V17's recent activity

  1. Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games

    V17
    Link Parent
    Yeah, that's a fair distinction, I was quite tired when I wrote that. I don't have the answer, it seems like the direction of the question may be "they're all grifters who either dug even deeper...

    Yeah, that's a fair distinction, I was quite tired when I wrote that.

    I don't have the answer, it seems like the direction of the question may be "they're all grifters who either dug even deeper or switched to other hateful culture war topics since then". This is undoubtedly true in some visible cases, but I'm not convinced it's the majority. I don't think this question can realistically be honestly answered because it would require a lot of digging and possibly a debate about where to draw the line of being significant enough.

    In my opinion the masses who somehow participated or just sympathized with the movement are more important, and among those I do believe most were not disgusting bigots or grifters.

    8 votes

  2. Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games

    V17
    Link Parent
    Probably not, people who are still talking about gamergate are a tiny minority among all the people who were more or less quiet supporters in its heyday, and they're bound to be more extreme if...

    Probably not, people who are still talking about gamergate are a tiny minority among all the people who were more or less quiet supporters in its heyday, and they're bound to be more extreme if they're still at it today.

    Also it was not just about the ratings. As I said, one of the important points in gamergate history was realizing that for unknown reasons that go way beyond gamerate itself the journalists seemed to hate "gamer culture" as a whole and attempted to coordinate in pushing "gamers" out of the hobby, or at least reducing their importance. It obviously went way beyond "trying to keep their advertisers happy". Which is why I said it's the exact opposite for me - getting angry at this is completely believable and even expected.

    9 votes

  3. Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games

    V17
    Link Parent
    Without any irony: it's the exact opposite for me.

    Without any irony: it's the exact opposite for me.

    7 votes

  4. Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games

    V17
    Link Parent
    I feel like maybe we've been in this discussion before, so I'm not writing an essay here, but I disagree with both your opinion and your attitude towards the video. Maybe it's different in the US,...

    I feel like maybe we've been in this discussion before, so I'm not writing an essay here, but I disagree with both your opinion and your attitude towards the video.

    Maybe it's different in the US, but where I'm from the quality of gaming magazines and online media was always low in the literary sense, but they were relatively trustworthy and mainly it felt like the people who wrote for them were videogaming fanatics - certainly not journalists, not worthy of any literary awards, with a bit of an underdog vibe, but reasonably trustworthy and so it felt like they were one of us. (I no longer feel like I'm part of that "us", but I see nothing wrong with it either)

    Gamergate revealed that for several big gaming media this is not true at all, they are not one of us, they are untrustworthy, they in fact seem to despise us and they form weird backroom cliques which they use to attack our culture.

    That is the big issue. Zoe Quinn was just a red herring pretty much. Most GG sympathizers never harassed anyone, they just felt betrayed and angry because of firstly this discovery and then the completely one-sided coverage of the full blown culture war that ensued.

    Also I find it quite frustrating how people are presented with a reasonable explanation for why GG happened, became so big so suddenly and never really vanished completely and instead of trying to learn from that their reaction is "no, this must be wrong, these people are evil and therefore no reasonable explanation may exist". Despite what I say above I would prefer something like gamergate to vanish and never happen again, but as long as the majority of people have this attitude, I think we're bound to repeat it.

    19 votes

  5. Comment on Build your own video game listicle in ~games

    V17
    Link
    Famous sequels that are great, but not as great as their fans claim: Fallout 2 Thief 2: The Metal Age Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven Killing Floor 2 The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall The...

    Famous sequels that are great, but not as great as their fans claim:

    • Fallout 2
    • Thief 2: The Metal Age
    • Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven
    • Killing Floor 2
    • The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
    • The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

    I'm sure the list could be much longer, but these came to mind first.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on What did you do this week (and weekend)? in ~talk

    V17
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    I went to a new hackerspace/makerspace hybrid that is going to open soon, to play around with their laser cutter and work on some projects I've had on my mind for some time, like an air purifier...

    I went to a new hackerspace/makerspace hybrid that is going to open soon, to play around with their laser cutter and work on some projects I've had on my mind for some time, like an air purifier that I've been too lazy to build using just hand held tools. This started an ongoing chain of thought: we're in a city of less than half a mil people and yet there are three hackerspaces/makerspaces. Is this sustainable?

