Ephera
@Ephera@lemmy.ml
- Comment on What's the best free version of word? 2 hours ago:
You can switch to the “Tabbed” interface for something more similar MS Office: …libreoffice.org/…/WG2521-UserInterfaceVariants.h…
- Comment on Poor Jeremy 6 hours ago:
Damn, so that’s what it feels like to be left-handed…
- Comment on 14 hours ago:
It’s pretty much just a hook into infodumping about medieval cities…
- Comment on r/Silksong joins lemmy! (And a new lemmy instance) 15 hours ago:
Link for those wanting to subscribe from other instances: !Silksong@indie-ver.se
- Comment on Outstanding in her field: cow recorded using tool for first time 5 days ago:
Oh yeah, as a wise Adam Savage once said:
Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.
That cow in the GIF is screwing around. But if it could have a chat with its cow friends about how that ball is flying and they could write that shit down – and they’d have stable enough of a food supply and no predators – then I 100% believe that they would continue screwing around + writing down, until they’ve figured out a rule for how that ball flies.
And from that point, they would start building trebuchets and take over the world. Cause that’s how things go, appparently…
- Comment on Outstanding in her field: cow recorded using tool for first time 5 days ago:
I mean, I hope so. I’ve just seen this sentiment expressed so often, that cows must be nearly braindead, because you don’t hear them reciting Shakespeare while they’re chewing grass.
I believe, that’s a general herbivore survival strategy to not
recite Shakespearemove much while they’re eating, so that they don’t draw attention from predators and conserve energy. At least, similar behaviour can also be seen in deer and bunnies.But yeah, clearly they’re intelligent enough to have survived until we domesticated them, despite being a big hunk of meat.
- Comment on Outstanding in her field: cow recorded using tool for first time 5 days ago:
They are not typically thought to plan, let alone solve problems. A new study suggests we may have underestimated them.
Never understood these views. Is it not planning, when cows predict where a predator is likely to appear again after it has disappeared behind some shrubs?
And is it not also problem solving in some way to run the hell away from predators?In particular, the tool use category feels like we’re asking a fish to climb a tree. There’s only so much cows can achieve with tools, since they can only hold those tools with their mouths. They might be solving physics equations in their third stomach and we’re asking, if they’ve figured out how to bang two rocks together.
Like, no, I don’t either believe that they are solving physics equations, but you can throw a ball for them and they’ll correctly estimate where it’ll go and in what direction to kick it back:
Which I feel like it should count for more intelligence than being able to extend your reach with a stick.
- Comment on how to dust properly 6 days ago:
Sorry, I meant a mop. Couldn’t think of the word and wanted to express that it should just be damp, not actually wet…
- Comment on 'The past is an underused tool': An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm 6 days ago:
I never understood why we place radiators underneath windows and therefore on outside walls. Is it just a matter of there being space underneath the window sill?
- Comment on how to dust properly 1 week ago:
I can recommend wiping the floor regularly with a damp cloth. Removes a lot of the dust from the room and is relatively quick to do. You don’t have to catch all the corners for that either.
You may want to add a bit of lemon acid to the water every few months or so, since the water will leave behind limescale when it dries, which will make your floor less shiny.
- Comment on Menger cheese = string cheese 1 week ago:
There’s these “ontological arguments”, which are basically folks trying to prove the existence of a god by reasoning with pure logic, so without relying on evidence. And they all sound like that. 🫠
One of the classics goes roughly like this:
- There is good and bad. (Which is one hell of an axiom.)
- A creature can exist which unifies all good properties. (Yet another hell of an axiom.)
- Because this creature has all these good properties, it would be even gooder, if it did exist.
- Since this creature unifies all good properties and its existence is itself a good property, it therefore must exist.
These arguments are also always funny, because the same logic can be used to “prove” all kinds of things. For example, a perfect island can exist, therefore it must exist. 🙃
As far as I can tell, the arguments don’t actually get better over time either, but rather just more convoluted, to make it less obvious how silly they are… - Comment on Bethesda announces a new Fallout... reality show 1 week ago:
Yeah, it reads like they wanted to make that reality show and then just slapped a random franchise on it for PR reasons.
- Comment on How do I properly and safely clean smartphone? 1 week ago:
Yeah, window cleaner or alcohol in general has the advantage that it dissipates, making it much less likely for it to get into the electronics and shortcircuit something.
- Comment on What is Substack and why all the sudden do all the content creators seem to be on it? 1 week ago:
It’s not yet in its enshittification phase, so right now it seems like a good deal. But before you know it, blog posts there will be blocked by all kinds of overlays and whatnot, like they are on Medium these days.
- Comment on Pet Peeves with Games? 1 week ago:
I think, this was on my mind: pt.mezzo.moe/w/waYE4NkZGpqQ9qpW1th1ga?start=15m10…
I don’t know, with this example in particular, I find it quite disruptive, too, that there’s explanations of the game mechanics and then the character barges in with some funky expression and some rhethoric question à la “And then I’m that thing?”. Yeah, dude, did you not listen to the tutorial ghost explaining that just then?
In fairness, this is a game that’s pretty much story-first with a bit of puzzling in between. And it was only that Let’s Play that I saw; I would’ve almost certainly skipped that game, if I came across the store page, since I assume, it would’ve been obvious that it’s a story game.
Well, and also in fairness, this is a pretty fringe game. There’s a decent chance that it isn’t considered ‘good’ in other aspects either.In general, I don’t want to be too critical. Not every game has to be for me. Well, most don’t have to be, since I don’t play an insane variety of games to begin with. But yeah, still just wanted to throw that into the conversation as a pet peeve of mine, since there’s (perhaps less egregious) examples of that in a variety of games.
