sp3ctr4l
@sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases 23 hours ago:
Titanfall 2.
Metal Gear Solid V.
Decade old games on PC.
Still look pretty damned good, imo.
- Comment on When you realize it's time to trade in your old sedan for an SUV 1 day ago:
Well I was gonna say because less and less Americans have their own pig farms, but sure, ok, that works too I guess.
- Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases 1 day ago:
I watch a good deal of his stuff on YT, and despite being I think roughly 20 years younger than him, I agree with his level of shock.
I used to work for Microsoft.
I have worked in varying different kinds of software dev, and have been making mods for games basically since I became a teenager.
… Almost no one optimizes anything these days, in my experience, be it a video game, a database or complex SQL query, … etc etc.
Most people seem to just be adding technical debt with reckless abandon, and its because management prioritizes slapdash, good enough solutions, over an actually maintainable and performant system.
This is a huge part of why Windows is a bloated pile of nonsense, which they think they can now fix with even more bloated nonsense (‘Copilot’).
Tech company managent and C Suite are basically cult members/leaders at this point, and their insanity is literally destroying the world, now that they think they can more or less build their idea of God, if only they can use all the economic capital in existence.
They’re insane.
- Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases 1 day ago:
Well, I also tinker with being a game dev, haven’t shipped anything yet, but I find his technical breakdowns comprehensive and enlightening, as far as it goes with render pipeline analysis.
Its also not just bashing.
As I said, he goes out of his way to showcase examples of better ways to do things, he finds rather rare or seldom used rendering techniques, and will do a whole breakdown of why he thinks these alternatives should be used instead.
His whole video on normal aware anti aliasing was fascinating.
He is suggesting superior solutions, not just criticizing poor ones.
If you can watch one of his hour long analysis videos and not think that they show any experience whennit comes to comparing, contrasting, and optimizing render pipelines, then frankly, I don’t think you’re qualified to have an opinion, as the breadth, and level of detail he goes into is superior to many others in the industry, and showcases itself.
I’m not saying he’s some kind of perfect game dev… there’s a lot more to being a game dev than optimizing render pipelines… but within that subset of game dev, I think he knows what he’s talking about.
- Comment on Diabolical 1 day ago:
(Arguably)UnethicalLifeProTips
- Comment on surely your hobby can't be that expensive 1 day ago:
Entirely seriously, learn how to make a game in Godot.
Its literally completely free, only costs you time, and assumes you have at least some kind of existing computer.
Alternatively: Find a video game you like.
Make mods for it.
Here’s another one that’s basically free:
Becoming/Staying fit, gaining strength and agility.
Make ‘weights’ out of milk jugs with water in them.
Maybe get a resistance band or two, they’re not that pricey.
You can absolutely do a ton of stretches and light to modetate muscle group workouts with basically just random shit lying around a typical home or apartment.
You can find basic guides for these excercises often just freely available from reputable medical organizations.
You can literally just go on a 20 minute walk, 3 times a week, and be in better physical shape than something like half of the US adult population.
Back to computer shit:
Blender is free.
Learn 3D modelling, rigging, UV wrapping, how texturing works, how to make animations, etc.
Same with Krita.
Become artist. Draw stuff good.
You can find probably literally millions of free tutorials for how to do basic and intermediate level concepts.
Whsitling/Singing/Voice Acting.
These are developable skills much more so than they are just… things you either can or cannot do, for some reason.
You can teach yourself how to do these, again to a basic or intermediate level, for pretty much free.
Same thing with at least some kinds of dancing.
If you’re feeling more EXTREME: Parkour and/or Urbex.
Lockpicking.
Go find the Lockpicking Lawyer on youtube.
Pretty sure he can recommend you a not too pricey basic starter kit for learning the basics.
… I could go on, but my hands are tired from what I’m going to call ‘autism posting’, one of my totally free, personal hobbies that I often indulge in.
- Comment on surely your hobby can't be that expensive 1 day ago:
… so long as it does not materially impact your ability to provide basic necessities for your own wellbeing, food, water, shelter, some level of climate control, etc.
… and you are not directly, indirectly, or functionally spending other people’s money on your hobbies.
- Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases 2 days ago:
Its because many game studios just started making many games that just assume you have some kind of raytracing capable GPU.
