FinishingDutch
@FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
- Comment on What's Mastodon precious? 3 days ago:
Agreed. If someone can’t be bothered to write two sentences, they really have no business being on a discussion platform. Because clearly they won’t be contributing much if anything to the conversation.
- Comment on [Tom Warren] The PS5 Pro still hasn’t sold out in the US or UK. Looks like the $700 price point will mean this console will be readily available this holiday 1 month ago:
These days I just assume nothing’s playable offline. It_ not like my PS5 is ever offline anyway, so it’s not really a point of concern for me.
The actual reason I like physical games is because they’re generally cheaper when they just release and get discounted far sooner than digital games.
For example: Armored Core VI costs 69,99 euros on PS Store.
An online game store here sells it for 19,99 brand new. That means I can buy a copy for myself, I can gift you copy, buy a third one to light on fire as a sacrifice to the gaming gods… and still have money left over for two frozen pizza’s.
That’s why I like physical.
- Comment on [Tom Warren] The PS5 Pro still hasn’t sold out in the US or UK. Looks like the $700 price point will mean this console will be readily available this holiday 1 month ago:
It’s not the price point. Most of the people who’d be in the market for one wouldn’t buy it because it doesn’t take discs. When I bought my PS5, I specifically bought the disc version. So I’m not going to ‘upgrade’ to a machine that doesn’t have one and only really offers ‘improved performance’ as its main selling point. It just doesn’t make sense.
If you’re new to the platform and are used to buying only digital, it might be more palatable. But as someone who’s been with Sony since the very first PlayStation: I’m gonna pass.
- Comment on Marques Brownlee says ‘I hear you’ after fans criticize his new wallpaper app 1 month ago:
I actually do have WPE… it was in a bundle one time, so I got it for free. Tried it once, but I’m conceptually not a fan of running extra software on my gaming PC to run fancy wallpapers.
Supposedly it’s not TOO power hungry and can turn itself off when gaming. How’s your experience been with that?
- Comment on Marques Brownlee says ‘I hear you’ after fans criticize his new wallpaper app 1 month ago:
I still have PTSD from the era of the ‘polyphonic ringtone’ hype. Those were the ‘fancier’ ringtones that weren’t just your usual beep or bell.
Usually you’d buy them by sending a text message to some expensive number and it would be sent to your phone. If you were dumb, yoi could get basically scammed into a ‘subscription’ so you’d get sent these expensive ringtones frequently. Many a teen got yelled at for that mistake in the late 90’s.
If you were a tech savvy lad, you could hook your phone up to your Windows PC and upload shitty ringtones yourself as well as wallpapers and such.
These days, who gives a shit? My iPhone ringtone is still the default ring. I honestly don’t care what it is, as it’s usually just annoying anyway.
- Comment on Marques Brownlee says ‘I hear you’ after fans criticize his new wallpaper app 1 month ago:
Paying for ANY wallpaper is just silly, much less a subscription model.
The only time you should pay for one if it’s an artist you want to actively support and/or thank for that specific work.
- Comment on I have no idea how to react to this. 1 month ago:
Back in the Trump days I saw a documentary on YouTube about the rise in LGBTQ+ gun culture.
Basically, most of the interviewed folks reasoned: I’d rather not need or use a gun, but the people who want me dead all have them, so I want to protect myself. Obviously, there’s also just people in that community who enjoy guns regardless. Both are perfectly valid reasons.
- Comment on Oxygen 1 month ago:
After it gets dark, they refill it with lighter fluid. Every morning they light it fresh with a big ‘ole Zippo.
- Comment on The Extreme Cost of Training AI Models. 1 month ago:
Geez, you’d think Gemini would be better than it is if they spent that much on it…
- Comment on Lebanon’s health minister says 8 killed, 2,750 wounded by exploding pagers 2 months ago:
This is definitely one of the most interesting attacks that’s ever happened. It certainly doesn’t look like an accident. If it was indeed Mossad: take a bow, you’ve earned it. That was a pretty slick move. That was probably a difficult op to pull off. Gotta respect the craft, even if you disagree on the method.
- Comment on Inaccuracies 2 months ago:
Some works will outright lie about it. For example, the TV show and movie Fargo specifically tell you it’s a true story, and even that names have been changed but ‘the rest has been told exactly as it happened’.
To me that’s weird. It doesn’t really add to the end result in my opinion, but would breed distrust when people discovered it was wholly fictional.
Still, even with things that are meant to be accurate portrayal of an event, it’s always good to check the facts. Hollywood just can’t help but fiddle with reality to tell a more interesting story, even when it doesn’t need it.
- Comment on FTC urged to make smart devices say how long they will be supported 2 months ago:
Well the new account was for the new streaming service which replaced the old one. And since that’s a different company… different TOS, obviously.
It was mildly annoying, but at least it means I can still use the radio I bought.
- Comment on FTC urged to make smart devices say how long they will be supported 2 months ago:
It’s really in the tech sector’s best interest to do that anyway. Because as a consumer, I’m now quite hesitant to buy a thing without knowing if it’s going to be properly supported.
