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BenVimes

@ BenVimes @lemmy.ca

Posts
2
Comments
115
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Retired WoW players, how does that part of your life shade your current life?

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  • I played at varying levels of intensity between 2010 and 2015.

    I met my first serious girlfriend through the game. It was also a long-distance relationship, and led to the frankly absurd story of how I lost my virginity, which involved a massive snowstorm and a lost passport. The relationship didn't work out, but it was formative for me as a person.

    These days, I still occasionally hang out with some of my old guild mates, who still play the game. Not as much anymore, especially after our D&D campaign ended, but I still consider them some of my closer friends.

  • Please no, just stop

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  • I got a free three month trial for Google's AI Pro plan, and Google wouldn't shut up about the fact that I had the offer waiting, so I gave it a shot. It's been more annoying than anything else. Gemini made me feel icky when I tried it, and now I get irritating popups asking me to use an AI tool every single time I go to type something in a Doc or Sheet

    My brother in Christ, I am misusing Google Sheets to plan my character builds in Final Fantasy Tactics. I have entered all the information in the sheet by hand, and it is mostly text. This information cannot be put into a graph of any kind. I do not need your help with anything.

  • Well I know what I'm doing now

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  • I had a DM who did something similar. We all had to describe five NPCs that were important to our characters: two friends or family members, two enemies or rivals, and one fate-bonded character who could be friend or foe.

    In addition to the RP possiblities, it also gave the DM a ready supply of NPCs to populate the setting.

  • You Wakeup age 16 with all your current memories. What's your plan?

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  • In addition to the normal investment stuff (for me it would probably be Bitcoin, or maybe shorting the market in 2008), here are a few things I'd have to consider:

    1. I'm now an atheist in the body of a teenager who is super involved in his church and private religious school. I'll need to be delicate in navigating this, as I can't just suddenly turn all those things off.
    2. I'm being dropped into one of the toughest years of my life mentally. All the bullying I suffered starting at age 10 is finally manifesting in bouts of anxiety and depression. I'll be better able to handle it, and even push back at the new round of bullying. I don't know if I'll still be friends with the same people.
    3. I'm going to get another shot at my relationship failures, starting almost immediately with my high school crush. I know that my wife will be waiting for me sometime in the mid 2010s, but all the very many other chances I had are also in front of me. I'll have the experience to better handle them, and I'll won't have the inhibitions and hangups of my youth (see point #1). The question is what to do if any of them turn serious, as again, it will be another 10 years before I will be able to meet my wife.
    4. I'm going to get another chance to consider my career. I don't think I would change it, as that would mean not meeting my wife. However, I know there are things I could do better that would make the first 10 years of my career more fulfilling.

  • What's the solution to dealing with the ineveitable flood of scammers using AI to rob your grandparents?

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  • All my grandparents save one have passed on, and I have no actual relationship with the one that still lives. So I'm not terribly concerned about her, beyond how much I care for any other random senior citizen.

    To answer the spirit of the question, though we can talk about my parents, who are grandparents now.

    Both are educated and about as tech proficient as I am. However, my mom nearly got caught in a gift card scam a few years ago, where someone was posing as one of her friends. She had even bought the cards, but insisted on going to give them in-person, which exposed the scam.

    Because of that, I think my parents are actually pretty safe, as they are now extra vigilant about the messages they receive, and know to follow up anything suspicious using an alternate communication method.

    I know, "once bitten twice shy," isn't the best defence, but alternate communication methods are. Stress to your loved ones that if they ever recieve a message from someone asking for money, to follow up using a different medium.

  • True story

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  • You can, but in my experience it is resistant to custom instructions.

    I spent an evening messing around with ChatGPT once, and fairly early on I gave it special instructions via the options menu to stop being sycophantic, among other things. It ignored those instructions for the next dozen or so prompts, even though I followed up every response with a reminder. It finally came around after a few more prompts, by which point I was bored of it, and feeling a bit guilty over the acres of rainforest I had already burned down.

    I don't discount user error on my part, particularly that I may have asked too much at once, as I wanted it to dramatically alter its output with so my customizations. But it's still a computer, and I don't think it was unreasonable to expect it to follow instructions the first time. Isn't that what computers are supposed to be known for, unfailingly following instructions?

  • How old are you (roughly) and how long does it take you to recover from illnesses and injuries compared to when you were younger?

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  • I'm in my mid-late thirties, and my recovery time is about the same as it was in my mid twenties. This is because when I was 26 I had major abdominal surgery. That experience ended up delineating my life, having boundless vigour before and but needing to carefully measure my energy and actions after.

  • No socks please

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  • Socks are worn for 99% of my waking hours. They only come off in specific circumstances, normally involving water.

