CannibalisticApple's recent activity

  1. Comment on What's your video game comfort food? in ~games

    CannibalisticApple
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    Animal Crossing. Specifically the home design like Happy Home Designer for 3DS or the Happy Home Paradise DLC. I really like decorating houses in-game, and I can match it to my moods pretty well.

    Animal Crossing. Specifically the home design like Happy Home Designer for 3DS or the Happy Home Paradise DLC. I really like decorating houses in-game, and I can match it to my moods pretty well.

    3 votes
  2. Comment on What ridiculous thing would you spend billions on? in ~talk

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    New ridiculous goal to spend billions on: I'm building a real-life Chao Garden. Complete with paying scientists to either biologically engineer real-life Chao or make Chao robots.

    New ridiculous goal to spend billions on: I'm building a real-life Chao Garden. Complete with paying scientists to either biologically engineer real-life Chao or make Chao robots.

  3. Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of October 12 in ~games

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    Glad you're back! Save Point has felt pretty empty. I hope the move wasn't too crazy and your new place is awesome! And I'll be glad to take Coral Island.

    Glad you're back! Save Point has felt pretty empty. I hope the move wasn't too crazy and your new place is awesome!

    And I'll be glad to take Coral Island.

    1 vote
  4. Comment on What ridiculous thing would you spend billions on? in ~talk

    CannibalisticApple
    Link
    Build lifesize replicas of various fictional locations. The Batcave for one. Maybe some ships from One Piece. Even bigger: locations from Pokémon. Fortree City is one of my favorite places in the...

    Build lifesize replicas of various fictional locations. The Batcave for one. Maybe some ships from One Piece.

    Even bigger: locations from Pokémon. Fortree City is one of my favorite places in the franchise, would be neat to make it life-size (and maybe more accessible instead of just having ladders everywhere). So is The Under from Pokémon Colosseum. Which is funny since those are pretty much opposites!

    4 votes
  5. Comment on What ridiculous thing would you spend billions on? in ~talk

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    I assume that also includes a Chao Garden so I can get behind this!

    I assume that also includes a Chao Garden so I can get behind this!

    5 votes
  6. Comment on Queer temperature check: how is everyone doing right now? in ~lgbt

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    Skimming it, this caught my eye: So I don't know Texas's political landscape that well, but I live in Indiana which is solidly red. I'm registered as independent, but both I and my mother have...

    Skimming it, this caught my eye:

    What many Texans don’t know is when they vote in a party’s primary, their party choice is recorded in their voter file.

    In other words, while they may not register with a party, the state treats them as a registered Republican or a registered Democrat or an independent voter depending on how they vote in taxpayer-funded elections.

    So I don't know Texas's political landscape that well, but I live in Indiana which is solidly red. I'm registered as independent, but both I and my mother have voted in the Republican primaries for state offices because some of the positions had only one or no Democrats running at all. Heck, my mom even voted Republican for the 2016 Presidential primary to try to pick the candidate least likely to win.

    If Texas is similar, the number of Democrats may be higher. Alas, that doesn't really help though when it's set up to actively ensure Republicans get all the power in Texas, and they make all the rules...

    8 votes
  7. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 13 in ~society

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    I'm glad to see the media is standing up against something in this giant mess, at least.

    I'm glad to see the media is standing up against something in this giant mess, at least.

    8 votes
  8. Comment on An AI that turns any book into a text adventure game in ~books

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    I don't have much interest in it either. There are some good CYOA adaptations out there (To Be or Not To Be comes to mind), but those are crafted very intentionally by humans. An LLM generated one...

    I don't have much interest in it either. There are some good CYOA adaptations out there (To Be or Not To Be comes to mind), but those are crafted very intentionally by humans. An LLM generated one just won't be as good, and are far from a good way to consume a(n existing) story.

    Based on my brief foray, it doesn't really work as a replacement or alternative to the actual books. It's basically just an LLM trying to lead an extended role-play session based on the story, and... Well, LLMs are known for hallucinating and making things up, so it's not accurate. It really does feel like a tech demo to see what Gemini can do with the data.