They largely stopped bothering to properly support and properly optimize for the hardware situations where you don’t.
A whole bunch of post processing and even just basic scene rendering?
Yeah, they’re now done in kinds of render pipelines that more or less blow up or chug without cards that have at least some ray tracing support, even if you actually have all your in game settings down to as low as possible.
Its hard to set up lights and bake light maps and such in the old fashioned way, its easy to just let the engine handle all of that for you as a dev, auto magically.
Problem is, very few dev teams actually know how to use UE5 properly, and I don’t blame them, it is absurdly complex.
Threat Interactive on youtube more or less has hours of extremely technical breakdowns of UE5 shennanigannery, and also comparisons to somewhat niche techniques used by select, older games, that are as, nearly as, or sometimes actually just better than many UE5 games at realistic high fidelity graphics… while also being more performant, running on older hardware.
Its exceedingly technical and complicated, but the upshot is: No, you’re not crazy, these idiots are often intentionally, often unintentionally, doing things in stupid ways, unnecessary ways.
- Comment on The Stock Market is Just Financial Fantasy Sports 2 days ago:
A… commerce degree?
Forgive my American dialect, but is that… Canadian… for a Business degree?
Uh anyway, myself having degrees in Econ and Poli Sci, here’s my attempt at explaining it, at this late date:
Sunk Cost Fallacy.
IE, its now essentially its own self-perpetuating delusion, its own bubble all in and of itself.
How did it get to this point?
Uh, Elon is a con artist.
See the same part of the Poli Sci textbooks that attempt to answer ‘Why do people who are directly, negatively impacted by Republican policies keep voting for them?’
Though at that point we may need to just delve more into Psychology, groupthink, socially performed identities, cults, etc.
- Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases 2 days ago:
Outside of a few exceptions, older games are ironically more novel and have more interesting gameplay.
And practically no one can actually afford the super duper premium Nvidia prices required to make an unoptimized UE5 engine game actually run well.
… Half of the gaming market in general is gacha games on mobile phones.
Most permaonline ‘hardcore’ gamers, people you ou see on game related discussion forums, as well as industry marketing execs, and yes, both pay for play gaming ‘journalists’, and most of your favorite youtube/twitch game opinion havers… they’re all delusionally out of touch with the basic economic reality most gamers are in.
This is why things like Stop Killing Games are important.
Publishers know that existing games are their primary competition, thats why they want them to be unplayable.
- Comment on Video Game Physical Software and Hardware Sales Just Had the Worst November in the U.S. Since 1995 - IGN 2 days ago:
In the mean time, while we wait for IP law to fix itself over the course of decades, or probably just never: I have physical copies of most of my games.
… on an SD card, that I bought, formatted, and moved files onto.
Steam lets you make game backups, GOG releases are basically portable… make a backup, compress it, put it on a backup drive.
… and thats all without my pirate hat and pegleg on.
- Comment on The Stock Market is Just Financial Fantasy Sports 3 days ago:
Yeah ok so you’re levered up, think everyone else doing the same thing are ‘fucking stupid’ ‘idiots’, dumber than you, because you have the secret sauce.
I will now quote my original comment:
… you’ve got the day traders, and they almost always get their clocks cleaned, they just develop a neurotic-obsessive personality based on ‘no, I’m the one guy that can outsmart the market’.
I didn’t expect one to actually appear, but, well hey there ya go.
I guess I should also amend ‘grandiose narcissist’ to my psych profile of the kind of person that does what you’re doing.
Here, lemme throw the ZeroHedge motto at you:
“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
Good luck with your dance.
- Comment on 50/50 chance this is a shit post 3 days ago:
… I don’t know what half those words mean.
I know loli is basically drawn, prepubescent girls.
I don’t know what a lolishota is.
And I am afraid to look it up, lol.
I also do not know what an … ‘anit’ … is?
- Comment on The Stock Market is Just Financial Fantasy Sports 3 days ago:
… right.
At no point did you deny that you’re using leverage.
Which means that if your understanding of ‘how it all works’ is… wrong… in any significant way…
Well then your personal situation unwinds in a micro version of how the rest of the economy currently is.
