Thorry

@Thorry@feddit.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EU tax officials confront the most pressing legal question of our time: If you sell RuneScape gold to someone and they use it to buy a magic sword, do you still have to pay taxes?⁩ ⁨⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah EU VAT opened up a whole can of issues. It’s super complicated and annoying, with all sorts of weird exceptions. The exact opposite of what VAT was supposed to be. EU countries should have just gotten their shit together instead of this patch work.

  I’ve actually seen that fraud in action. People used to ship around huge amounts of phones and CPUs, because they were high value, but took up very little room. A truck full of pallets of tray CPUs could be worth a huge amount.

  I think now most of the holes are patched. But for a while there were special rules surrounding phones and CPUs just because they were often used in the fraud scheme.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EU tax officials confront the most pressing legal question of our time: If you sell RuneScape gold to someone and they use it to buy a magic sword, do you still have to pay taxes?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  The real genius behind VAT is that it isn’t just applied to transactions between business and consumer, but to all transactions. The rule is normally very simple, it’s applied to all transactions, with few exceptions. The rate can vary, but those rules are also usually very simple. The trick is: When a business has a transaction with another business, VAT is still applied, but the selling party has to levy the tax and forward it to the government and the purchasing party can ask the government to give back the tax they paid on the transaction.

  This may seem a bit convoluted, where the tax goes through the government only to end up back in the business. But this ensures the tax is applied always. Normally a profitable company would sell their products for more than the components they purchased. The difference between these two is the value added. And by getting back less from the purchases as what they have to pay for sales, the tax is only applied to the value added. And for consumers it functions as a sales tax, being applied to all transactions and no way around it.

  This system is way harder to mess with than any other form of sales tax. The rules are simple with few exceptions and thus very easy to reinforce. It’s also a more fair system, where each party in the chain pays a part instead of the consumer paying for all of it.

  In the end the consumer pays most, but as the taxes are supposed to be used to make their lives better, it seems like a fair deal? Now if you have a government that’s more about filling their own pockets than actually doing what they need to do to improve the lives of the people living there, well then you are going to have a bad day. But that doesn’t happen in civilized countries right?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A broken clock is right twice a day, but a wrong clock is just wrong.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It would depend on how fast it runs. The faster it runs the more times it’s right. So if we extrapolate, once you get a clock running backwards fast enough, it will be right all of the time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨smol⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Outer Wilds has taught me these dudes are larger than my space ship.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shh⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve seen the same or even worse. Pallets of stuff would be received, all wrapped up tight in an ungodly amount of plastic. The pallet would be unwrapped, plastic discarded and the contents scanned to confirm the correct items and number of items were present on the pallet. After each item was scanned and it’s serial number recorded, someone would go to validate the items. When validated and found to be correct, the items were again stacked on a pallet and wrapped by another ungodly amount of plastic. The terrible thing was, as I was outside of the distribution chain, I had a view on the bigger picture. Items would often go through several of these places, each doing the exact same. The amounts of plastic each item consumed in the process was huge. But it was necessary, errors were found often, so the steps needed to be done. And the pallets could often get wet, nobody would accept soggy cardboard, so it needed to be wrapped.

  The issue is plastic is basically free and extremely good at what it does. A more permanent solution like encasing the goods in some other material, like wood or metal would be more expensive and do a worse job. It’s similar to asbestos, where the solution is so good, nothing else can compete. It took a mighty effort and strict laws to mostly abandon asbestos. I fear humanity has lost its will to live and won’t have it in us to ban single-use plastic.

  Some places did use metal trollies instead of pallets, but the pallets were never really a problem. They were almost always made from sustainable woods, be re-used often, till they just about fell apart. After which they were sent out for recycling, either back into a refurbished pallet, or a stamped recycled wood pallet or other recycled wood product.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨And now it's not even working properly⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I have definitely seen TVs where there is a top transparant plastic layer that looks like protective film but is absolutely not supposed to come off. I’ve even seen two models of OLED TVs that are very similar, and have plastic on the metal backing. On one of them it says to absolutely not remove the plastic. On the other it says to make sure to remove it, otherwise the TV will overheat.

