chonglibloodsport
@chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
- Comment on CrankBoy - the original Game Boy game emulator for the Playdate console (my article) 6 hours ago:
Oh okay. That sounds a lot better than I thought!
I think to me the crank seems ideal for a fishing game. Has anyone made one of those?
- Comment on CrankBoy - the original Game Boy game emulator for the Playdate console (my article) 12 hours ago:
It’s a tough sell then. I did a search in the article for the word crank and got a lot of matches but it was too long for me to read. I would have preferred some short video clips to demonstrate exactly how it works.
- Comment on CrankBoy - the original Game Boy game emulator for the Playdate console (my article) 13 hours ago:
Ahhh that’s annoying. The crank looks like it makes the whole unit much more awkward to hold, especially for larger hands. The fact that it’s just a control gimmick which doesn’t really add anything to classic Game Boy games makes it a hard pass for me.
- Comment on what are the grievances with the "male loneliness epidemic"? 13 hours ago:
Evolution is not our friend. Evolution favours reproductive fitness, not happiness. Happiness is just one of many tools in the toolbox for getting us to reproduce.
The current situation with low birth rates due to the availability of contraceptives is a temporary blip. Right now you can witness a wide range of forces arrayed against that status quo. Note that for humans, evolution operates not only at the genetic level but also at the cultural level since parents can pass their culture on to their children.
We’re witnessing a major backlash and reaction against secular liberalism, a return to authoritarianism and a revival of religious membership. Religion has always been one of the most powerful of evolution’s cultural weapons for increasing reproductive fitness.
- Comment on BECOME THE INTELLECTUAL BLADE 2 days ago:
Ahhh, I dunno what country he’s from but in my country (Canada) there are loads of jobs for math grads. The one thing you have to give up on is pure math. No business is interested in paying someone to write proofs.
I did a major in computational math with a joint pure math. I took a lot of pure math courses and loved them but there’s no practical use for them outside of academia. It’s like learning to write poetry.
However, the skills of a mathematics grad and the broad applicability of mathematics to many areas of business, engineering, and science are undeniable. Even someone who has only studied pure mathematics has a huge advantage over someone who has an unrelated arts degree, for example, all else being equal (personal hygiene, social and communications skills).
All else is rarely equal though. But that’s another matter entirely!
- Comment on At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion 2 days ago:
You won’t get that from AAA studios: that’s largely indie territory today.
The issue with creating novel and interesting gameplay is that it’s not a straight-line process. It takes a lot of experimentation and failure. That doesn’t match with the large teams and assembly-line process of AAA game development.
An indie game developer, especially one who just works on the game in their free time but otherwise has a day job, is 100% free to experiment and redo their game design hundreds of times. Often this doesn’t mean throwing the game away but instead making lots of small games for game jams or just to build a portfolio of projects.
Couple that with the fact there aren’t nearly as many AAA studios as there are indie game developers working on hobby projects and you can see why AAAs are at such a disadvantage when it comes to experimenting with novel and innovative game designs. Indie game don’t need to all be successful to make it hard on AAAs: out of thousands of indie games only one needs to be successful.
- Comment on BECOME THE INTELLECTUAL BLADE 2 days ago:
Well it’s hard for me to say what your professor really meant. If he meant “there are no jobs paying math undergrads to write proofs” then yes of course, no one but professors or rich parents would pay for that. But all he said was “there are no jobs for undergrads/masters/PhDs” which to me implies that math grads are no better off than high school grads at getting a job, with which I would strongly disagree.
- Comment on BECOME THE INTELLECTUAL BLADE 2 days ago:
I have a math degree. I am far from independently wealthy. There are plenty of math-related jobs out there if you’re willing to stoop from the lofty perches of pure math. Statistics, data science, risk management, actuarial science, finance, accounting, operations research, optimization, computational mathematics, machine learning/AI.
The list goes on and on and on. Many of these jobs might be quite boring for someone who just wants to work on difficult proofs all day but they’re generally a lot better pay than any academic job below the tenure track (and way better pay than Starbucks).
Life is a lot tougher if you’re into physics or chemistry or biology. There you really do need a PhD to do anything and the research positions are extremely competitive to get.
- Comment on Americans’ junk-filled garages are hurting EV adoption, study says 3 days ago:
Sure, though the UK has a much larger proportion of those old houses than the US.
- Comment on Americans’ junk-filled garages are hurting EV adoption, study says 3 days ago:
Many Americans have huge garages, some with room to park 2 or even 3 vehicles with plenty of space to walk around them. But even single garages are large enough to park cars.
