supersquirrel
@supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
- Comment on Bottom of the Ocean 2 days ago:
there is a youtube channel that shows all that shit tho
m.youtube.com/user/SchmidtOceanVideos
It is hours and hours of the most powerful non-fiction hallucinogens you can possibly take but also it is very calming and relaxed often with a friendly science narrator.
In a way I guess it is like going on a field trip with Mrs. Frizzle but from the slightly horrifying perspective of actually being on the field trip.
The deep sea dropped so much acid it just got stuck down there, and at this point nobody fucks around down in that neighborhood when it comes to being as absolutely fucking weird as possible.
Scifi movies don’t have shit on the actual real deep sea.
- Comment on What's Mastodon precious? 2 days ago:
Try going to the home page of instances of accounts you like (or of instances that seem interesting) and browsing there federated feed, you can discover tons that way.
As a general mastodon instance mas.to looks good and is a nice size with a good stable history.
- Comment on What's Mastodon precious? 2 days ago:
bluesky does not have functional federation by any reasonable measure.
- Comment on What's Mastodon precious? 2 days ago:
Curation was made by users.
Right, users not corporations make social networks, so the community not for profit corporations should own those social networks.
Can we not all see this as the same old pattern of predatory rent seeking behavior applied to online communities just seasoned with even more jargon and condescending handwaved half explanations?
- Comment on I want to feel like a bad-ass wizard 1 week ago:
Thanks for the recommendation Fictorum looks awesome!
- Comment on I want to feel like a bad-ass wizard 1 week ago:
Yeah lots of recommendations here but let me give you some that I think answer your request more specifically.
Wizard Of Legend is a top down roguelite where you play a wizard that can equip different spells and upgrades. The combat and strategy is very focused on spells and how good you are at slinging them between dodging enemy attacks.
store.steampowered.com/app/445980/?snr=1_5_9__412
Margoq’s Lair is a top down roguelike where spells are cast by composing them from elements, for example fire + shield casts the spell fireshield. It makes for a much more satisfying experience than pressing a button to cast a spell.
- Comment on Netflix is removing nearly all of its interactive titles 2 weeks ago:
Wish they put all this money into funding indie game devs and connected small game studios with the professional film and live action apparatus netfix has access to.
I haven’t played it but Hellbade Senua’s Sacrifice seems like it categorically demolishes whatever netflix execs thought they were doing while they burned money.
- Comment on Epic roguelike Caves of Qud now has a proper tutorial 3 weeks ago:
What an epic game, I haven’t really gotten into it beyond the initial zone but even the world building of the default starter zone is fantastic. I feel like this game transports me to a different place more than any AAA game with gorgeous graphics.
- Comment on In the era of remakes and remasters, what niche game would you like to see receive the treatment? 3 weeks ago:
Subspace Continuum
- Comment on X's idiocy is doing wonders for Bluesky. 4 weeks ago:
the big appeal of BlueSky is the initialization of the interface. It defaults you to “Following” rather than “Discover” and isn’t jamming a ton of ads in your feed. There’s basically no algorithm. Its a very basic service, rather than an engineered mess. More akin to Facebook or Twitter from back in the '00s, before monetization ruined them.
The big appeal of bluesky is that it is in the early stages of monetization that hinges on effectively enclosing a commons so that everybody chooses the product and everything else effectively dies off. The next stage will come, which is when the enshittification happens.
Do you honestly believe there won’t be enshittification because the priorities of the current development in the near future is focused on the benefits of users?
…or to put it another way, do you set a mouse trap with food a mouse finds miserable to eat? Do you think that first bite of cheese accurately depicts the reality about to unfold?
- Comment on Meta has suspended several Threads and Instagram accounts that track the private jets of celebrities such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian, and Donald Trump 4 weeks ago:
Seriously threads and bluesky are false promises, the rest of the fediverse might grow and innovate slowly but it is genuine growth on genuinely community owned platforms.
Bluesky and threads are visions of the past wearing the future’s clothes. They are investor backed and fundamentally and irrevocably for profit ventures.
Do not be seduced into wasting your time in stuck in the past, this is a perfect reminder we already know where it will end no matter what their precariously employed devs say.
- Comment on Netflix's "Team Blue" of Halo, Overwatch and God Of War vets close without a single game to their name 4 weeks ago:
Pathetic showing for a massive waste of talent and money.
- Comment on Japan shifting back to nuclear to ditch coal, power AI 4 weeks ago:
It really makes me realize how truly fucked the next 30 years are going to be (and beyond of course) that all of a sudden no one cares about climate goals and reducing wasteful energy use “because AI”.