  Even if you know a lot about these kinds of things, don’t be proud and just read the manual / quick start guide. It will tell you what plastic needs to be removed and what needs to stay.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Intel says Arc GPUs will live on after Nvidia deal⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Intel actually bought AMD Radeon GPUs for their Hades Canyon (Kaby Lake G) platform. It was a NUC mainboard with a full Intel platform, combined with an AMD Radeon GPUs. The Intel CPU and the GPU (including HBM2 memory for the GPU) was all on one package.

  I think they did a couple of follow ups on that as well, because it worked very well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why did in game cameras take so long to get good?🤔⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The fixed camera was a staple in 3D horror games. I think it started with Alone in the Dark (1992)? But there might even be something earlier that started it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨🤡🤡🤡⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Fun fact, the Moon actually has a very low albedo, meaning it’s actually not all that reflective. The surface differs a bit, depending on the composition. But overall it’s quite close to a dark asphalt.

  Our eyes (or more our brains) are very good at high dynamic range and discerning details. That’s why a Moon rising may look huge, bright and beautiful. But when you try and take a picture, it looks terrible.

  Now this isn’t to say the moon isn’t actually bright when standing upon it. The Moon is at the same distance more or less to the Sun as the Earth and the lack of atmosphere causes the contrast to be higher. We all know standing outside on a bright day will be pretty damned bright. Even when looking at a darker surface like a road, it can be bright out. Thus we wear sunglasses, as did the astronauts, just integrated into their visors. And our eyes adjust to let in less light, as to not blind us.

  And our cameras need to be set differently, to prevent the picture from being blown out. Usually automatically, but with fancy or old cameras manually. The astronauts did the same, making it very hard to estimate how bright the surface actually is. If we were to lock our camera on Earth, taking a picture of the bright Moon in the night sky. Then go to the Moon’s surface and take another picture with the same settings, the brightness would be the same. However the picture would be a pretty terrible one.

  Humans are terrible at estimating things like brightness, because our eyes and brains adjust to the light level. This is required to make us better at seeing the world and thus surviving, but not as good at being scientific measuring devices. Thus we’ve used our tools to create actual scientific measuring devices and have mapped the albedo of the Moon. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s all perfectly consistent, who would have thought?

  This is the thing about all these Facebook conspiracies. They are often based on actual real mismatches. Things that make you go: “Hmmm that IS weird!”. But then instead of doing the research and finding out the answer (which usually takes about 5 mins of searching), they abuse the confusion to promote their bullshit theories. Sometimes it will be just straight up lies, but sometimes it’s actually an interesting thing that lies beneath.

  I’ve also noticed a lot of them can also be easily defeated when they claim stuff, that it only supports their case if it were always the case. Like for example flat earth because no plane routes that travel between certain places on the southern hemisphere. That would be a strong point for them, except 1 min of googling shows there are actually active plane routes that would be impossible on a flat earth. With live tracking available and people posting on social media getting on and off these planes. Or for example the Earth only being 6000 years old because dino bones are plastic in museums. Sure if all dino bones were plastic, that would be a strong point. But in a lot of cases there are a lot of actual bones. Augmented with plastic to show a full skeleton, where only a partial one was dug up. Which is often plainly stated next to the bones, if those idiots could read of course. Or the skull being hung at the top made from plastic, with the real actual skull in a display next to it, so people can look at it closely.

  Flat earth is so dumb, it can be disproven in a billion different ways in very little time. I’m not convinced anyone actually believes that crap. They also do basically nothing to disprove the round(ish) Earth model, they just say it’s nonsense because they say it is. And invent crazy dumb shit for their own “theories” that aren’t even internally consistent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Purpose of Difficulty | GMTK Mini⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Man fuck those Ninja Gaiden birds

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Purpose of Difficulty | GMTK Mini⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I haven’t done a whole lot with the crests as I found the starter crest to be very versatile and I got used to the moveset. I have played around with the Beast crest which is really fun, allowing you to just go ham on enemies. However I found against bosses the Beast crest doesn’t work at all, as the damage taken is too large for the lifesteal to overcome. Unless you are dodging and weaving, which defeats the purpose of the Beast crest a bit.

