tal

@tal@lemmy.today

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spelthorne restricts hoverboards, catapults and balaclavas⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  What is banned?

  • Possession of catapults, slingshots, or similar items without a legitimate reason

  Was there an actual problem with widespread use of catapults in Spelthorne?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump's Corrupt Plan to Steal Rural America's Broadband Future⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  In fairness, rural America probably didn’t entirely understand the implications of said vote.

  As I’ve pointed out on here before, I feel like a lot of people in mostly-Republican-voting rural American are going to be even more disappointed when they discover agricultural subsidies ending, healthcare subsidies ending that disproportionately benefit poorer, rural areas, illegal immigrant agricultural workers that farms rely on becoming unavailable, counter-tariffs that tend to target agricultural output from rural areas, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK to host Donald Trump for full state visit this year, says Buckingham Palace⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  No, please don’t mess it up. While he’s off doing pomp and ceremony stuff, he doesn’t have his fingers in policy. In fact, a full world tour of all British territory might be warranted.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite Tactical RPGs?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  What did you think of the new aiming system? I’ve heard mixed things, but it sounded good to me (or at least way better than a flat percentage).

  I don’t know what the internal mechanics are like, haven’t read material about it. From a user standpoint, I have just a list of positive and negative factors impacting my hit chance, so less information about my hit chance. I guess I’d vaguely prefer the percentage — I generally am not a huge fan of games that have the player rely on mechanics trying to hide the details of those mechanics — but it’s nice to know what inputs are present. It hasn’t been a huge factor to me one way or the other, honestly; I mean, I feel like I’ve got a solid-enough idea of roughly what the chances are.

  even if it doesn’t hit the same highs as JA2, there hasn’t really been much else that comes close and a more modern coat of polish would be welcome.

  Yeah, I don’t know of other things that have the strategic aspect. For the squad-based tactical turn-based combat, there are some options that I’ve liked playing in the past.

  While Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3 aren’t quite the same thing — it’s closer to Fallout 1 and 2, as Wasteland 1 was a major inspiration for them — the squad-based, turn-based tactical combat system is somewhat similar, and if you’re hunting for games that have that, you might also enjoy that.

  I also played Silent Storm and enjoyed it, though it’s now pretty long in the tooth (well, so is Jagged Alliance 2…). Even more of a combat focus.

  And there’s X-Com. I didn’t like the new ones, which are glitzy, lots of time spent doing dramatic animations and stuff, but maybe I should go back and give them another chance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I've just created c/Ollama!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sorry, you are correct. The syntax and interface mirrors docker, and one can run ollama in Docker, so I’d thought that it was a thin wrapper around Docker, but I just went to check, and you are right — it’s not running in Docker by default. Sorry, folks! Guess now I’ve got one more thing to look into getting inside a container myself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I've just created c/Ollama!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  While I don’t think that llama.cpp is specifically a risk, I think that running generative AI software in a container is probably a good idea. It’s a rapidly-moving field with a lot of people contributing a lot of code that very quickly gets run on a lot of systems by a lot of people. There’s been malware that’s shown up in extensions for (for example) ComfyUI. And the software really doesn’t need to poke around at outside data.

  Also, because the software has to touch the GPU, it needs a certain amount of outside access. Containerizing that takes some extra effort.

  old.reddit.com/…/psa_please_secure_your_comfyui_i…

  ComfyUI users has been hit time and time again with malware from custom nodes or their dependencies. If you’re just using the vanilla nodes, or nodes you’ve personally developed yourself or vet yourself every update, then you’re fine. But you’re probably using custom nodes. They’re the great thing about ComfyUI, but also its great security weakness.

  Half a year ago the LLMVISION node was found to contain an info stealer. Just this month the ultralytics library, used in custom nodes like the Impact nodes, was compromised, and a cryptominer was shipped to thousands of users.

  Granted, the developers have been doing their best to try to help all involved by spreading awareness of the malware and by setting up an automated scanner to inform users if they’ve been affected, but what’s better than knowing how to get rid of the malware is not getting the malware at all.

  Ollama means sticking it in a Docker container, and that is, I think, a positive thing.

  If there were a close analog, like some software package that could take a given LLM model and run in podman or Docker or something, I think that that’d be great. But I think that putting the software in a container is probably a good move relative to running it uncontainerized.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK must 'actively prepare' for potential of war in the 'homeland', review warns⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The UK must “actively prepare” for a potential “wartime scenario” in its homeland, the National Security Strategy has warned.

