lou's recent activity

  1. Comment on What does the word "cancelled" mean to you? in ~talk

    lou
    Link Parent
    That is a very insightful response. Thanks ;)

    That is a very insightful response. Thanks ;)

  3. Comment on Fallout's Timothy Cain talks about encumbrance in games in ~games

    lou
    Link Parent
    Absolutely agree with you comment on enumbrance. Playing Skyrim/Fallout 3/4/New Vegas the ridiculous amount of things my character can hold is terrible to the role-playing aspect and makes the...

    Absolutely agree with you comment on enumbrance. Playing Skyrim/Fallout 3/4/New Vegas the ridiculous amount of things my character can hold is terrible to the role-playing aspect and makes the objects cheap and irrelevant. They're just data, not "real" objects.

    Also, I have noticed that it is pleasant to watch Cain. I didn't have a word for it, but I think "cute" is what I'd use to describe it. Dude's cute! Lol

    2 votes

  4. What does the word "cancelled" mean to you?

    ~talk Ask
    I am not a native English speaker. Because that word became prominent in recent years, with a meaning that is heavily disputed, dictionaries and encyclopedias are useless in determining how it...

    I am not a native English speaker.

    Because that word became prominent in recent years, with a meaning that is heavily disputed, dictionaries and encyclopedias are useless in determining how it should be interpreted.

    Tildes has a good assortment of intelligent native English speakers. In that light, when applied to people and in the context of social discourse, what do words such as "cancelled" and "cancelation" mean to you? In your view, are there situations in which these are employed either correctly or incorrectly? Or are they multiple and fluid in such a way that they can be applied to a vast array of situations dissimilar from each other?

    This discussion is about semantics and subjective interpretation. It's about how words are employed to convey meaning. If you find semantics or subjectivity irrelevant, boring, stupid, unnerving, or otherwise unworthy of discussion, please do not comment.

    14 votes

  5. Comment on Fallout's Timothy Cain talks about encumbrance in games in ~games

  7. Comment on China population set for 51 million drop as pro-birth moves fail in ~society

    lou
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Having a kid can be a status symbol. A cute kid to post all over Instagram is a good way to get likes. My wife definitely got lots of compliments for her braveness and overall wonderfulness....

    Having a kid can be a status symbol. A cute kid to post all over Instagram is a good way to get likes. My wife definitely got lots of compliments for her braveness and overall wonderfulness. Fathers don't get much in terms of compliments and praise but there is some degree of romanticization of fatherhood as well. I have on occasion shared pictures with my son in relatively private settings and that did increase appreciation of me as a person. I am against posting his pictures in public platforms. However, if someone wishes to have a kid for status, it is probably easier and cheaper to hire a publicist.

  8. Comment on How To Train Your Dragon | Official teaser trailer in ~movies

    lou
    Link Parent
    Yeah... I can't remember the last time I was excited by CGI in movies, to be honest. Practical effects are so precious. Every time I can do something on set, that is what I do. Lighting beats...

    Yeah... I can't remember the last time I was excited by CGI in movies, to be honest. Practical effects are so precious. Every time I can do something on set, that is what I do. Lighting beats After Effects every time. It's so much better (for the basic kind of things I used to do).

    7 votes

  9. Comment on Brazilian police arrest five officers over alleged coup plot and plans to kill President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva following the 2022 elections in ~society

    lou
    Link
    This is about the 2022 election and the 2023 terrorist attack on the Three Powers in Brasilia. So not a recent plot, but rather an after effect of terrorist action back then.

    This is about the 2022 election and the 2023 terrorist attack on the Three Powers in Brasilia. So not a recent plot, but rather an after effect of terrorist action back then.

    7 votes

  11. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    lou
    (edited )
    Link
    After installing Retroarch, I was a little skeptical that I needed an emulation front end. It was difficult for me to understand which advantage something like that would bring, and what I read...

    After installing Retroarch, I was a little skeptical that I needed an emulation front end. It was difficult for me to understand which advantage something like that would bring, and what I read online was not very helpful. I decided to give it a shot anyway. I installed Retrobat because my main computer runs Windows 10 and I did not want something too labor intensive. Retrobat is made specifically for Windows and is not available for any other operating system, so I assumed that it would have all kinds of makeshift QOL that a program is allowed to do when it is built for just one operating system.

