Ephera

@Ephera@lemmy.ml

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bethesda is allegedly working on ‘multiple Fallout games’, including Fallout 3 Remastered, teases report⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, they do have the infinite money glitch, a.k.a. being owned by Microsoft. If Microsoft’s investors think these Fallout 5 will make its money back, it’s more lucrative to get started on it sooner rather than later.

  And it does also need to be said that they can’t keep remastering Fallout titles forever. They need to develop a new title at some point.

  Bethesda Game Studios has so far always only had one game in development at a time, which should be TES6 right now. If they are working on Fallout 5, we’re likely talking pre-production stages. So, it might very well be the case that the two remasters come out in roughly equal spacing before Fallout 5 comes out in a few years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Romero Games reportedly met with Microsoft just a day before the publisher pulled funding for the studio, and there was 'no mention' of the decision that put over 100 people out of work⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  From what I know of large corporations, I’d honestly be surprised, if the Microsofties they met, knew that this was happening…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's up with the sudden increase in AI slop?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, so much of it is a mediocre/old joke overlayed on a generated image.

  I’m guessing, there’s people out there, who genuinely just flood social media with these mediocre posts to try to grow accounts or similar…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you all keep the area around the toilet paper dust-free?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I was also surprised how well it works, but you genuinely just sploosh water with a mild bit of pressure at it and it comes off.

  I’ve been using a hand-operated travel bidet, which is basically just a squeeze bottle with a nozzle, and that still gets me perfectly clean. Definitely much cleaner than with toilet paper.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can all the milk replacements bubble if you blow thru a straw in it like a child?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Does cow milk bubble in some special way? Like, you can make bubbles rise even in water, but I’m guessing, that’s not what we’re talking about…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Having the ability to lie and manipulate with no remorse will get you much further in this world than having morals and being correct⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  By some definition of “further”, sure. Mainly the definition someone with no remorse would have.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Xbox Hardware Is Dead,' Says Founding Team Member, 'It Looks Like Xbox Has No Desire — Or Literally Can't — Ship Hardware Anymore' - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, sometimes I wonder if they do these bad names for the free publicity of people complaining about them. But then there’s plenty examples where the name isn’t just clunky, but rather actively confusing for potential users…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Young men are 'playing videogames all day' instead of getting jobs because they can mooch off of free healthcare, claims congressman⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  His job is to spread lies and fear, so no reason for him to say something different, if he would know reality…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Entirely too many questions about Mastodon. So sorry.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It is similar to Bluesky, yes. They both got a lot of inspiration from Twitter (before Musk turned it to shit/X).

  And I would say that the discussions are more shallow than on Lemmy. Even though Mastodon has a higher character limit than Twitter and many Mastodon instances effectively remove the character limit, it’s still fundamentally a platform for shortform interactions. Infodumping is rarely seen, because you need to create a silly number of chained messages.

  On the flipside, though, you get to know people. I do appreciate the time I spent on Mastodon, because of that. It’s a very different perspective as not everything is about discussing cold hard facts, but rather also people’s hobbies and struggles and whatnot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What if the idea of “life” and “intelligent life” is all relative?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I find ants and bees and such interesting in this regard. They work together more seamlessly than humans do and arguably have a higher form of sociality.

  Especially in Western cultures, we humans like to think of the individual and compare ourselves to the individual of other species. But that is a logical fallacy.
  Are you smarter than an ant? Sure. But are you smarter than a human-sized ant hive? That’s a far trickier question to answer…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨! Mastodon new ToS from July 1has a binding abbreviation wave !!r⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I don’t like when corporations put stuff like that into their ToS, but at the same time, I 100% understand why every open-source license under the sun has it. You’re giving it away for free, so you don’t want people to sue for more than you’re providing for free.

  Mastodon.social is currently very much in the latter camp of giving things away for free. I also understand that a service is yet another beast than a piece of software, since they hold your personal data and may leak/sell it. But yeah, at this point in time, I wouldn’t want someone to be able to sue Mastodon.social out of existence. I guess, it depends a lot on how it’s formulated in the end…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marathon is delayed⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I could imagine that they didn’t want to do something called “Destiny 3”, because people would expect that to be better than Destiny 2, which is virtually impossible, if you’re gonna start over from scratch, with how many years of development have gone into Destiny 2 by now…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Best place for a community alternative to Facebook group?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve never used Facebook, but I’ve seen people say that Friendica is quite similar to Facebook (in case you care about that).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you can't make it yourself, store bought is fine⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think, that’s not a coral, but rather a tree next to a stream…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plex has paywalled my server!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, the wording is confusing. A long time ago, there was no paid software, there was only software where you got the source code and other software where e.g. it was pre-installed on some hardware and the manufacturer didn’t want to give the source code.

  In that time, a whole movement started fighting for software freedom, so they called their software “free”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I hate audio animal repellers⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I can hear them, too. The upper limit for what humans may be able to hear is around 20 kHz, so 15.5 kHz is well within range.
  Of course, not everyone can hear them. Some folks just don’t have the same range, but in particular also the older you get, the less flexible the eardrum becomes, which zaps that range, too.