  The review highlighted Russia and Iran as potential threats, including saying that the latter’s “hostile activity” on British soil is increasing in an effort to “silence critics” as well as “directly threatening the UK”.

  If you read the article that they’re linking to, it does say that this is a “low probability” scenario.

  “We are trying to raise awareness through this war game to say, look, let’s have a look at what might happen,” he said.

  “Unlikely and low probability though it is, so that we can start to put some measures in place and remind ourselves about how we used to do it - use history as our weapon, if you like, in that regard.”

  Russia has aimed to assassinate people on British soil and has engaged in sabotage in Europe, but that’s also a long way away from what I’d call a real wartime situation.

  Vice asked a guy at Jane’s to do an assessment of whether Russia could do an invasion of the UK a decade back. He said that Russia likely could:

  The requirements for carrying out a successful invasion are pretty substantial, which makes the list of realistic threats to Britain quite small. The bigger military powers are an obvious contender to begin with; the USA and Russia have certainly got the manpower and capability to carry it out but China, for example, doesn’t yet have a global reach and couldn’t support enough troops and aircraft that far from home to make it viable without support.

  That being said, that was also pre-Russo-Ukraine War, and that may have altered things (China’s certainly built up her military a lot over that decade). Might be interesting to go back to Jane’s and ask for an updated assessment.

  Iran could engage in terrorism, maybe smuggle some weapons in, but doesn’t have the force projection capability to engage in much by way of conventional war on the UK territory. Iran’s current ballistic missiles don’t have the range to reach the UK from Iranian territory, so unless they can launch them from ships or aircraft or closer territory, they aren’t in the picture…and while you could probably hurt the UK with said missiles if you could get them close enough, hit seats of government, power plants, I don’t believe that it’d be sufficient to take the UK out of the fight, and then you’d be in a fight with an opponent who has more force projection capability than you do who is at a range that you can’t easily hit them at; not a favorable situation. Not to mention NATO.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One gamer got so tired of waiting for Valve, he made his own 'Steam Controller 2' out of Steam Deck parts, and it even splits in half like Switch Joy-Cons⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  They have mechanical components that will wear out over time (though I suppose some propel probably use them lightly enough that it’s less of an issue).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite Tactical RPGs?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Just tried it, and it was some other game I was thinking of.

  While I haven’t finished the game, thoughts:

  • It’s the strongest of the post-2 Jagged Alliance games that I’ve played.

  • Still not on par with JA2, at least relative to release year, I’d say also in absolute terms.

  • My biggest problem — I’m running this under Proton — is some bugginess that I’m a little suspicious is a thread deadlock. When it happens, I never see the targeting options show up when I target an enemy, and trying to go to the map or inventory screen doesn’t update the visible area onscreen, though I can blindly click and hear interactions. The game also doesn’t ever exit if I hit Alt-F4 in that state, just hangs. AFAICT, this can always be resolved by quicksaving (which you can do almost anywhere), stopping the game (I use kill in a terminal on Linux) and reloading the save, but it’s definitely obnoxious. Fortunately, the game starts up pretty quickly. Nobody on ProtonDB talking about it, so maybe it’s just me. I have not noticed bugs other than this one.

  • So far, not much by way of missions where one has to figure out elaborate ways of getting into areas or the like: more of a combat focus. I have wirecutters, crowbars, lockpicks, and explosives, like in JA2, but thus far, it’s mostly just a matter of clicking on a locked container with someone who has lockpicking skill. Probably more realistic — in real life, an unattended door isn’t going to stop anyone for long — but I kinda miss that.

  • The maps feel a lot smaller to me, though the higher resolution might be part of that. A lot of 3d modeling to make them look pretty. There’s a lot more verticality, like watchtowers.

  • The game also feels considerably shorter than JA2, based on the percentage of the strategic map that I’ve taken. That being said, JA2 could get a bit repetitive when one is fighting the umpteenth enemy reinforcement party.

  • Unique perks for mercs that make them a lot more meaningful than in JA2 (though also limit your builds). For example, Fox can get what is basically a free turn if she initiates combat on a surprised enemy. Barry auto-constructs explosives each day.

  • Thematic feel of the mercs from JA2 is retained well.

  • Interesting perk tree.

  • A bunch of map modifiers like fog that have a major impact.

  • Bunch of QoL stuff for scheduling concurrent tasks for different mercs.

  • Pay demands don’t seem to rise with level, though other factors can drive it up (e.g. Fox will demand more pay if you hire Steroid).

  • Feels easier than JA2, though I haven’t finished it.

  • I’m pretty sure the keybindings are different.

