I often starts playing a game, then quit because it simply doesn't feel like a PC game to me. Sometimes it is because it is a console port, but not always.

I just tried playing VAMBRACE, and got stuck when trying to open a door. There was an "open door" icon right at the door, but clicking it had no effect. Turns out I had to press the action button, which was the E on the keyboard. What's more, all the icons in the game works like this, having assigned a key you have to press. With me having a mouse which is designed especially to click on things on the screen, this makes little sense. It reminded me of the way early homemade DOS games let you use keyboard input, typically in this format:
<P>lay <M>anual <Q>uit
Obviously, VAMBRACE was designed to be played with an Xbox controller. But the end result is a control scheme which grew out of fashion thirty years ago.

I quite hate the Xbox controller. That wobbly thumbstick are just so so uncomfortable, with the forward direction forcing you to move your thumb forward and slightly left in the most awkward of movements. Despite most humans having 10 fingers, the majority of actions are performed by the right thumb which have to move between 4 different buttons. In the Xbox controllers defence, it had to have the wobbly thumbstick as a replacement from WASD + mouse first person shooter movement. But this doesn't change that I'm never going to like this silly gadget.

I can't say exactly what the difference is between PC games and console games. There are of course the controls, keyboard and mouse VS gamepad, but I also feel like there are also some differences in the basic feeling of the game. A lot of consolish games feel a bit like a tech demo with some light interaction throughout, sort of like a rollercoaster ride.

This was something I liked about NOITA. It is designed for PC from the ground up. The aiming requires a mouse cursor, and the wand tinkering would be pretty much impossible without a mouse.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

This is an off-the-cuff, stream-of-consciousness post, so IDK how much sense it'll make.

This idea of quitting the Internet is not new for me, but it's also never been a serious, "consider-the-pros-v-cons" plan, either. Just a kind of knee-jerk reaction to seeing things online that remind me (more and more often, these days) that the 'Net is not what I hoped-and-wanted it to be, and it is becoming less like it, daily.

But in recent months, for me, I find myself thinking about it more, more often, and more seriously.

For a bit of context, I am a software developer (I guess), 20+ years in the field, more back-end than front-end, but quite a lot of web development, too. And I've been burned out in my field for the last several years, working occasionally, but mostly just living off of savings ... watching them dwindle, while I try to figure out what else to do with my life.

I also think there is some kind of burgeoning groundswell towards some similar ideas ... many people becoming more and more disgusted with what corporations and governments have done and are doing to it, trying to find some way to walk away from it w/o completely severing themselves from the modern world. The latest generation of AI and the new magic word, "enshittification" are certainly making more people realize that the 'Net is not headed in a good direction.

I could so easily go into a long-winded rant about "this isn't the Internet we were promised", and yada ... but whatever. It is what it is, and many people are happy with it, and many, many more are just quietly resigned to it being a necessary part of life.

For many, many years, I have explored online alternatives, the dark web, assorted distributed-network ideals like Hyperborea and IPFS. I keep seeing potentials, but nothing that ever coalesces.

Again, just stream-of-consciousness here ... anyone else ever find themselves seriously considering this, or something similarly drastic?

Hey there! I'm an office monkey doing IT stuff. I've mercenary'd my way across multiple teams for the last decade (level 1 support to basically DevOps for payment systems) with no formal training or certification at a fairly large company. It's nice that my bosses all seem to appreciate that I'm flexible, but my work kinda swells and relaxes every couple months, and sometimes it feels unstable since I've never actually put any of this knowledge into an accepted certification. I look into certifications but nothing jumps out; recently I gave AWS a shot in a self-guided course and realized I was pretty bored by it. Something that popped into my mind as I noticed that I don't really have a "portfolio" is that I have tons of car work, audio editing, off-the-cuff writing about games, etc things that have to do with my hobbies in gaming, cars, music, shitposting on the internet, etc that I'm happy to make without feeling pressured. I feel like if someone asked me to pick up something like this for pay and give me a deadline - a program to edit, a car to work on, an image or audio to manipulate, something analyzing a piece of art - I'd happily do it without even thinking about it, and they're the kinds of things I could do for hours losing track of time.