Do y’all not realize ocean food networks are likely about to collapse in the next 10 years and that global warming has been alarmingly increasingly accelerating in the last 5 years?
Sure nuclear power can be great, but that power needs to be used for actually useful power efficient tasks. AI is the least energy efficient solution for most problems it attempts to solve, by several orders of magnitude.
Moreover I think the philosophy of nuclear power advocates is usually something along the lines of “we don’t need to be energy efficient if we have unlimited power!” which is an absurdly naive way to look at the climate crisis that arose out of that same kind of thinking.
In the first place this flavor of nuclear power advocacy ignores that the current system is violently opposed to that kind of shared abundance and wealth at an existential level and that the solutions needed to solve that can never come from a more advanced and powerful nuclear design.
Advocacy for renewable energy on the other hand generally understands this and doesn’t pretend the solution is a seductive fantasy about limitless clean power fueling limitless growth where people in wealthy industrialized nations can all keep living the same lifestyle indefinitely.
- Comment on X's controversial changes to blocking and AI training saw half a million users leave for rival Bluesky in just a single day 4 weeks ago:
Bluesky is vc backed by investors, it is a false promise that I am sure a lot of people working on the project believe, but it is a fale promise all the same.
Bluesky is in the part of its lifecycle where investors tolerate no return on their investment in favor of drawing more people in. That is the relevant difference between Bluesky and other social media.
There are cool parts to Bluesky but it is absolutely a false promise of a future the fediverse already provides. It is also full of “liberal” sheep who tell themselves they think differently but are so locked into the mindset of the way things are that they NEED their social network to be owned and operated for a profit by people orders of magnitude more wealthy than them.
Bluesky will end up essentially the same as all investor backed for-profit social networks, a toxic, centralized shithole (or in this case pseudo-centralized because of the moderation system).
- Comment on Arma 4 will release in 2027 5 weeks ago:
This is good news and between Operation Harsh Doorstop/other unreal engine games in the pipeline with modding support and arma reforger/arma 4 we are finally leaving the era of stagnant big map shooter design where modding options were basically the source engine or sticking to the ancient and abandoned bf2 engine.
Will performance be prioritized in development though? Given bohemias track record I doubt it, and it really heavily limits the potential of their games compared to a game like Easy Red 2 or Operation Harsh Doorstop that can easily simulate large battles on even a mediocre gaming computer with humans and tons of ai.
- Comment on Minetest breaks the chains of being a Minecraft clone with a new name — Luanti 5 weeks ago:
The minecraft modding scene is also a serious longterm threat to microsoft making money off minecraft, so I hope the Luani modding scene continues to grow!
(I don’t think microsoft will necessarily kill java minecraft but microsoft clearly sees minecraft java as a dead end, you are fooling yourself if you think otherwise)
- Comment on Minetest breaks the chains of being a Minecraft clone with a new name — Luanti 5 weeks ago:
Hell yeah I love it!
- Comment on GTA IV footage generated with AI shows the power of AI for future PC game remasters 1 month ago:
how about we try remastering more games with with well paid human game devs who are given job security and are allowed to actually have a healthy worklife balance?
- Comment on Google Is Stuffing Annoying Ads Into Its Terrible AI Search Feature 1 month ago:
AI as far as big tech is concerned is simply a way to “fix” search engines so that they dont do the awful crime of segregating ads from search results.
it is literally the whole damn point of shoving AI down everybodies throat…
- Comment on Epic Games reduce their cut for Unreal Engine games for same-day Epic Store launches 1 month ago:
Side note definitely the coolest game on the unreal engine is the free and moddable tactical shooter (with vehicles) Operation Harsh Doorstop.
…steampowered.com/…/Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/
There really hasnt been a good modding plaform for games like this since Battlefield 2.
- Comment on Ubisoft investors push for company sale as shares hit decade-low 1 month ago:
There are plenty of Ubisoft games I would buy if they werent by Ubisoft.
Even if I want the game though, it just isnt worth the bullshit not to mention, will my game even work after Ubisoft inveitably cancels support for it.
Ubisoft in every aspect from blatant slaps to the face of customers in their behavior to boring overly simplified map janitor mechanics treats its customers like they are gullible sheep who will sit there and tolerate whatever bullshit Ubisoft shoves down their throat so long as the graphics are pretty.
I swear I can feel the condercension oooozing out from their corporate boardroom from thousands of miles away.
Every single Ubisoft game would do better with sales if it didnt have Ubisofts name on it, I am quite confident in that.
- Comment on Microsoft retires WordPad after 28 years — app no longer available as of Windows 11 24H2 1 month ago:
Is there anything left to microsoft that makes sense at this point? Maybe the physical doors to the microsoft offices still function… after you watch an ad?