    The socks must be well-fitting and put on straight, pulled up to their natural height and tightness. I prefer socks that come halfway up my shins, and I only wear ankle socks when working out.

    The socks must be a matched pair. No mixing between different colours, cuts, brands, etc.

    No holes allowed; if a sock gets a hole of any size, it immediately goes in the garbage. The widowed sock goes on my dresser until an appropriate mate is made by the splitting up of another pair.

    On the other hand, I never sleep in socks under any circumstances. I find I get too warm.

  • Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

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  • This article only talks about the number of Copilot 365 licences that are active. It doesn't even consider the situations like my workplace, where everyone was given a licence but hardly anyone uses it.

    I wouldn't be surprised if the actual usage rate for these licences is also very low, meaning the situation could be even more dire than the article makes out.

  • Bible rule

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  • "A revolting bit of casuistry," as Christopher Hitchens put it. The problem this justification is that homosexuality is what people are and not what they do, and hating someone's inherent and immutable trait is the same as hating the person themselves.

  • Pumped

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  • I find it much more enjoyable than jogging. Also, easier on my leg joints.

  • Cooking 😋

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  • It's a personal thing, but the smell of cumin kills my appetite. I had a bad experience with it once and I can't shake the association between the smell and the experience.

  • Company Replaces Customer Support With AI, Then Panics and Forces Engineers to Work the Phones as the AI Fails

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  • Interesting that you were still using StoCard. Some months ago the app broke for me and directed me to download Klarna. My info had been migrated over and everything.

    I promptly found a new loyalty card app (SuperCards) once I saw the microloans and other unnecessary garbage in Klarna.

  • Company Replaces Customer Support With AI, Then Panics and Forces Engineers to Work the Phones as the AI Fails

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  • Couldn't have happened to a nicer company.

    Anecdotally, Klarna is the company that bought StoCard, an app for scanning and storing loyalty cards, and replaced it with their own app. I personally liked StoCard and found the microloan bloat of Klarna to be unbearable.

    I realize that's not as serious a charge as the predatory microloans themselves, but it does give me some measure of personal satisfaction to read about their self-inflicted wounds.

  • What's your relationship like with your family?

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  • It's good, with one point of contention: I stopped going to church a decade ago, while my family has remained devoutly religious. While I wasn't disowned, it remains a rift that we sometimes have to awkwardly dance around.

    Most of the time it's fine: I don't discuss my atheism, and they don't discuss the theological aspects of their church life. But sometimes it gets weird, like one camp is unsure where the boundaries for polite conversation are.

  • Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes | Reveal Trailer

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  • I don't know how to feel about it being an RTS, as I'm pretty bad at those.

    I guess a straight slow-time game might end up too similar to the board game, though.

  • Carney 'disappointed' as Trump increases tariffs on Canada to 35%

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  • Hey, you hacks writing this: there is no massive flow of drugs going from Canada to the USA. Stop letting the orange rapist get away with this lie.

    Here's my original post again. I bolded the key part: it's Trump telling the lie, and the news organizations are credulously repeating it.

    This same article doesn't provide any pushback to this claim until much later in the article, and then it only says that, "Carney said Canada accounts for only about 1% of fentanyl imports into the US," instead of calling it what it is: a lie.

    This is what has my onions cheesed: that major news outlets are uncritically repeating all the fetid slop that spews from Trump's mouth. Another example was the 'Governor Trudeau' bit from a few months ago, where I saw one clip of a gormless CNN anchor nod their empty head and chuckle as Trump's lapdog displayed the most wanton disregard for civility and the truth.

  • Carney 'disappointed' as Trump increases tariffs on Canada to 35%

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  • Canada had "failed to cooperate" in curbing the flow of fentanyl and other drugs across the US border. The Canadian government says it is cracking down on drug gangs.

    Hey, you hacks writing this: there is no massive flow of drugs going from Canada to the USA. Stop letting the orange rapist get away with this lie.

  • Lemmy is a tech literate echo chamber

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  • My own experience, as someone who is not necessarily tech illiterate, but also not an expert either:

    I decided to check out some basic Linux stuff, and found a post directing newcomers to a website that was supposed to be a top-notch beginner's guide. This guide started with a history of Linux, written in the style of an early 2000s GameFAQs guide. It then jumped immediately into selecting a distro, and started describing each option with terms like "lightweight"and "robust" without explaining what those terms meant in that context - or even defining what a distro was in the first place.

    As someone who has used Windows for around 3 decades, I could make some inferences to fill in the gaps. But I imagine someone with less experience with PCs would get completely lost.

    Now on the flip side, I've also shared in another thread the story of how I lost interest in programming partway through my introductory university course, and mostly received positive feedback. The folks in that thread seemed happy to hear the perspective of an outsider.