ProdigalFrog
@ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
- Comment on RuneScape's monthly membership now costs as much as a World of Warcraft subscription as Jagex announces its second price hike in less than 2 years 52 minutes ago:
I played the older rune scape growing up, like a lot, it was my first MMO.
The draw of the game, at least for me, were two things.
One: the punishment for dying was losing all but 3 of your items, do there were high stakes that made enemy encounters kinda exciting. It was pretty unique at the time, though maybe Ultima Online had that too, not sure.
Two: the quests in run escape actually slapped. Unlike literally every other MMO on the market (which had simple fetch quests or kill X amount of things quests), Rune scape had really well written, funny, interesting quests that often played like an older point’n’click adventure, many of which gave really unique and odd rewards that you could practically use in other parts of the game.
Those just blew my wee little mind back then, and I was absolutely hooked on it. I think in particular the quests would hold up, even against modern titles.
The downside was to get to those quests, you had to grind like a motherfucker to get the required skill levels to start it. That padded out the play time by hundreds of hours, but doing it with friends or chatting while you did cooked some lobster for the 300th time made it bearable, sometimes even soothing to zone out to.
I could never tolerate the grind today like 12 year old me could, it’s unbearable, but if I could play a version of runescspe that removed the grind, I’d be tempted just to play allthe quests I never got to.
- Comment on YSK that Joseph Stalin created the Great Terror. He started killing people randomly including artists, generals, doctors, scientists, government officials. Everyone was terrified. 19 hours ago:
It did exist, it’s just that in the past, the real socialist revolutions were crushed by the authoritarian stalinists.
- Comment on A really weird but cool Quake 1 Engine Music Video - Fornax Void - Corporate Intranet 21 hours ago:
Feel free to! :D
- Comment on What to self host with a GTX 1060? 2 days ago:
You could use the GPU to help host a peertube instance, with the card helping transcode the video.
- Submitted 3 days ago to retrogaming@lemmy.world | 0 comments
- Submitted 3 days ago to retrogaming@lemmy.world | 0 comments
- Comment on Harmony - Yet Another Discord Alternative 4 days ago:
I’m sure there’ll be lots of bugs and I don’t think it will scale well.
The lack of scaling and even more critically, lack of federation, unfortunately makes this not a viable alternative. And without meaning to sound harsh, I think it’s mostly a duplication of effort of both Movim (XMPP) and Fluxer (which plans federation in the near future).
The Discord-alternative landscape is filled with people vying to take its place, but I think we would be better served rallying behind Movim and XMPP as a whole, IMHO.
- Comment on Gryt-Chat: Like Discord but Self Hosted 4 days ago:
Uh… Yeah I think it’d be better if we stuck with Movim instead, which is already built on a proven scalable and most importantly federated back-end (XMPP), and also already offers text, group audio and video calls, screensharing w/ audio (have to use chromium based browser for now to stream the audio), and even some pretty decent encryption.
- A really weird but cool Quake 1 Engine Music Video - Fornax Void - Corporate Intranetwww.youtube.com ↗Submitted 4 days ago to retrogaming@lemmy.world | 5 comments
- Submitted 4 days ago to retronet@lemmy.sdf.org | 1 comment
- Comment on What should we actually turn our aggression towards? 5 days ago:
but I see it like trying to fill a jug with a hole in the bottom.
If viewed from the perspective that the community fridge isn’t solving the issue of the people near it needing it to be continuously resupplied, then yes, it is a ‘bottomless pit’. But at the same time, what it is providing is a somewhat constant relief from the system which created the circumstances for a community fridge to be needed, which means its also a source of endless/ongoing harm reduction.
But, if the community fridge is viewed as one tool in our belt with which to build alternative systems that would eventually allow us to decouple from our current one, then it is not a bottomless pit, and instead is one very needed and useful stepping stone leading to a much more egalitarian and prosperous society that could eliminate food deserts and wage labor entirely. In that way, a community fridge is just one form of prefiguration. Specifically, a community fridge is building out one part of a gift-economy.
If you’d like to see the end result of those efforts visualized in a very realisistic manner, I’d highly suggest The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin, which is a classic sci-fi novel based in an egalitarian gift-economy, and goes quite in-depth on how it functions.
