jaycifer

@jaycifer@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google is purging ad-blocking extension uBlock Origin from the Chrome Web Store⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not just the customers, but the “business partners” too! If you want your search results at the top of the list, pay up! Sometimes you even get to pay for your ad to be shown in a context that’s not relevant at all, despite all the data collected to personalize ads!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I don't want to call Twitter X out of spite, but calling the travesty that is X Twitter is an insult to the people that made Twitter what it was.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a myth so widely pushed and accepted over the decades that just calling it a myth won’t be accepted as an argument against it at this point.

  What I think is interesting is that this sense of fiduciary duty can be used by a company to do whatever they want. Mass layoffs are part of a fiduciary duty to cut costs. Mass hirings are part of a fiduciary duty to expand operations for growth. At this point it’s less a myth and more an excuse for doing whatever.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Melts our frozen-solid hearts': Frostpunk 2 devs celebrate 350,000 copies sold—covering the production and marketing costs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe some mental mixup with Snowpiercer, which does take place on a train surrounded by snow?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Melts our frozen-solid hearts': Frostpunk 2 devs celebrate 350,000 copies sold—covering the production and marketing costs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, instead of building individual houses and mines for a few hundred people, you build districts for thousands of people. Instead of heat levels per district, there are five “bad things” that have levels, food, sickness, cold, squalor, and crime. If you don’t produce enough of something like heat from coal/oil the cold level will start to rise to different levels depending on the percentage of the need met (if you make 1/4 the heat demanded, it gets really high). Each level affects other problems, so high levels of cold leads to higher sickness, high levels of sickness reduce the number of available workers, which makes it harder to keep housing districts running, which you need to keep enough shelter or else cold levels rise more.

  There are also multiple ways to solve the issues this causes. If you can’t find or exploit a new source of heat yet, you could build hospitals in housing districts to counteract the increase in sickness and keep that level low, preventing sickness, or you could pass a law like family apprenticeship that increases the percentage of your population that can be used as workers (kids helping their parents) so you can afford more people being sick. You could also shut down some material or food production to save heat demand or workers, but then you need to have big enough stockpiles to survive the deficit, or you might be dealing with hunger from food shortages (which increases sickness by the way) or crime from material goods shortages.

  And the worse things get, the blacker the edges of the screen get as tensions rise, trust falls, and your own hope outside the game wavers, which get’s really intense. But that only makes it all the sweeter when that one district, building, or law you needed finishes and you see that beautiful word while hovering over the problem killing you; “diminishing.”

  I think I went on a bit of a tangent there, but I have really been enjoying my time with the game so far. The one issue I have is the game chugs right now. On an RTX 2080S I have the resolution down to 1080p and framerates still hover around 40. Maybe it’s my CPU

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Melts our frozen-solid hearts': Frostpunk 2 devs celebrate 350,000 copies sold—covering the production and marketing costs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a “survival city builder,” so it’s easier to lose than most. It has some serious style and in the first game has some tough decisions between doing what’s humane or doing what benefits you mechanically. As an example, for dealing with the dead you can create a cemetery where the dead can be remembered, reducing the malus to the hope of your people when someone dies. Alternatively you can create a snow pit out in the cold to preserve the bodies for organ harvesting, healing the sick faster and preventing some deaths but reducing hope overall.

  I’m biased because I’ve played the first game for over 200 hours, but if it’s on sale definitely give it a try if you think the art looks cool or like city builders. It’s best played in winter when it’s already cold outside. I first played it during the polar vortex a few years back and it was awesome feeling the cold creep into my room as I tried to keep the cold from taking my people.

  I’ve also played two playthroughs of Frostpunk 2 the last week and it feels like a larger scale escalation of the first game. If you play the first game enough you learn build orders and what to research first which can become rigid, the sequel feels a lot more fluid in deciding what to build toward next. A law or building has a smaller impact overall but there are enough of them that it feels like building a house of cards that you hope can weather the literal storms that hit you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨if the total fertility rate drops and stays below global replacement rate, will humans disappear?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Let me spoil part of the Foundation series for you. In one book, the cast visits a planet where they encounter one person with psychic powers surrounded by robot servants. He reveals that the planet is evenly divided by I think 128 people like himself who want for nothing and live comfortably. They only reproduce asexually, and only in preparation for their own death or when another dies.

  What this illustrates that’s relevant for you is that yes, not hitting the replacement rate could lead to significant population decline, but only until people are comfortable enough and want to have kids or feel it is the best way to maintain their way of life (think farmers having kids to help on the farm).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Crowdstrike whoops would've been so much worse in 2020⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There would definitely still be people that want the money/authority that comes from a CEO position, they would just be held to a standard. A company is not an organization or the processes that it follows, it is the people that create and carry out those processes. If you separate the responsibility for the company from the people that make up that company you allow mistakes without real consequences for those that had a part in causing it.

  Based on what I have heard the last day, the CEO of Crowdstrike created a culture of cutting corners in the organization he is responsible for that led to a reduced focus on QA testing which in turn let this bug slip into the production machines of a significant number of other companies and organizations counting on that not happening. If the responsibility for that mistake lies with something as nebulous as “the company” then the organization may close, but the people that were responsible would be separated from the consequences of their negligence and free to move on to any other company having learned they can do the same things without being harmed personally. That sounds less than ideal.

  I think the CEO should have some consequences. Maybe not jail time (although maybe if there were people in medical situations that died because the machines being used to keep them alive were bricked) but a real fine that impacts him personally may prompt a greater drive to organize the company to avoid the issue in the future, or prevent it at future companies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Summer Sale - Top Deals⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a 3D first person game instead of a 2D isometric, and most of the differences stem from that. More manual building (they added blueprints but I don’t know how good they are), infinite resource sources which means setting up a mining outpost is permanent. Much less focus on fighting wildlife, though that is present.

  Overall, it’s a much more relaxing, slower paced game than Factorio. Both are good at different aspects of the same thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Singlehood is on the rise around the world. New evidence suggests many single people are choosing to remain single and living happy lives.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m totally open to being in a relationship with someone, but they would have to be one helluva person to make me want to give up being single!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  One of my philosophy professors described philosophy as a bunch of people trying to convince themselves they’re not nuts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Patient gamers, what are your favourite city builders?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree with most of the suggestions here, and I’ll also throw out Tropico 6. It’s one of the few coty builders outside of Frostpunk where the soundtrack actively pulls me into the experience. It’s also fun building up an island balancing between investing in economic growth, citizen happiness to get reelected, or military/oppression methods so you don’t have to get elected.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Humbling? That’s going on in my head. I’m that complicated! Or at least the “hardware” I run on is. I think having a brain the beautifully complex is more empowering than anything! I wonder what new discoveries will stem from this.