chonglibloodsport
@chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
- Comment on Nintendo of America might turn your Switch into an expensive paperweight if you mod your console or install any "unauthorized" games, new policy warns 4 days ago:
No, it’s theirs. You agree to be bricked when you buy it!
- Comment on On the prospect of an $80-$90 GTA 6, former PlayStation boss says 'it's an impossible equation' for big-budget studios to keep their prices down 5 days ago:
If they don’t spend enough money to differentiate themselves then they risk being drowned in a sea of indie games.
Every year the number and quality of indie games increases. The ferocity of competition makes it extremely hard to get anyone to play your game, let alone survive as a developer. This raises the bar on quality to a ridiculous degree.
Take any AAA game from the 1990s. Today that’s a single person project which can’t even compete with the most basic of indie games out there. To actually make money and support yourself as an indie developer is ridiculously hard!
- Comment on Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College 5 days ago:
Hey I’m not blaming students for any of this. I’ve been in the trenches with them this whole time. I’ve witnessed first hand the power of Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and mobile games. It robs them of their ability to focus. Then when they’ve procrastinated long enough they get exasperated from stress and fire up ChatGPT for a way out.
I’ve tried to help a teacher who can’t even get her own son to study. No avail.
I can’t really blame our political leaders for this. They don’t know what they’re doing either. They had no more ability to anticipate the effects of all this stuff than the rest of us.
The only ones who truly anticipated these issues are the folks working in social media. They saw what was happening first hand, through their metrics. They began unplugging their families from technology before anyone else.
I also don’t blame our teachers nor the folks in charge of setting curriculum (also teachers for the most part). I have friends who have worked in education research. They simply do not have the resources to compete with social media psychology researchers (working for big tech) who run A/B tests around the clock on millions of people in order to learn to maximize engagement. What hope does a teacher have when facing a class of 30+ bored, tired, social-addicted, and disillusioned teenagers? Very little.
I think we’re not too far from a huge social media and technology backlash. But before that we’re going to see a lost generation of squandered human capital.
- Comment on Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College 5 days ago:
I have been tutoring high school students as a volunteer for nearly a decade. Most of these in early high school (9-10) can’t even write a simple paragraph. How are they going to express critical thinking when they can’t even write very simple things?
I mean we’re talking about kids who are functionally illiterate. The system has failed to teach them this basic skill. Critical thinking about complex and nuanced topics is way beyond that! And the problem is they’re not going to learn the basic skills if they use AI to prevent themselves from doing any work.
By analogy, imagine trying to train people to be Olympians. Before they can perform in their sport they need to train their bodies to build muscle and endurance. Yet they insist on bringing a forklift to the gym because they think what it really want them to do is move weights around, not lift them.
- Comment on Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College 6 days ago:
How do you teach a kid to write in this day and age? Do we still want people to express themselves in writing? Or are we cool with them using AI slop to do it?
- Comment on Eggs 6 days ago:
Oh yeah. I only boil 2 eggs at a time now.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Or if you’re like me and don’t care about the latest big studio games. I play games by development teams with less than 10 people, tending towards just one person. I have no desire to play any of Nintendo’s newest games.
- Comment on Eggs 1 week ago:
I don’t like hard boiled eggs. I prefer medium-soft (slightly runny on up to jelly-like yolk; used to make ajitsuke tamago) which are harder to peel than hard boiled eggs due to softer whites.
When I boil eggs I poke a hole in the bottom (blunt end) before boiling and then after chilling in cold water I crack the blunt end to begin peeling. Since the blunt end has an air pocket this technique makes it easy to begin peeling.
- Comment on After they kill Wikipedia history will be AI hallucinations. 1 week ago:
You can download Wikipedia to your computer. It’s big but it’s not an unreasonable download size. Many people have backed it up already!
It’s very unlikely to disappear without someone having a copy.
- Comment on I wonder what the specs are on the technology that disables shopping cart wheels 2 weeks ago:
Oh wow yeah. Like nails on a chalkboard!
- Comment on I wonder what the specs are on the technology that disables shopping cart wheels 2 weeks ago:
Shopping cart wheels here only freeze for one reason: crappy bearrings that get jammed up when people run through pools of spilled grape juice and maple syrup.
- Comment on ‘You Can’t Lick a Badger Twice’: Google Failures Highlight a Fundamental AI Flaw 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on ‘You Can’t Lick a Badger Twice’: Google Failures Highlight a Fundamental AI Flaw 2 weeks ago:
That’s because AI doesn’t know anything. All they do is make stuff up. This is called bullshitting and lots of people do it, even as a deliberate pastime. There was even a fantastic Star Trek TNG episode where Data learned to do it!