    Everything about Retrobat is very easy and extremely well-documented. After more than a month of using it, I never had to ask a question to an actual human. I am not a computer wizard so that is a very good measure of the quality of a project and its documentation. The one thing I find unnecessarily complex is choosing in which folder are all my games, saves, and settings stored. I usually configure a lot of things to be inside my OneDrive, and I was planning to keep my games on a frontend agnostic folder. To achieve that one must use SymLinks on Windows, which are not as intuitive as on Linux. I used the command line for a while but ended up installing Link Shell Extension so I could more easily create symlinks via a command in the context menu. Having used Linux for years, managing symlinks is not an issue to me, but most Windows users would find that needlessly complicated. Retrobat could simply allow me to set my folders, and if it is essential for them to be within Retrobat install folders, it could just handle the symlinks for the user.

    Because Retrobat is mostly a configurator for EmulationStation, it is not technically a frontend, but rather a set of tools and defaults for EmulationStation. EmulationStation/Retrobat will call whatever emulator runs the game you choose right after it overwrites all of the emulator settings to reflect the settings you made on Retrobat. If you never played a game for that system, the emulator will be downloaded and configured automatically.

    To me, the greatest advantage of Retrobat is its large set of sensible defaults, saving the grunt work of looking up all the best settings to achieve ideal emulation. If you wish to do that yourself, it is possible to prevent Retroarch from overwriting changes made directly to the emulator. That is almost never necessary, as the Retrobat UI exposes most settings anyone cares about. Additionally, the default settings are marked as AUTO, making it trivial to remember how to reset them to the defaults. When you scroll the menus, there will be a small text below each entry showing exactly what you altered.

    Looking at my games folder, I see

    • Atari2600
    • GameCube
    • GameGear
    • MasterSystem
    • MegaDrive
    • NeoGeo
    • PcEngine
    • PcEngineCD
    • PSX
    • PS2
    • PS3
    • SegaCD
    • Windows
    • GB
    • GBA
    • GBC
    • NES
    • SNES
    • Wii

    For most of those consoles, Retrobat will call Retroarch. They mostly run perfectly without any changes. The only exceptions are PS3 games, which require previous decryption and, later, live compilation of the shaders. A Google search showed me that this is unavoidable for technical reasons I can't explain. RPCS3 will compile shaders for as long as you play the game and the only way to render those shaders to cache would be to play the entirety of the game before you play a game -- which doesn't make any sense. Although that may be different on a more powerful machine, to me PS3 games are a drag, and many of the games I would play are either available on PC or are originally PS2 games. PS2 emulation is stellar, and I can easily upscale it to my 1080p monitor.

    I have been working with my therapist to try to understand what I really want, as even in my leisure time I am always trying to achieve goals and fill gaps, and that is not fun. I started trying to like Persona 3, then Final Fantasy X. I found them rigid and claustrophobic. So I installed Fallout 4, then Fallout New Vegas on PC, but the joy wasn't there. Then I installed Turtle WoW, a World of Warcraft private server. I played quite a bit of it and then lost interest. I suddenly had the urge to play Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and decided to do so on PS2. The Steam version would require me to do some modding to restore the cut content (mostly songs), but I am a little tired of modding right now, and the Playstation 2 version was the one I failed to give a chance to back when I had an actual PS2. So I'm playing it now.

    In the generation before the PS2, most games were weakly narrative. It was all about gameplay, and if a game had a cutscene, it was a cutscene I could skip. When the PS2 came up, I felt left behind. Suddenly all games had a relevant story, often unskippable. Unlike most gamers, I couldn't care less about intricate narratives and the notion that even a mere platformer now wanted to be a film was, to me, infuriating. I already watched films and TV shows, I didn't need my games to be in that space. For decades, I have rejected story games out of spite. I still think I was right, by the way. I don't care for cinematic games at all. They feel pretentious and stuffy. But maybe my rage prevented me from some valuable experiences. So yeah, I'm not skipping the cutscenes in San Andreas. Let's see how long that lasts.