Your strategy relies on never making a significant mistake.
Statistically, you will.
Oh right, also this:
A few million is nothing.
Maybe enough to confidently own a pretty nice home.
Assuming the starving mob doesn’t visit you.
In terms of fixing society?
That’s roughly on the scale of helping hundreds or thousands in your local community, on an ongoing basis.
Nothing, in the grand scheme of things.
… A couple million?
Jeff Bezos makes ~3 million dollars in a single hour.
An hour.
Try and square that, really try and think about that.
That house you wanna get, that non profit you wanna set up?
That you took huge risks for, for multiple years, some how lucky enough to never fuck up?
That’s an hour of Jeff sleeping.
He could see your house, or envision that non profit in a dream, and then on a whim, just buy 8 of them when he wakes up.
The solution to this, to trying to fix society is not trying to beat them at their own game.
The solution is breaking the rules of the game.
After all… that’s how they got to be where they are.
- Comment on 50/50 chance this is a shit post 3 days ago:
… did you ever get the Mew out of the back of the truck, lol?
- Comment on 50/50 chance this is a shit post 3 days ago:
I lost track after Gold/Silver/Crystal, so it stops at 251 for me.
- Comment on 50/50 chance this is a shit post 3 days ago:
No, it has a custom name, so this is a Pokemon that has already been caught.
Wild Pokemon do not have custom names.
- Comment on 50/50 chance this is a shit post 3 days ago:
… except that the Pokemon is named Bidet.
This… usually can only be done, giving a pokemon a custom name… right when you catch them, or, at maybe like a single, pretty far out of the way NPC, that only exists in one spot in the game world.
So, think of basically a birth certificate or changing your name on a government ID, similar level of … not many easy opoortunities you have to rename a Pokemon.
… This all implies… that this Pokemon’s purpose is to serve as a bidet, precisely for situations like this.
Either that, or she named it Bidet as a joke, and is now midly dying inside from both the general awkwardness of the situation, and the immense irony of now having to… actually use ‘Bidet’ as a bidet.
- Comment on 50/50 chance this is a shit post 3 days ago:
Ironically, Bidet will be unable to fulfill their… nomative deterministic function… if they do not have enough PP for Water Gun.
… where PP stands for Power Point(s), in Pokemon lingo, the number of times a Pokemon can use a specific move.
- Comment on 50/50 chance this is a shit post 3 days ago:
I mean… the … implication is still that she’s going to use the poor penguin… just its… water gun ability… as opposed to… being a literal asswipe.
- Comment on 50/50 chance this is a shit post 3 days ago:
- Comment on 50/50 chance this is a shit post 3 days ago:
I mean… I can see why people are weirded out by this, but also… it really doesn’t have to be a sexual thing.
You could put Ash, or Silver or whoever in this position… its… not like guys cannot also use bidets… and its not like the concept of running out of toilet paper is inherently sexual.
Sure, it can be, if that’s actually your fetish.
But it doesn’t have to be.
What, she has a semi risque, bikini type thong thing, as underwear?
Uh… when I was the age of this character (10-12 apparently, depending on which game she’s in)…
I would stand at the bus stop for school, and one neighborhood girl, same age as me, would brag about wearing one of these, have it hiked up past her pants/shorts waist line, and keep trying to get me to do dares or favors so I could ‘see more of it’.
I was also friends with less uh… attention seeking girls, and a few years later, I’m getting invited to their slumber parties (mostly to marathon a season of Buffy, sometimes Toonami, eventually Venture Bros) because I’m actually respectful, trustworthy, and keep my hands to myself.
What I’m trying to say is:
What this character is depicted as wearing was not an uncommon kind of girl’s undergarment bottom, even 20 years ago.
Not all girls wear granny panties.
Its not inherently sexualizing, to be wearing a fairly common kind of underwear.
I think the point of this is to be embarassing and awkward… ‘cringe’, even… not fetishistic.
- Comment on The Stock Market is Just Financial Fantasy Sports 3 days ago:
Yes, and then the trick is timing your exit or restructuring into countercyclicals … at the right time.
And timing is the part almost everyone fucks up.
Also, if you’re ‘buying low and selling high’, and you’re up 5000+ ytd?
