KoboldCoterie
@KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
- Comment on Two Just Stop Oil protesters attack Magna Carta’s glass case 15 hours ago:
Probably unpopular opinion, but I think these types of protests are actually pretty effective. They make news headlines every time, and people talk about them, and they aren’t hurting anyone… I just feel like they could be more efficient at delivering their message. It seems like “They’re trying to destroy things!” shocks people more than “We’re destroying the entire world while we ignore climate change!”, and drawing attention to that, and how none of these works of art or historical relics really matter in the face of what’s coming if we don’t change course, would draw a more apt parallel between what they’re doing and the message they’re trying to convey.
- Comment on The Rogue Prince of Persia has been delayed to avoid being overshadowed by Hades 2 19 hours ago:
I have been watching the Prince of Persia game, but I would absolutely have glazed right over its release while entranced by Hades II, so yes, I agree with you, it’s a very smart decision on their part.
(Also, can I just say, holy shit is Hades II some good value. It’s basically two games worth of content in one. More than twice the size of Hades I. Utter insanity.)
- Comment on Netflix Doc ‘What Jennifer Did’ Uses AI Images to Create False Historical Record 3 weeks ago:
Documentaries often include recreations of events, such as historical events that weren’t filmed. It’s usually noted as being a recreation or re-enactment. If AI-created images are used instead and are noted as being such, I don’t really see the problem, assuming the images are curated to depict the scene accurately.
- Comment on DMCA Notice Targeting ‘Bypass Paywalls Clean’ Isn’t The Thing to Get Angry About 3 weeks ago:
While that could be a worthy topic of discussion, these scenarios can be immediately addressed using a DMCA counter-notice. BPC’s creator can simply file one with GitLab and in less than two weeks’ time, the platform would have to restore it, if whoever sent the original notice didn’t sue the developer in the United States.
Who is the author of this piece suggesting pays for that potential lawsuit? Like, it’s great to say “Oh, they can totally fight this, and they’re probably in the right to do so”, but companies weaponizing the legal system is basically trivial for them to do, and unless they’re offering to help foot that bill, they’re putting all the risk on the developer which isn’t really fair.
- Comment on CPS says it was wrong to pursue case against press photographer 4 weeks ago:
Being from the US, I initially read the acronym as ‘Child Protective Services’, which put an entirely different spin on the story.
For anyone else who makes this error, it’s ‘Crown Prosecution Service’, a rough equivalent (from what I can tell) to the US district attorney’s office.
- Comment on oops 1 month ago:
During the pandemic, my son orchestrated a prank wherein during one session, the entire class kept telling the teacher she was on mute, despite it not actually being the case, and she spent the whole hour-long period trying to solve the non-existent technical problem. The responsible thing to do would probably have been to put a stop to it but I was just so impressed by his ability to coordinate this with 30 kids that I just couldn’t.
- Comment on Judge rules YouTube, Facebook and Reddit must face lawsuits claiming they helped radicalize a mass shooter | CNN Business 1 month ago:
Did you even read the article we’re discussing, or are you just reading the comments and getting mad?
- No decision has been made. This is simply a judge denying the companies’ motion to have this thrown out before going to trial.
- This is very much different than “the gun market” being indirectly responsible. This is the equivalent of “the gun market” constantly sending a person pamphlets, calling them, emailing them, whatever else, with propaganda until they ultimately decided to act on it. If that was happening, I think we’d be having the same conversation about that, and whether they should be held accountable.
- Whether they’re actually responsible or not (or whether any group is) can be determined in court following all the usual methods. A company getting to say “That’s ridiculous, we’re above scrutiny” is dangerous, and that’s effectively what they were trying to do (which was denied by this judge.)
- Comment on Judge rules YouTube, Facebook and Reddit must face lawsuits claiming they helped radicalize a mass shooter | CNN Business 1 month ago:
If we remove that it become: funnelling a market towards the further consumption of your product. I.e. marketing
And if a company’s marketing campaign is found to be indirectly responsible for a kid shooting up a grocery store, I’m sure we’ll be seeing a repeat of this with that company being the one with a court case being brought against them, what even is this argument?
- Comment on Judge rules YouTube, Facebook and Reddit must face lawsuits claiming they helped radicalize a mass shooter | CNN Business 1 month ago:
Ohh u didnt report someone ur also guilty cant see any problems with this.
That’s… not what this is about, though?
“However, plaintiffs contend the defendants’ platforms are more than just message boards,” the court document says. “They allege they are sophisticated products designed to be addictive to young users and they specifically directed Gendron to further platforms or postings that indoctrinated him with ‘white replacement theory’,” the decision read.
This isn’t about mandated reporting, it’s about funneling impressionable people towards extremist content.
- Comment on Steam :: Introducing Steam Families 1 month ago:
This isn’t Steam specific; this applies to almost every digital marketplace. Yeah, it sucks, but there’s some things you just have to accept. When’s the last time you bought a physical copy of a PC game?
- Comment on Steam :: Introducing Steam Families 1 month ago:
They could have made it an AU only feature, though, and didn’t, to their credit.