  The patches that have been release will probably help a lot of people with the bosses as, if I understood correctly, they’ve decreased the contact damage. This will help a lot with the feeling if boss fights being unfair due to hits taken are often compounded by subsequent contact damage. On many occasions I’ve gone from 4 health, doing OK to dead in less than one sec. This can feel very unfair. Especially after going through a long and annoying run back and then 2 easy phases, just to get to the hard part and die right away.

  It feels like if one were to simply be able to practice the hard part, bosses would be defeated much faster. The runbacks (which often include shortcuts it must be said) combined with long easier phases contribute to a feeling of unfair difficulty. It also makes things take up more time than needed, leaving people to feel like the game is wasting their time. Or difficulty for the sake of being difficult. As the video stated, difficulty is a tool that most be wielded carefully.

  When doing for example a SL1 run in a Souls game, the player must play at a high level without many or even any mistakes. Boss fights will take longer and the stakes go up. The difference is, one chooses to do these challenges. Often only after already mastering a game. For many people Silksong feels like being thrown into the deep end, without being able to properly swim.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Purpose of Difficulty | GMTK Mini⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You misunderstand. I was limiting what I said to act 1, just like the video did. The things you are talking about are in act 2. I’m glad to see it gets better in act 2, however I’m not as far into that yet. Most people running into these issues will quit before beating act 1 most likely, so it’s kind of a moot point.

  I simply can’t believe those damage numbers. I was talking about the nail upgrade in the town. Is there some other upgrade I’m not aware of? All the low level enemies seem to take the same number of hits. In Hollow Knight the upgrades to the nail were very noticeable. The nail upgrade in Silksong felt like it did nothing at all. Bosses might have gone from 16 hits to 12 hits per phase, which is still a whole lot of hits. Especially as windows for damage are brief and far in between and bosses have 4 phases typically.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Purpose of Difficulty | GMTK Mini⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree with a lot in this video, but disagree on one key point. You can go explore somewhere else and get upgrades and stuff.

  I really liked this aspect in Elden Ring, where the bosses could get pretty hard, but you could always just go explore. Explore the lands, level up, find cool weapons and upgrades to get really OP. Then return to the boss and kick their ass. Once you’ve put 500 hours into it, you do challenge runs like SL1. But if you only want to put in 100 hours, you can easily beat it, no matter your skill level. The exploration feels great, the world is interesting and there is a lot to find. As compared to the previous Souls games where the game would just put a big roadblock boss in your path and good luck getting past it. Or a game like Nioh that gives you a tutorial boss, with which one struggles a bit but then beats pretty fast, only to almost right away throw in the next boss which is so hard about 70% of people quit on him (according to stats I’ve seen).

  However, I feel like this doesn’t apply to Silksong at all. You can go explore and get a whole lot of stuff, but a lot of it seems totally useless? You can get one damage upgrade, which does fuck all (haven’t looked it up, but feels like 15% maybe?). The different crests are really cool, but won’t help you beat bosses. There is maybe 1 full mask or 2? But as everything does 2 damage, that’s only 1 extra hit. The secondary weapons are mostly useless and as the video said, you need to farm resources to be able to use them.

  I consider myself pretty good at these kinds of games. Not great, but pretty good. I’ve played the fuck out of DS1, DS3 and Elden Ring. I’ve beaten Nioh 1. I’ve done SL1 runs and all sorts of challenges in DS1, DS3 and Elden Ring, I’ve done randomisers etc. I’ve beaten Hollow Knight 3 times, the third time I did 112%.

  For Silk Song I’m about 20 hours in, I’ve beaten Act 1 and did pretty much everything I could find (not spoiling myself on anything). I’m part of the way into Act 2 and I don’t know if I want to play anymore. Every enemy is a bullet sponge, requiring a lot of hits to get out of the way. Everything does so much damage. Simply exploring and finding shit feels like a slog. I’ve had many completely unfair deaths where I got booped by an enemy only to fall into a pit of spikes and die. You go from full health to death very fast. And the bosses just keep on getting more difficult. It feels like a grind instead of fun.

  On the other hand, I love the way the game looks, I love the boss music (not as much a fan of the level music, too much atmospheric, too little actual music), I love how smooth it feels to play. And I love the world and want to explore it all. That’s where I disagree with the video, I’m not in the rage quit phase, I’m in the this isn’t fun to play phase.

