Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)S

sylver_dragon

@ sylver_dragon @lemmy.world

Posts
6
Comments
756
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Ubisoft initiates colossal restructure to become a more 'gamer-centric' company

    Jump

  • They are chopping the development teams and titles up into convenient bite-sized chunks. Ubisoft will hang onto the large titles in the Vantage Studios vertical, and the rest will be spun off or sold off. Any spun off studios will be saddled with crippling debt.

  • Microsoft Shuts Down Library, Replaces It With AI

    Jump

  • Eating their own dog food slop.

  • Do corporations really do research?

    Jump

  • It tends to be much more focused on bringing products to market, but of course they do. The transistor, the base unit of all of the microchips which make this conversation possible, came out of Bell Labs. And, as much as we might hate them for it, you have companies like Monsanto doing a lot of work on chemical engineering and genetics. Much of the work on AI (for good or slop) is being done in private sector labs now. Aeronautics research happens heavily in companies like Boeing and Airbus, though they are often working hand in hand with government labs (e.g. NASA, JPL, EASA).

    Where Universities and Government really shine are areas like basic research and research which doesn't have obvious commercial applications. Which is why support for those organizations is so critical. Those areas of research often have long term effects and can result in entirely new areas of knowledge, research and products.

    It's easy to think of large corporations as soulless organizations hell bent of accumulating wealth at the cost of anything else, because they are. But they are also surprisingly good at focusing wealth and effort to find new ways to do things cheaper, faster and more efficiently. Specifically because those things make money. Veritasium had a video on a good example of this recently.

  • The Elder Scrolls Online's smaller expansions are "not in any way" a result of last year's layoffs

    Jump

  • So, the layoffs didn't cause the change to smaller expansions. The change to smaller expansions made the layoffs easier.

  • At this point, what should we do about the ICE raids? If an ICE agent breaks in without a warrant or holds you at gunpoint, what do you do?

    Jump

  • Vice News did a bit on 3d printed firearms a while back. It was really interesting and gave a realistic demonstration of the ease and difficulties of 3d printed firearms.

  • That was the rule the whole time?

    Jump

  • Right, but have you considered that no one actually cares about Greece?

  • Do we need more users ?

    Jump

  • This is it exactly. I made a hard cut with Reddit, but I'll admit to missing the sysadmin subreddit. The place was full of very smart, helpful people and also cranky. The PowerShell subreddit was another great resource. I haven't been willing to go back, but those sorts of communities only exist when you hit a certain mass of people on a platform.

  • At this point, what should we do about the ICE raids? If an ICE agent breaks in without a warrant or holds you at gunpoint, what do you do?

    Jump

  • That would probably be the FGC-9. Or Luty's Expedient Homemade Firearms. That said, getting into a gunfight with armed federal agents seems like a quick way to commit suicide.

  • World’s first megawatt-level airborne 'windmill' feeds power to grid

    Jump

  • I'm curious about helium leakage from the envelope and how that will be managed. I can understand why they chose helium to lift it, but it is notoriously hard to contain. If this scales up, they are going to need a constant source to replenish losses.

  • 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

    Jump

  • Steam is certainly in a dominant market position. They had a large first mover advantage and have also done a lot of work to make and keep gamers happy with the platform. That said, I can understand companies being upset at the 30% Steam tax on sales. It's a pretty large cut and other stores (e.g. Epic) have tried to compete based on that cost. The problem being that many games have massive Steam libraries and want to keep everything on one place and they aren't really affected by the cost to the devs; so, without a significant reason to change, they won't. It also doesn't help that some competitors (e.g Epic) have been user hostile in the past and so don't have a high level of trust. Steam has also built a lot of goodwill with power users for their work on Proton.

    While I do think there needs to be healthy competition for storefronts, as long as Steam resists the temptation to enshitify their dominant market position, I don't see them losing market share in any meaningful way. Perhaps it would be better if Steam were spun off from Valve, putting them Valve on equal footing with other devs. But, video games aren't really fungible. It's not like I'm going to say, "oh darn, Kingdom Come is too expensive, I guess I'll buy Half Life instead". They are just fundamentally different games and if I want to play the first one, I'm not able to get that by buying the second. So, the price of one of them isn't really a factor in pushing me towards the other. Though, Valve might use Steam to push one game over the other, and that could be something that is a problem.

