cerebralhawks

@cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Snapchat allows drug dealers to operate openly on platform, finds Danish study⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Wait until they learn what the platform was designed for

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The McDonald's employee who called on Luigi has never received their "reward", folks chasing the 100k for Kirk may not either...⁩ ⁨⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  They used to say the rewards was for information leading to the conviction. If they don’t get a conviction, the reward is forfeit by default.

  People are still gonna try though. They just have no legal recourse if the reward is not paid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How popular/important do you have to be for your death by homicide to be labeled as an "assassination"? What if the homicide is for a private matter that's separate from their importance?⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Murder is killing with malice. Assassination is killing for political capital. There can be crossover but it isn’t necessary.

  Take a head of state — not strictly a current one, not wishing here. Just as an example. He’s giving a speech, it’s an assassination. You caught him in bed with your wife and shot them both — that’s murder.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Subscription models like Xbox Game Pass are "not properly valuing" developers, says former Bethesda exec⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Former not current… Bethesda never saw a dollar they didn’t like.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Still just Animal Crossing on the Switch! If it ain’t broke…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RomM (self-hosting emulation) releasing a significant update - 4.2⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds like something that wouldn’t be too hard to do, given that Plex (and others like it) exists. The difference is, Plex is streaming.

  So with a good network, you can just send the game and do the emulation client side, and sync the save and other data back to the server. With a powerful enough host, you can handle the emulation on the host machine and just stream the video, with the client streaming the controls back, but this wouldn’t be good for a lot of games (too much latency). Same issue as GeForce NOW. Good if you’re near their CDN; otherwise, useless.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sexualized video games are not causing harm to male or female players, according to new research⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay but what games are considered sexualised and how many people are actually playing them?

  Cyberpunk certainly qualifies both. It’s got explicit sex, and it’s got a large player base. But while uncouth and perverse things happen, you can’t really be party to them. You tend to show up after. Maybe your choices might lead to some, but you’re not there for it. The only sex involving the player is generally wholesome. Except, you know, the ghost of Johnny Silverhand riding shotgun and not necessarily consenting to it (especially when you hook up with the cop).

  Then there’s Skyrim. Bigger player base but no sex outside of mods. And there are plenty of mods, but if you look at the player count among people using those mods… it’s nowhere near the player count of Skyrim as a whole, or Cyberpunk, or even a lot of the other games. And from there it drops off sharply.

  So… what sexualised video games?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, you know the 30.06 ammo is kinda hard to come by, so I didn’t use it all the time. I’d avoid combat on Liberty Island and just hoard ammo. I modded a mod for it and made a few changes — like after UNATCO “cuts through” the NSF “like a hot knife through butter,” with my mod, they don’t loot the bodies. So I do. Bit of a reward for getting through without being detected. So then I trade the pistol for the silenced version. The mod that I modded, Shifter, makes unique versions of each guns with a stat or two buffed. I could tell you where the pistol is (Lebedev’s bed on the plane) but I forget where the silenced pistol was. May have been in the canals in Hong Kong — so, not worth waiting for. I mean as opposed to slapping the weapon mods on the regular one. So for most guys I’d shoot with the silenced 10mm. Sniper’s really only good at range. But, that one mission, where they drop you on top of the 'ton (the hotel in NYC, supposed to be Hilton, but… copyrights) I take everybody out with the sniper rifle (it’s like 8 guys tops) before dropping down to street level. I can’t remember if it’s when you go to Dowd to get the plans to scuttle the freighter, or when you go back to NYC to send the singal from NSF HQ. Been way too long since I played, but really only a year or two. I wish they’d put it on Xbox.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Rockband was a good example of achievement-gating the higher difficulties. You got an achievement for beating the game on Medium, Hard, or Expert. And doing it on one of the two higher ones would unlock the ones below if you didn’t already do it on those difficulties. So if you were good enough to beat it on Expert, you got three or four achievements. Now I know you’re probably thinking “wait how do you beat Rockband”? By completing the Endless Setlist, which is unlocked when you beat the story mode. The story mode just unlocked the higher tiers of difficulty. The Endless Setlist was all the songs. Six hours and 20 minutes minimum. Oh, and when I said “three or four achievements”? The fourth one is if you do it without pausing or failing (at any difficulty Medium or higher). That one was called the “Bladder of Steel Award.” Yes, I own it. You food prep in advance, you do it on vocals, and you time your bathroom breaks very carefully (and drop a deuce in advance as well). But those three achievements for beating it at difficulty? Those are per instrument. I only have the gold (expert) vocals award. I may have the bronze (medium) bass award, but I never got any for guitar or drums.