We’ve all been burned before. My Sonos webradio lost functionality for a while after some backend streaming service was defunct. They did manage to fix that but it meant installing a new app, new account that sort of thing. It’s annoying- but at least the manufacturer did the right thing to keep it working. I can only imagine how frustrating it would’ve been if the entire thing stopped working with no support…
Basically, that experience is why I’m no longer willing to buy things that wholly depend on outside servers and the like to keep working. There’s too much risk of ending up with an expensive paperweight.
- Comment on Butcherbirb 2 months ago:
“Oi, cunt!”
- Comment on Bill! BILL! Bill! BILL! 2 months ago:
While I’m not fundamentally opposed to kids learning basic math, even at that time it was used (think 1990-1996) it was a bullshit argument to ban them. After all, they were already cheap enough that a kid could have one on their wrist!
Heck, you can now buy them for less than a dollar on Aliexpress. But why would you, since literally every smartphone has one built in. It was silly to ban them.
- Comment on Bill! BILL! Bill! BILL! 2 months ago:
Those were actually banned at the schools I went to as a kid. Along with calculator watches, couldn’t have one of those either. ‘Because you need to know math and won’t always have a calculator on you when you grow up’ 😂
- Comment on What are some game series you would like to see revived? And if possible, which entry should the new game follow from? 2 months ago:
I am aware of that excellent video, yes. And indeed I’ve played literally every game he shows there. I really like some of them, but none have that charm that actual Outrun has.
- Comment on What are some game series you would like to see revived? And if possible, which entry should the new game follow from? 2 months ago:
Outrun. The last one we had, Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast, was fucking awesome. I literally bought that for every system they released it on. It’s one of my most played games.
I’d absolutely love a new Outrun in that same vein. There’s been a few half decent clones over the years, but none match both the gameplay, proper branching paths and overall vibes.
SEGA has long since stopped selling it because they no longer have the Ferrari license for the cars. But as a car guy, I’ve easily got dozens of suggestions what to replace them with. Ferrari’s are nice… but I’d also love an Outrun with Lamborghini, Porsche or a whole pack of Japanese cars like NSX, AE86, RX7, Miata…
- Comment on No one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke. 2 months ago:
Exactly. I can’t control where other people find news, and if they choose poor sources, well, that’s on them. All I can do is be the best, most reliable source for them if they choose to read our news.
Our newspaper community is smaller than you might think. People frequently move around from company to company. I’ve worked in radio, TV news as well as newspapers for the past 20 years. I have a lot of former colleagues who work at other companies within our regional media. And us journalists are a gossipy bunch, as you can imagine. If someone actively tries to undermine my trust, they wouldn’t just be blackballed from the dozen or so regional newspapers that we publish, but also the larger national conglomerate that runs about 40. We take pride in good sources. Undermine that, and you’re not working for us.
- Comment on No one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke. 2 months ago:
The point I’m making isn’t really about the ability to fake specific angles or the tech side of it. It’s about levels of trust and independent sources.
It’s certainly possible for people to put up some fake accounts and tweet some fake images of seperate angles. But I’m not trusting random accounts on Twitter for that. We look at sources like AP, Reuters, AFP… if they all have the same news images from different angles, it’s trustworthy enough for me. On a smaller scale, we look at people and sources we trust and have vetted personally. People with longstanding relationships. It really does boil down to a ‘circle of trust’: if I don’t know a particular photographer, I’ll talk to someone who can vouch for them based on past experiences.
And if all else fails and it’s just too juicy not to run? We’d slap a big 'ole ‘this image has not been verified’ on it. Which we’ve never had to do so far, because we’re careful with our sources.
- Comment on No one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke. 2 months ago:
I can’t control where people find their information, that’s a fact. If people choose to find their news on unreliable, fake, agenda-driven, bot-infested social media, there’s very little I can do to stop that.
All I can do is be the best possible source who people who choose to find their news with us.
The ‘death of newspapers’ has been a theme throughout the decades. Radio is faster, it’s going to kill papers. TV is faster, it’s going to kill papers. The internet is faster, it’s going to kill newspapers… and yet, there’s still newspapers. And we’re evolving too. We’re not just a printed product, we also ARE an internet news source. The printed medium isn’t as fast, sure, but that’s also something that our actual readers like. The ability to sit down and read a properly sourced, well written story at a time and place of their choosing. A lot of them still prefer to read their paper saturday morning over a nice breakfast. Like any business, we adapt to the changing needs of consumers. Printed papers might not be as big as they once were, but they won’t be dying out any time soon.
- Comment on No one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke. 2 months ago:
Well again, multiple, independent sources that each have a level of trust go pretty far.
From my personal experience with AI though… I found it difficult to get it to generate consistent images. So if I’d ask it for different angles of the same thing, details on it would change. Can it be done? Sure. With good systems and a bit of photoshopping you could likely fake multiple angles of it.