- Comment on What should we actually turn our aggression towards? 5 days ago:
Hi, no offense taken.
but that particular recommendation seems like something that would be ignored, marginalized, or abused/destroyed.
If I may ask, are you basing that on personal experience, or your own research into the effectiveness of community food fridges?
Personally, I don’t see it as terribly different from the work of Food Not Bombs, which provides food to anyone who needs it at a particular location at set schedule.
The usefulness of a community fridge is that it can often be used to prevent food wastage. As an example, if your garden produces too many zucchini for you or your neighbors to eat, the extra can be distributed to the food fridge for anyone who needs them. Local small businesses also often participate, and donate their unsold food to prevent having to throw it away.
The Teach a Man to fish analogy is often not viable in vulnerable communities or impoverished ones. As an example, if someone lives and works in a food desert, they may not have access to a car to get them to a grocery store with more healthy food options, and their job’s low pay may effectively trap them in that area if the places closer to a good grocery store are too expensive to rent. You could potentially teach them how to grow their own food if they have a viable place to grow them, but they may not be able to spare the extra funds to purchase the seeds or the equipment required to start growing effectively.
I’d suggest taking a look at this instructional video on how to set up a food fridge by someone who has already done so to see how viable it is in practice, and how much good it can potentially do. You may find that your views on it change when its laid out in such a way.
- Comment on What should we actually turn our aggression towards? 6 days ago:
Turn your aggression toward building up alternative systems that allow us to reduce and eventually eliminate our need to rely on capitalist systems dominated by sociopaths. That could be taking part in a mutual aid group, creating a free food fridge in food deserts, or learning how to grow your own produce along with your friends and neighbors.
For more info on exactly how to do that stuff, look here: slrpnk.net/post/34794436/21025333
- Comment on Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions 1 week ago:
Although it’s all borrowed money so it doesn’t matter to them…
Right, and they tend to convince investors to give them more by the amount of users adopting and using the product, which they can then extrapolate out with wild projections to convince venture capital to give them even more investments.
If more people abandon it entirely, the less venture capital they may be able to entice into their trap.
- Comment on Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions 1 week ago:
Unless that AI is hosted locally and only trained on GPL code (AFAIK, no AI model like that exists), it’s both unethical to use, and potentially corrupting the code-base with proprietary code it copied from somewhere else.
If a developer uses an AI hosted in a datacenter, then every use of it encourages the waste of water and fossil fuels to run the datacenter, it encourages the more to built in vulnerable neighborhoods where they can’t do anything about the pollution they generate, and it enriches the pocketbooks of the techno-fascists that run those datacenters.
- Comment on Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions 1 week ago:
I’m surprised they’re not adamantly against it, since AI code so frequently spits out garbage code, yet Debian is known for its stability. How can they not see the conflict here, especially to their reputation?
- Comment on Making a 3d-printed Underwater Dive Helmet With A Floating Air Supply 1 week ago:
Your previous comment lead me to think that you disapprove of instructional videos of things that if replicated by someone who does it incorrectly it would become dangerous or life-threatening.
- Comment on Making a 3d-printed Underwater Dive Helmet With A Floating Air Supply 1 week ago:
Hm. Out of curiosity, do also believe that instructional videos of how to do house construction, electrical work, or brake repair on cars should not be freely available to prevent people from watching it and doing incorrectly and dangerously?
- Comment on Firearm Advice 1 week ago:
No prob! :)
- Comment on Making a 3d-printed Underwater Dive Helmet With A Floating Air Supply 1 week ago:
But wouldn’t the excess pressure and air just go out the bottom of the helmet? it’s open to the water below, similar to shallow-water helmets, which are used by untrained tourists.
- Comment on Firearm Advice 1 week ago:
Yes, the meat analog he uses, though not perfect, is the closest to a real-world test I’ve found that a regular person could reasonably perform themselves.
357 out of a revolver is indeed still too slow, even with lighter bullets. Only in a lever action carbine does 357 start to reach the required power to perform some hydrostatic tearing, since 357 is really able to take advantage of that extra barrel length to increase velocity fairly dramatically.
There was an extremely comprehensive video done on real-world wound ballistics that I was struggling to find for my last comment, but I found it just now, once again thanks to Luckygunner.