  That’s just one example of difficulty and incentives. I like how Deus Ex 1 did it, too. On Easy, you did more damage and took less. On Hard, you did less and took more. On Medium, it was balanced. On Realistic… everyone takes more. That was how I played. I wasn’t getting hit. I played a sniper. Even on Easy it was hard to one-shot enemies with a good gun and a headshot. For some reason that didn’t kill them. On Realistic, a shot to center mass with my .30-06 will drop any human enemy. A shot to the head will drop the augmented ones. So that’s how I play… played. It’s not on Xbox and it’s not on the Mac. My Mac can run it through Whisky, but I haven’t played much more than parts of the first level, so I’m not sure what the compatibility looks like later.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I grew up with Atari and the NES. I think it’s actually both ways. I don’t think casual games were ever really a pushback against difficult games though, I think they were just trying to reach a wider audience. Take Subway Surfers for example, it’s probably the best example of the casual (phone) game. Anyone can pick up and play it, and if you fail, you just start over. IIRC you had to watch an ad first though? I dunno, I got hooked on it and I bought the coin doubler for $5 which also removed the mandatory ads (not the ones you can opt to watch to double some prizes or open ad-gated prize boxes though). That’s all I ever paid for it — far less than any paid game. Of course you can’t “win” at it either, it just goes on forever. On consoles, you also have Animal Crossing and the like. Games that never end but you can’t lose, either. Like you can get stung by wasps or scorpions or bit by tarantulas (though the latter two encounters are rare), but you just pass out and wake up in front of your house with nothing lost. But no, I don’t think casual (e.g. Animal Crossing) or accessible (e.g. Subway Surfers) was an active “push back” against the “NES Hard” trend of hard gaming.

  Of course, arcade games weren’t just hard to be hard — like Subway Surfers and other phone games, they exist to get you to spend money. An arcade game that isn’t generating revenue isn’t desirable to people who operate arcades.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t mind difficult games. I recognise that they exist as a kind of pushback against mobile games and casual games that have risen in popularity. I don’t mind that they exist. Likewise, I strongly believe that gaming is for everybody, but not every game has to be for everybody.

  I think it’s perfectly fine, though, to ask the question: if the game — any hard game, to include the Dark Souls game and its spinoffs (e.g. Elden Ring) and knockoffs (e.g. Breath of the Wild) — had an easy mode, where virtually anyone could win it eventually, would that truly make the game less fun for people who like hard games? What if the game were hard by default, and easy mode cost $5 extra? That way, you would never be presented with the option, but those who want it can get it for a slight upcharge. (Maybe less on a $20 game, I’m thinking the $5 would be for a $70 game.) Case in point: Final Fantasy XV was never hard. But for 49¢, you could buy a “DLC”/“mod” that made gas cost half — 5 gil instead of 10 for any fill-up — and also made hotels (which give a big XP buff) half price. So one early-game strategy was equipping a ring that would not pay out experience when you camp, and saving your XP (which is normally paid out every time you sleep) until you could afford a room at the XP-doubling Galden Quay resort hotel, gaining you several levels by then. With the DLC/mod, you could afford it much sooner, and you could actually do it a few times, setting you up for later parts of the game. It wasn’t an easy mode, but it did soften the grind a bit, and it wasn’t presented as an option in the game. You kinda had to know about it and go look for it.