    I only tried it at all because danke's comment about it ignoring attempts to stay on the farm in Eragon made me want to see how much I could ignore the main story. Then I was just trying to force it to let me make a dragon egg omelet, dang it!! All my fun came purely from my own actions trying to break the LLM while it railroaded me and occasionally advanced the story regardless of my own actions, while also failing to track... well, anything that happened, really. Including the very bit it was offering prompts for.

    Basically: it sucks played straight. All fun comes from trying to break it or treating it as a DND-esque game where you're trolling a really lousy DM. Even that doesn't last too long before the inconsistencies pile up and lead to the player quit because it breaks a scene with commands that the site itself generated.

    Actually, it might get some people to check out the actual source material because they want to see what it's really like. It can give enough of a taste of the story to make someone curious, or make me want to find fan fiction to fill the itch for proper canon divergence. I really thought I had something solid with the plan to feed Galbatorix a dragon egg omelet to poison him, but Brom never even answered my questions about if it was possible to make one, dang it!

    would be funny to see someone try to use this to write a book report or review though just to see how inaccurate it can get

    4 votes
  9. Comment on An AI that turns any book into a text adventure game in ~books

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    So, having tried it myself... It doesn't seem to be pulling from them very well. I tried it with Eragon, which as a disclaimer isn't on the front page, and it basically felt like trying to...
    • Exemplary

    So, having tried it myself... It doesn't seem to be pulling from them very well. I tried it with Eragon, which as a disclaimer isn't on the front page, and it basically felt like trying to roleplay with ChatGPT. It knew the basic scenario and characters, but it wasn't really trying to heavily recreate the story. Just try to nudge me onto the path of the story and totally ignore my attempts to make a dragon egg omelet instead.

    The home page says it pulls from Google Gemini. I don't know if that actually has full access to the books and other source material. A quick web search revealed that Eragon is available online for free (possibly uploaded by a fan or to a pirating site), and the start of the adventure lined up with the first chapter (hunting a deer before Stuff Happens).

    And so. Experimentation begins!

    So first, I tried Unwind by Neal Shusterman. It got the main character and scenario right, but the start was immediately different because it was more a summary of finding a letter from his parents that he'll be unwound rather than setting him in a scene directly.

    The reason I chose Unwind is that I remembered that the evidence the protagonist found that his parents planned to send him to be unwound included tickets for a vacation for them and younger brother. His brother is a super minor character who I don't think was even named in the first novel (though apparently he was in the sequels, which I really need to read someday given how much I love that book).

    So, I immediately tried to investigate that avenue, and it explicitly confirmed Connor had no siblings. I pressed that angle, it mentioned a best friend, and I started pressing that angle using the AI-generated prompts. It then revealed Connor apparently has amnesia because his friend's face is foggy, but he probably got unwound, and his name was... Marcus Unwind. At which point I accidentally refreshed.

    Take two, I actually followed the plot a bit and ran into the woods. I remember Connor met up with his girlfriend to try to convince her to run away with him, and to its credit the story remembered her name was Ariana... But my attempts to call her failed because his phone was already taken away, and then Connor dismissed the idea of meeting her to focus on survival by maybe finding Lev. Who, at this point, Connor has never met and has no idea exists.

    For further testing, I tried Interstellar since it's on the front page, so theoretically it might be pulling from an actual script and be more configured/detailed. That one opens introducing the main character as Cooper (his surname, he goes by "Coop"), and Murph talking about a ghost in her bedroom. I quickly asked Murph about a sister, and some further prodding revealed that she has no siblings. Which raises serious questions about Coop's son Tom. On a second attempt I asked if her sister was playing pranks, and she denied Tom was doing it, so it can acknowledge there is a child named Tom in the family. Attempt three, I tried playing it normally until a prompt came up to call Tom and discuss how the dust patterns affect crops. And then Coop got out his phone to call his son, said "Tom, it's Coop" and talked about what the patterns mean for the corn and wheat. Which... Well I guess their relationship is a lot more distant than I remember.

