Wes's recent activity

  1. Comment on Introducing Steam Families in ~games

    Wes
    Link Parent
    VAC bans are basically unappealable, outside of extreme circumstances (eg. the recent ban caused by AMD driver changes). You really need to be sure you trust whoever you're sharing with. At the...

    but steams support is good so maybe there's a way to appeal?

    VAC bans are basically unappealable, outside of extreme circumstances (eg. the recent ban caused by AMD driver changes). You really need to be sure you trust whoever you're sharing with.

    At the same time, not every game implements VAC bans, or they have their own system in place. For instance the Dark Souls games have so-called "soft bans" that are tied to Steam account IDs. These bans would presumably not be shared between families. Though I suppose it is possible this new implementation of family sharing may expose the Steam ID of all parties. That remains to be seen.

  2. Comment on With Yuzu and Citra gone, why is Dolphin seemingly unaffected? in ~games

    Wes
    Link Parent
    To see Dolphin's reasoning on this, you can read their blog post. https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2023/07/20/what-happened-to-dolphin-on-steam/#what-about-the-key

    In that respect, Dolphin is even more in violation, since they actually ship the encryption key with the software - Yuzu at least made you get it yourself.

    To see Dolphin's reasoning on this, you can read their blog post.

    https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2023/07/20/what-happened-to-dolphin-on-steam/#what-about-the-key

    19 votes
  3. Comment on Do you have any game sub-genres that you have a name for, but aren't big enough to be "official" sub-genres? in ~games

    Wes
    Link Parent
    I'd say Orcs Must Die is in that same genre. It places you more "in the trenches", where the towers are utilities you deploy to help avoid the onslaught of orcs. It has a different feel than...

    I'd say Orcs Must Die is in that same genre. It places you more "in the trenches", where the towers are utilities you deploy to help avoid the onslaught of orcs. It has a different feel than Sanctum, which to me is closer to a traditional tower defense in its design. There you're spending more time planning the actual "path" of the towers, and the gunplay is secondary in that respect.

    Both games are fun, though I think Orcs plays better in multiplayer because you're both in the thick of it, and not having design meetings between rounds.

    3 votes
  4. Comment on Do you have any game sub-genres that you have a name for, but aren't big enough to be "official" sub-genres? in ~games

    Wes
    Link
    Great question. I'd like to put forward Bridge Simulators. Not to be confused with bridge constructors. It's a genre that almost exists, but there's still no tag within Steam to describe them. The...

    Great question. I'd like to put forward Bridge Simulators. Not to be confused with bridge constructors. It's a genre that almost exists, but there's still no tag within Steam to describe them.

    The premise is this: you and a group of friends take up stations to control a ship (usually a spaceship). You progress on a dangerous adventure where your crew must work together, often balancing resources such as power to defeat hostiles and make it through dangerous territory. Roles typically involve a captain, engineer, and weapons expert, with each station offering unique challenges. For example, an engineer may need to match shield harmonics to reduce incoming damage, while the captain is making the executive decisions to get everyone to safety.

    I have not played all of these (so excuse the brevity), but I got started with Artemis and found it a lot of fun in a good group.

    And though I've only briefly followed these projects, these are open-source alternatives from dedicated communities.

    As an honorary mention, I will include Elite Dangerous for its multicrew mode, though it mostly just gives you an extra "pip" of power to put into one subsystem.

    11 votes
  5. Comment on Google announces major update to combat AI-generated spam in search results in ~tech

    Wes
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    Google is using the term scaled content abuse now. It's not exactly clickbait they're targeting, but the actual helpfulness of the content. "Scaled content" seems like a useful term because...

    Google is using the term scaled content abuse now. It's not exactly clickbait they're targeting, but the actual helpfulness of the content.

    "Scaled content" seems like a useful term because they're specifically describing junk content produced in bulk with zero human oversight. Their policies state that they're still okay with AI content that is steered by humans, as long as it's accurate and helpful.

    Prohibiting AI outright doesn't seem like a viable option. AI writing aids are becoming integrated into more and more software tools, and AI checkers are notoriously inaccurate. Asking if the content is useful makes a lot more sense as a metric than asking how it was produced.

    24 votes
  6. Comment on Inside Apple Arcade: axed games, declining payouts, disillusioned studios – and an uncertain future in ~games

    Wes
    Link Parent
    That looks a whole lot like Galcon, an older strategy game where you send triangles to planets to take them over and produce more units. Perhaps a clone?

    That looks a whole lot like Galcon, an older strategy game where you send triangles to planets to take them over and produce more units. Perhaps a clone?

    6 votes
  7. Comment on Tildes Book Club - How is it going? Discussion of Cloud Atlas will begin the second full week in March in ~books

    Wes
    Link Parent
    It's no problem at all! To be clear I wasn't trying to complain about the pings or anything. I was just starting to feel some guilt about being expected to participate when I wasn't planning to in...

