Sunsofold

@Sunsofold@lemmings.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fediverse Social Media Guide⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  So many people on lemmy seem to not be the types to hate based on nationality, except for this. The only nationalities I have seen attacked on here are Trumpicans and the French. Trumpicans at least are an ideology, but what is happening with the French that makes them the exception?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I probably interact with people who are at the pinnacle of their chosen skill but I'd never know because that skill isn't something that generates fame.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Misread woodworker as woodpecker. Amusingly surreal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump says a 25% tariff "must be paid by Apple" on iPhones not made in the US, says he told Tim Cook long ago that iPhones sold in the US must be made in the US⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Trump has a lot that seems might be wrong with him, but schizophrenia never really seemed to be on the list. Narcissism, dementia, psycho-/socio-pathy, compulsive lying, and possibly more, but I’ve never gotten the feeling he displayed the hyperpatternicity I associate with schizophrenia.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Seeing as the US mint is planning to discontinue pennies and the general outlook on the future of the world, that could be not that far off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨70% of games that require internet get destroyed⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s the difference shareholders make.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Less racist in the modern sense, more profoundly stupid and racist in the archaic sense.

  Civilized coutry is a redundant phrase if taken literally. A country is a territory and the associated state. You can’t have a state (political structure) without being ‘civilized.’ (participating in some kind of civic process) They are using civilized in a manner akin to how people used ‘white’ many years ago, referring to acceptability rather than color. e.g. The oft noted ‘Irish and jews weren’t white.’ In that context it seems more of a sign of lack of critical thinking than colorism or essentialism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling than the Truth?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The thing about compelling lies is not that they are new, just that they are easier to expand. The most common effect of compelling lies is their ability to get well-intentioned people to support malign causes and give their money to fraudsters. So, expect that to expand, kind of like it already has been.

  The big question for me is what the response will be. Will we make lying illegal? Will we become a world of ever more paranoid isolationists, returning to clans, families, households, as the largest social group you can trust? Will most people even have the intelligence to see what is happenning and respond? Or will most people be turned into info-puppets, controlled into behaviours by manipulation of their information diet to an unprecedented degree? I don’t know.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling than the Truth?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The trick is, snake oil salesmen exist because there are customers. You might be smart enough to spot them coming, but many, many, many people are not. Being dismissive of scamming as an issue because you can spot them is like being dismissive of drownings because you know how to swim. It ignores the harm to your world done by having others around you destroyed, sometimes because they are cocky and hubristic, sometimes just because they were caught in a weak moment, just a bit too tired to notice the difference between rn and m in an email address.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The AI Hiring Pause Is Officially Here⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re replacing coders with AI at MS? Everybody ready for windows to gain a whole new set of vulnerabilities?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Christians were real, they’d be lining up to post for their sins (not trying to avoid judgement).⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And… blocked.

  You clearly have nothing of value to contribute. May life guide you to a better place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Christians were real, they’d be lining up to post for their sins (not trying to avoid judgement).⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is simultaneously too shallow and vague to be seen as concrete claims to be discussed, and too complex to be a simple shower thought.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is your favorite indie game?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I liked that it wasn’t a parody of itself. Most of the writing could have been unchanged if it hadn’t been anthro themed. And the writing was nice, nothing ham-fisted, and had some respect for the reader. I keep running into games where you’ve just talked to an NPC about how they need you to hit the blue button, and you’ve gone through a hallway of posters saying your goal is to hit the blue button, had a quest marker guiding you there that says ‘this way to the blue button you need to press,’ and your character still feels the need to speak to the air about the need to hit the blue button when you walk into the blue button room.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Minecraft’s VR support is now gone⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Headline from the future:

  MS announces Minecraft VR, will cost less than $5/month when you buy a full five year subscription

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is your favorite indie game?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you want to see someone play Vagante, check out Pakratt13 on the tubes. He did a daily show of roguelikes for a bit and vagante was in the rotation. That’s how I heard about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is your favorite indie game?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I play, almost exclusively, non-AAA games. Some gems, known and hidden:

  • Autonauts and Autonauts Vs Piratebots - Cute automation games
  • Spelunky - Elegantly simple and well executed platformer
  • BPM: Bullets Per Minute - Rhythm FPS. Others have tried. None I have found have been as good.
  • Immortal Redneck - FPS roguelite
  • Ziggurat - FPS Roguelite
  • Receiver II - Unique FPS roguelike. Every part of everything that moves is simulated. The hammer on your gun hits a firing pin which hits the primer on the cartridge. You can get stovepipes, misfires, double feeds, etc. You don’t reload by hitting ‘reload’ but go through the full manual of arms in a shooter where the tolerances for failure are fairly slim.
  • Valley - running game. The feeling of letting a hill propel your running to otherwise impossible speeds, bottled. Nice little story too.
  • Dredge - Lovecraftian fishing game.
  • Tunnet - lovecraftian network technician simulator. Build a network to allow communication between computers in an underground society with unspeakable horrors occasionally destroying your mind/body.
  • Opus Magnum - Programming puzzles
  • Vagante - roguelike with tight tolerances
  • Ruiner - Cyberpunk slash n dash with a soundtrack half by Sidewalks and Skeletons. Very fun.
  • Tails Noir - Detective story. Normally find the anthro thing a bit tiresome but this was pretty good. Well written. Not a ))))
  • Elderborn
  • Moonlighter
  • Webbed
  • A Story About My Uncle
  • Tormentor X Punisher
  • Tin Can
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Recommendations for "girly" games?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve never played it but ‘Pony Island’ seems to have a pink color scheme and I’m guessing it’s about ponies, so maybe?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Game design question : how to make a "trapped" player character?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It can be that. Never played Ghosts so I don’t know about that one in particular. Some games do other things with it, but that sort of thing is absolutely usable to create that ‘trapped’ feeling.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The first driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes | CNN Business⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Great, just in time for the number of shipments of imports needing to be distributed across the US to plummet…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pico de gallo is fruit salad⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Or is salad an undercooked and dry soup?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Game design question : how to make a "trapped" player character?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you want to produce the sensation of being trapped you have to use the feeling of power and loss. It stems from the sense of ‘If I could just…’ If I could just get out there, I could defeat that henchman for him. If I could just get out there, I could solve that riddle for him. If I could just escape this box, all would be fixed.

  Now, the trick is, because this is a video game, players have a reduced sense of agency. The player’s sense of capacity is ‘what happens when you hit the button.’ Mario, before more modern adaptations, had a capacity to move left and right, jump, run, and ‘use ability.’ The player never had the ability to do anything else, so it never feels like a limitation. No one ever said, ‘playing Mario makes me feel trapped because I could beat Bowser if I could just access the cannon that’s right over there.’

  So, to produce the feeling of confinement, one must create the sense of power, and then take it away. Give the player enough power that they could even defeat the dragon, but then take it from them so they feel limited. If you can find a way to make it feel like it’s not even forced, as in they feel like they could have won the game in Act 1, Scene 1, but their lack of skills as a player were what made them lose, all the better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Game design question : how to make a "trapped" player character?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If that’s the style of game you are looking for, I could see a structure of 'do code golf puzzles to:

  • program robots to help the knight directly’
  • ‘trick’ henchmen or magical castle elements (abstracted coding) into doing things that help the Knight’
  • write the guard’s ‘daily action plan’ so they patrol in a way that doesn’t get the knight caught’
  • complete abstract ‘magical haxors’ that open the dragon’s firewalls’
  • social engineer the dragon between runs to let you have more supplies’
  • give simple instructions to collections of small woodland creatures to do simple things that add up to a real goal (in the vein of Opus Magnum)’
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Recommendations for "girly" games?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I played one a few months back that might fit the bill. ‘Garden Life: a Cozy Simulator’ It’s a game where you grow/decorate a garden of flowers and sell/give them to people. Very pleasant.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Will We Know If The Trump Tariffs Were A Good Idea?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s kind of subjective.