Being a breadwinner right now with a kid I don't have the risk factor to jump careers right now, but if I lost my job I feel like I'd want to give some different industry a shot. Problem is I just don't get how people... weasel into these things? Is that how this happens? Or do they just eat a ton of time/money making these laterals? Where do they get the experience, where do people find the connections? I'm curious - has anyone ever turned a hobby into a career? Did it work out?

Send me a list of things to listen to for a day. Probably best if it's 4-8 hours, but if you want to recommend less (like an album or two) I'll listen and then use the "radio" feature to stream similar music afterwards.

Alternatively or additionally, feel free to get out of your comfort zone and join in on the listening.

Context:

I have a lot of time to listen to music while working. Recently I've been getting bored with my go-to catalog. About 5 years ago I posted out like this on a different platform and had a pretty good experience.

This doesn't need to be specific/catered to me, since that's part of the experience. But if it helps, I tend to listen to pop, electronic, alt rock, R&B, and funk. I also enjoy jazz and 40's music. Here's my last.fm if you want more specifics, though the all-time stats are skewed towards my heavy listening a decade ago.

Edit:

Feel free to post links to whatever you use to listen or no links at all. I don't mind doing some leg work to get it playing on my streaming service.

Alright, a 2nd spoiler disclaimer for those who accidentally clicked it anyway.

When it became apparent to me that the alien race had sent over two 10-dimensional supercomputers folded into the size of a proton trying to halt human scientific progression in an attempt to maintain its technological advancement while making the travel towards Earth, something doesn't sit right with me.

Why oh why, if you were a 10-dimensional supercomputer being nearly all-knowing yet having only the capacity to be at one point in time and space to deny or halt scientific progression, you wouldn't just write code to A) make copies of yourself to then B) hack all the systems and possible computers in the world to halt anything and everything and basically just plunge humanity back into the dark ages if not outright spreading a deadly virus that would eliminate us from the face of the earth if we are such a big threat to them.

And over the concept of lying and then not being able to coexist with that even though you have the technological head start? And why only communicate with a human to figure out about us if you have two quantum entangled super computers capable of overseeing everything and anything all the time anywhere to gather pure 'scientific' data about us as a species.

I've just finished 1883. I haven't shed so many tears over a stupid show in a long time, if ever, and I want more of it. It was similar when I watched several lets-plays of The Last of Us.

I'm not sure I can pin down what I'm looking for. I think it's the journey through hostile territory and thriving in it. There's mostly suffering and hardship, and every small moment of joy is only followed by more bad times. But for the protagonist this is food, it only makes them grow and become more fierce. Not necessarily to their advantage, but that's drama I guess.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

Playing with Llama 7B and 13B, I found that the 13B model was capable of doing a simple task, rewriting titles in sentence case for Tildes submissions. The 7B model doesn't appear capable of the same task, out of the box.

I heard about Android's new AICore available on a couple of new devices. But it sounds like Gemini Nano, which runs on-device, can only handle 2B or 3B parameters.

Is this size of model useful for real tasks? Does it only become useful after training on a specific domain? I'm a novice and wanting to learn a little bit about it. On-device AI is an appealing concept to me.

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Hesitating between posting this as a comment or a topic but here we are.

While reading this Tildes post (and the blog post) about tiny undervalued hardware, a curiosity sparked in my head.

How do you organize and store your cables, tiny hardware, and other stuff? Mine are like a bunch of rat tails tangled up inside a plastic box.

I live in a small apartment (for now) and would like to hear your thoughts. And recommendations.

We don’t have to limit ourselves to just wires and cables. For example, I also have old phones, external CD players, etc.

Bonus points if it’s portable and you could travel with your “tiny hardware”.