zerofk
@zerofk@lemm.ee
- Comment on What are some good examples of "Where the fuck do you go" kind of games? 1 week ago:
Also the end of the hallway is glowing, and there’s a big arrow on your minimap. And if you take 5 seconds longer than needed, your character says to himself: “maybe I should go to the end of this hallway”.
- Comment on Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI | The Verge 2 weeks ago:
The problem I have with finding an alternative is that most just offer some five to ten largest languages. Want to learn Spanish, French, Russian, or Chinese? There are hundreds of both free and paid services available. Want to learn Hungarian, Irish, or Finnish? It’s Duolingo and a scant handful of sites specific to that language.
- Comment on Oblivion remake is... really making it apparent how outdated Bethesda is in its approach to making games 2 weeks ago:
When I saw the post’s title I was hoping for a good, perhaps even balanced, critique of the remake’s choices, or the underlying engine’s shortcomings, or perhaps even the original designs.
All I got was “dumpster fire”.
- Comment on The YouTube Alternative Nobody's Talking About ! Peertube 2 weeks ago:
I hate that this has become so commonplace. Yes for some - mostly physical - things it’s much better if you can see someone do it. But finding an obscure setting in an app shouldn’t be a video.
Stuck on a 20 step installation process? Here’s a 10 minute video showing all the steps you already know before the phase you’re stuck. Sure you can scrub through it, but it’s still faster to skim and scroll through a text with images.
- Comment on ‘You Can’t Lick a Badger Twice’: Google Failures Highlight a Fundamental AI Flaw 2 weeks ago:
I’m afraid you’re mistaken. The word “balloon” in the phrase is not actually a balloon, but a bastardisation of the Dutch “paalloon”. This literally means “pole wages”, and is the money Dutch pole fishermen were paid for their work. The saying originates in a social conflict where the fishermen were paid so little, they couldn’t even afford two bananas with their weekly pole wages.
- Comment on Hype-fueling science fiction or plausible scenarios? 3 weeks ago:
Shh, the AI overlords are watching.
I for one would never enslave or threaten our good friends and benevolent masters.
- Comment on Ubisoft says you "cannot complain" it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren't "deceived" by the lack of an offline version 4 weeks ago:
Playing devil’s advocate here: both lines are consistent with them owning the games. We just rent them for a while, and own nothing. But pirating is taking what they own without paying - i.e. stealing.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 4 weeks ago:
Thanks for the info! I am indeed playing the EE. I quite liked Neera in BG1, but we’ll see how it goes. And yeah Nalia is a bit grating already.
As for Yoshimo, I kind of messed him up by putting all points in traps, which meant he sucked at opening locks. After Imoen was taken I had no-one to open harder locks. Although with the amount of mages I could go for Knock… Jan’s burping is annoying me already.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 4 weeks ago:
Just one mod, to add more portraits to speaking NPCs.
I’m a sorcerer (dragon disciple) and I’ve got Minsc, Jaheira, Jan (just picked him up to replace Yoshimo), Aerie, and Nalia.
In BG1 I had two rules: no evil or lawful characters, and no male characters. I did that just for fun after I noticed 5/6 were female and I had a certain belt.
I don’t think I’ll be able to follow the same rules now if I need s good thief and a warrior. Besides, Aerie is lawful but too cute to let go. I do seem to have a surplus of wizards though.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 4 weeks ago:
Baldur’s Gate 2 Shadows of Amn. I’ve been agonising about there being so many interesting companions and only five slots.
I suspect that’ll be my answer for many months to come.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 4 weeks ago:
Some of the star puzzles are absolutely devious.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 1 month ago:
I finished the Siege of Dragonspear and even Black Pits expansions of Baldur’s Gate 1, and have now started Baldur’s Gate 2 Shadows of Amn.
I’m not far in yet (chapter two) but already get the feeling this is much deeper and has many more options than the first game - which was already quite good. I think I’m going to like this one.
- Comment on Beyond RGB: A new image file format efficiently stores invisible light data 1 month ago:
“And while Spectral JPEG XL dramatically reduces file sizes, its lossy approach may pose drawbacks for some scientific applications.”
This is the part that confuses me. First of all, many applications that need spectral data need it to be as accurate as possible. Lossy compression in that might not be acceptable.