- Comment on Steam :: Introducing Steam Families 1 month ago:
Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members’ libraries, even if they are online playing another game. If your family library has multiple copies of a game, multiple members of the family can play that game at the same time.
Well this is exceptionally exciting. This potentially solves 100% of my complaints with Family Sharing as it exists currently.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
The fact that websites like this frame it like a scoreboard is IMO a symptom of the problem. Rather than fetishizing massive wealth, we should treat it as anathema; exclude billionaires from discourse, treat them as mentally ill, distance ourselves from them in every possible way.
- Comment on US lawmakers vote 50-0 to force sale of TikTok despite angry calls from users 2 months ago:
I wonder if this could also be applied to games owned in whole or part by Tencent…
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
But are education costs really so out of reach for younger generations, considering new career opportunities and wage inflation?
Yes.
- Comment on Film Companies Seek ‘Torrenting History’ Related to Redditor 2 months ago:
Wouldn’t things like torrenting records and “movie piracy websites” used fall under fifth amendment protections? They’re being asked to provide a record of the piracy they’ve committed.
- Comment on I'm a US citizen, people in other countries, what do you think when you read stories like these about the US health care system? 2 months ago:
You certainly broke through the propaganda.
But I also constantly hear from Americans that it’s impossible to turn it around, that candidates who support these common sense moves are unelectable and that there is nothing they could ever do about it.
Have we broken through the propaganda, though? Shit, just look at the pushback around Obamacare (which while certainly not ideal was the best public option health care we’ve had available in my lifetime) - there was so much negative press that people just didn’t have any idea how it was actually benefitting them. There’s an old Facebook thread that gets posted from time to time with someone railing against Obamacare while not even realizing they were using it to get coverage.
Even in countries with the bare minimum of democratic guarantees and no money you would have the mother of all endless riots under these circumstances.
I think the biggest thing that a lot of folks from outside the US - especially those in Europe - don’t understand is just how big this country is. We are around 96% as large as the whole of Europe, with about half the population. The BLM protests was the most widespread activism we’ve managed that I can remember, and that was squashed pretty easily. It’s incredibly difficult to get a significant part of the US to coordinate on anything activism-related, and that’s really what it would take to make a difference, I think.
- Comment on I'm a US citizen, people in other countries, what do you think when you read stories like these about the US health care system? 2 months ago:
you’ve gotta go left so hard that the current dems would split into right and left.
That’s great in theory, but if we do that, we’re giving the government to the GOP in the interim, and they’ve made it quite clear that if they get power, they don’t intend to give it up again. Not to mention, the effects of this would extend well beyond our borders. I’ve advocated very strongly for exactly this sort of action in the past, but now is simply not the time.
- Comment on I'm a US citizen, people in other countries, what do you think when you read stories like these about the US health care system? 2 months ago:
The amount of propaganda we’re subject to here is just astounding. News programs, print media, billboards, web articles, everywhere. Just looking at the way a given issue is framed completely differently in different states or cities or from different news sources is pretty eye opening. That, combined with rampant gerrymandering, makes it really hard to blame voters for voting against their self-interest; we’re just being bombarded with media designed to make us think, act and vote a certain way. I’m completely sure my own views are influenced by it, too, to be clear - I’m not claiming to be some pillar of purity.
It’s not that Americans are ‘bad people’ any more than the people in any other country are. It’s just that a relatively few voices are given very large platforms and basically dictate the discourse.
- Comment on I'm a US citizen, people in other countries, what do you think when you read stories like these about the US health care system? 2 months ago:
Incidentally, ranked choice voting was on the ballot where I live in 2020. I actually did spend some time trying to spread the word and drum up support. It didn’t pass, so we’re right back where we started, and I live in one of the most liberal states in the country.
Our state senators, representatives and local government are actually pretty alright, as American government goes, but the fact of the matter is that the country is being held back by a tyranny of the minority and those of us who don’t live in the handful of battleground states that define elections don’t really have much power to influence that.
Getting any sort of federal-level change into effect is basically an impossibility, because (it is my view that) corruption is so rampant. We’d have to oust the majority of the House and Senate and replace them with reasonable people to have any chance of getting the votes for something like that. At this point all we can really do is hope to hold off the fascist wave that’s building.
- Comment on I'm a US citizen, people in other countries, what do you think when you read stories like these about the US health care system? 2 months ago:
The power is in the hands of the voters.
That’s a really hot take. Tell me, who should I vote for to bring about these magical changes I have the power to effect?
- Comment on I'm a US citizen, people in other countries, what do you think when you read stories like these about the US health care system? 2 months ago:
How can an US doctor charge like 10 times the prices on our side of the pond ?
There’s an unspoken assumption that when doctors quote a price, the insurance companies will widdle that down to a fraction of that amount when they pay out, so if a procedure actually costs $X.00, doctors will bill the insurance for $X * Y, so insurance actually ends up paying what it actually costs.