- Comment on Pet Peeves with Games? 2 weeks ago:
I think, you’re perhaps conflating story with gameplay here? I do think, it’s good to incorporate the tutorial into normal gameplay. So, you start playing the actual game right away and get told the controls as you need them. And sure, if it is a story-driven game, that probably means there has to be a story segment before all that to explain why you’re starting on this journey to begin with. So, I’m not saying I want the tutorial to be an entirely separate thing, like it typically was in the 90s.
I’m mainly just complaining about when it’s too intermixed, because I’d like to be able to skip all the text boxes where they’re rambling about the story. If they switch mid-sentence to explaining what you’re supposed to do and what buttons to press, then I’m likely to miss that while skipping through the story bits.
Preferably, there’s a separate info box on screen after the dialogue ends (which is a good idea for several reasons), but it could also just be highlighted, if they want it to be within the dialogue. - Comment on Switch 2 Sales Reportedly Struggled Over The Christmas Period 2 weeks ago:
I actually reinstalled it myself after writing that comment. 😅
I only really started to fully appreciate it, when I learned that drifting gives you a boost. So, if you’re going around curves, you pretty much always want to drift, which then kicks your speed up once you stop drifting. Maintaining a higher speed than your car normally goes, is vital for beating the harder difficulties.
- Comment on Pet Peeves with Games? 2 weeks ago:
I really don’t like when games intermix tutorial with story. Unless the story is the main attraction, I cannot get myself to care for it. And then having to click through tons of story texts to pick out the tutorial parts, that is just cumbersome.
I also have to say, though, that it really doesn’t help my immersion when the fairy, that just told me she’s from the clan Uhgaloogah, then tells me to press the X button on my controller.
If you put in a lot of effort, you can make it credible that the controller is part of the game world and the fairy would know the buttons. But most games do not put in that effort. And then, IMHO it is a lot less immersion-breaking when the game just shows an info box, where we both know that it isn’t part of the game world. - Comment on Switch 2 Sales Reportedly Struggled Over The Christmas Period 2 weeks ago:
Mario-Kart-at-home by the way: supertuxkart.net
Buy now for $0 and get Rocket-League-at-home for free on top!
(It’s one of the game modes in SuperTuxKart. 🙃)But yeah, $80 is kind of wild, even just because it’s fundamentally still a cart game. You pretty much need a group to regularly play it with, otherwise you won’t get your money’s worth out of that.
- Comment on Is ice heavier than water? 2 weeks ago:
Ackshually, gram is a measurement of mass, not of weight. And because a gram of ice takes up more volume than a gram of water, it is likely to float on top of the water, where it is slightly further away from the center of gravity, therefore experiencing less strong gravity. As such, a gram of ice likely weighs less than a gram of water. :P
- Comment on AI-Induced RAM Crunch Could Push Next PlayStation and Xbox Past 2028 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, it feels like those consoles would be more expensive, for hardware that’s not going to be terribly stronger, to play games which don’t need the visual upgrade, and all of that wants to be paid by players with less money to spend.
- Comment on Is there a practical reason a lot of FOSS project don't offer torrent downloads or is it just a stigma thing? 3 weeks ago:
For me, it’s a matter of infrastructure for regular downloads being free. I just upload the distributable into a release on Codeberg and I’m done.
Whatever is needed to provide a torrent is just additional complexity, where I’m not sure it actually benefits anyone.
Of course, if I wanted to become more independent from my code hosting platform, torrents would be something to consider. But my projects are far too unknown to get seeded, so it would still just be a direct download with additional hoops. - Comment on Pizza is a tomato pie. 3 weeks ago:
Where I live, we have a food that’s basically flatbread with toppings. One of the popular toppings is apple slices and raisins, which looks like an apple pie. And we do like to joke that pizza is simply the tomato variant of it, too. 🙃
- Comment on Why We're Boycotting Xbox (and Maybe You Should Too) - People Make Games 5 weeks ago:
Fuck Microsoft
- Comment on Does each country have a book/library of the laws of the land that a commoner can consult to check if they're about to do something illegal? 5 weeks ago:
For Germany, there’s also www.gesetze-im-internet.de/index.html which lists the laws in their current version, similar to dejure, but well, the webpage is actually hosted by our government. It’s as official as you’re gonna get on the internet.
- Comment on Are you a market or supermarket enthusiast? 1 month ago:
Yeah, I figured, once I actually thought about it. 😅
- Comment on Are you a market or supermarket enthusiast? 1 month ago:
I’m now imagining you going to the grocery store, pretending to be your twin, to get the employee discount. 🙃
- Comment on Are you a market or supermarket enthusiast? 1 month ago:
Would love to know, too. To my European eyes, it looks like onions, potatoes, apples and tomatoes, but surely they have some different produce there. Whatever is in the bottom-left does look unfamiliar, at least…
- Comment on The past was not that cute 1 month ago:
I think, she’s just showing an example of the aesthetic that we would now call “cottagecore”, even though it would not have been called that back then. Lots of trends did not have a name when they were their most popular…
- Comment on Quitting Spotify for Navidrome 1 month ago:
A few years ago, I set up a home-server with music and some pictures on there, and recently I noticed that my storage disk was getting full. Then I saw that the disk only had 16 GB and wondered, where the hell I got that small of a disk from.
So, I go to plug in a bigger disk and can’t even find the original disk at first. Turns out my whole storage capacity was one of these bad boys:
And yeah, I’ve got about 1800 songs, clocking in at 5.8 GB, so even that tiny storage would easily be enough for a much larger collection.
And I do also have them replicated on my phone, for listening on the go. (Don’t even need an SD card in my case.)