  There are two broad views on whether something ‘was a good plan.’ Generally, everyone agrees that accomplishing the intended goal is the first requirement, but people tend to divide then on whether there is a secondary requirement. Many hold that the second necessary requirement is that the action doesn’t violate prior tenants.

  e.g. if the goal is to get children out of a burning building, actually getting them out is generally a minimum requirement for ‘a good plan’, however, if the plan is to get them out by punting them out the window, it would be argued by many that the plan was bad because it violates a prior tenant to not hurt the children.

  For the tariffs, it is almost a given that it will create a better business environment for companies that want to compete in sectors where tariffs act as a protectionist measure. However, it is also generally a given that the tariffs will cause financial pain for the average American, whose standard of living depends on cheap foreign labor. For many people, the damage done to the American public is like the punting. It violates established values, and thus becomes a bad idea.

  This also all assumes the stated goal is the real goal. The claim is the tariffs are intended to help American businesses, but the general interpretation is that’s a lie. Many people believe the tariffs are simply a threat to get obedience from other governments. From this view, the tariffs are a failure, because essentially no power has been gained over the rest of the world, and many places that were cooperating freely before now have antipathy toward the US.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t even know about it until I read this comic, but now I’m one of the salty.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Agreed. Role queue was dumb. I liked having the ability to look at how things have been going and say ‘They’re doing X. I’ll swap to this character and screw up their plans.’ The thing I loved most about OW was that it wasn’t locked into the left click first competition. Their Widow is causing trouble? Lucio>wall climb>drop in>boop them out of their safety bubble and get them shredded. Distract them behind a shield to the left so someone on the right can sneak up on them. Or go Sombra and do an invis run/tele to magdump into their head at point blank. Or go monkey and pig meatwall to get close enough to ruin her day. Whatever. Just something with more intelligence than left-click and die repeatedly.

  I miss Mayhem too. People complained that it took too long to die/kill but that was what was amazing about it. How many games can you say have ever felt like you were in an epic fight where every thrust, parry, twist, duck, and swing mattered? Where you don’t win by the luck of a single shot but have to tactically manipulate enemy attention so you can change the angle of attack so it favors your healer over their Junkrat? Battles won or lost by the timing and precision placement of a Zarya hole catching the targets thrown by a Lucio boop to hold them just off the payload just long enough to get to the next checkpoint?

  Man, I miss that game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a cancelled game you really miss?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Might sound odd to some, but Overwatch.

  Early Overwatch was great. Then some updates made it better. The only things wrong with it were design choices that were made for financial reasons. Then they made it much worse. Then they made it worse. And worse. And then they made 2, which turned it into just another ‘left-click on the target’ game, because those make more money. It saddens me that it died.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Am I going crazy, or has people's spelling gotten awful lately?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t forget the internet is global. People for whomever English is a second language are much more common than they once were.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you use your blinker in a car?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I do, but I am slightly discouraged from doing so by the drivers in my area. People are always so terrified of not being the first waiting at the next red light, they see a turn signal as a warning to ‘speed up and go past this car before they can get ahead of you.’

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A French law requiring adult sites to run age checks( facial age estimation, ...etc) and block users under 18 became applicable to sites based in France and outside of the EU.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  A ways back, I saw an article about how the French were rioting because their retirement age was being increased from 62 to 64. I remarked that it was interesting to see the French rioting against a change that wouldn’t even quite bring them to parity with the US but Americans can’t be bothered to riot for almost anything. A Frenchman said they didn’t want to even be more like the US in any way.

  This law is absolutely the now-classic American attitude that kids can watch violent movies all day, but if they’rEXC exposed to one female nipple, you gotta shut it all down. Is France turning into America now, following Britain down the red, white, and blue path?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people develop feelings for someone?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Happy to help.

  There are a lot of things in human society you are expected to ‘just know,’ which is silly. Human social dynamics is so complex psychology, sociology, and their various related fields are possible doctorate fields, but when someone says 'How do I know the difference between, ‘love’ and ‘love love?’ people will just say, ‘You just know.’