- Comment on Microsoft retires WordPad after 28 years — app no longer available as of Windows 11 24H2 1 month ago:
Thanks for making me throw up in my mouth
- Comment on We lost Keanu 1 month ago:
Great description, the thing most people get wrong about defending science and history is that they dont convey how fucking weird it really is.
- Comment on Bethesda Game Studios workers have unionized 3 months ago:
Damn I needed some good news bad, that is fantastic!g
- Comment on 4 months ago:
bites lip, damn Switzerland that is hot as fuck
- Comment on Babe wake up, new VLC update just dropped 4 months ago:
Please use foodgrade coconut oil when inserting this update!
- Comment on Microsoft has gone too far: including a Game Pass ad in the Settings app ushers in a whole new age of ridiculous over-advertising 4 months ago:
I don’t think you’re talking about the Outlook I am talking about because I’m talking about the Outlook Mail and Calendar apps, not the Office ones. And that’s fine and dandy about proprietary software and all but frankly I haven’t really seen any non-proprietary mail apps that look aesthetically pleasing. But that’s besides the point, it’s a matter of personal preference when it comes to visuals after all.
… I am not just talking about little details and preferences here? Windows products are increasingly broken and dysfunctional at every level. Features don’t work, features are randomly changed and broken, nothing is consistent, core features of the computer are made opaque, any given Linux package manager is about 1000000 times more trustable than the ad ridden, sketchy, bloatware filled Windows store where you have to hunt for actually useful and trustable tools.
I’d also like to add, nowhere did I ever mention using laptops. All my experiences are with desktops that I had a hand in building from scratch. So I’m not sure what you’re even getting at with those assumptions.
…because for 99% of people who are going to be using a computer for light email, research and text editing work they are going to be using a laptop?
It’s somewhat concerning that you have such a strong obsession over the topic that you would go and whether intentionally or unintentionally offend people and I hope that you are a much more pleasant person to converse with outside of this topic or even this site.
I think it is completely reasonable to be upset when someone is condescendingly foreclosing the possibility that something can happen when the evidence they are using for it is outdated and they refuse to update it in their heads. The only response at that point when someone refuses to re-evaluate their position and continues to “speak for the group” when they really don’t represent the group anymore is to make it even clearer that they don’t speak for a group, and I am sorry if my method offended here, I believe your heart is in the right place but please stop trying to tell us about how stupid and unwilling people are to learn new things. Please please please just keep your mouth closed, it doesn’t help anyone, period. Even if you were right, there would be nothing to change in our actions as it would just be hopeless to even try?
This isn’t 2015, a good Linux distribution is as polished, easy to use, and easy to explain to a newbie computer user as Windows is. If you aren’t ready to accept that shrugs I mean fine but don’t push your outmoded narrative into conversations that might actually convince someone who doesn’t know about Linux that it isn’t worth checking out as a serious alternative. You are actively doing damage to the future of this software movement by dismissing it offhand like this.
- Comment on Microsoft has gone too far: including a Game Pass ad in the Settings app ushers in a whole new age of ridiculous over-advertising 4 months ago:
Outlook is atrocious what on earth are you talking about?
I am sorry you really don’t have an accurate handle on the state of things anymore, I think you are stuck in your ways and you don’t realize that emotion is leading to you assuming everyone else is as stuck in their ways as you.
Windows is atrocious at this point, search doesn’t work and purposefully confuses new computer users about where is being searched and what is being searched. Ads pop up everywhere in the UI and will continue to spread like a terminal cancer in the UI.
Search on windows also just sucks and takes ages with the default settings (an inexperienced computer user will be using).
Windows is buggy, windows is constantly playing head games with its user by trying to force them to use the edge browser.
Hell Windows illegally changed the entire operating system countless people had without getting consent because it would look good for their numbers.
Seriously you are WAYYY out of your league if you are going to claim a nice Linux distribution on good hardware with good driver support (such as some dells or thinkpads) is worse than trying to use a windows laptop in 2024….
…please get your head out of the sand :)
- Comment on Microsoft has gone too far: including a Game Pass ad in the Settings app ushers in a whole new age of ridiculous over-advertising 4 months ago:
Bringing it back to the whole thing about Linux, can you imagine how frustrating it would be to have to help debug a user’s Linux installation when they already need help with installing a browser add on? I work with tech and Linux on a daily basis and I already find it frustrating doing it for myself (fuck Nvidia drivers). No way am I gonna recommend it to someone else.
Are you honestly going to still claim at this late date of 2024 that a decent popular linux distro is actually going to be MORE of a headache than Windows?
…?
Have you tried Windows recently?