    I've been a long time member of the one true local hackerspace - non-profit, no external funding, democratic and a bit edgy at times. Visited this week as well. However over the years it's been losing its edge, making its culture diluted and more mainstream accessible, and while the fact that it has 4x more members than a decade ago (which is the cause of the dilution, not the result of it) has some pros, like allowing us to afford a big space, the hackerspace transformed into what feels like a group of mostly people who want to be a part of a community where somebody else does cool cutting edge shit, instead of a group of people who want to (and are able to) actually do cool cutting edge shit. This is disappointing and makes me feel a much smaller connection to the place than I used to.

    The new lab that I visited is also a nonprofit, but with central leadership. It tries to be accessible for non-hackers as a makerspace, but with the day to day stuff mostly ran and maintained by a core of hackers, with rules less strict than in a commercial makerspace. We'll see how well that works. The upside is that while it has external funding, it's not from a potentially hostile business that expects something back. It should make enough money to pay for its rent and energy, but if that doesn't happen here and there, it's not the end of the world. And the funding provides cash for more expensive machines, like the laser cutter or a big 3-axis CNC.

    Then there's a commercial makerspace ran by a local startup incubator/innovation center. Also with some expensive machines, but with somewhat stricter rules and less freedom and sense of community.

    The new lab is certainly going to compete with the other two in its hybrid approach, which I guess is the point. So far a few of the people who, like me, were not entirely happy with the direction the hackerspace was going, left the hackerspace and are helping to set this place up and get it ready for opening. Competition is not wrong though, and this could be a golden era for hackers/makers.

  7. Comment on Stop Killing The Internet: No digital ID and no age verification in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    You're not wrong, but also there's a line beyond which discussing the ideas is more like LARPing than talking about politics because it's firstly too unrealistic and secondly the idea is not...

    You're not wrong, but also there's a line beyond which discussing the ideas is more like LARPing than talking about politics because it's firstly too unrealistic and secondly the idea is not presented with a plan on how to do it and how to deal with the consequences, which are things much more important than the idea itself. In my opinion this is the case because the financial incentives are too huge, which is why the corporations will fight it, and because it would completely break down the sales & marketing channels that many small businesses, ones that we don't hate, are built on, and create a situation where existing corporations are fine because they can afford to brute force non-targeted advertising, but new and small businesses are screwed.

    1 vote

  8. Comment on Stop Killing The Internet: No digital ID and no age verification in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    In my opinion you hugely overstate how many people actually care about this and similarly understate the consequences. And as soon as anybody comes with a proposal to actually do it, you will get...

    it's also a ridiculously, broadly popular proposal

    In my opinion you hugely overstate how many people actually care about this and similarly understate the consequences.

    And as soon as anybody comes with a proposal to actually do it, you will get all the big ad companies coming with a campaign informing people that they will no longer be able to show ads to their target demographic, no matter if they're coca cola or a local pottery studio. And that while big corporations will get through this because they're already established and they have the cash for billboards, the small and new are going to lose their primary marketing channel that is now even more important than in the past as organic traffic from google plummeted in the last few years.

    And the issue is they're not going to be wrong.

  9. Comment on Stop Killing The Internet: No digital ID and no age verification in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    The problem with this is that it's not going to happen. Even if we're here talking just hypothetically, I prefer talking about things that have some potential of being realized.

    Ban all collection and resale of user data as well as any kind of content- or user-aware advertisement and the commercial incentive for this manipulation vanishes. It will kill a whole industry, but it deserves to die painfully. Everyone in it deserves to be as economically bankrupt as they are morally bankrupt.

    The problem with this is that it's not going to happen. Even if we're here talking just hypothetically, I prefer talking about things that have some potential of being realized.

    2 votes

  10. Comment on Stop Killing The Internet: No digital ID and no age verification in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    I saw all of those things as well and I would greatly prefer seeing them and having an open internet than locking the internet down, both as a kid and now. However I think that social media and...

    I saw all of those things as well and I would greatly prefer seeing them and having an open internet than locking the internet down, both as a kid and now.

    However I think that social media and everything it does - addiction, exploitation of negative emotions, the idiotic shit that it spreads - is much worse for a young brain than goatse, lemon party or even mr. hands. That's what makes my opinion on this not entirely clear, ideally this would by handled by the parents, but obviously many parents don't care or are brainrotted themselves and I think the damage may be big enough to warrant some regulation.

    11 votes

  11. Comment on Stop Killing The Internet: No digital ID and no age verification in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    I agree with this, but I'm not sure if this is a real option anymore and creating a sub-internet and leaving the rest be seems like the less bad solution than current attempts to require some sort...

    I agree with this, but I'm not sure if this is a real option anymore and creating a sub-internet and leaving the rest be seems like the less bad solution than current attempts to require some sort of ID everywhere.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on X corp is taking down Nitter instances and demands takedown of project repository in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    I mean, this is possible on xitter as well, isn't it?