  I actually think there’s something to that. Making a game and selling parts of it never really goes down well with players. But most players can’t beat hard games. So what if instead of new games being $70 or $80, they were $50 or $60 still, but people who want help can buy things that will make the game easier. Let those players subsidize the ones who are good enough to beat it without them, incentivising them to get better. Ideally, to get better at that game so they uninstall the helpers, beat it without them, then when the next one comes out, they’re ready.

  I don’t hate hard games. But I’m not going to pay for them. If they make their money off people who have that much time on their hands, that’s fine. It’s a sound business decision. But I also think a game can’t say “we wish we made more money” while intentionally excluding players who maybe have full-time jobs, families, or other valid reasons to not learn the perfect button combinations and ultra-precise timing some of these games require. I think if they could find a way to include those players while not putting off their base, they’d have a winning solution on their hands. And no, we’re not gonna quit our jobs or neglect our families to “git gud” like we live with our parents and are half our age.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is Lemmy much better with telling a user why they were banned?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m pretty new to this, so I can’t really game it out in my mind what the effect would be. My first instinct is to say that they would pour money into one instance, probably the biggest one, and the rest of the federated instances would just go about their merry way.

  In fact, there are corporate federated services… I mean Bluesky is kinda federated, so is, I think Threads by Facebook/Instagram? But a lot of services don’t federate with it because they don’t like the people behind them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should I feel bad that my abuser is suffering?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly living well and not thinking about them at all is the best revenge you can enjoy. Just put them out of your mind and focus on other people. Worrying about them doesn’t do you any good, even if they aren’t doing well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wikipedia is resilient because it is boring⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Kinda, sorta, not really.

  So on Reddit, the people who run the iPhone subs have iPhone 17, iPhone 18, iPhone 19, and so on registered and they’re squatting on them until they become useful. Or Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Fallout 5, Fallout 6… Now what some people have done is add a word. Like you have the “Cyberpunk” sub and “Low Sodium Cyberpunk.” That works. Or like you have Atheism, and you have RealAtheism. So you can put a word on it, or something like that. But you’ll never be able to be the “original” because a small group of people control those.

  Now with Lemmy, those same people will just make those communities on the biggest Lemmy instance, but they won’t do it on all of them. I use Divisions by Zero, which leans a little further left than some of the others, it’s more of a fringe instance I guess? They’re probably not gonna target that. So if someone made a community and tried to divert views to their videos for profit like I said in my example, I could make a community with the exact same name on this instance. The other community probably wouldn’t let me advertise it there. I could do it once and get banned and maybe get a couple people to join both, at least, but I could promote it on neutral ground, and people could decide who they want to support. Because of federation, even if you aren’t on db0, you can still subscribe to a community hosted on it. Like this community is on lemmy.world and I’m subscribed to it and freely commenting on it (at least until/if lemmy.world decides to defederate the instance I’m on — they have that right and ability. But I could make an account on their instance or one that is federated with them. And that’s kosher as far as I know, as long as I myself am following the rules of the instances I post on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is Lemmy much better with telling a user why they were banned?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Reddit will tell you why you were banned. It generates a PM with the reason and a link to the offending post.

  For example, I was banned for inciting violence towards a protected group of people… in reference to saying child predators should face stiffer legal penalties. Someone took it the wrong (or maybe right) way because their president is in the Epstein files. Honestly I wasn’t even thinking of him but if the prison jumpsuit fits… anyway, it was not a mystery to me.

  I did appeal in case AI flagged me but a human upheld it.

  But as to why Lemmy is better in that regard… more open platform trying to improve upon the formula of those that came before. Also run by people not corporations. And not operated by the GOP.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is it just ChoMo s have their identity and address released to the media? I get for the kids but would also like to know if I am living next to a murderer or serial meth maker or whatever?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Because people who kill generally don’t get released. Murder one or “Murder in the first degree” means premeditated and typically carries life/death sentences. Murder two is more like heat of the moment, you come home and find your wife in bed with another man… those carry sentences of a decade or more. Below that you’re in manslaughter territory which is more like accident/extenuating circumstances and those people get years too.

