Ephera

@Ephera@lemmy.ml

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Movim: Building a Decentralized Social Network on XMPP⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh man, seeing folks suggest it as a Discord alternative always had me uninterested, because I don’t even use Discord and it just seemed like yet-another-standard.
  Now I’m reading this really technical title for a talk which mentions XMPP and I’m instantly sold.

  Well, to be honest, “Movim” also sounded like a VC-funded startup. Looks like it’s a bus-factor-of-1 open-source project instead, which I have significantly more trust in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's literally science⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, extremely cheesy way of putting it: The best work position is the next one.

  I.e. don’t stay in one position for a long time, but rather switch it up regularly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m always surprised to hear people believe in ghosts, not because I consider it particularly ridiculous, but rather because ghosts have no relevance in my life. I don’t need them to exist to explain what’s happening around me.

  Every few years or so, I might hear a noise where I don’t have an explanation, but that always feels adequately explained by me not knowing things. I’m constantly surrounded by living beings as well as materials that are subject to gravity, temperature, humidity etc.. Occasionally, they’ll make noises quite naturally.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Their point is that one could come up with a billion hypotheticals for what might theoretically exist, because we cannot disprove it. If we spent as much time humming and hawing whether each one actually does exist as we do for ghosts, souls, gods, Big Foot etc., then you won’t be doing anything else in life.
  That’s why it’s a typical position to just say that they don’t exist until proven otherwise.

  Or in the more general sense, this is Occam’s Razor: If there’s multiple possible explanations for something, then one should assume the simplest explanation until proven otherwise.
  And if you hear a door slamming shut in your house, then wind is a much simpler explanation than ghosts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do smoke detectors have little speakers inside them? If yes, would it be possible to hack them to play a little jingle?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I would guess that the units used in smoke alarms and microwaves generally have integrated drivers that only operate at a single frequency.

  Yeah, you could more easily create a rhythm than a full melody. If you get a few devices, which beep at different frequencies each, you could do a lot more by having them beep in succession and in intervals.

  Of course, this requires that they’re roughly in tune, which may not be the case at all. 🥴

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox’s leadership shift proves it: the gamer era is over, AI runs the show now⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair, Sarah Bond was in a similar position and is a woman of color, too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Free and open source RTS 0 A.D. release 28 "Boiorix" is live⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Glasses for correcting far-sightedness do just use a convex lens like in a magnifying glass, so …yes?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Free and open source RTS 0 A.D. release 28 "Boiorix" is live⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hmm, there might be a more proper solution, but picking a lower resolution would probably make things bigger…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Widelands, the open source Settlers-like devs plan to ban all AI generated contributions⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, you don’t really need to announce anything, if the AI-generated submissions were super helpful anyways.

  But yeah, I guess, all I can say is that I really don’t believe your theory. Especially Widelands could’ve done so many other things in the past, if they cared so much for attention.

  But I have also been in the maintainer role, having to deal with generated submissions, and it really isn’t fun. I’m talking specifically about fun, because these are community-driven projects, so you need volunteers to have fun for anything to happen.
  In theory, a generated code submission could bring useful changes to the project, but it still isn’t fun to review, because there isn’t a human on the other side that you can teach. Even worse, you’re effectively just talking to an LLM through a middleman. If I wanted to use an LLM, I’d use it directly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Widelands, the open source Settlers-like devs plan to ban all AI generated contributions⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Open-source projects don’t have anything to sell. They don’t care terribly much for the publicity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sony plans to minimize effect of rising PlayStation 5 memory costs by boosting software and network service revenue, according to CFO⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh man, for some reason I thought the title was going to end with:

  by boosting software and network service efficiency.

  Of course, they’re just talking about offsetting the costs, not actually about reducing them. 🫠

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Young gamers in Japan may not be forming the same attachment to Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest because modern dev cycles are as long as their childhood, users theorize - AUTOMATON WEST⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I was thinking that recently when I realized I’ve known

  the crazy plot twist in Star Wars

  (Luke’s daddy issues)

  for as long as I can remember.

  I’ve also known

  so many iconic characters and scenes

  (Yoda, R2D2, Chewbacca, the metalkini, C3PO, when they boop the Death Star etc.)

  before I was even old enough to watch the movies, too.

  I’m sure they’re cool movies, with lots of cultural relevance, but they’ve been spoiled in every possible way for me, specifically because the older generation loves them so much that they can’t shut up about them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨KaOS Linux Drops KDE Plasma After 12 Years for Niri/Noctalia to Escape systemd - 9to5Linux⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Wow, that is some unexpected news. I guess, they were always quite opinionated and their whole shtick was “GTK bad”, so with Noctalia still being Qt-based and them still using KDE applications, they do still stick to that principle.

  Well, and I do have to say, when I tried KaOS before, it just felt like a more restricted version of most other KDE distributions. You’d need a very specific brand of masochism to find that preferrable. With that Niri+Noctalia desktop, they have a unique selling point beyond being restrictive, so I guess, godspeed to them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lemmynsfw is down, possibly forever. The server is still serving images and videos though - if anyone wants to archive do it now!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I’m all for a place like that existing, but it really doesn’t need to exist in my timeline, which I might scroll while I’m on the bus or such…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why am I able to edit communities that don't belong to me?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Python goes brrr… 🫠

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 576 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, then you should get a mod for that. I can absolutely understand your qualm. Morrowind came out in an era when RPGs were still computerized DnD, and that’s a design decision which aged particularly poorly.