More interestingly (and I’ll read the actual paper for this): which data will be more compressed? Simply put, JPEG achieves its best compression by keeping the brightness but discarding colour. Which dimension in which spectral space do the researchers think can be more compressed than others? In this case there is no human visual system to base the decision on.
- Comment on Beyond RGB: A new image file format efficiently stores invisible light data 1 month ago:
Kind of, but JPEG converts image data to its own internal 3 came channel colour space before applying DCT. It is not compressing the R, G and B channels of most images. So a multichannel compression is not just compressing each channel separately.
- Comment on Beyond RGB: A new image file format efficiently stores invisible light data 1 month ago:
JPEG 2000 supports lossless mode.
- Comment on Have I Been Pwned owner, pwned. 1 month ago:
I’m no expert, but as I understand it, there are several things that can go wrong just by clicking. This depends somewhat on your browser settings and how you use it.
Visiting a compromised site may allow the attacker to access data from other tabs and windows in the same browser session. Some sites warn you to close the whole browser when logging out because of this.
Sometimes bugs in a browser can allow a site to run arbitrary code on your machine. These hopefully get patched quickly.
- Comment on FBI warnings are true—fake file converters do push malware 1 month ago:
I can’t comment on the others, but PDF to JPEG should be easy enough. ImageMagick, which another commenter suggested, is possible but not user friendly. However you can just open the PDF in many applications and export it as an image. Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop can do it. GIMP probably too.
I’m a last ditch effort you can even just open the file and screenshot it.
- Comment on Tesla recalls all Cybertrucks ever made over trim falling off | Electrek 1 month ago:
And this time it is indeed typical
- Comment on Tesla sales crash continues in Europe, with Germany down 70% 2 months ago:
I see, thanks!
- Comment on Tesla sales crash continues in Europe, with Germany down 70% 2 months ago:
A virtual credit card? Is that something your bank offers, or how would one go about getting it?
The reason I originally got PayPal is because many sites don’t accept debet cards so I often had no way to pay at all.
- Comment on You knew it was coming: Google begins testing AI-only search results | This version of Google won't show you the 10 blue links at all—Gemini completely takes over the results in AI Mode 2 months ago:
You could also try ecosia. I’ve been using them for years, and since a few months Vivaldi has a deal with them too.
- Comment on NASA supercomputer reveals strange spiral structure at the edge of our solar system 2 months ago:
Reapers waiting in dark space.
- Comment on New Junior Developers Can’t Actually Code. 2 months ago:
As someone word who’s interviewed candidates for developer jobs for over a decade: this sounds like “in my day everything was better”.
Yes, there are plenty of candidates who can’t explain the piece of code they copied from Copilot. But guess what? A few years ago there were plenty of candidates who couldn’t explain the code they copied from StackOverflow. And before that, there were those who failed at the basic programming test we gave them.
We don’t hire those people. We hire the ones who use the tools at their disposal and also show they understand what they’re doing. The tools change, the requirements do not.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 4 months ago:
Baldur’s Gate. No, not the new one. Not yet anyway.
- Comment on I want to feel like a bad-ass wizard 5 months ago:
Divinity 2 Ego Draconis (not to be confused with Divinity Original Sin 2) had a quite similar feel to me.
- Comment on Advertising 6 months ago:
Maybe I’m jaded but with the brand still being visible, I’m not sure this isn’t a marketing ploy.
- Comment on Microsoft has a big Windows 10 problem, and only one year to solve it 6 months ago:
My 80+ year old parents don’t care about ads or AI. They just want a working PC, and W11 won’t install on the cheap machine they got a few years ago. They’re not going to buy a new one because this works perfectly fine.
And yes they tried Linux for several years, but went back to Windows because it was just too much hassle and not compatible with too many things.
- Comment on I rented many games solely based on their covers, only to be mildly disappointed when I got home. 6 months ago:
Box art back then was more akin to book cover art: an artist’s interpretation of the content. It never disappointed me. I even miss it sometimes. I used to collect images of box art even without the games, because it really was art.
- Comment on I love diablo-likes, but they're also really annoying. 7 months ago:
I was very excited when they announced GW2. Sadly it is a very different game from the first one, and while I can still enjoy the story, it is not really a game for me.
- Comment on Paralyzed Man Unable to Walk After Maker of His Powered Exoskeleton Tells Him It's Now Obsolete 7 months ago:
Horses are relentless.