  Child predators get time, too, but they never get rehabilitated because there’s no cure for it. They’re always going to want to ruin some child’s life, and they’re going to want to do it a lot, to ruin several kids’ lives. So there’s a registry for them, and they can’t live near schools, churches (ironically), day care centers, and such.

  As for those asking what the term means, please do the community a favor and downvote people giving wrong answers trying to be funny. Chomo is street slang for child molester, and the word is derived from “homo.” So the word “homo” makes sense, it’s just short for homosexual. Put a C on it and the first sound is “Ch” like child. So it’s someone who targets children. Never thought I’d see the term up here though. Guess Lemmy is getting popular.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google's plan to restrict sideloading on Android has a potential escape hatch for users⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Because they want to stop people from using ad blockers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wikipedia is resilient because it is boring⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I hate to say it, but I don’t think Wikipedia is as neutral or as open as it claims to be. Some of the article comments talk about there definitely being some bias against anonymous editors, even if they’re correct.

  I’m not sure if it was in that article or in another comment section, but someone said after Elon Musk did the Nazi salute at Trump’s event, an anonymous user mentioned it and there was a big controversy. And a registered user took it down and berated them for it, and another registered user came along an added the salute info back in and it was fine. Or something like that.

  I definitely still think Wikipedia is a net good. But it seems to me any time you have a centralised source of information, a small group of people will fight to control the narrative so they can spin it any which way they want. For example, on Reddit, my favorite band’s unofficial subreddit is run by a guy who bans any fan cams of the events — unless they’re his. So obviously he does fan cams so he can make ad money on YouTube, but he uses Reddit to block those of others to direct the traffic to his. I think Fandom (the shitty wiki site with all the ads) run a lot of gaming communities, again, to drive ad revenue. Lot of that shit going on. I mean, if they tried that on Lemmy, someone could just open a community on another instance and the users could then decide who they want to support.

  Is Wikipedia susceptible to that kind of influence? Of course it is. And I worry about it being taken over by the wrong people. I don’t think that has happened yet, but I’ve seen it happen on other sites.

  To be clear, we should definitely support Wikipedia against the alt right, but we should also be cautious that they, and other bad actors, don’t destroy its credibility from within. Yes, the alt right has their own Wikipedia (Conservapedia or something like that) but that’s not good enough, they want ours to be theirs, too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wikipedia is resilient because it is boring⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Is it paywalled in some countries? I saw the article when it first went up and it was paywalled then — The Verge restricts new articles to paid subscribers. But after an hour or two it went free to read and the link is fine now. At least from my machine in my location — can’t speak for others and the Archive link is definitely welcome.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sextortion with a twist: Spyware takes webcam pics of users watching porn⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Right, the part I don’t get is, the video of you isn’t going to include what you’re looking at. And if it does you can say they faked it. They could put anything there. They don’t have a shot that includes both you and the screen. They can get sound though, so they can match sound, but that can be faked too. Strip out the audio. Separate the sounds of what you were really watching from the ambient sounds (and the grunts/moans from you) and then dub those sounds over the new audio and it should be passable.

  Also, I just wouldn’t do anything embarrassing with a camera pointed at me. I’d cover the camera or point it away from me. Even sitting on the toilet browsing, back cameras point down at the floor, front camera points up, maybe gets the top of my face? Nothing private is seen by the camera by my best intentions. I just do this naturally. I guess others don’t?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sextortion with a twist: Spyware takes webcam pics of users watching porn⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Black Mirror had an episode about this.

  Surprised it took someone this long to actually make it.

  I forget the name of the episode. If you’re curious, it’s on Netflix, it’s in season 3, and it’s right before San Junipero. It was bleak AF, which is why the only happy (and arguably the best) Black Mirror episode came right after it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK government trial of Microsoft's M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, no shit. But they nearly doubled the price. I canceled my membership, but I doubt enough did to actually matter.

  I was fine paying $60 a year for Office. I was never gonna use the AI stuff. When they said it was $100, I bailed. So now they don’t get the $60. But enough people will go on paying that they will actually make more money on Office in the next year, not less.

