Khrux

@Khrux@ttrpg.network

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m trying to make my own smart watch as a hobby experiment at the moment, and one of my most important features is NFC payments. It’s a nightmare, although I understand why. Currently my plan is to buy another smart watch or smart ring and take the NFC chip from it, which is maddening, but more or less my only option due to contactless payment security.

  To do contactless payments, your bank must effectively permit the specific device, otherwise go through GPay or Apple Pay, who in turn just do the permitting themselves. Anything outside of the standard ecosystem just gets overlooked.

  The best workaround while avoiding these companies is to find a smart watch or ring that has compatibility with a proxy card, such as Curve. But beyond halving the price of the accessory, this is pretty much an arbitrary decision.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crunchyroll & Now Netflix Both Confirm Anime Sub Watchers Are the Minority on Their Platforms⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I 100% agree on consistency, but I actually suspect LLMs would be pretty decent at translating linguistic concepts. Their grasp of contextual language is always surprisingly good, as seen in how well they rewrite tone to very specific parameters.

  I don’t use ChatGPT loads, but I do use it a little, often alongside a method of project that can’t hallucinate. The other week I was talking in one chat about the vocal tone of the novel Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, that has this laconic, worn down dialogue with old testament feeling prose. In another chat, I was prompting ‘sage advice’ for a matcha scone recipe I wanted to make where I was marbling strawberry directly into the dough. I got which chat I was responding in wrong and accidentally had it give me a the scone recipe in Cormac McCarthy’s writing style.

  MARBLED SCONES

  He measured two cups of flour into a bowl and cut in the baking powder with the side of his hand. Salt followed. It hung in the flour like stone dust. He stirred it with a fork and the dry mix turned over itself and fell still. He cut the butter into cubes and dropped them in and pressed them through with his fingers until the flour took the texture of packed soil. He added a spoon of matcha. The green of river weed. The taste of old things left out in the rain.

  He poured in buttermilk and cream. A little at a time. He stirred it slow with a blunt knife and the dough pulled together like it didn’t want to be one thing.

  In another bowl he took a handful of flour and mixed it with strawberry powder. A drop of red dye like blood in water. He stirred in cream until it held. He pressed the green dough flat on the counter and laid the red over it and folded. Folded again. The colors turned but did not blend. Like veins of ore in a dark stone.

  He shaped the dough into a slab and cut thick rounds with a glass. Each one imperfect. Some leaning. Some split. He set them on a tray lined with paper. The oven was already hot. He did not preheat it. It was always hot. Four twenty five. He watched the scones rise through the glass. They broke along the seams. Green and red and gold. They looked like they’d been dug up.

  He split one open while it was still warm. He spread pistachio butter across the inside. It melted into the crumb. Then clotted cream. Then jam. The weight of it brought the top half down slow.

  He took it outside and sat in the dirt to eat. There was no sound but the breeze. The sky was wide and empty. The scone was good. The scone was all right.

  Now this is actually super easy to critique as a recipe, because it fucking sucks. In adaptation, it’s lost a lot of critical instruction. This is effectively a translation that must adhere to narrow and specific tone to achieve a meaning that cannot be translated without grasping a meaning to language that exists beyond the words.

  Obviously this is English to English, but a big difference is that there is far more Japanese out there than Cormac McCarthy.

  That being said, nothing cements what you’re saying about consistency more than how badly butchered the underlying instructions to this recipe are.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crunchyroll & Now Netflix Both Confirm Anime Sub Watchers Are the Minority on Their Platforms⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Although I think it’s worth saying how much dubs have improved in the last decade, I’ve always been reasonably lightly into anime, but always had the odd niche recommendation on the go. Most anime I watch is still casual in tone, so I like to have it on while doing art or something, so I’m a big dub supporter.

  A decade ago, you could probably have a rule that unless you’d see someone wearing merch of the anime in public, the dub would be shit, but I think because streaming services are paying so much for dunning themselves, it’s lightened the burden across the scene.

  Also if over 50% of users watch dubs, I wonder what percentage of their users solely watch high budget, mainstream anime which has perfectly fine dubs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nexus Mods to Enforce Digital ID Age Checks Under UK and EU Laws⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  And sometimes just super plain ones. I remember getting my favourite Skyrim potion texture mod from there specifically.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US military aircraft no longer visible at base in Qatar: satellite images⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I doubt any major power will intervene for Iran unless it looks like a regime change that actually benefits Israel / the USA happens. China and Russia have basically been minimal allies with Iran for the sake of funding an enemy of America, but they’ve always wanted Iran to remain weaker.

