Brokkr
@Brokkr@lemmy.world
- Comment on What are your favorite 1000+ hour games? 3 days ago:
Factorio, it’s fun from the first minute but you’ll still be learning new things after 1000 hours.
- Comment on Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 3 weeks ago:
2 x 10^34 for those people who like to use numbers to represent numbers in a sane way.
- Comment on Three Mile Island owner seeks $1.6 billion federal loan to restart nuclear plant for Microsoft AI facility 1 month ago:
Market cap doesn’t say how much cash they have available. For that, look at cash on hand which publicaly traded companies need to report
MS has about 75B cash on hand, so they could afford this themselves. They will probably argue that it will bring jobs and expertise to the state. Also, it’s a loan, so the interest will generate funding for the state as well.
- Comment on Patient gamer philosophy 1 month ago:
The question is moot from both sides of the deal, but understanding why is important.
For something like a game, you will only ever pay approximately what you think a game is “worth”. How you determine that value is entirely up to you and should be based on your own opinions and beliefs. Therefore, if you derive value from supporting niche developers, that’s great for you and you should continue to do so as you wish. If you don’t value that quite as much, then wait for a sale price that does.
Your individual decisions will not affect the decisions of publishers and developers.
Their decisions will take into account the total profit that they think a game can provide over its lifetime. This is determined by the initial price and sales as well as future discount prices and sales. The way they estimate the potential profit of a new project is based on past data. If they see most of their sales at launch time, they will price the game accordingly. If they see more revenue over time from sales, then they will price the game accordingly. As long as they continue to hit those goals, then they will continue making products for those audiences.
Therefore, the best way to support the projects you like is to buy the game when the price justifies the value to you. That is buy it whenever you want. The only way to not support (I am purposefully avoiding the word hurt) the publisher and developer is to pirate the games.
- Comment on Satisfactory 1.0 2 months ago:
Everything except the losing interest part is what people love about factory games. So while they have your interest, realize that you are absolutely playing them “correctly”. But if you don’t like iterating your designs (not everyone does, and that’s OK), then these are probably not the right genre for you.
- Comment on Unsolvable epic store captcha 4 months ago:
Are you completing them quickly and correctly? If you are, that might be the issue.
Try making mistakes and then undoing them, as if you mis-clicked.
- Comment on ELDEN RING - Update 1.12.2 (Rebalanced Scadutree Blessings) 4 months ago:
You should see an increase, but likely small. Since the end point increased and since the curve only increases between upgrades, that means that all points before the end point must also increase. However, most of the benefit is now granted in the first half of the upgrades possible, so at your level the increase per level will be smaller than it was before.
- Comment on Elon Musk says it's his turn to have the remote 6 months ago:
How is the X in xitter pronounced? Is it “sh” like in Xi? This seems to fit this time line, but it would be nice to have confirmation.
- Comment on What are the best indie games you've ever played? 8 months ago:
Even Arkane alone at that time wouldn’t be considered indie. They had done a few contract jobs for major releases, like CoD, before developing Dishonored.
- Comment on What are the best indie games you've ever played? 8 months ago:
I’m not sure Arkane and Bathesda could be considered as indie devs at the time of release. Bathesda had released Skyrim the year before.
- Comment on Cory Doctorow gets scammed 8 months ago:
When a possible fraud department calls you, you shouldn’t need to verify any digits of the card. Answer only yes or no.
Call them back if you need to give additional information.
- Comment on Cory Doctorow gets scammed 8 months ago:
When a fraud department calls you, you don’t need to provide any more information than your name and yes/no answers. If they are asking for any additional information, tell them that you don’t trust their authenticity and that you’ll call the number on the credit card. A legitimate agent will politely end the conversation there.
Then you better call that number on the card quickly.
- Comment on Divine Automation: Factorio and phantasies of mechanization 8 months ago:
It was rather difficult to understand the point of this essay. It doesn’t state it’s thesis until about the middle. The first half is a philosophical review of automation games, taking a detour to explain what the word automation could mean (why?) to eventually arrive at the conclusion that tech bros (incorrectly associating them with Silicon Valley, which is focused on hardware, not software) are bad. The reasoning for which seems to be largely an opinion stated as fact with the supporting evidence being that these games are unrealistic.
I found it difficult to engage with these ideas because the linkage between them is so incredibly stretched that it is hard to see the connection at all.
- Comment on [deleted] 8 months ago:
Landlines are dead, but I recently installed a VoIP phone because cell service at my house is great.
It is nice being able make calls reliabily now and the kids have a way to call 911 too.
- Comment on Those free USB sticks in your drawer are somehow crappier than you thought 8 months ago:
They don’t exactly fail the quality checks, they get binned into a lower grade. It’s a common practice in many industries when reworking isn’t possible or financially viable.
It isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. Consumers can save some money when they don’t need top performance, the company gets some revenue, and the products don’t go into a landfill right away.
- Comment on OpenAI wants to raise 5-7 trillion dollars. Yes, Trillion 9 months ago:
Patenting actual inventions is absolutely necessary for industrial research to be viable. Being a patent troll is the problem. The US patent office needs to be expanded, probably doubled, to address the issue. I don’t know how well equipped other nation’s patent offices are.