  • Tiny thing, but I always liked the start of JA2, where your initial team does a fast-rope helicopter insertion into a hostile sector. Felt like a badass way to set the tone. No real analog in JA3.

  • I started running into guys with RPGs early on in JA3, much earlier then JA2.

  • JA2 has ground vehicles and a helicopter and they require you to obtain fuel. Transport logistics don’t exist in JA3, other than paying to embark on boat trips at a port (and just checked online to confirm that they aren’t just in the late game).

  • More weapon mods in JA3. Looks like some interesting tradeoffs that one has to make here, rather than just “later-game stuff is better”.

  For me, it was a worthwhile purchase — even with the irritating bug I keep hitting — and I would definitely recommend it over the other post-JA2 stuff if you’ve played JA2 and want more. It hasn’t left me giggling at the insane amount of complex interactions that were coded into the game like JA2 did, though, which were kind of a hallmark of the original.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One gamer got so tired of waiting for Valve, he made his own 'Steam Controller 2' out of Steam Deck parts, and it even splits in half like Switch Joy-Cons⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  From the article, I believe that it’s Steam Deck parts.

  Which makes sense, because you can get a Steam Deck, but the Steam Controller 1 has been out of production for some years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: WD-40 is perfect for removing adhesive left behind by stickers⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve never seen naptha (i.e. Zippo lighter fluid) do anything to any painted or finished surface, nor any of the plastics I’ve ever tired it on.

  I’d guess that it’s probably bad news for natural rubber. IIRC, naptha is similar to gasoline, and gasoline will mess natural rubber up.

  That being said, I have a can of naptha myself.

  kagis

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rubber

  The two main solvents for rubber are turpentine and naphtha (petroleum). Because rubber does not dissolve easily, the material is finely divided by shredding prior to its immersion.

  One other thing to keep in mind is that it is (obviously, given that that’s how lighters that use it work) quite flammable in vapor form and the fumes aren’t great to breathe, so this is something you’d want to use in a well-ventillated area.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: WD-40 is perfect for removing adhesive left behind by stickers⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had good luck with Goo-Gone.

  It has an extremely strong citrus smell (which I don’t think is an additive).

  kagis

  No, according to them, it’s one of the solvents.

  googone.com/…/goo-gone-goo-and-adhesive-remover-s…)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Websites Are Tracking You Via Browser Fingerprinting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Seems like that might be useful to have a per-site toggle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Temperatures surpass 29C as UK heads for heatwave⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, retrofitting whole-house HVAC is a pain, but it’s not hard to get a window unit.

  We tend to want a 240V heavy appliance outlet for beefier window air conditioners, but you’ve already got that as standard on British household circuits.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Temperatures surpass 29C as UK heads for heatwave⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  To grab a random city in a toasty state over here in the US, Phoenix’s current high today is 116°F, or 46.6°C.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Involvement of Chinese vessels in cable breakages in Europe, and Russian vessels near Taiwan, suggest 'plausible China-Russia coordination', UK report says⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m skeptical.

  I could believe Russian intelligence maybe paying off some captain to drag an anchor.

  But there’s no need for the Chinese state to be involved for that, any more than various European states were involved when Russian intelligence was paying people to perform acts of arson. Like, China isn’t a hive mind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨HS2 to be delayed again as costs spiral by £37bn after 'litany of failure'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  “HS2 has made Britain a laughing stock in terms of its ability to deliver big infrastructure projects, and it has to end. This will set out the way we will do that,” a source told the PA news agency.

  Ten years back:

  raconteur.net/…/britains-most-successful-megaproj…

  Infrastructure is not “the new rock ‘n’ roll”. However, if it were, then with a seminal project management playlist ranging from Heathrow Terminal 5, via the Olympic Park and Crossrail, on perhaps towards Thames Tideway Tunnel and the HS2 high-speed rail link, the best of British is fast becoming a greatest hits for the 21st century.

  Recent project history has placed Britain in a unique position of global influence, according to Professor Andrew Davies at University College London’s Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment. “Over the past decade or so, the UK has transformed the way megaprojects are delivered, moving away from a world of fixed-price contracts, risk transfer, lowest-cost tendering and adversarial relationships,” he says.

  For Professor Davies, who specialises in the management of projects, the market has witnessed the emergence of a “flexible megaproject delivery model”, initiated by Heathrow’s T5.

  “The UK has created an institutional environment for delivering megaprojects in a radically new way. The United States and many European countries are watching and learning,” he says.