- Comment on Report: Microsoft's latest Windows 11 24H2 update breaks SSDs/HDDs, may corrupt your data 5 days ago:
I used Arch for about 7 years. I still have it installed on an old PC but I haven’t used it recently. Every time I told pacman to update everything it felt like an adventure. Never knew if I was going to reboot to a working desktop or to a console printing cryptic error messages that take a while to Google on my phone before I get things back up and running. I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy’s grandma!
It all comes down to the maintainers of Arch putting all of the responsibility for breakage (especially due to old configuration files) 100% on the user. That’s not a system any normal person should use, that’s a system for Linux hobbyists. A LTS distribution where “don’t break the user’s install no matter what” is the rule is absolutely the only system I’d ever trust for grandma.
It’s fine if you want to assume all responsibility for updating grandma’s system and fixing breakage every time. I don’t have any interest in doing that. If I’m at grandma’s house I want to spend time talking to her, not fixing her computer.
- Comment on Report: Microsoft's latest Windows 11 24H2 update breaks SSDs/HDDs, may corrupt your data 5 days ago:
But that means she’s not getting security updates and since she’s grandma she really needs them. On the other hand, if you’re automatically upgrading her Arch install then there will be breakage she is hopeless to fix.
So what advantage does Arch offer grandma over a traditional release LTS distribution which will be nice and stable, not breaking or changing unexpectedly on her but still remaining current with security patches?
- Comment on Report: Microsoft's latest Windows 11 24H2 update breaks SSDs/HDDs, may corrupt your data 6 days ago:
I think most of the replies to my remark thought I was questioning Linux for grandma overall. I wasn’t. Just Arch. I don’t think grandma needs rolling releases.
- Comment on Colony of waxcaps (Hygrocybe sp.) 6 days ago:
Gorgeous colour! A real beauty!
- Comment on Report: Microsoft's latest Windows 11 24H2 update breaks SSDs/HDDs, may corrupt your data 1 week ago:
You jest but would you really install Arch on your grandmother’s PC?
- Comment on A handful of people are slowly killing over 8 billion people, but we're expected to sit idly by and let it happen 1 week ago:
Who buys and uses all the stuff produced by those factories and delivered by those cargo ships?
- Comment on A handful of people are slowly killing over 8 billion people, but we're expected to sit idly by and let it happen 1 week ago:
I find it hard to believe that emissions would drop by 80% just by getting rid of all the billionaires. Or did you mean all of Western civilization when you said “those responsible for the other 80%”?
- Comment on Game prices should have increased with every new generation, former PlayStation US boss says 1 week ago:
Yeah I don’t hate Valve fans at all. I have a Steam account myself with a decent library that I play on my laptop.
I had no clue whatsoever about the hacked 3DS ecosystem until my friend basically dragged me into it by buying the consoles (refurbished actually)! Once I started learning about the scene I really got impressed with what the small homebrew community accomplished. In addition to emulators and some homebrew games, there are also a number of utilities in the scene. You can run an FTP server on the hacked N3DS and just bulk copy over files via wifi rather than having to pull the microSD card and sneakernet it to your PC. There’s also a program called universal updater which is a package manager of sorts that makes it easy to download and install emulators and other apps quite easily.
Of course none of this is as smooth and convenient of an experience as installing Steam games would be on a Steam deck, though I’m sure if you’re into emulators you’ll have to use other tools to get those installed anyway.
My friend and I are currently playing through some classic NES RPGs which we’d previously overlooked. The N3DS has pretty good battery life, lasting about 10-12 hours on a full charge; far more battery life than I have time to spend gaming in a day anyway (due to my job). The standby time is good but not great. Lastly, a big plus for me is that replacement batteries are available through iFixit. I bought 2 of them and the install process is very easy (just a couple of screws and you’re in).
My hope is that iFixit will continue to make replacement batteries available long term. That could potentially allow my N3DS to last decades into the future, barring premature capacitor failure or some unfortunate accident.
- Comment on Game prices should have increased with every new generation, former PlayStation US boss says 1 week ago:
The one I have is called the “New Nintendo 3DS XL” and it has a much faster CPU (804MHz Arm 11) compared to the original 3DS (268MHz Arm 11). While the CPU difference doesn’t matter for running DS or 3DS games (apart from a handful of games written specially for the New 3DS) it makes a big difference running the more intensive emulators (such as the PS1).