But for the images we run? It wouldn’t really be worth the effort I imagine. We’re not talking iconic shots like the ones mentioned in the article.
- Comment on No one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke. 2 months ago:
I work at a newspaper as both a writer and photographer. I deal with images all day.
Photo manipulation has been around as long as the medium itself. And throughout the decades, people have worried about the veracity of images. When PhotoShop became popular, some decried it as the end of truthful photography. And now here’s AI, making things up entirely.
So, as a professional, am I worried? Not really. Because at the end of the day, it all comes down to ‘trust and verify when possible’. We generally receive our images from people who are wholly reliable. They have no reason to deceive us and know that burning that bridge will hurt their organisation and career. It’s not worth it.
If someone was to send us an image that’s ‘too interesting’, we’d obviously try to verify it through other sources. If a bunch of people photographed that same incident from different angles, clearly it’s real. If we can’t verify it, well, we either trust the source and run it, or we don’t.
- Comment on Perspective 2 months ago:
When I worked in radio production, basically everything was formatted like YYYY-MM-DD. Which means stuff is really to find and properly in chronological order.
I still usw the MM-DD format for my own file formatting, even though DD-MM is the Dutch standard.
YYYY-MM-DD is god’s perfect date notation as far as I’m concerned.
- Comment on SanDisk introduces the first 8TB SD and 4TB microSD cards - Liliputing 3 months ago:
It gets even wilder when you tell younger people that PC’s didn’t even come with storage drives in the early days. One of the earliest I used had to have software loaded through cassette tape. That was certainly a bit annoying, as it took quite a while and was error prone.
These days I somewhat collect old hardware. I love things like my Macintosh Plus where you need to juggle disks in order to load software in the memory so you can use it. Nowadays a single text e-mail outweighs the entire OS for a system like that.
- Comment on SanDisk introduces the first 8TB SD and 4TB microSD cards - Liliputing 3 months ago:
Our first family PC had a 1,3 gigabyte drive. That had Win ‘95 on it, productivity apps, bunch of games, etc. This was a time when you could actually still run games off CD-ROM’s without needing installs.
These days, my phone has over 200 times the memory. It’s still amazing to me.
Same thing with SD cards. When I started with digital photography, a 32 MB card was big. My current camera takes images that are too large to fit on it! Early cameras even had floppy disk storage, if you can imagine…
- Comment on Apple Foldable iPhone Launch Faces Delay Until 2026, Faces Design Roadblocks 3 months ago:
I’ll look into those. That Sharp looks ancient though? I’m seeing videos on it from 6 years ago, assuming it’s the correct one.
- Comment on Apple Foldable iPhone Launch Faces Delay Until 2026, Faces Design Roadblocks 3 months ago:
Back in the ‘sweet spot’ of cellphone use, the late ‘90’s, you could get several days of use out of a battery. Some only needed a weekly charge. I also don’t need or want a flip phone to do everything that a smartphone does.
I’m a big proponent of making phones bigger with bigger batteries. I’ve got huge hands and most phones feel dainty and fragile. Give me a house brick with a week long battery and I’d be perfectly happy. Making phones slimmer is just silly.
- Comment on Apple Foldable iPhone Launch Faces Delay Until 2026, Faces Design Roadblocks 3 months ago:
God yes.
I was looking at phones yesterday and thinking: do they make an actual, premium flip phone with keyboard a la the old Motorola Razr? It appears nobody does. All I could find were cheap shitty Chinese plasticky trash or phones made for the elderly.
I want something with a nice metal/titanium case, premium keyboard, decent oled screen, 10+ megapixel camera on it… and something that I can snap shut like it owes me money. Don’t make it too small; I want a week’s battery life at least and swappable battery.
And I would - and I’m not joking here - pay 600-800 euros for that, depending on how premium the experience is.
I think there’s absolutely a market for that.
- Comment on I miss console ads being this weird 4 months ago:
I miss forums as well, and I’m actually moving back to them. Back in the early 2000’s, I visited like a dozen forums each day. I was a member of like three watch forums, a camera forum, a Star Trek forum, some gaming forums and others. Just ‘doing the rounds’ kept you busy for a while. People also were insanely knowledgeable on those niche forums, and they all had their own specific culture and flavor to them.
Places like a niche subreddit are… OK at best. They are convenient and easy to visit, but don’t tend to have the level of knowledge and discourse that I generally enjoy. You also run the risk of your sub getting ruined by people who are into the wrong aspects of your particular hobby. For example, on a watch FORUM, the discussions are about design, mechanical features, history, photography, how to repair, etc. etc. On the subreddit, a lot of posts tended to be drive-by posters who ‘found a watch and wanted to know what it’s worth’. or ‘is this fake’. The subreddit didn’t curb that, so eventually I and many others just stopped going there. It was basically too easy for people to post there just because, well, they could. Whereas on an actual watch forum, you can do a bit stricter moderation and the registration requirement weeds out low effort posting.
Some consider that ‘gatekeeping’, but I see it as a valid way of protecting one’s chosen community.