Patents require the disclosure of the invention so that it can be copied by others after 20 years.
- Comment on OpenAI wants to raise 5-7 trillion dollars. Yes, Trillion 9 months ago:
Companies don’t have income, they have revenue and profits. Revenue minus Costs (which include salaries, investments, materials, etc) equals Profits. The costs get detailed into different buckets which tracks investments into the company itself versus expenses that the company needs to pay to continue operating. An important number is the return on investments (ROI). A high enough ROI means the company makes more from investing in itself than it would from using the money for any other purpose.
I wasn’t talking specifically about an AI company, but companies in general. The investment in AI discussed in the original article is not about immediately developing additional AI programs, but rather about expanding the production of semiconductor manufacturing to meet the needs of chips for AI. A reasonable argument could be made that this will eventually eliminate jobs. Counter arguments would likely point out that the nature of jobs would change. Personally, I think that AI is going to become a larger part of our society and we need to think about the ways that we need to react to that. It likely means investing in better education, because some of the first jobs to go will be jobs which require low intellectual contributions. I don’t think it will replace jobs which require a great degree of physical manipulation however, because robotics are simply not at that level yet.
Regarding your point about c-suite raises, I addressed this very point in the last paragraph of my prior comment.
- Comment on OpenAI wants to raise 5-7 trillion dollars. Yes, Trillion 9 months ago:
I get the joke/point that you’re making, but usually a company’s investment into research, development, expansion, etc is tax exempt. Hopefully even the most serious critics of our current capatalist economy would agree that these types of investments should be tax exempt, because it means paying more salaries or purchasing goods and services from other companies, which again means more salaries. Generally, these aren’t c-level salaries either because usually the c-suite is not producing the goods and services required.
If those investments then net a huge profit that goes to a few individuals, then yes, those profits should be taxed, unavoidably and fairly.
- Comment on Gel and lithium-ion tech could enable 1000-mile EV range on one charge 9 months ago:
Ok, maybe it’s possible that they aren’t using a very focused electron beam, but usually when scientists think about using an electron beam they mean something inside of a machine like an SEM or e-beam lithograph. These only operate on small areas.
If an unfocused beam (and therefore lower energy density) can be used, then this could likely be scaled more easily. Even if a focused beam is needed, scaling may still be possible, but will likely require additional developments to create that process.
- Comment on Gel and lithium-ion tech could enable 1000-mile EV range on one charge 9 months ago:
Article states the use of an electron beam to enable this. So not currently scalable, but still a seemingly significant result.
- Comment on Fuck Ubisoft. 9 months ago:
I’m not taking a side in the debate of Steam vs others but has Steam ever negotiated an exclusivity deal of a 3rd party game?
- Comment on Against The Storm v1.1 update is out, improving early game variety and bringing a lot of QoL features 10 months ago:
Have you tried Factorio? If you want something that you can invest some time in the then that might be what you want.
- Comment on Rumored Nintendo Switch Flash Cart Video Shows Multiple Games on a Single Cart 10 months ago:
Kind of is, but it probably gets around some of the security that Nintendo puts on running games from the SD card.
- Comment on The rise and fall of Usenet: How the original social media platform came to be 11 months ago:
While text based messages on usenet may be dieing, the file sharing is still quite popular. My radar and sonar still pick up plenty of signals.
- Comment on It's official: Evernote will restrict free users to 50 notes | TechCrunch 11 months ago:
The author of that article seems completely out of touch with the requirements of a modern office. Also, that is in no way related to a note taking app.
While I do agree with the sentiment that low tech can be good. While I find note taking apps helpful, I also like a notebook and pen (even lower tech than a typewriter).
- Comment on It's official: Evernote will restrict free users to 50 notes | TechCrunch 11 months ago:
They offer additional features. One Note ties into the MS eco-system in an okish way. Obsidian is basically text (actually md) in a folder/folders but supports plug-ins that can do a lot. Notion is backed by databases. Others run in the terminal and can support plug-ins. Evernote was one of the first to offer additional features and offered syncing and connections to other apps (seems a lot of that has been restricted in the last 15 years).
- Comment on AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking Is Enabled 11 months ago:
support.apple.com/en-us/HT204104
Apple will not cover water damage, even though the phone has protection.
- Comment on [deleted] 11 months ago:
Not a lawyer, but first sale doctrine seems to apply to copyrights, not goods. Is there another version?
- Comment on Video of ceramic storage system prototype surfaces online — 10,000TB cartridges bombarded with laser rays could become mainstream by 2030, making slow hard drives and tapes obsolete 11 months ago:
I get your point, but the consumer version may not need to be as complex as an electron microscope. Additionally, there will be much more demand for these than electron microscopes. I’m speculating here, but both of these factors together could reduce the price significantly.
- Comment on Video of ceramic storage system prototype surfaces online — 10,000TB cartridges bombarded with laser rays could become mainstream by 2030, making slow hard drives and tapes obsolete 11 months ago:
I’m sure pharmacy has some crazy value density, but it’s hards to put accurate values on their products because of insurance.
The boxes of wafers I was talking about is roughly 1.5 ft cubed. The fabs will have hundreds of these boxes moving around by robots at any one time.