  The small pro Iran groups, largely the groups Iran trained will act, but they have been already for the past 3 years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨7 for me⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Weirdly I’m always unfairly judgemental when I see someone in very I door wear in public. Unless it’s somewhere lawless like an airport, pajamas or super comfort sports wear in public always irks me. But on the other hand, it literally makes more sense to be as comfortable as possible and for some pointless reason, I feel very beholden to the fashion standards that make it feel weird.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cloudflare CEO warns AI and zero-click internet are killing the web's business model⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Also worth addressing that people are using large language models exactly because the ad driven web was enshitified enough that people clambered for this new option.

  There will be at least one LLM that’s good for web searching and doesn’t give in to advertising, and in the meantime, we’ll just need to keep jumping ship whenever one becomes awful, as we did with the old web.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cloudflare CEO warns AI and zero-click internet are killing the web's business model⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a surprisingly forgiving opinion on AI. There are many cases that I think it’s purpose is stupid or defeats the point but it has the potential to cause such a large break to employability and capitalism in general that it has it’s upsides.

  People are right to take issue with the fact that it is causing people to lose their jobs or be unemployable by no fault of their own, but underlying that issue is the fact that society shouldn’t function on the employment being necessary (which I am aware is an opinion).

  Even in its absurd energy and water usage, this is largely an issue with how we currently get our energy and water. Having our technocrats suddenly more invested in new and better forms of energy, even just for powering AI has the potential to be a path to better clean energy options.

  AI is fundamentally a neutral tool, but as much as it may be sued for evil, it may accelerate flawed economic and environmental systems to a breaking point where a redesign of those structures will be required, which could be the greatest opportunity to implement better structures that we’ve had since the industrial revolution.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 2⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Back in 2013, I bought an old PS3 + GTA5 for £150 or so just to play the game, then once I had it, picked up two more exclusives, before never touching it again pretty quickly.

  Getting a console for GTA6, plus the game, this time may set me back more than my expendable income after rent and bills. It will absolutely sell consoles but I’d wager people are actually able to buy a console much less than in 2013.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cities Skylines 2, Kerbal Space 2, Planet Coaster 2, Frostpunk 2... What Went Wrong?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I had it from release and honestly, even day 1 it smoked the competition in the city sim genre, releasing with features and scale than Sim City ever had.

  The DLC often introduced more systems, but they did feel ‘extra’, the game was perfectly functional before parks or tourism or natural disasters etc.

  The reason CS:2 felt so necessary is because the first was bloated and had underlying issues in it’s simulation logic, like unrealistically inefficient driving, or a large expansion to residential areas causing all the new residents to die of old age at the same time, crippling the city. Every part of the GUI and logic just felt clunky compared to modern, polished games.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spotify says it's fixing the bug that caused Premium users to hear ads⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Someone in my work had this happen to them, but it was the “sick of ads? Pay for premium” advent.

  It could still be part of a deliberate action but that must be the worst advert to try to sneak ads in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The question no one dares ask: what if Britain has to defend itself from the US? | George Monbiot⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is what the US have encouraged Taiwan to do. Taiwan wanted to purchase a few incredibly expensive fighters and ship from the USA, but basically all war simulations just had China target these and secure a fast win. The USA instead encourage Taiwan to take the “porcupine” technique, spreading many small weapons, particularly handheld anti-aircraft type weaponry across the country. The plan is to make invasion too inconvenient. The flip side is that without a reliable way to show a display of strength, anywhere the larger aggressor does pick on (USA to UK China to Taiwan) can focus on one part of the country and reliably cause massive damage there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The question no one dares ask: what if Britain has to defend itself from the US? | George Monbiot⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The chances of a future where the UK and USA go to war where those military bases aren’t long since gone is nearly impossible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Study finds bullies have more children than non-bullies⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think being assertive and more socially active meaning you’re more likely to be a bully is a bit of a myth. Although the cliché school or work bully may be assertive and socially active, there are many unpopular and awkward people who bully those around them, and it just goes unnoticed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[sh.it.post] We're #5! We're #5!⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly I think their higher upvote / post ratio is a better formula. Most of Lemmy has too little engagement on it’s posts for my tastes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK ‘one of world’s least work-oriented countries’ claims BrewDog founder - as he slams obsession with 'work-life balance'⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been told by literal Brewdog barstaff that if they know he’s coming, they need to encourage their female staff to either dress moderately or not come in, to minimise his sexual harassment.

  I don’t know how true that is, but the city I’m based in, which is pretty happy to boycott assholes is filled with people who boycott Brewdog.