  Not enough people are willing to vote with their wallets or even their feet to effect any meaningful change. At least not when it comes to their tech toys.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Half of Young Men Would Rather Date an AI Girlfriend Than Face Loneliness or Rejection, New Report Reveals⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You don’t believe it’s ever happened?

  I don’t know why the CSS isn’t loading on this CNN link, other than maybe because the link is 16 years old. (Probably older than the waifu in question.) But here you go: www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/…/index.html

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Poland: Twitter/X facilitated spread of anti-LGBTI hatred and harassment⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Rest of the world: Yeah, we know. Except, it wasn’t just in Poland.

  X is owned by a guy who supports fascist causes in Europe. He used to support one in the US until they had a falling out. He did the Nazi arm gesture (albeit with the wrong arm, IIRC). Then (or perhaps before) he got rid of a bunch of content moderators.

  We know exactly where he stands and what he stands for.

  That said, there are still good people on Twitter. My wife and a bunch of her artist friends. I keep telling her, it’s bad news up there, it’s supporting a bad dude… but this whole community is up there and they won’t move. I’m not sure what it will take at this point.

  Honestly all social media is kinda trash these days.

  Facebook has literally had people killed. Some anti-government rebels were using Facebook in some third world country (I forget the name), and Facebook gave their location data to the government. Volunteered it even. Guess who stopped using Facebook. Wonder what happened. Oh yeah, and you know what Mark Zuckerberg calls his users? “Dumb fucks.” Literally. Can’t make this shit up.

  Reddit was built on CSAM, they even sent one of their early moderators a physical award for running a subreddit with upskirt shots of underage girls. (He was very publicly outed. Guess who didn’t even protect the guy who helped build their empire?) They also tried to falsely accuse a third-party app developer of blackmailing them, but the guy recorded the conversation. A bunch of people rebelled but they all came back around. I myself got banned for suggesting stiffer penalties for child abuse, and I lost the appeal (I figured maybe an AI tagged me but a human would overturn it, but no). So I figure they did me a favor.

  I think it’s mostly the same people who use all these services, from Facebook to right here on Lemmy. And in any group of people, you have a few bad apples. But I think you have to look at the people leading it. What they stand for, how they see the world, the kind of world they want to make.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube is now flagging accounts on Premium family plans that aren't in the same household⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The three people who replied before you said they don’t get the sponsor plugs.

  When I had YTP (I had a trial, it was like 3 months for $1), I got the sponsored segments. So either those other people are lying, or they don’t understand what I’m saying.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube is now flagging accounts on Premium family plans that aren't in the same household⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  So you’re using SponsorBlock as well, or you’re watching videos without sponsors.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do phone scammers work? I get them trying to get another persons money. But how do they get all the info and now can do voice fakes. I highly doubt they just pick a random person and say fuck them⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  They might target, but sometimes they buy information too.

  For example, my wife and I use Visible. It’s Verizon but cheaper (and it’s owned by Verizon). They also sell your number to scammers. So we get a lot of scam calls and voicemails. We just ignore them. Reporting them does nothing because the carrier is who you report them to (on an iPhone) and the carrier is the one that sends them. But I do it anyway. Most of them come in when I’m at work (and without my phone) anyway. So yeah, so they know who we are (name, town we live in). We just don’t engage with them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Michelle Yeoh Admits “We Could Have Done Better” With ‘Star Trek: Section 31’⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It really is. The DS9 story is done anyway, and Garak was the most interesting person on the station by far.

  I’m thinking a limited series formatted like Luther. Short seasons, high quality, but spy stuff instead of cop stuff.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there "headhunters" that work *for* you?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Like an agent? Actors and sports players have them. People who get paid in the millions. So they can hire people to act on their behalf to get them work while they sip martinis by the pool.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube is now flagging accounts on Premium family plans that aren't in the same household⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Why pay for premium anyway? Let alone a family plan. You still get ads. They can be skipped too — SponsorBlock will do it for free. Google could use this but chooses not to.

  They want YouTube to be like cable TV. You pay for it. You watch ads. You pay more for premium channels.