    EDIT: two caveats about Retrobat. (1) Remapping front-end level hotkeys is impossible unless you wish to create your own fork and messing with C#. That includes keybindings to create save states for example. And (2) remapping the gamepad for specific games and consoles will always require blacklisting it from Retrobat controller and remapping it in each particular emulator.

    5 votes

  12. Comment on Teachers: what do you do with a class that couldn't care less about what you have to say? in ~talk

    lou
    Link Parent
    One class was 14-15, the other was 14-16.

    One class was 14-15, the other was 14-16.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on United States Department of Justice will push Google to sell Chrome to break search monopoly in ~tech

    lou
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Would that settlement prevent Google for reentering the browser market with a new or not-really-new product? Suppose Google sell Chrome to Opera for cheap. Can't Google just fork Chrome and call...

    Would that settlement prevent Google for reentering the browser market with a new or not-really-new product? Suppose Google sell Chrome to Opera for cheap. Can't Google just fork Chrome and call it "Silver" now?

    I mean, yes, the effectiveness of that move in reducing unfair market conditions will depend on the terms. Unfortunately I am not a lawyer so that's more or less empty speculation from me.

  14. Teachers: what do you do with a class that couldn't care less about what you have to say?

    ~talk Ask
    I'm not a teacher, professor or anything, but I had a speaking engagement at a school recently and saw myself in front of a class of students who where tired, bored out of their minds, and just...

    I'm not a teacher, professor or anything, but I had a speaking engagement at a school recently and saw myself in front of a class of students who where tired, bored out of their minds, and just wanted to go home. It was a demoralizing experience because I was invited to talk about things that are very dear to me on a personal level. It wasn't easy because in a sense I was putting my heart out to a sea of rolling eyes.

    I lectured two classes. The first was wonderful, the students were very interested and made great interventions. The second was a complete disaster and I almost ended it before the time. They were interested in anything but my talk. At some point I wondered, why should I keep talking? Do teachers face that routinely? If so, there's a place for you in haven!

    I was glad to go back home knowing I would not have do it again...

    43 votes

  15. Comment on United States Department of Justice will push Google to sell Chrome to break search monopoly in ~tech

    lou
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Well, if Chrome lacks true value as you mention, I can't believe it would be priced very high.

    Well, if Chrome lacks true value as you mention, I can't believe it would be priced very high.

  16. Comment on United States Department of Justice will push Google to sell Chrome to break search monopoly in ~tech

    lou
    Link Parent
    I do. Not only Microsoft but also Brave, Opera, or Mozilla. They might not buy for the codebase but rather for the brand and userbase. That is not insignificant value.

    I do. Not only Microsoft but also Brave, Opera, or Mozilla. They might not buy for the codebase but rather for the brand and userbase. That is not insignificant value.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on United States Department of Justice will push Google to sell Chrome to break search monopoly in ~tech

    lou
    Link Parent
    If I was Microsoft I would buy it just to end it.

    If I was Microsoft I would buy it just to end it.

    10 votes

  18. Comment on Two sides of the same coin in ~humanities

    lou
    Link
    Sorry for suggesting Reddit but that's a good question for either /r/askphilosophy or /r/logic.

    Sorry for suggesting Reddit but that's a good question for either /r/askphilosophy or /r/logic.

    1 vote

  20. Comment on Tildes Video Thread in ~misc

    lou
    (edited )
    Link
    I'm not sure everyone knows that Ariana Grande is a brilliant comedian. Here's her on SNL. A subtle and on point performance. Nothing against her music as she's great at that too but I wish she...

    I'm not sure everyone knows that Ariana Grande is a brilliant comedian. Here's her on SNL. A subtle and on point performance.

    Nothing against her music as she's great at that too but I wish she did more comedy.

    Another one.

    That one got a lot views.

    Also, SNL fans are not digging Jane Wickline at all. It got pretty toxic for a while, but thankfully that seems to have subsided. The reality is that yes she's a terrible performer, but that should not justify any personal attacks. I feel that she's crazy smart though, and could be a good cast member a few years down the next road. She's too green.

    Here's an example of her wooden delivery.

    2 votes