The side effect is that we pay co-pays or deductibles or non-100% coverage amounts based on what insurance was billed, not what the procedure actually cost. It’s actually cheaper in some cases (especially with regards to medications) to not use insurance because then, we’ll get billed what it actually cost, not the grossly inflated amount, and if our coverage is only, say, 50% for a given procedure, or if we have a co-pay on medication, we end up paying less. Meanwhile we’re still paying the insurance companies for the coverage we’re not taking advantage of. The whole system is fucked beyond belief. We know it, we just can’t do anything about it.
“Vote for the politicians who want to fix it!” only works if they actually do want to fix it, and will follow through if elected.
- Comment on Why does it seem that people dislike recordings of their voice more than photos of themselves? 2 months ago:
I’d assume it’s because you see yourself whenever you look in a mirror, and that image matches what a picture of you looks like. However when you talk, what you hear doesn’t match what other people hear, so hearing a recording of the ‘external’ sound of your voice sounds more foreign, and that can lead to discomfort.
- Comment on When people talk about returning the cart after shopping, does that include putting it in a corral, or do you have to take it all the way to the front of the store to be a good person? 2 months ago:
I had that job in high school. When I first started, someone who’d been doing it for years was showing me the ropes, and he pointed out that sometimes people who live nearby the store would just walk to the store, then walk home with the cart, and leave it at the apartment complex, so he would (and thereby I should) periodically walk down there to collect them.
I initially thought this was complete BS and I hated that I was being asked to do it. After the first week or so, I realized what was actually up: He was inviting me to take paid breaks every hour or two, during which I got to take a leisurely 20 minute walk down the street and back, and not have to deal with customers or managers or anyone else, and he’d managed to sell this to management as a benefit to the company. He was an awesome co worker.
- Comment on It’s Surprisingly Easy to Live Without an Amazon Prime Subscription 3 months ago:
From what I’ve seen, the difference is that they either ship it same day, or wait a few days to ship it. It still arrives in the same amount of time from when it ships until I receive it, they just take their time (maybe artificially) in getting it out the door.
- Comment on It’s Surprisingly Easy to Live Without an Amazon Prime Subscription 3 months ago:
I cancelled Prime late last year, and haven’t really missed it, either.
Leaving Prime also meant the end of free Amazon Prime Video (you can still rent or buy many movies without it), but I’ve been able to bear it.
While I had Prime, I think there was 1, maybe 2 instances where I wanted to watch something and it was actually included with Prime. Every other time, Amazon Video had the movie, but they wanted an additional fee to watch it, so this was absolutely no loss.
One thing to note: Every time I check out on Amazon, now, they offer me a reduced price 1-week “trial” of Prime, to get the expedited shipping, for like… $5 or so? If you cancel yours, and also see this offer: You can take the offer, submit your order (and get the free 2 day shipping), then once you get the shipping confirmation, go in and cancel the Prime subscription. Since you’ve had it for only a few hours, Amazon actually refunds the price you paid. In effect, you get the shipping benefits for free. We’ll see if they close this loophole, but for now, it works.
- Comment on Would magically turning all trans people into the gender they want to be be unethical? 3 months ago:
If you modify the thought experiment slightly, it becomes an interesting trolley problem.
Let’s assume the spell you’re using is all or nothing - either it cures everyone, or no one. What if some subset of people explicitly do not consent? How many people would it have to be, or what percentage, before you would consider not doing it? Obviously if only 1 person doesn’t want it, who cares, greater good, but what if it was 99% of people? Where’s the line?
- Comment on Instagram finds that AI Mr beast scams do not go against community guidelines. 3 months ago:
If 500m could take down Meta, I bet we could crowding that shit. Someone set up a GoFundMe!
- Comment on Why can't code be uncompiled? 4 months ago:
The main issue is that to make code human-readable, we include a lot of conventions that computers don’t need. We use specific formatting, name conventions, code structure, comments, etc. to help someone look at the code and understand its function.
Let’s say I write code, and I have a function named ‘findUserName’ that takes a variable ‘text’ and checks it against a global variable ‘userName’, to see if the user name is contained in the text, and returns ‘true’ if so. If I compile and decompile that, the result will be (for example) a function named ‘function_002’ that takes a variable ‘var_local_000’ and checks it against ‘var_global_115’. Also, my comments will be gone, and finding where the function was called from will be difficult. Yes, you could look at that code and puzzle out what it’s doing, but you wouldn’t know that var_global_115 is a username, so you’d have to go find where that variable was set and try to puzzle out where it was coming from, and follow that rabbit hole backwards until you eventually find a request for user input which you’d have to use context clues to determine the purpose of.
It’s not that the code you get back from a decompiler is incorrect or inefficient, it’s that it’s very much not human-readable without a lot of extra investigatory work.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 months ago:
Shit like this feels like such a greed-fueled missed opportunity.
Like, I wouldn’t mind seeing “Sponsored” locations in Google Maps if it was only shown when I was searching for that thing (like, I search for gas stations near me, and it shows a sponsored option at the top), and if it came with a discount for me if I go there. I’d take a 2 minute detour to get a slight discount on my gas purchase, for instance. That’d actually make me care about seeing it. As it stands, Google is the only one benefitting, and it makes me actively not want to go there.