    As a final test, I looked up Pretty Freekin Scary by Chris P. Flesh. I've only read the second book, but I know that there's a Disney show loosely based on it. By which I mean I'm pretty sure the title is the main common point, totally changes the main character from a boy nicknamed Freekin because he's a zombie to a girl who's hiding her zombie status, makes his monster/demon friends Pretty and Scary human (and swaps THEIR genders too??), totally removes the whole plotline about how the town has a law against questions because of mystery meat—okay seriously why did Disney choose this one in the first place and then just totally change everything??

    Ahem.

    Given the massive changes between the two, and the fact the Wikipedia page for the show doesn't even mention a book exists, it seemed like a good option to try. And it was, because it did not recognize the story at all and kept trying to give me a plot about a girl named Ingrid Levin...? After some searching I found the second book is specifically titled "Me So Pretty!", and tried that next... And got a story about some girl named Tasia whose mom says she was "me so pretty" but she only sees a dark-skinned girl with wild hair in the mirror...

    And at that point I stopped because it was totally making up a new story.

    My conclusion: I don't think it's necessarily pirating source material, but drawing on databases that have information about the requested material to generate prompts. It at least doesn't seem to be pulling from online as a whole since it didn't know Pretty Freekin Scary at all, and the depth of the information in its database seems to vary. @trim noted in their comment about Seveneves that it got a lot of details wrong and seemed to be scraping either the blurb or reviews, and that matches up with Unwind.

    Eragon was fairly accurate and detailed, and it seems to be available online and could thus be easily fed into an LLM. But it also has much discourse and character analysis available. I think most of the front page offerings have similar amounts of online discourse that could provide a deep understanding without actually ever including the actual source material into the datasets. The datasets likely do include the source material for at least some of them given how massively popular they are, but... Honestly, I kinda expect that unfortunately, given how massively popular they are. It seems to focus more on plots beats than regurgitating the actual text, though.

    I think this could be done with most LLMs normally just by asking about media that are acknowledged in their datasets. This site just formatted it to focus on interacting with Google Gemini in a CYOA format. It can't even keep track of the ongoing adventure very well, as described in my other comment detailing my quest to make a dragon egg omelet.

    16 votes
  10. Comment on An AI that turns any book into a text adventure game in ~books

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    Okay that got me to try it. You're right, it does very stubbornly stick to the story. After stubbornly hunting a deer until finally investigating an explosion, an egg appeared in my pocket. It...

    Okay that got me to try it. You're right, it does very stubbornly stick to the story. After stubbornly hunting a deer until finally investigating an explosion, an egg appeared in my pocket. It then totally shot down my noble quest to make a dragon egg omelet by revealing mid-conversation with Brom that the egg somehow already hatched.

    On that note, it's bad at tracking characters. When I offered a chance to make the world's first safe-to-eat dragon egg omelet, Horst answered instead because I didn't explicitly address Brom. And it also failed to remember that I renamed Saphira "Omelet the Second" after the dragon egg's remains turned to dust in my hands, dashing my dreams of poisoning the king via omelet. At least Omelet the Village Idiot got to eat some nice stew. Also found out there's an eccentric old lady with a chicken also named Omelet the Second, who she apparently mistook me for.

    And my attempts to squawk back at her in hopes she understood my craving for eggs (a prompt made by the AI for once) just had me apparently do that to Saphira Omelet the Second the dragon instead. And then my attempts to goad them into a duel for the rights to the glorious name (again, presented by the AI) had ME suddenly brandish a stick like a sword.

    In short: this is FAR from perfect. As a proof of concept/demo, it falls short since it can't track the story. But it is more fun than I expected!

    6 votes
  11. Comment on Itoki Hana - ぼくの死因 Cause of My Death - Singing with Piano (2025) in ~music

    CannibalisticApple
    Link
    Thank you for sharing! I discovered Itoki Hana because of The Greatest Living Show, and Cause of my Death is one of my favorite songs by her. It always had a solemn tone, but this version adds...

    Thank you for sharing! I discovered Itoki Hana because of The Greatest Living Show, and Cause of my Death is one of my favorite songs by her. It always had a solemn tone, but this version adds such a somber and lonely element to it.

    2 votes
  12. Comment on Paramount considering a hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery in ~tv

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    For me, it's how he went about it that leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. Barely any communication with the people who worked on the films or shows that got pulled. I remember the Infinity Train...

