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sylver_dragon

@ sylver_dragon @lemmy.world

Posts
6
Comments
775
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Intermittent fasting no better than typical weight loss diets, study finds

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  • Not every news article is going to be about some ground breaking research. That researchers are putting these sorts of fad diets to the test is important and knowing the outcome of that is useful. Journalism is about informing people, not entertaining them. If you can't handle being informed without the sensationalism, you may need to seek professional help.

  • Video game romances need to evolve beyond lore dumps

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  • Unless the romance is central to the game, that sort of focus and depth just isn't going to be put into it. There is also the issue that the writers in video games have far less control over the main character than they do in other mediums. In a book, you don't have to worry about your main character deciding to to fuck off for a week collecting all the boxes in a village and stacking them on the town well, just because it's funny. That main character stays on task and on plot for the writer. There are games where that high level of control is possible, visual novels exist, but that starts to push into the question, "why not just make a book/movie instead?"

    Similarly, I think it's going to be hard for any video game romance not to come off as transactional, due to the nature of a game being a computer program. Imagine trying to tell Romeo and Juliet as a video game. At some point, Romeo and Juliet will need to interact. Romeo arrives at Juliet's window and professes his love. How does the player interact with the game for that scene? Is it just a cutscene? Or a cutscene with quick time events (press X to woo). Trying to replicate a Jane Austin style story would be even worse. As books about people sitting about in drawing rooms drinking tea and being catty to one another, replicating that in a video game is all going to boil down to dialog trees. Perhaps the first time through it could feel fresh and interesting, but on a second playthrough it's going to quickly be obvious that the whole thing is really just "pick the right options for a chance at sexy-time". Maybe we could get a Jane Austin Rouge-like, in that each time you load it up the characters' personalities change and you really do have to pay attention to verbal and social queues to get anywhere. But even that is still really just "pick the right options for a chance at sexy-time".

    Ultimately, I think video games are always going to be fairly transactional in nature. They are computer programs and are ultimately deterministic. All the interactions you have in a video game need to be planned out, scripted and maybe even voice acted. It's what makes all the interactions in Baldur's Gate 3 so amazing. Everything those characters do was planned for, written and recorded. Every comment, every facial expression was planned, written and coded. There is no spontaneity, because there can't be (maybe with AI, but that's a different can of worms). That so many little things actually did get covered is amazing. But, the trigger conditions for playing that bit of animation and voice acting will be hard coded. Whether or not a character likes the main character must be a set of numbers stored in memory, because that's how computers work. Yes, it could be far more complex than just an easily identifiable number. And perhaps hiding those numbers from the player would make it feel less obvious, but they aren't going to go away.

    And all the work which goes into planning, writing and coding those interactions is time spent during development. Going back to Baldur's Gate 3, wouldn't it be awesome if some of the NPCs started pairing off with each other? If the main characters isn't getting busy with Shadowheart, maybe she discoverers an interest in big men who can turn into bears so you come back to camp sometime to find her and Halsin sitting very close together talking softly. This could even have the whole random element where different characters have different crushes/interests each time you play through. That would be neat to see, but it's going to require a lot of extra development. Unless that's a feature which starts selling video games, it's not going to happen. Perhaps this sort of thing will show up in indie games, I wouldn't expect it in major titles anytime soon.

  • US Democrats: proud of deportations

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  • Pepperidge Farm remembers:

  • Microslop

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  •  
            I remember working in environments where management had decreed that we would not install updates ever. . .

    That’s…definitely a decision that puts a lot of trust in Microsoft’s security. Lol

    It was a very different time. Security was still something that happened mostly at the network perimeter, and even then not much. Routers without firewalls were very common and things like SQLSlammer were much more possible.

  • Microslop

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  • Ya, I'm sure the AI code isn't helping, but is it materially any different? I spent way too many long nights trying to unfuck Windows servers after updates failed to install correctly. And that was well before the AI Slop Boom. Even more fun is when the update reported installing correctly but the Nessus scans came back showing the old version of DLLs still in the System32 folder. There is a reason no one installs Windows patches on day 1. At minimum, you give them a week to let the foolhardy and fanboys get their disks slapped by Microsoft, again.

    Going back to my days supporting Window 2000/2003, I remember working in environments where management had decreed that we would not install updates ever, because of too much downtime due to bad updates. Even today, updating in OT environments can be very difficult due to shitty software running on really old versions of Windows. At least that stuff can usually be kicked off the network and left to rot in isolation.

  • What do you think is the worst human invention?

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  • one day when we will hopefully be living in more peaceful times without imperialists

    You don't read much history? Humans have never lived in widespread peace for any length of time. We have evidence of violence between groups of humans well back into the Stone Age. We are not a species prone to peace.

  • Gallup to Stop Tracking Presidential Approval After More Than 80 Years

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  • President John F. Kennedy had the highest average approval rating among the presidents tracked by Gallup at roughly 70%.

    So the secret to a President having a high approval rating is to get shot in the face. Guess Trump should have shifted the other way.