    Isn’t the point of the site that you only see content from people you explicitly follow?

    I mean, this is possible on xitter as well, isn't it?

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Artists built a site to escape AI. Scrapers are coming for it anyway. in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    Sure, I was just reacting to the general "photography of the art is banned", because in my opinion it generally is not. I agree that "for commercial purposes" is a different thing and would be...

    Sure, I was just reacting to the general "photography of the art is banned", because in my opinion it generally is not. I agree that "for commercial purposes" is a different thing and would be related here, maybe it was just stated in a weird way.

    4 votes

  14. Comment on Artists built a site to escape AI. Scrapers are coming for it anyway. in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    It's crazy how weird and specific this AI defense gets as well, especially in the open-source segment. It's not just defending prompting, it's defending only specific types of prompting. I use...

    It's crazy how weird and specific this AI defense gets as well, especially in the open-source segment. It's not just defending prompting, it's defending only specific types of prompting.

    I use generative AI either for things that are basically worthless and throw-away but need to be done anyway, like recently for unified icons in a corporate presentation template, or for inspiration - basically instead of building a reference/inspiration/moodboard folder in the first stages of working on something, I use generative models for some of it. It has some limits of course, but it's immensely useful, whether for commercial or hobby projects, and it can often come up with genuinely cool and weird ideas when wielded well.

    Unfortunately one thing that often happens is that as you train models for more fidelity, prompt adherence, coherence or photorealism, their creativity drops, they lose the weirdness that makes generative AI interesting for me. Midjourney seems to be the only company that explicitly tries to prevent this and succeeds. But I haven't used any new open models in years, so I asked a question about current "creative" models in /r/StableDiffusion, as it seems to be an open model hub.

    What I found was that there is a group of people who are very proud of being able to use the models and workflows to create very specific, very literally described images, no matter their artistic quality, and viewed the usage of more creative models as so low effort that they equated it to using a slot machine and being unable to be creative on your own. Their own creations were, without exception, worthless derivative crap in some kitchy anime/"hand-drawn"/"painted" style, but it was specifically the crap that they wanted to create, which gave them a feeling of higher status. They didn't care that those professional graphic artists who do not avoid AI generally use these creative "slot machine" models because they're simply better for the job, and they don't care about ultimate prompt adherence because they would never think of shipping an AI image, which is only used somewhere in the early part of their workflow anyway.

    It's hard to describe the feeling of absurdity it evoked.

    Why is it a thing in these communities to always antagonize artists?

    To be fair many artists argue against AI in the exact same ways. Their motivation is much more understandable and rational for sure, but what doesn't help is that the way they speak against AI is often clearly done without having basic understanding of how the technology works (but not realizing this and talking about the technology anyway), and that the loudest opponents are often the artists that create the most low-value art like commissions done in style of a specific show etc. Those who create things of value generally just say a few words against AI when asked, but spend their time creating, not arguing on the internet. So they are fighting for an understandable cause, but often in a really stupid way and without having the useful defense of "I'm an actually good and successful artist".

    4 votes

  15. Comment on Artists built a site to escape AI. Scrapers are coming for it anyway. in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    That's not comparable either, music sampling may include using snippets transformed enough to be unrecognizable, but it also includes using bits of the original with only very mild transformation...

    That's not comparable either, music sampling may include using snippets transformed enough to be unrecognizable, but it also includes using bits of the original with only very mild transformation or no transformation at all. Training generally doesn't do that, and if it does, it's more like a side effect of being fed so many copies of Mona Lisa that it's remembered almost as is, the goal of training is to avoid this.

    Not to mention that until AI arrived some of these laws about permission to use in music specifically were rightfully considered overzealous, but now that they can be used against AI they are suddenly good. That's a separate issue, and I could accept new laws that apply to machine learning specifically, but I'd hate to see tightened or cemented laws regarding various types of reuse in music for everyone as a side effect of anti-AI pushback. For context I am a musician.

    6 votes

  16. Comment on Artists built a site to escape AI. Scrapers are coming for it anyway. in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    Is this common? Never heard of it, which for the latter is because I don't work in a gallery, but I attend galleries often and I rarely see photography being banned with the exception of flash...

    Photography of the art is banned, as is anyone who works for competing galleries.

    Is this common? Never heard of it, which for the latter is because I don't work in a gallery, but I attend galleries often and I rarely see photography being banned with the exception of flash photography for reasons of potentially damaging the pieces and blinding other people. I myself usually snap a few photos of my favorites.