  I’m not entirely convinced that either the “everyone is sitting in awe at the feet of the master” or the “we’re a global laughingstock” statements about HS2 are quite true.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Twix ad banned for encouraging unsafe driving⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The advert shows a man with flowing hair involved in a car chase and crash that results in his and an identical, caramel-coloured car sandwiched on top of each other, like a Twix.

  Five complaints issued against the advert said it encouraged dangerous driving and was irresponsible.

  Now I know where those “This stunt is performed by a trained professional. Please do not try this at home” disclaimers come from.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google is intentionally throttling YouTube videos, slowing down users with ad blockers⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If your phone is Android, NewPipe is an open-source, third-party client that permits setting quality. It’s on F-droid (the big open-source app repository) if you use that, and probably on Google Store as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nexus Mods' new owners promise they won't monetise the site to death as users panic at the whiff of venture capital⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It really depends on how one is modding. Bethesda does have their own mod site and in-game support for modding, and that’s pretty straightforward (and the only option on consoles). That will limit what mods are available.

  I do kind of wish that there were one cross-platform open-source universal “game mod” program that could support multiple online services.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google is intentionally throttling YouTube videos, slowing down users with ad blockers⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If you use Firefox:

  addons.mozilla.org/…/youtube-video-quality/

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite Tactical RPGs?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Cannon Fodder - a UK classic, very arcadey but very fun and lighter than all these other “serious” games

  It has that iconic theme music:

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASTLGt_9vbU

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite Tactical RPGs?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I really liked JA2. The UI is pretty elderly today, though.

  I haven’t been very impressed with some of the subsequent attempts to revive the series, though I still haven’t gotten around to playing Jagged Alliance 3 yet, and that has much better scores than some of the intervening releases, like Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. If you haven’t tried JA3 yet either, you might consider taking a look.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nexus Mods' new owners promise they won't monetise the site to death as users panic at the whiff of venture capital⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, unless someone makes an alternative, people are going to use it.

  They do need to provide a lot of bandwidth, which isn’t free, though I wonder how viable it’d be for someone to create a Nexus-like Website using magnet URLs and BitTorrent as a backend.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI boom means regulator cannot predict future water shortages in England⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know if the coolant in fridges undergoes phase change between gas or liquid or just pressure change and stays a gas, but if it does a phase change, sure.

  kagis

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump

  A gaseous refrigerant is compressed so its pressure and temperature rise. When operating as a heater in cold weather, the warmed gas flows to a heat exchanger in the indoor space where some of its thermal energy is transferred to that indoor space, causing the gas to condense into a liquid. The liquified refrigerant flows to a heat exchanger in the outdoor space where the pressure falls, the liquid evaporates and the temperature of the gas falls.

  Yeah, sounds like it does do a phase change.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI boom means regulator cannot predict future water shortages in England⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  But it’s not like all the water just disappears after it enters the data centres.

  It doesn’t disappear as such, but it won’t be in usable form.

  The reason they want to make use of the water isn’t as a heat transfer fluid to something else. The phase change from liquid water to water vapor consumes energy.

  Evaporative coolers work on this principle.

  So now you’ve got a bunch of water vapor blowing away in the wind, which you’re not going to be drinking.

  Same thing some thermal power plants do — you probably have seen images of those nuclear power plants with cooling towers, and other types of thermal power plants will do the same, coal, oil, gas.

  That being said, they don’t really need freshwater, as long as they can set up some sort of evaporation system that uses seawater for cooling, doesn’t clog up from salt or other stuff building up. The UK being an archipelago, seawater is not in terribly short supply.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨29% of adults couldn't go hour without internet - survey⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  29% of adults must not be very big on sleeping.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨First/notable 3D games where you could dive below water (and walk on land)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Obligatory Marathon 2 theme music

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anker recalls over a million power banks due to fire and burn hazards⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Could be following British convention.

  thepunctuationguide.com/british-versus-american-s…

  American style uses double quotes (“) for initial quotations, then single quotes (‘) for quotations within the initial quotation.

  British style uses single quotes (‘) for initial quotations, then double quotes (“) for quotations within the initial quotation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For All That Is Good About Humankind, Ban Smartphones⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Many of us want to disconnect, but we can’t do so alone — not without losing touch with the world around us. Disconnection, today, carries real social and economic costs. Until such time as smartphones and social media can be democratically governed or nationalized — liberated from the imperative to profit off our attention indefinitely — a ban may be the most realistic path to reclaiming our lives.

  If the author can’t stop using whatever website he’s upset about without requiring everyone else have their smartphones banned, that sounds like a him problem.