  Admittedly, it was also perhaps just a bad design decision in general. In DnD, you don’t either roll a dice for each sword hit. Nor are you able to miss an enemy from just not being near enough. At the very least, they could’ve played a different sound, if your sword connects, but does no damage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 576 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, it is the green bar. And yes, it drops from attacking.

  As has already been said, stamina potions are often quite worth it. But it also helps, if you switch to walking for approaching an enemy, for example (instead of running). If you’re sprinting across the landscape and get ambushed unexpectedly, then yeah, the game punishes you for being exhausted.

  In general, Morrowind is much more roleplay than the later parts. You can optimize the fun out, by waiting around until your stamina recovers, every so often. But the game gives you enough opportunities to become filthy rich and overpowered, so that you shouldn’t need it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Based on this graph, and this graph alone, guess at what time I completely blocked OpenAI crawlers⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They cause a huge amount of load, deteriorating the service for everyone else. I’m also guessing the time ranges in the graph, where there’s no data, is when OP’s server crashed from the load and had to restart.

  That kind of shit can easily trigger alerting and will look like a DDoS attack. I would be pissed, too, if I dropped everything to see why my server is going down and it’s not even proper criminals, but rather just some silicon valley cunts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Based on this graph, and this graph alone, guess at what time I completely blocked OpenAI crawlers⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My best guess is that they don’t just index things, but rather download straight from the internet when they need fresh training data. They can’t really cache the whole internet after all…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 576 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Speaking of the combat, I can’t say i’m a fan. Maybe there’s something i’m missing but it’s definitely a lacking point of it. I just find myself jabbing at the enemies until either one of us drop dead.

  One thing that’s perhaps not obvious from today’s viewpoint, is that stamina affects your hit chance quite a bit.

  It is also a good idea to be rather skilled in your weapon of choice.

  And of course, the real pro tip is to install a mod which changes the hit feedback. 😅

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let's take a moment to remember the time period when everyone had to adjust to using dual-joysticks on controllers.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, indies are thankfully still covering 2D games, and there has been somewhat of a rebound in general, where e.g. Nintendo will also publish 2.5D versions of some of their games.

  It just always felt weird that AAA studios treated 3D as mandatory, in the name of profit in particular, despite it locking out customers.
  Well, kind of the obvious thing happened: Mobile games. Often fiercely 2D. Often controllable with one finger. And of course, obscenely profitable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Oatly banned from using word ‘milk’ to market plant-based products in UK⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Here in the Ger of Many, you can buy scouring agents which are branded as “scouring milk” (Scheuermilch), but oat milk is where we draw the line, apparently.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let's take a moment to remember the time period when everyone had to adjust to using dual-joysticks on controllers.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, it’s just wild to me, that we went full-force ahead with the whole 3D thing, when you lock out so many potential players with it.
  With 2D games, you can chuck someone a controller and even if they’re just haphazardly pressing buttons, they can still participate in the game. With 3D, no chance.

  And even those who do have practice still struggle with it. Think of a difficult 3D game and I bet it’s a valid joke that the true end boss is the camera.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rechargeable electric arc lighters kinda suck for the average person, and will typically end up as e-waste.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I am skeptical how I might use it to start a campfire even though it’s supposed to be a camping tool.

  Could probably light some tinder with it, like thin sticks or dry grass…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨it's a long distance relationship⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m open for counterarguments, but I always felt this was a silly way of looking at things. You cannot measure stuff at the quantum level without significantly altering what you measured. (You can never measure without altering what you measured, since we typically blast stuff with photons from a light source to be able to look at it, but for stuff that’s significantly larger than photons, the photons are rather insignificant.)

  As such, you can look at measuring quanta in two ways:

  1. Either the quantum had the state that you end up measuring all along. It is only “undetermined”, because strictly nothing can measure it before you do that first measurement.
  2. Or you can declare it to have some magical “superposition”, from which it jumps into an actual state in the instant that you do the measurement.

  Well, and isn’t quantum entanglement evidence for 1.? You entangle these quanta, then you measure one of them. At this point, you already know what the other one will give as a result for its measurement, even though you have not measured/altered it yet.
  You can do the measurement quite a bit later and still get the result that you deduced from measuring the entangled quantum. (So long as nothing else altered the property you want to measure, of course…)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨it's a long distance relationship⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The analogy that makes most sense to me so far, is this:
  You rip a photograph in half and put both halves into envelopes. Now you send one of the envelopes to your friend in Australia. You open the other envelope. Boom! Instantaneous knowledge of what’s in the envelope in Australia. Faster than light!!!

  In quantum terms, you “rip a photograph in half” by somehow producing two quanta, which are known to have correlated properties. For example, you can produce two quanta, where one has a positive spin and the other a negative spin, and you know those to be equally strong. If you now measure the spin of the first quantum, you know that the other has the opposite spin.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Using the same abbreviation scheme as "internationalization" -> "i18n", the word "to" can be abreviated as "t0o".⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hmm, to my knowledge, tx generally means “transmit”, as opposed to rx – “receive”.

  I don’t think, there is much logic to it…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Taste the flavor⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Capsaicin (the chemical that causes the heat sensation in chilis) is soluble in oil, so it can definitely play a role.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Not that limit⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In my experience with maths, there’s a whole bunch of different conventions all over the place, so it might’ve genuinely been how they were taught, even if you were taught differently…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Three dinosaurs in a trenchcoat⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh yeah, that was my assumption, for sure, too. I was just playing devil’s advocate for the trenchcoat theory, because it’s funny.