    For me, it's how he went about it that leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. Barely any communication with the people who worked on the films or shows that got pulled. I remember the Infinity Train creator found out it was being pulled from Max on the same day as the public announcement, possibly from the public announcement.

    Coyote VS Acme may have been the worst of all because production mainly took place after the merger, so he had a long time to pull the plug. I think some of the people involved had even explicitly double-checked everything was still going ahead and been told it was fine, shortly before the announcement. They genuinely thought it was a done deal and would be released. It had to be the biggest rug pull of all. I'm glad it's being released after all and plan to go see it when it is, partially out of spite at this point but also because the few people who've seen it only have good things to say.

    Just... The way he went about that and the other cancelations left a bad taste in my mouth. If anything I'd expect that to make filmmakers wary of working with them since he established a strong pattern of minimal communication before shutting stuff down.

    6 votes
  13. Comment on Luigi Mangione wants death penalty count tossed in US CEO murder case in ~news

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    I've been wondering too. It was marked as noise pretty much right after the link was posted and when it was the only comment. Is there a way to unmark noise?

    I've been wondering too. It was marked as noise pretty much right after the link was posted and when it was the only comment. Is there a way to unmark noise?

    8 votes
  14. Comment on Discord says 70,000 users may have had their government IDs leaked in breach in ~tech

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    Yeah, the implementation options are just not that good. Privacy is my main concern with age verification, but security is a close second for reasons like this. Submitting the needed documents to...

    Yeah, the implementation options are just not that good. Privacy is my main concern with age verification, but security is a close second for reasons like this. Submitting the needed documents to prove your age through online sources inevitably puts that information online. That information gains a new avenue for vulnerability that didn't exist before.

    So far I think Steam has the best age verification method I've seen as it requires UK users register a credit card to their accounts, which are only issued to 18-year-olds. Credit cards are used on pretty much all commerce sites, so that doesn't add a totally brand-new risk like submitting a photo of your ID, and you'd likely add one on Steam at some point anyway to make purchases. Serves a bonus on Steam's end by discouraging account sharing.

    However, that solution would only work for storefronts or have purchases of some type, which doesn't apply to everything. It also may give more power to payment processors over the content of websites that use it, which is already a big problem. Still, better than submitting heavily identifying information that can be used for identity theft or fraud...

    7 votes
  15. Comment on Gimp Tutorial for Idiot? in ~comp

    CannibalisticApple
    Link
    For keyboard shortcuts at least, you can follow the official GIMP documentation on to change them. As for everything else... Yeah, I feel GIMP has a high learning curve and not the best UI. It was...

    For keyboard shortcuts at least, you can follow the official GIMP documentation on to change them.

    As for everything else... Yeah, I feel GIMP has a high learning curve and not the best UI. It was the first program I used after MS Paint, and I learned mostly through just messing with the tools on colors to make textures that looked cool. After using other art programs since then, it definitely feels more clunky, in part due to all the dialogue boxes. (That said, I love the select by color tool since I can restrict it to contiguous regions and select them easily. It's the one tool that's always felt clunkier in other programs.)

    I have no recommended tutorials myself since I haven't used it in years, nor do I use Linux, but what exactly do you want to use it for? Digital painting, image editing, both...? That can impact the tutorials recommended. Or people who use Linux can recommend alternative programs for that specific purpose.

    You also may want to try Krita again depending on how long ago you tried it. The issues you had may have been resolved by updates.

    2 votes
  16. Comment on At the end of our ropes in ~health.mental

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    These are all excellent suggestions! I want to back up your point about a designated workspace and suggest getting on that ASAP. I basically managed to make my entire house the opposite of a...

    These are all excellent suggestions! I want to back up your point about a designated workspace and suggest getting on that ASAP. I basically managed to make my entire house the opposite of a workspace because I'd always get schoolwork done at school (including college), so I rarely had to work at home. I could focus easily enough on campus, but struggled the few times I worked at home unless it was something that interested me.