  And yes, they sound fucking awful and give me instant headache, which is perhaps unsurprising as that’s literally how they deter other animals. I wish they were illegal or at least regulated to actually be out of hearing range.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Radio transmissions⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, but that doesn’t actually happen in reality, that things just stop changing. Occasionally, you get rather isolated ecosystems where the changes go back and forth in a mostly self-contained manner and then adaptation might plateau for a bit, but at some point, a lightning or an earthquake or something will strike and then it’s back to adaptation.
  Well, and those species which were the most adapted to this isolated ecosystem are also likely to die out then, rendering this temporary endpoint not exactly “ideal” either.

  But it’s also not one singular endpoint either. Diversity is itself a strength, which helps species survive. This is particularly important where there is change, because external influences will affect different members of this species more or less strongly.
  But even without change, splitting the work is beneficial. This can be as mundane as not everyone carrying around the equipment for bringing out the babies. But in particular with societal structures, it can also mean that the big muscle folks might do the muscly tasks and the big brain folks do the brainy tasks and those with claws for hands open up all the tin cans.
  Evolution will not push past that to arrive at some hypothetical “ideal endpoint”, because that society with work splitting is fitter for survival than a monoculture would be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Radio transmissions⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I hate that so much. Often times, it’s clearly just easier/cheaper to put makeup on a human actor, or at least for the aliens to be able to use the same equipment. But it’s so boring. If I want to see a humanoid with different skin color, I’ll visit my neighbor.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Radio transmissions⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “Ideal endpoint of evolution” is itself a funny joke to those who participate in knowing things…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT 'got absolutely wrecked' by Atari 2600 in beginner's chess match — OpenAI's newest model bamboozled by 1970s logic⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You can make external tools available to the LLM and then provide it with instructions for when/how to use them.
  So, for example, you’d describe to it that if someone asks it about math or chess, then it should generate JSON text according to a given schema and generate the command text to parametrize a script with it. The script can then e.g. make an API call to Wolfram Alpha or call into Stockfish or whatever.

  This isn’t going to be 100% reliable. For example, there’s a decent chance of the LLM fucking up when generating the relatively big JSON you need for describing the entire state of the chessboard, especially with general-purpose LLMs which are configured to introduce some amount of randomness in their output.

  But well, in particular, ChatGPT just won’t have the instructions built-in for calling a chess API/program, so for this particular case, it is likely as dumb as auto-complete. It will likely have a math API hooked up, though, so it should be able to calculate a logarithm through such an external tool. Of course, it might still not understand when to use a logarithm, for example.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If we replace most plastic with a non plastic alternative and would that really be better?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think, it’s possible to find alternative materials which behave similar to plastic in certain use-cases.

  But yeah, I can’t see a one-for-one replacement happening. It’s part of the appeal of plastic, that it does not degrade.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨lemm.ee is shutting down at the end of this month⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  join-lemmy.org can help you find an instance based on your interests.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨lemm.ee is shutting down at the end of this month⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If they couldn’t find/trust additional admins, I don’t see how they could’ve handed it off entirely…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨IPv6 for self hosters⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t have much experience with IPv6 yet either, but as I understand, the primary benefit is that you can get rid of a lot of the crappiness of IPv4, which you might just deem ‘normal’ at this point, like NAT and DHCP. It does happen quite a bit, for example, that we’d like a unique identifier for a host, but with IPv4, you need to store a separate UUID to accomplish that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There's been a massacre!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, perhaps the most fitting example here is non-vegetarian diets: Feed plants to livestock. Livestock uses up some energy for its own existence. Then feed livestock to humans.

  There is a slight difference in that livestock can ingest leaves, which we cannot, but in industrialized farms, they typically get fed produce anyways, to make them grow more quickly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SUNS OUT GUNS OUT⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Huh, that’s a wild statement considering he later went on to formulate his ontological “proof”, which attempts to prove God’s existence without relying on axioms (and in my not-so-humble opinion fails to do so, because it assumes “good” and “evil” to exist).

  Sure enough, this statement here is about math and not a general statement, but you’d think he would’ve gotten a clue, that trying to prove anything without axioms is not a smart idea…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SOCKS SOCKS SOCKS⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They could’ve also socked the tail…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A potential ‘anti-spice’ that could dial down the heat of fiery food⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Hmm, so they did find a use for homeopathy after all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A new technology for extending the shelf life of produce⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Very interesting, but it’s wild to me that needles made from silk proteins are the first choice here. Surely there’s gotta be some plant protein or cellulose or such that’s a lot cheaper.

  I do also wonder, if they looked at bringing out melatonin onto the fields before the harvest, in hope of the plants picking it up via their roots.
  The article makes it sound like they had a solution (microneedles) in search of a problem, so maybe they didn’t even really look at other solutions. Which is fine, other studies can do that, but yeah, we should do that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Besides money/capitalism, why are tech companies trying to push AI text generators over search engines?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think, it’s mainly just companies trying to get their foot into the market. If Microsoft can establish LLMs as alternative to search, then it’s Google that loses market share. And once they control a share of the market, then they figure out how to capitalize on that.

  At the very least, they can use it to control what information is available to the public and how it’s framed. But they can also integrate things like the LLM generating an affiliate link when asked about a product, or just generally weaving ad placements into the generated answers.