When I got mine it had the very last version of the 3DS operating system installed (Nintendo still maintains the update servers even though the eshop is shut down). Yet the instructions for the hack were easy enough to follow and I had no trouble getting up and running.
The Steam deck is an attractive option too though. The main reason I got into the 3DS is because my friend bought 2 of them and gave one to me so we could both do the hack and play lots of games and discuss them. I think the main reason to really prefer a 3DS comes down to form factor: if you really like the folding case, the stylus, and the dual screen setup (which really shines for many games in the massive DS/3DS library) then you’re not gonna get an optimal experience with the single-screen Steam Deck. I think in particular the stylus really matters for puzzle games which demand higher tap precision than you can comfortably achieve with a fingertip.
- Comment on Game prices should have increased with every new generation, former PlayStation US boss says 1 week ago:
It’s hard for me to imagine anyone buying brand new AAA games these days. Between the huge back catalogues of previous gen consoles as well as the PC and the insane prices for new AAA games which don’t innovate very much anymore, I can’t see much reason spend that kind of money.
I have a hacked New Nintendo 3DS and it can basically run every console emulator up to and including PS1 as well as natively run GBA, DS, and 3DS games. The library for the thing is enormous and with a 128GB microSD card you can store a ton of stuff on it.
Oh and it can also run DOSBox and SCUMMVM games though I haven’t tried them so I can’t vouch for the play experience. I should think the stylus would make a decent mouse replacement but I’m not sure how well it works in practice. Arcade-style DOS games that use the keyboard only (Duke Nukem, Crystal Caves, Commander Keen) should work great though!
- Comment on anyone have personal experience with industrial tourism? 2 weeks ago:
Don’t forget to paint over those cracked weld joints!
- Comment on As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act 2 weeks ago:
Ideally anyway. Government interference can always screw it up and create barriers to competition.
Where I live (Ontario, Canada) on-peak electricity prices have pretty much exactly kept pace with inflation over the past 20 years, so in effect electricity costs have not gone up.
Off-peak prices have crept up more than that but solar power doesn’t help with off-peak generation at all. Wind turbines do produce more at night but we’ve had government subsidies to encourage building wind power capacity and those subsidies result in higher wholesale prices for that power (actually above the off-peak prices consumers pay).
- Comment on As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act 2 weeks ago:
As prices go up it becomes more attractive to build more generating capacity. When capacity goes up prices will come back down.
- Comment on If CEOs think they can replace everyone with AI, why do they think Wall St. will need CEOs? 2 weeks ago:
I didn’t say anything about low intelligence. That’s your uncharitable reading of my claim.
- Comment on If CEOs think they can replace everyone with AI, why do they think Wall St. will need CEOs? 2 weeks ago:
The Dunning-Kruger effect. CEOs (especially ones who joined the company long after it was successful) really don’t know how to do the job of most of their employees. Their lack of knowledge of those jobs leads them to vastly underestimate how complex they are.
At the same time, CEOs (hopefully) know how to do their own jobs which leads them to a more accurate assessment of AI’s ability to do the job: a total farce.
In truth, AIs aren’t likely to replace most jobs in any case because it’s all a house of cards.
- Comment on Water Snek 2 weeks ago:
Hawaiian bunker hobbies!
- Comment on Water Snek 3 weeks ago:
Facebook has lots of interesting groups for hobbies and other interests. Yes, you can find groups like that outside of Facebook but they’re often much smaller and less active (unless you go to Reddit).
- Comment on Developer survey shows trust in AI coding tools is falling as usage rises 3 weeks ago:
It’s not a quirk of LLMs, it’s a quirk of human cognitive biases.
See: Gell-Mann amnesia effect.
- Comment on If everyone spontaneously became the same race the world would realize that the rich are the real problem 3 weeks ago:
A see a few people here saying “they” when we should be using “we.” Just by using “they” you’re exhibiting the mindset of “they, not me” and “us vs them.” Racism is just one facet of it.
- Comment on Duckstation(one of the most popular PS1 Emulators) dev plans on eventually dropping Linux support due to Linux users, especially Arch Linux users. 3 weeks ago:
One of the most entitled takes I’ve ever read.
The guy built software and opened sourced it. People started packaging it for their favourite distribution repositories and then users started coming to him for support on problems he didn’t create!
It’s like if you were a farmer selling eggs and some kids bought your eggs and started throwing them at people’s houses and then instead of the cops arresting the kids they come arrest you for selling eggs. It’s bullshit!