    7 votes

  17. Comment on Why Germany's favorite soda comes in a beer bottle in ~food

    V17
    Link Parent
    Czechia has Kofola, which is quite successful and imo pretty good, do try it if you get the chance. Around some parts of the country Zon lemonades are kind of popular - they are less special, but...

    Czechia has Kofola, which is quite successful and imo pretty good, do try it if you get the chance. Around some parts of the country Zon lemonades are kind of popular - they are less special, but they basically represent what soft drinks used to be like here before Coca Cola and Pepsi, and they're cheap. Especially the raspberry one, a generic version of that synthetic flavor raspberry soda used to be ubiquitous in restaurants, these days it's less common and you mostly get Kofola or flavored non-alcoholic beer instead.

    Austrian Almdudler is pretty good, though it has been more than a decade since I last tried it.

    And perhaps italian San Pellegrino, if it counts. It's basically sparkling mineral water flavored with real citrus juice. I don't like the most famous tangerine one, but the orange one is truly excellent - I'm not really a fan of sweet stuff either, but this I could drink all the time if it wasn't kind of expensive here.

    Oh, and maybe Mate flavored soft drinks? They tend to have a lot of caffeine, so it's not really soda for kids, but I like them specifically because they taste kind of bitter. I think the most popular ones are made in Germany, and there's more than just Club Mate.

    5 votes

  18. Comment on Is there any interest in building a Tildes successor? in ~tildes

    V17
    Link Parent
    I will explain. Being from an ex-communist country, I don't like spaces that are strongly US-style progressive because they tend to be quite dogmatic, which is only made worse by first past the...

    I honestly have no clue what you mean with this

    I will explain. Being from an ex-communist country, I don't like spaces that are strongly US-style progressive because they tend to be quite dogmatic, which is only made worse by first past the post system in the US - something that is not present in other western countries, but the online polarization of the political debate that it creates tends to spill to them anyway.

    The political system and debates that take place where I live are quite different, so many opinions and debates that I see in such spaces just seem stupid in a "been there, done that, clearly doesn't work" kind of way, and it's also annoying as hell being regularly called a member of "the other side" when in reality I just have no reason to call myself a member of either and I'm almost always closer to their side than to "the enemy" in my opinions.

    This approach tends to require overmoderation, whether it's on reddit or elsewhere. And yes, due to the nature of Lemmy and Reddit it also creates constant vigilance and ideological checks, judging whether some dissenting people are worthy of being members or just trolls. The problem is it's really easy to be labelled a troll if you're just outside of their political worldviews.

    Tildes also has a western progressive bias, but it's less extreme on average and outside a small minority of topics that create strong emotions dissent is not a problem in terms of moderation or in terms of the community turning against you, so while I'm not entirely happy here, it doesn't overshadow the other qualities.

    Moderation is one of these topics where many people who have not been involved with moderating communities simply don't realize how much of it is needed if signup is open.

    No, I do understand this. I just don't care - if the community or moderation sucks as a result, then they chose the wrong place to run it and I'm not going to use it.

    I do believe that some sort of gatekeeping is a crucial part of any healthy online community and is the reason why Tildes is what it is.

    21 votes

  19. Comment on Is there any interest in building a Tildes successor? in ~tildes

    V17
    Link Parent
    I can't double check for now because it's down, but if it's what I think it is, the community and the team behind it were exactly the problem for me personally - it seemed like an overmoderated...

    But I don't think it was the team behind it or the community itself that was the issue.

    I can't double check for now because it's down, but if it's what I think it is, the community and the team behind it were exactly the problem for me personally - it seemed like an overmoderated (western) leftist safe space with the same issues that similar subreddits have. I am on Tildes specifically because, despite obvious western left bias, it is not overmoderated, most people don't have extreme opinions, and even with controversial issues people don't generally assume you're a troll if you go against the grain.

    16 votes

  20. Comment on ‘Barbie 2’ in crisis: sequel could be shelved amid pay battle and crumbling deal talks in ~movies

    V17
    Link Parent
    Why? Isn't that a relatively common thing to happen? It doesn't always happen, maybe not even in the majority of cases, but in the case of a movie based on a hyper-commercial toy franchise, where...

    Why? Isn't that a relatively common thing to happen? It doesn't always happen, maybe not even in the majority of cases, but in the case of a movie based on a hyper-commercial toy franchise, where the fact that the first one was not just a blatant cash grab seems like a bit of a miracle, this seems like a fair expectation.

    5 votes