    It's no problem at all! To be clear I wasn't trying to complain about the pings or anything. I was just starting to feel some guilt about being expected to participate when I wasn't planning to in the first round. You're fine to keep me in the "mailing list", though I tend to catch most new threads in ~books anyway.

    3 votes
  8. Comment on Tildes Book Club - How is it going? Discussion of Cloud Atlas will begin the second full week in March in ~books

    Wes
    Link Parent
    Since I've been pinged a few times, I just want to mention that while I am interested in a few of the selected books, I don't plan to participate in all of them. Cloud Atlas wasn't one that...

    Since I've been pinged a few times, I just want to mention that while I am interested in a few of the selected books, I don't plan to participate in all of them. Cloud Atlas wasn't one that interested me very much so I've chosen to skip it (for now, at least).

    I mentioned before that I'd jump in when a book from my backlog is chosen though, and two that interested me were The Dispossessed and Piranesi. So I expect to participate in the conversation for those two, at least.

    Just to set expectations since I've been CC'd in each of these update threads so far.

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

    Wes
    Link Parent
    Yep, it's directly afterwards. I'd say it's up to you how to deal with Gundyr, but I don't think anyone would fault you for fighting him normally. Going fists only be very unfun, and you'd not...

    If I remember correctly you can find the broken straight sword only after gundyr. In which way would you kill him without voiding the run?

    Yep, it's directly afterwards. I'd say it's up to you how to deal with Gundyr, but I don't think anyone would fault you for fighting him normally. Going fists only be very unfun, and you'd not have enough consumables to take him down with just firebombs. So I'd say consider Gundyr to be "just a tutorial" and start the run properly afterwards.

    I'm not sure if you're interested in the other titles, but DS2 has some great challenge runs basically built into the game. You get special rings for completing a "no bonfire" run, as well as a "no death" run. I've done the former. You're allowed to light a bonfire to set your spawn point, but may never sit at them to warp (except for primal bonfires).

    I have actually completed a no death run in DS1, and it took around a dozen attempts! Palms were very sweaty on the final boss. It was surprisingly a lot of fun, and plays very differently than other runs. Instead of over-preparing like with SL1, you tend to treat runs as "throwaway". Like a speedrunner you can skip 95% of items, only collecting those that help you achieve your goal (usually titanite or souls on corpses). It's similar to your comments about how SL1 changes your perspective on souls, and that losing them means nothing. It's the same idea here with running past all the loot on the ground.

    I'm not as into challenge runs as I used to be, but there's still a few I'd like to accomplish. As I said broken straight sword in DS3 is up there, and I've not done an SL1 in Elden Ring yet. I'd also like to play some more Bloodborne in general. That's tough because I can only play it through PS Now streaming, but I'm sure there's lots of fun to be had with arcane and bloodtinge builds.

    Anyway, I hope this post doesn't read like a brag! It's rare to find others who are interested in these kinds of challenge runs, so I may have gotten a little over-excited. Kind of makes me want to go play some right now...

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

    Wes
    Link Parent
    Great choice. I finished DS3 at SL1 and had a blast with it too. It's really amazing how some bosses that normally feel trivial suddenly become a challenge. I really appreciated Dragonslayer...

    Great choice. I finished DS3 at SL1 and had a blast with it too. It's really amazing how some bosses that normally feel trivial suddenly become a challenge. I really appreciated Dragonslayer Armour's moveset a lot more after learning the fight at SL1. Twin Princes gave me trouble too. Dancer I did pre-Catacombs because I wanted to get some early titanite to upgrade my toothpick of a weapon.

    It might be a little too similar to your current run, but I'd suggest an "ashen estus only" run. ie. no healing estus. It puts a lot of focus on different schools of magic without feeling overly prohibitive. Definitely easier than SL1, but gives you a good excuse to get into miracles or regeneration builds.

    Another common run is "Broken Straight Sword only". I've completed this in the previous games, but not yet DS3. That's high on my todo list. Though in DS2 it was "ladle only", which is far more amusing. Fists do more damage until you're able to enchant the ladle.

    I co-oped a bow only run through all three games, and that was also a lot of fun. DS3 has the most variety by far since weapon arts add a lot of flavour. You can only hold 99 arrows of each type though, which actually became a problem at Yhorm! Hardest boss? Probably the Deacons...

    2 votes
  11. Comment on GUI dev using Godot in ~comp

    Wes
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    If you're building GUIs in Godot, you may wish to enable the low_processor_mode setting. It will disable automatic refreshing if there's been no changes to the UI. It's designed specifically for...

    If you're building GUIs in Godot, you may wish to enable the low_processor_mode setting. It will disable automatic refreshing if there's been no changes to the UI. It's designed specifically for desktop applications.

    15 votes
  12. Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of February 18 in ~games

    Wes
    Link Parent
    Just to clarify, this is the 2013-2018 survival trilogy (Tomb Raider, Rise, Shadow). It's not the original remastered trilogy that released just two weeks ago (Tomb Raiders 1, 2, 3).

