may not have been the most interesting versus basic grunts, but it never got stale. I’ve never played another game where the core gameplay changed so much so frequently.

  Physics interactions -> Basic FPS -> Fan Boat -> Mounted Gun -> Gravity Gun -> Zombies & Traps -> Car -> THE CRANE FIGHT -> Rockets & Gunships -> Ant Lions -> Ant Lion Minions -> Turrets -> Resistance Squads -> Striders -> Super Gravity Gun

  Honestly the HL1 combat may have been somewhat more challengjng, but it was a grind. Fights were often just frustrating. I’ve abandonded playthroughs because I didn’t feel like spending another 10 hours beating my head against the endless amounts of enemies just to get to the end of… whatever I was doing I forgot.

  HL1’s big innovation was never removing control from the player just to tell the story. Beyond that they also had some interesting AI behaviour and weapons. It was a game with old-school length and old-school difficulty.

  HL2’s big innovation was the physics engine, and they played with it in so many ways, whole polishing every other aspect of the design. They kept the gameplay tight and did something just long enough to explore it and then they moved on. They never forced you to hang out just repeating the same loop over and over to pad the length.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Onion buys rightwing conspiracy theory site Infowars with plans to make it ‘very funny, very stupid’⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is Dan the loud one? I’ve never learned their names, but I’m waiting for him to scream something about them horning in on their territorily.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Onion buys rightwing conspiracy theory site Infowars with plans to make it ‘very funny, very stupid’⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I gotta find out what the Knowledge Fight folks have to say about this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bitwarden Makes Change To Address Recent Open-Source Concerns⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Why do they have to “WANT” that? Why does that matter to the criticism? If it’s true, it’s true, and the fact that corporations are the ones in a position to habitually make terrible decisions about FOSS is a big problem. It’s valid to point out that it would be good to find a better way.

  If anything it sounds like you “WANT” to ignore it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Advertising⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Fellow Aussie, I know instinctively this was Aussie, just not which part.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ukraine graphics is crazy⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  People have been trying to boycott tome since we had a word for it. If you figure out how you let me know please.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This researcher wants to replace your brain, little by little. The US government just hired a researcher who thinks we can beat aging with fresh cloned bodies and brain updates.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I cut a big nerve in my thumb years ago, and apparently plastic surgeons fix that sort of thing.

  They reattached the nerve bundles, but I was told the sheathes could be realigned, but the nerves would have to grow back from the point of the cut all the way to the skin.

  At first one half of my thumb was entirely numb, and over the course of well over a decade I’d get pins & needles as bunches of nerves would finish regrowing, except attached to random channels in the nerve bundle, so my brain had to completely remap all those signals to what they actually meant. Also extreme nerve pain near the cut whenever it was bumped, I assume because many nerves just didn’t grow successfully and remained near that site.

  It felt super weird because hot, cold, pain & touch were all mixed up, but eventually my brain sorted them out. It still feels a little weird, especially near my nail, but I haven’t had a pins & needles experience for a few years.

  The problem with doing that with a neck is that it would take wayyy longer and the chances of the patient dying from complications due to no brain signals working right… yeah I don’t see medical science fixing this unless we can regrow nerves in a much shorter span of time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PayPal implements default data sharing with third parties: users must manually opt out⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I found this: …europa.eu/…/what-should-i-do-if-i-think-my-perso…