  • I was quite out of the loop, but it sems like TeamSpeak 6 is now a full fledged self-hostable Discord alternative? TeamSpeak 6 Is Back: New Design, Screen Sharing, and More

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  • Team speak? What year is it?I remember hosting a teamspeak server for folks I played Wolfenstein: ET with. In the early 2000's.

  • Question about Antivirus

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  • While I don't know the specific post you are referring to, Malware exists for Linux. Here's a great overview from last year. If someone wants to argue, "oh it's from a security company trying to sell a product" then let me point you at the Malware Bazaar and specifically the malware tagged elf. Those are real samples of real malware in the Linux specific ELF executable binary format (warning: yes it's real malware, don't run anything from this site). On the upshot, most seem to be Linux variants of the Mirai botnet. Not something you want running, but not quite as bad as ransomware. But, dig a bit and there are other threats. Linux malware exists, it has for a long time and it's getting more prevalent as more stuff (especially servers) run on Linux.

    While Linux is far more secure than Windows by design, it's not malware proof. It is harder for malware to move from user space into root (usually), but that's often not needed for the activities malware gets up to today. Ransomware, crypto miners and info stealers will all happily execute in user-land. And for most people, this is where their important stuff lives. Linux's days of living in "security through obscurity" are over. Attackers are looking at Linux now and starting to go after it.

    All that said, is it worth having a bloated A/V engine doing full on-access scanning? That depends on how you view the risk. Many of the drive-by type attacks (e.g. ClickFix, fake tech-support scams) all heavily target Windows and would fail on a Linux system. The malware and backdoors that come bundled with pirated software are likely to fail on a Linux system, though I'll admit to not having tested that sort of thing with Wine/Proton installed. For those use cases, I'd suggest not downloading pirated software. Or, if you absolutely are going to, run those file through ClamAV at minimum.

    Personally, I don't feel the need to run anything as heavy as on-access file scanning or anything to keep trawling memory for signatures on my home systems. Keeping software up to date and limiting what I download, install and run is enough to manage my risk. I do have ClamAV installed to let me do a quick, manual scan of anything I do download. But, I wouldn't go so far as to buy A/V product. Most of the engines out there for Linux are crap anyway.

    Professionally, I am one of the voices who pushed for A/V (really EDR) on the Linux systems in my work environment. My organization has a notable Linux footprint and we've seen attackers move to Linux based systems specifically because they are less likely to be well monitored. In a work environment, we have less control over how the systems get (ab)used and have a higher need for telemetry and investigation.

  • What would a sunrise look like, you stood on the imaginative surface of a black hole?

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  • Let's ignore the pedantic issues of "there is no surface", "there is no sun to rise" or "you'd be dead so insanely fast you probably wouldn't notice". Assuming you were magically teleported and held protected just above the event horizon of a black hole, it would be so bright you'd go blind almost instantly. Not because of any star coming over the horizon, but because the accretion disk would just be that bright. If you look at NASA's pictures of M87, you aren't actually seeing the black hole. There's nothing there to see. Instead, what you are seeing in the pictures is the accretion disk around the black hole. As matter gets closer to the event horizon, it accelerates and all that stuff starts bumping into each other. At the energies involved, this produces electromagnetic radiation of basically every energy. There is infrared right up through x-ray, included lots and lots of visible light. And this is happening on a scale which is so mind mindbogglingly big that words really just fail to capture it. Here is an artistic representation with our solar system for scale. Pluto's orbit would be well inside the event horizon. There is an insane amount of light and energy in that accretion disk. And thanks to the blackhole warping light around itself, you would be getting bombarded by its energy from every angle, including the disk on the opposite side of the black hole. In short, it would be really bright.

  • Exploring options for buying property

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  • One of the things to look at is the interest rate you would be paying for either loan and how that would effect the total cost of the loan. Also, there is the question of the utility of any money spent up front. For example, if using a loan on the existing house would result in no up front costs and a 5% interest rate over 30 years, and the standard mortgage would cost $20,000 and have an interest rate of 8%, you're almost certainly better to use the existing house as backing and throw that same $20K in a long term interest bearing investment (e.g. government bonds). All this assuming you plan to hold onto the second property long term.

    Compounding interest is a fantastic tool and a fearful master. If you can make it work for you, then do it. If you are facing the possibility of paying it, you almost always want to lower it as much as possible.

  • Microsoft spends billions on AI, converts just 3.3% of Copilot Chat users

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  • Yup, I have an Enterprise seat for Copilot through work. It can be useful to slop up emails for management, but anything requiring care, accuracy or attention to detail seems outside it's wheelhouse. As a those descriptors apply to much of my work, that Copilot license basically collects digital dust. But management is absolutely over the moon with AI, so I don't feel bad giving them AI slop.

  • [The Economist] Why software stocks are getting pummelled

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  • That of ServiceNow, whose tools help businesses automate various tasks, dropped by 13%

    If AI can kill ServiceNow, I'll happily praise our new AI Overlords. I'm sure ServiceNow can be really good. I've just never seen it in practice. Perhaps we just never paid for the "interface which doesn't suck" module.