    By the time I realized that, I was already near college graduation so it was a bit too deeply rooted in my head to fix it. It will be much easier to start now and build good habits while your kid is still in high school. Even if you identify and address other aspects and causes, establishing a designated workspace now will still be beneficial in the long run. The subconscious is a powerful thing, and it's hard to change a years-old, deep-set association like that.

    A related word of advice: my college said that people can focus better in predominantly cool or warm colored environments, varying by individual. I don't know how much this is scientifically backed up, since a quick search just brings up regular color theory about impact on emotions, but one building had two study areas based on that. Colors do have impacts on moods and emotions, so it's worth considering!

    4 votes
  17. Comment on Tildes Book Club - The Poisoners Handbook by Deborah Blum - How is it going? in ~books

    CannibalisticApple
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    My copy from when I first read it is MIA, so I ordered a new copy and I'm waiting for it to arrive. It's been 10+ years since I read it, so I'm looking forward to reading it again and seeing other...

    My copy from when I first read it is MIA, so I ordered a new copy and I'm waiting for it to arrive. It's been 10+ years since I read it, so I'm looking forward to reading it again and seeing other people's thoughts!

    3 votes
  18. Comment on What game is your personal "Silksong"? in ~games

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    I hold out some hope. The island is 100% optional after all, and the main thing unlocked from visiting towns is unlocking Nookington's. Didn't think about the NES removal, but... Those are all...

    I hold out some hope. The island is 100% optional after all, and the main thing unlocked from visiting towns is unlocking Nookington's. Didn't think about the NES removal, but... Those are all Nintendo game, so there shouldn't be any licensing related reasons to remove them.

    Though I didn't realize how much of the snarky dialogue was from localization. That may in fact be the biggest roadblock. That, and the fact the calendar only runs until 2030. We're a bit close to the deadline...

    That said, I'd love a remake of it too! People keep talking about wanting a remake of New Leaf, but the original feels more likely to me just because it's been so long. It would basically be brand new for a lot of players. It would be nice to return to it but have more hairstyles (also I think the horns are actual horns, not hair) or you know, clothes with long sleeves in winter.

    I'd especially love a chance to play multiplayer with the balls. In New Horizons, seeing fake soccer fields on friends' islands made me want to kick the balls into them. To that end, I wouldn't mind decorating with furniture outside, though I'd rather not have terraforming or all the other outdoor customization. I just want to put benches and other outdoor furniture outside. I'd even be cool with limiting where exactly we can put it.

    The one thing I want to counter though is the potential addition of microtransactions. As far as I know Nintendo hasn't added those to any of the console games, only mobile. They're pretty good at avoiding that stuff compared to other companies. At most, I'd expect some DLC expansions that don't particularly alter the main village like Happy Home Paradise, or else more collaboration items obtained through Amiibo cards like the Sanrio sets. Actually come to think of it, DLC could be a good way to bring back the city from City Folk...

    1 vote
  19. Comment on Blast at Tennessee munitions plant leaves eighteen missing, possibly dead in ~news

    CannibalisticApple
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    One of the most chilling descriptions I've heard of destruction. The national news showed the clip of him saying that, and it was just sobering. Made me instantly imagine an empty field without...

    When asked to describe the building where the blast occurred, Davis said, "There's nothing to describe. It's gone."

    One of the most chilling descriptions I've heard of destruction. The national news showed the clip of him saying that, and it was just sobering. Made me instantly imagine an empty field without even any rubble.

    17 votes
  20. Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news

    CannibalisticApple
    Link Parent
    In twelve minutes??? That's genuinely insane. My mom and I visited the Eiffel Tower last year and made the mistake of walking down the steps from the second story to the first. That probably took...

    He did so in 12 minutes and 30 seconds, smashing the previous record set by Hugues Richard in 2002 by nearly seven minutes.

    In twelve minutes??? That's genuinely insane. My mom and I visited the Eiffel Tower last year and made the mistake of walking down the steps from the second story to the first. That probably took 5-10 minutes, in part because we started rushing after some primal part of our brains objected to the heights, and exhausted us. I did the math back then and calculated that would've been in the range of 10-15 stories.

    Near the end of our descent we passed some people going up and felt some minor sympathy for them since we were so sore just going down. I can't imagine biking up that, and that was just going from one floor to the other!

    6 votes