He gives a summary of it here, and also made this video as a supplement, but if you’d like to see the absolute last word on firearm wound ballistics, I’d suggest this full documentary featuring Dr. Martin Fackler (but be warned, this has NSFW gory images as examples).
- Comment on Firearm Advice 1 week ago:
When it comes to pistol calibers, raw kinetic energy isn’t really a factor, they’re just too weak to actually induce any sort of hydro-static shock that could cause a permanent rupturing of nearby tissues, you need much higher velocities or energy to do that that, which only rifle rounds or shotgun slugs can reliably induce.
For pistols, the only mechanism of action they can rely on is the mechanical size of the bullet itself, as the bigger the bullet, the larger the hole, and thus the faster the blood loss. Hollow points are the best method to cause bigger holes.
Ballistic gel is a somewhat deceptive testing media, as it can show a big permanent wound cavity beyond the size of the bullet itself, which isn’t actually how it would perform real tissue, which is able to stretch much more than ballistic gel. What really matters for pistol rounds are being able to expand as much as possible while also maintaining adequate penetration (12" in gel), so that you can reliably penetrate bone and muscle to reach critical organs from any angle. You also want to ensure that the specific hollow point chosen isn’t prone to being plugged by heavy clothing if you live in colder environments.
LuckyGunner provides the best comparison of bullets that I’ve personally seen for every pistol caliber, allowing you to avoid bullets that don’t adequately penetrate, expand, or over-penetrate.
All pistol defensive pistol calibers break bone when struck, the xtreme penetrators will simply penetrate further and through more bone than a hollow point. This makes it act similarly to a hardcast (ultra hard lead that doesn’t deform) flatnose bullet, which are also usually only recommended for bear protection.
Over-penetration is an extremely negative trait in personal defense against humans, as it means that the bullet will pass through the target into anything behind them, including innocent who you do not intent to hurt. In self defense rounds you want the bullet to stop inside the first target to avoid endangering anything behind them.
But how do you assess value?
Xtreme Defenders are a good value for bear protection, but are extremely poor value for self-defense, as they are more expensive than a good hollow point while providing less effective wounding characteristics and increased danger to bystanders.
- Comment on Making a 3d-printed Underwater Dive Helmet With A Floating Air Supply 1 week ago:
How would it blow up your lungs?
- Comment on Making a 3d-printed Underwater Dive Helmet With A Floating Air Supply 1 week ago:
I’m assuming you didn’t watch the video, but this particular helmet design has a completely open bottom, and it needs weights attached to it to keep it from floating (he attached just enough weight to keep it neutrally buoyant). If it sprung a leak, you would easily be able to remove the helmet either by lifting it up off you, or tilting forward or to the side and sliding it off. it is not strapped to the person at all.
- Comment on Firearm Advice 1 week ago:
These aren’t really that effective compared to a hollow point. They create a big visual in ballistic gel, but in a more realistic medium they act more like an improved FMJ, but still over penetrate badly (which isn’t a good thing in most cases).
They tend to be recommend as a bear round, where over-penetration is actually valuable and desired.
The same manufacturer actually makes a deeper cut version that doesn’t over penetrate called the xtreme defender, which is generally still worse than a good hollow point in standard calibers, but can be a good option for weaker calibers like .380, where hollow point under-penetrate.
however, for 9mm and above, you’re better off with a standard hollow point, which is more effective and far more affordable than the all-copper xtreme rounds.
- Comment on Making a 3d-printed Underwater Dive Helmet With A Floating Air Supply 1 week ago:
His helmet is essentially a diving bell helmet with a pressurized feed of air from an air compressor, so the lungs don’t have to overcome breathing through a snorkel. He plans to use it in shallow areas around Florida, he was only testing it in his pool.
- Submitted 1 week ago to 3dprinting@lemmy.world | 34 comments
- Comment on Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse 1 week ago:
Ah, my bad. Thanks for letting me know!
- Comment on Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse 1 week ago:
From what I understand, Piefed instances will have better support for Mastodon posts, and I believe it supports subscribing to Peertube channels already (something that Lemmy still doesn’t support…)
- Comment on Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse 1 week ago:
This article is confirming the extreme merit of Citizen Controlled Media, which has only become more and more important as form an essential form of prefiguration as time goes on.