The key to bullshitting is to never look back. Just keep going forward! Constantly constructing sentences from the raw material of thought. Knowledge is something else entirely: justified true belief. It’s not sufficient to merely believe things, we need to have some justification (however flimsy). This means that true knowledge isn’t merely a feature of our brains, it includes a causal relation between ourselves and the world, however distant that may be.
A large language model at best could be said to have a lot of beliefs but zero justification. After all, no one has vetted the gargantuan training sets that go into an LLM to make sure only facts are incorporated into the model. Thus the only indicator of trustworthiness of a fact is that it’s repeated many times and in many different places in the training set. But that’s no help for obscure facts or widespread myths!
- Comment on 'There Are So Few Of Us Left': Even Full-Time Games Journalists At Big Websites Are Feeling It In 2025 4 weeks ago:
I never use AI. Can’t stand it. Wish it would go away!
I also think it’s completely stupid and overhyped. I took a course in 4th year on building and training neural networks with PyTorch. I know how it all works at an intimate level. It’s not going to lead to a singularity any time soon (as so many people think).
- Comment on 'There Are So Few Of Us Left': Even Full-Time Games Journalists At Big Websites Are Feeling It In 2025 4 weeks ago:
I think there’s a lot of explanations for the decrease in value of the ads:
- ad market saturation
- user ad fatigue
- rampant ad blocking
- less engagement overall
I’ve heard YouTube video ads pay a lot less to the creator than they used to. A lot of creators are struggling and feel pressured to release a lot more videos and more consistently. But this can all be measured by view counts where the numbers drop off as engagement disappears.
One of the worst things a YouTube creator can do is completely change the type of videos they make. This often gets people to stop clicking videos and YouTube’s algorithm takes this as a sign to stop recommending that creator, causing their views to drop off a cliff.
I wonder if there’s a similar issue with the ads on game review sites today. I have seen some YouTube video reviews that include a sponsored segment for a game I’d never in a million years consider playing (which has no relevance to the video at hand). Maybe if people are reading reviews the ads aren’t relevant to the games they’re playing so they never bother with them?
- Comment on 'There Are So Few Of Us Left': Even Full-Time Games Journalists At Big Websites Are Feeling It In 2025 4 weeks ago:
Video game reviewers used to provide a valuable service. Back when all video games were Nintendo expensive, we needed trustworthy reviewers to guide us towards making the correct purchase. Paying the inflation-equivalent of $100+ for a single video game made a single bad purchase really hurt.
Nowadays, people log on Steam and scroll through hundreds of previously purchased (never played) games they picked up for a few dollars each during a Steam holiday sale 3 years ago. They can just click download and start playing anything that tickles their fancy!
Plus I’d also add that many gamers have found games that have enormous replay value (especially multiplayer games like League of Legends or Hearthstone or Fortnite) and they sink thousands upon thousands of hours into that one game.
What room is there for professional game reviewers reviewing new games every week and writing about them? Most gamers seem to have more games than they could ever want, plus single games that could last a lifetime by themselves.
The same could really be said for music reviews. People used to read magazines like Rolling Stone in order to get reviews of the latest songs from the hottest bands. Nowadays people just listen to the music themselves and decide whether or not they like it, no reviewers needed.
- Comment on What If History Had Taken a Different Path? 5 weeks ago:
Oh yes, the 32X was one of the things that killed Sega. It wasn’t the only thing.
The Sega Saturn, as beloved a console it is with fans now, was deeply flawed. Because Sega couldn’t make up their minds whether to stay with 2D sprite hardware or to go all-in on 3D (as the PlayStation and N64 did), they ended up doing the worst compromise and including hardware for both.
The result, a dual-CPU and 8 processor architecture, was complex and difficult for developers to take full advantage of. It was also very expensive at $399 US, a full $100 more than the $299 PSX.
A big issue with the Saturn’s development was that Sega of America president Tom Kalinske wanted to make a deal with Silicon Graphics but Sega of Japan refused. As we all know, Nintendo made that deal and the Nintendo 64’s powerful hardware was the result.
Sega Saturn’s failure wasn’t just a major financial setback for Sega, it really damaged Sega’s brand in the consumer eye. They went from extremely cool with the Genesis / Mega Drive to out of touch and irrelevant with the Saturn.
The fact that the Dreamcast later fixed all of the Saturn’s issues made it an awesome console, but it was too little too late!