  • MAGA ‘was all a lie’: Marjorie Taylor Greene torches Trump in scathing new interview

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  • Yup, I'd never consider Greene an ally. But, the enemy of my enemy is a useful tool against my enemy. The more conservative voices calling out Trump's corruption and self-serving, the better. The MAGA base is never going to listen to anyone who is politically to the left of Atilla the Hun, but someone like Greene may be able to peel a few of them off into the "disaffected, non-voters" camp.

  • Misplaced Priorities

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  • When did Right Click -> Set as Wallpaper -> Desktop involve writing code?Yes, older versions of Linux may have had that setting buried in a config file somewhere, which required editing in a text editor. And that sort of UI was shit, is shit and will always be shit. But, if we're going to bring up old versions of an OS, let's talk about Windows Me.

  • Trump Says He Wants to 'Drive Housing Prices Up' Instead of Lowering Costs for People Who 'Didn't Work Very Hard'

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  • What a shite take from the man who has no sense of real-world costs.

    He also has no understanding of inflation. Lowing interest rates with rising inflation will, almost certainly, drive up home prices. As there will be more dollars chasing a limited supply. The problem is that this sort thing has a bad habit of going poorly. Investors have just gotten addicted to cheap credit. The US Fed is supposed to be the adult in the room, but The Pedo in Chief is doing his best to undermine that safeguard.

  • Trump Says He Wants to 'Drive Housing Prices Up' Instead of Lowering Costs for People Who 'Didn't Work Very Hard'

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  • A-fucking-men.I'm in a similar boat house. We bought in 2011, used a USDA loan and were able to pick our place up for a song ($160k). It now has a "value" of ~$360k. And all that extra "value" is doing for me is increasing taxes and insurance costs. I'm not planning on selling any time soon, so my home "price" going up is a net negative. Sure, we might sell in a decade or so, but today's price won't have a major impact on that.

    What I’m getting at is, this doesn’t benefit homeowners, it benefits housing investors, who are the group Trump really wants to prop up.

    What? You're telling me the pedophile, racist, Nazi sympathizer, billionare son of a racist, Nazi sympathizer who made the family's billions by wartime real estate profiteering is more interested in protecting real estate profiteering than helping people? Color me shocked, absolutely shocked, I say. Well, not that shocked.

  • Comcast keeps losing customers despite price guarantee and unlimited data

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  • I ditched cable TV over a decade ago for a simple antenna (and wrote a notable Reddit post on the antenna while I was at it). That was done because I was tired of my wallet being raped each month, because I had to buy a higher bundle to get the channels I wanted. I was stuck with cable internet for a number of years afterwards, as it was the only option in my area. Then T-Mobile offered up 5G based internet in my area at a low price. That was around 6 years ago and I haven't looked back.

    The cable companies sat on their laurels while the world moved on. They are now shocked that their terrible offerings for terrible prices are falling to real competition. Sure, I fully expect the new carriers to do everything in their power to enshitify their service offerings. That's the nature of business/ But, with the market open to competition, there is now a real opportunity for us customers to shop around and get a less shitty experience. Broadband internet is a commodity and is completely fungible. Prices should be falling and it was only rent seeking rules keeping the prices up.

  • Fable's evil landlords won't grow devil horns, as reboot ditches classic character morphing due to a lack of belief in objective arseholery

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  • I'd just be happy to see "evil" choices which weren't cartoonishly silly. So many of these game end up offering you choices like:

    • Kiss the baby, donate all your money to an orphanage.
    • Kill the baby, cook and eat it. in front of the mother.

    There's never anything like:

    • Kiss the baby, take over the orphanage, run an outward front which looks like a fantastic charitable organization while training the orphans to commit crimes for you.

    Really well done "evil" should be loved by the people, seem outwardly good while using that as cover to do selfish things. But that is much harder than "Press X to murder an innocent for no reason".

  • Mildly Interesting @lemmy.world
    sylver_dragon @lemmy.world

    Arrows vs. Armor 3

  • Self-hosting @slrpnk.net
    sylver_dragon @lemmy.world

    Self-hosted blog options.

  • Lemmy.world Support @lemmy.world
    sylver_dragon @lemmy.world

    Request to take over c/virginia

  • 3DPrinting @lemmy.world
    sylver_dragon @lemmy.world

    Infill percentage versus stiffness

  • News @lemmy.world
    sylver_dragon @lemmy.world

    Winchester man reveals name of soldier who created massive peace sign in Vietnam at height of war

    www.winchesterstar.com /winchester_star/peace-out-winchester-man-reveals-name-of-soldier-who-created-massive-peace-sign-in-vietnam/article_fcfa789d-cf73-569a-9920-1df2eb32bead.html
  • 3DPrinting @lemmy.world
    sylver_dragon @lemmy.world

    Horribly inefficient party favors