  • hmm

    Jump

  • At a previous job, we had to deal with scientific equipment (oscilloscopes, at the like) running on Windows XP (in the lat 2010's). On the positive side, we were able to kick them off the network entirely. On the downside, nearly every single one of them was infected with Conficker and we'd get alerts when the operators used USB drives to move data between the equipment and the production network. By the time I left, we'd gotten a few of the devices reloaded with a factory image and then turned off autorun, but I'm sure the problem is still widespread. And, of course, upgrading beyond Windows XP wasn't possible and applying OS hardening to the devices was a pipe dream. There should be a special place in Hell for the management of companies which create these sorts of devices. They are happy to charge vast amounts of money, but do fuck all to ensure the security of them.

  • Scientists discover a treatment that will let you live to be 1000 but it also turns you into a reptile. Do you do it?

    Jump

  • I'm in, though I'm curious what "turns you into a reptile" means. Does it just mean I become cold blooded. I'm fine with that, it just means I'm moving somewhere tropical. Do I grow scales and a tail? Certainly not ideal, but I could probably live with it, especially if the tail is prehensile and if I get claws in the mix. Do I get a really long, controllable tongue? Can't think of any uses for that. Nope, none at all...

    Attraction, sex and reproduction would be interesting questions as well. Do I still find human women attractive, or is my brain rewired to want a lusty argonian maid? What does my new plumbing look like? Are there others of my new species around for me to do the monster mash with?

    But overall, yes I'd probably go for it. I don't delude myself into thinking that I will somehow continue to exist after death; so, not dying seems like the better alternative. Sure, if the downsides are really bad, I can accept that death is a better outcome (e.g. you live forever, but have locked-in syndrome forever). But, living as a lizard person doesn't seem too horrible.

  • Mechs shouldn't have heads

    Jump

  • If we're aiming more towards realism, there are many reasons no modern military fields anything which looks like a mech. Not the least of which is tall, thin objects stick out on a battlefield and becomes targets. If you want an armored vehicle with a big gun, you build it low to the ground and end up with a tank. More survivability usually boils down to two factors:

    1. Lower observability
    2. More armor/defense

    You don't die if you don't get shot, and if you do get shot at you really, really want to prevent whatever hit you from penetrating in and killing the crew and/or disabling the vehicle.

    Mechs, with spindly legs end up high above the ground and those legs become obvious targets given the complexity of making a leg work. You'd want to reduce the height, meaning shorter legs. Then you want to not have something as horridly complex as an actuating knee or hip. So, let's just use a tracked drive or wheel instead. At for the top, why arms? Again, too much complexity, just a single rotating turret would be simpler and easier to shield. That head thing can be reduced to a sensor mast and we'll just make the sensors omnidirectional to avoid the whole "make it spin" complexity. And um, we just built a tank. Sure, there is some advantage to walking vehicles, and they might make sense on a small scale or in support roles where they are much less likely to come under fire. But for a front-line armored vehicle, I'd buy tanks.

    At the same time, mechs look cool.

  • Removed

    You should try it. It's...it's beautiful

    Jump

  • Gotta have that progress bar, otherwise you might be tempted to

    <Ctrl>

    -C and you will be left with some of your software problems.

  • Removed

    You should try it. It's...it's beautiful

    Jump

  • Yes, and you can probably get better performance with different block sizes. This is just what I used to fix drives as it was fast enough and I couldn't be arsed to do any real testing to find the right speed. Also, my stash of drives was no where near homogeneous, so the right size for one type of drive may not have worked for a different type of drive. I also used the 4MB block size when imaging drives to have an ok-ish speed while not losing too much data if there were read errors.

  • Removed

    You should try it. It's...it's beautiful

    Jump

  • For a physical machine:for f in $(lsblk | grep disk | cut -d ' ' -f 1); do sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$f bs=4MB status=progress; done

    That will remove all your current software problems. You'll have new ones, but the old ones will be gone.

  • There should be a way to upvote a post/comment while selectively downvoting a part of the text.

    Jump

  • A solution exists: ignore the upvote/downvote buttons and use the reply button. You can then address the points you agree with and more importantly the points you disagree with, why you disagree with them and make your own points. It takes more effort, but it provides a lot more value than the mindless voting buttons.

  • Are there any ai organizations you trust?

    Jump

  • I trust every AI group to do their level best to separate me from my money. Beyond that, I wouldn't trust them with a stolen identity.

  • ‘Don’t expect troops on the ground,’ Johnson says after Venezuela briefing

    Jump
  • 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