- Comment on What If History Had Taken a Different Path? 5 weeks ago:
The 32X was one of the things that killed Sega. Making add-ons or expansions for existing consoles has proven to be a failed business model.
The problem? It fragments the player base. Game developers want the largest number of people to be able to buy their games. If your console has 3 different add-ons and only a fraction of the players have each one then game developers are going to ignore that add-ons to focus on developing for the base console which they know everyone will have.
So you end up spending a lot of time and money developing add-ons that developers are all but guaranteed to ignore and so players will ignore the add-ons because they don’t have enough games available for them. You’re far, far better off taking the time and money you would have put into an add-on and instead put it into the next generation console.
Yes, for the same reason (fragmented player base) it’s also hard to convince developers to move to your new next gen console. However, you have a few advantages with a new console that the add-on doesn’t have. For one, you can sell the new console to customers who never bought your previous console. For another, you’re not restricted by the hardware requirements or limitations of the old console in any way. This makes the new console easier to develop and easier to distinguish (graphics wise), making it a much more attractive buy for customers. The ease of development of the new, clean-slate console means it can often be a lot cheaper but also with better graphics and sound, more capabilities etc. because it doesn’t rely on the old technology (electronics wise) of the previous console.
Lastly, and this is a big one, you can convince game developers that the next gen console is the future and you are going all-in on it by stopping sales of the old console. You can’t do that with an add-on for obvious reasons!
- Comment on Which actor did not have a single bad film? 5 weeks ago:
James Dean. Credited in only 3 films (appeared in a few more as an extra):
- East of Eden
- Rebel Without a cause
- Giant
All 3 are above average on IMDb (> 7).
- Comment on Which actor did not have a single bad film? 5 weeks ago:
Plan 9 from Outer Space!
Dubbed the worst film ever made. To be fair to Bela Lugosi, he had no choice in the matter as he appeared in it film posthumously.
- Comment on If you could add, remove, or alter one single bodily function, what would it be? 5 weeks ago:
Remove the need to exercise, like an anaconda. The ability to just lay around doing nothing and still be ripped to the max. That would be cool!
- Comment on Other than Canada and Australia, which countries are best alternatives to traveling to the USA? 5 weeks ago:
I’ve never been to NYC. In general I would say I’m not a fan of big cities. I guess I’m biased though.
I will say Toronto has some very nice areas where I wouldn’t mind living. They’re extremely expensive though!
- Comment on Other than Canada and Australia, which countries are best alternatives to traveling to the USA? 5 weeks ago:
I’ve been to Toronto many times and talked to loads of people who have either lived there or visited there many times. You’re the first person I’ve ever heard say that!
- Comment on Other than Canada and Australia, which countries are best alternatives to traveling to the USA? 5 weeks ago:
If you’re looking for an alternative to the USA’s big landscapes and natural parks then Canada is your best bet. If you’re looking for more cultural stuff and things to do in cities then Canada only has a few nice cities and they’re spread across the country from coast to coast.
- Comment on If restaurants just microwave their food can I just get the frozen version and cut out the middle man? 5 weeks ago:
If you really like food then learning how to cook is one of the most rewarding skills of all. Personally I think it’s even more than that. I think it’s harder to appreciate a really good meal until you’ve learned to cook it yourself.
- Comment on Coin-sized nuclear 3V battery with 50-year lifespan enters mass production 5 weeks ago:
Why not Solar? I have fairly recent Casio (FX-260 Solar II) and it works in dimmer lighting conditions than I’m comfortable working under anyway. Under normal lighting (for being able to see while doing math with pencil and paper) it’s rock solid!
- Comment on Batman has an awful lot of villains with doctorates. 5 weeks ago:
A billionaire beating up a bunch of starving postdocs!
- Comment on Why do news articles and such call the governments of countries/groups of countries after the capital? 1 month ago:
It’s Synecdoche, a figure of speech where a part of something is used to refer to the whole.
- Comment on BlackBerry may have the perfect opportunity to produce a Canadian made cellphone to compet with Apple and other America brands. 2 months ago:
LineageOS is Android. If you use that then you’re not competing with Android, you’re joining it. The OP wants BlackBerry to provide an alternative to iOS and Android.
We’re not talking about hardware startups trying to build a minimum viable product, we’re talking about a company trying to market a product to regular consumers.
BlackBerry had a successful consumer product prior to the launch of the iPhone. Since then, the bar has been raised to the stratosphere and BlackBerry no longer comes even close. With thousands of employees they couldn’t do it.
- Comment on Apple reveals M3 Ultra, taking Apple silicon to a new extreme 2 months ago:
No, the ram is integrated into the CPU.