Then you’re basically daytrading, which basically means this is a full on part time job for you, at least…
… and while did you say you’re not shortselling, you did not say you’re not using any leverage.
So uh yeah, best of luck, hope you can keep up the perfectly timed dance, and never miss a beat, nor miss an upcoming time signature change.
- Comment on The Stock Market is Just Financial Fantasy Sports 3 days ago:
Ideally around 150 years ago, but far, far too late is better than never.
- Comment on The Stock Market is Just Financial Fantasy Sports 4 days ago:
Way, way back in the day, when the primary model of stocks and the stock market was…
I buy 1 share of Company X stock, for Y dollars, and once a year, it pays me Z dollars as a dividend…
Yes, with that paradigm, it made a lot more sense to say that this ‘drove engagement’… because a stock operated more like a miniature bond in/for a company.
But, now the whole model is ‘stock price must go up forever’, nest eggs are capital gains realized upon retirement, that you take loans out against to avoid paying cap gains tax…
…not dividends gradually paid into a growing retirement savings account, managed by a regional or local bank.
Which entirely blows up that way of thinking.
- Comment on The Stock Market is Just Financial Fantasy Sports 4 days ago:
More or less this, yes.
Index funds are generally less risky than trying to pick individual stocks, balance your own portfolio, or god help you, be an active day trader.
But, as pinball wizard says… if the blend of stocks the index etf is based on… if all the components are also varying degrees of delusional…
Then everything could break, rather rapidly, if enough small delusions, or one big shared delusion… are revealed as such.
I’m not actually a financial advisor, but I am giving some advice:
Go make a chart of the DJIA, divided by the USD price of Gold.
… Gold is pretty signifcantly outperforming the stock market, in this 2nd Trump term.
As the Chinese say, we are currently living in ‘interesting’ times.
- Comment on The Stock Market is Just Financial Fantasy Sports 4 days ago:
Former econometrician here:
Yes. Correct.
Ever since stock buybacks became the bog standard default, and P/E ratios are between ‘significantly elevated’ and ‘completely fucking delusional’…
Yep. None this shit makes any real sense.
Which is actually a huge problem.
Because… the economic ‘point’ of a stock market, in capitalism, is more or less to act as a kind of giant, collective brain, that figures out how to efficiently and rationally allocate capital and investments.
The ‘invisible hand’, and all that.
So when that brain spends a decade or two more or less in a euphoric psychotic break… well… it doesn’t exactly make sound financial choices.
Which translates into about two decades of nonsensical investment of a society’s resources.
Less ‘theoretically’: Its a giant gambling machine, and if you’re not rigging the game yourself, 99.9999% chance you’re the mark, you’re gonna lose.
And you won’t see it coming, not untill its too late for you to get out intact.
Economists have for a long time referred to state run lotteries as effectively an ‘idiot tax’, because anyone who can do fairly basic statistics also knows they’re very likely to lose money, thus, only idiots gamble.
The stock market as it is now more or less represents a more complex version of the same kind of thing… you’ve got the day traders, and they almost always get their clocks cleaned, they just develop a neurotic-obsessive personality based on ‘no, I’m the one guy that can outsmart the market’.
No, you can’t.
- Comment on An Apple fan says they lost '20 years of digital life' after using an Apple gift card 4 days ago:
Hey I mean, honest self-awareness is far more respectable admirable than blustering bullshit overconfidence and over inflated ego.
"If your cup is full then there is no more room. There is no more room for anything new to get in for any new idea, for any new feeling or thought and so you just have to continue to empty that cup. Continue to pour out and then you have the space for something new to come in and it does require awareness, it does require a desire to be present and to want to figure these sorts of things out.”
- Bruce Lee
- Comment on An Apple fan says they lost '20 years of digital life' after using an Apple gift card 4 days ago:
Why isn’t this posted in Leopards Ate My Face?
… this person… trusted… all their files… on someone else’s computer?
… they… trusted a giant… tech corporation… to… care about them?
How is this person a developer?
Normally I’d say “clearly this person has never worked in software developement”… but apparently they have, and are just very naive?
- Comment on 6 days ago:
No, this is
Patrickcapitalism.As run by fascists.
… Fascism.
Haven’t these Senators gone to school? Read a book?