  Maybe I’ll continue, I know I have the skills to beat the game. But if I’m not having fun, what’s even the point of playing anymore?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Down time⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Whatever you do, don’t look up Gandalf Big Naturals online, trust me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The song that never ends announces what it is in the first line, then expects us to believe some people started singing it without knowing what it was⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨User "threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works" is banning users for downvoting his posts.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  What are you talking about? Shows up in a community? People see Musk fellatio posts in their All feed and downvote it. Lemmy communities aren’t a closed thing and banning people for voting is dumb.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft mandates a return to office⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

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• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft mandates a return to office, 3 days per week⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

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• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientific unprogress...⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  One of the most important ones that a lot of people use every day are the huge advancements that have been made in creating modern chips. It might not be something new and exciting, but it actually involves very groundbreaking work and huge breakthroughs. Not just the crazy machines that ASML makes, thought to be breaking the laws of physics just years ago. But also advancements in manufacturing, being able to create super advanced 3D structures and large scale manufacturing at a very high level, yet with a surprising consistency in quality and low cost. Not just for ever bigger, more efficient and faster chips, but also things like MEMS at tiny sizes and low cost.

  Often it’s taken for granted what we have. People saying stuff to the sentiment that this isn’t the future, everything is boring, we haven’t got flying cars or people living on Mars. But the fact we all got this ultra powerful computer, with a high resolution high framerate self emitting screen, no active cooling, a bunch of sensors, lots of memory and storage and hyper connected to all sorts of networks, all powered by a high capacity high power low wear battery should be mind blowing. And not just that, but it fits in our pockets and they are so cheap everyone has at least one. Just because we’ve chosen to spec our tech tree into the small stuff instead of the large stuff, doesn’t mean we haven’t come a long way.

  I think people look at the past at new “inventions” and think that’s the way progress is. New revolutionary stuff. It’s why people often invest in crowd funding of obvious scam products. They want something that changes the game. In reality it’s a lot of little steps that create a big change over time. And imho this has always been the case. We always hear about the Wright brothers “inventing” the airplane. Like they had some magic sauce and thought of something nobody else thought of before. Then made it and bam the world was changed. In reality they didn’t invent anything, they developed it. They made prototypes and iterative refinements. And they were far from the only ones working on the exact same concept. If they didn’t finish first, someone else would have within the same time frame. But the romantic story of two American blokes with the right stuff changing the world all on their own just sounds good.

  So let’s also celebrate the thousands of smaller breakthroughs that got us where we are today.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Official Training⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Where I live it’s the same, the machine does all the work. But there’s always one or two dudes that walk ahead of the truck and make sure it’s all positioned and spaced correctly. Especially in the city where streets can be narrow and there isn’t enough room, they end up just wheeling the bins into the machine a couple at a time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Adhered so hard it delaminated the glass.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I keep a very sharp scalpel next to my printer. It’s super thin and a bit flexible, but still has a sturdy handle to hold on to. With it I can get in between the glass and the PETG no matter how stuck it is. Once I cut a little bit, usually the whole print lifts right away.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Say hello to Bary⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Your mom’s so fat, she pushes the barycenter of the solar system outside of the diameter of the Sun

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Big Surprise—Nobody Wants 8K TVs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Tell me Legolas, what do your elven eyes see?

  Fucking pixels Aragorn, it makes me want to puke. And what the fuck is up with these compression artifacts? What tier of Netflix do you have?

  Sorry Legolas, could we just enjoy the movie?

  Maybe if the dwarf stops stinking up the place. And don’t think I didn’t see him take that last chicken wing, fucking dwarves.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Left 4 Dead creator teasing new four player co-op shooter⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Talk about a low bar

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨30-year-old solar panels still going strong⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well yes and no. It’s a giant piece of silicon, but it’s also exposed to high energy rays all the time. Panels can suffer from water ingress and then crack when it freezes. They are exposed to all sorts of animals, both big and small that can cause damage. Have their top surfaces get more opaque due to normal erosion. Those things can either outright break the panel, or slowly make it less efficient. UV rays alone cause a degradation of around 1% every year. However modern more efficient compact panels suffer more from this than the older kind. So old panels might still be going strong, but give a modern panel the same amount of ageing and it might do a lot worse.