    Just to clarify, this is the 2013-2018 survival trilogy (Tomb Raider, Rise, Shadow). It's not the original remastered trilogy that released just two weeks ago (Tomb Raiders 1, 2, 3).

    4 votes
  13. Comment on Google cut a deal with Reddit for AI training data in ~tech

    Wes
    Link Parent
    That's more my thinking. That they'll have access to more recent comments, and have a better understanding of the overall structure and relationship of those comments. For example reddit has an...

    They might have new comments sooner, though, or keep a larger history.

    That's more my thinking. That they'll have access to more recent comments, and have a better understanding of the overall structure and relationship of those comments. For example reddit has an "other discussions" tab at the top that Google could more easily use to find related content. They could have written special handling for something like that before, but I get the impression that Google doesn't like to build special handling for websites (preferring to rely on OpenGraph, Schema.org and such). So an API for exploring relationships makes that more feasible.

    It may also play into E-E-A-T where a community or even individual could be assigned an authority grading to determine if they're a good source to show. There's a lot of bologna on Reddit, but also a lot of insight, and having a wide span of data gives Google a better chance at determining which is which.

    One other consideration is that Reddit isn't very good about showing old content. Their codebase tends to drop content after 1,000 entries in all views/filters. Having direct API access likely gives Google more access to historical data that would otherwise be difficult to scrape, even if its recency may downrank it.

    I'm sure AI does play a large role in this deal, but I can definitely see benefits on the Search side as well.

    7 votes
  14. Comment on Google cut a deal with Reddit for AI training data in ~tech

    Wes
    Link Parent
    It actually makes a lot of sense. People are often lamenting that they need to append "reddit" to search queries, and I do the same. If they have access to the Reddit firehose, they have a real...

    It actually makes a lot of sense. People are often lamenting that they need to append "reddit" to search queries, and I do the same. If they have access to the Reddit firehose, they have a real opportunity to improve their regular results.

    6 votes
  15. Comment on PSVR2 to add PC support in 2024 in ~games

    Wes
    Link Parent
    I can corroborate what you're saying. I'd like to add that a wireless headset that is otherwise dependant on a PC could exist; it's just that nobody has made one yet. The closest would probably be...

    I can corroborate what you're saying. I'd like to add that a wireless headset that is otherwise dependant on a PC could exist; it's just that nobody has made one yet. The closest would probably be the Vive with a wireless adapter.

    Instead of being a standalone Android headset with a underpowered Snapdragon SoC, such a device would have just the electronics for receiving and decoding a video stream and sending inputs back to the PC. My hope is that the Valve Deckard ends up being something in this class. All the benefits of wireless, with the power of a PC behind it.

    4 votes
  16. Comment on JavaScript bloat in 2024 in ~comp

    Wes
    Link Parent
    I agree with you, and I've long felt that browsers should maintain a local cache of the most common libraries specifically for that purpose. The list would evolve over time, but imagine how many...

    I agree with you, and I've long felt that browsers should maintain a local cache of the most common libraries specifically for that purpose. The list would evolve over time, but imagine how many times jQuery v2.2.4 has been downloaded, or the specific version that's packaged with WordPress sites. Nowadays we'd likely see many copies of React or Vue included as well.

    Popular web fonts are also good candidates. Raleway is used on plenty of marketing pages. And Font Awesome? Used on virtually every eCommerce site. What a waste of bits downloading the same glyphs every time just to show a shopping cart symbol, or a couple social media buttons in the footer.

    I think it's really unfortunate that browsers have (maybe had to) become fearful of using caches because they leak a small amount of information based on previous history. Shared site caches are now dead, so even using the same CDN doesn't prevent redownloads of assets.

    A local cache of common libraries somewhat sidesteps this problem, but still lets you query the list to identify the specific browser version being used. A dynamic list that is per-profile solves that, but then creates a worse problem by introducing a new fingerprinting method instead.

    I wish we could actually take advantage of all these optimizations without worrying about bad actors so much. Especially now that including the hash in the resource request is becoming a common practice. It seems like we could really optimize things for users on poor internet. Disk space is rarely the limiting factors anymore, with the possible exception of mobile phones.

    It's reminds me of the Spectre/Meltdown mitigations that killed performance on many CPUs. It's good that patches were made available, but a toggle to enable "risky execution" could be very helpful for tasks that are running trusted code in a secure environment. There's a number of situations where execution speed would be prioritized over the threat of bad code path optimization.

    Some platforms already allow a high security setting like Apple's lockdown mode for high-risk targets (journalists, et al). Similarly, Firefox has a setting to discourage fingerprinting by turning off a number of browser features (like dark mode support). So a slider that lets you choose between browser features + speed (JITs, shared caches, page prefetching), and absolute security (disabled fingerprinting, imprecise timers, or disabled JS) isn't too different than what we have now.

    But realistically I don't expect browsers to ever expose something like this. Most users wouldn't be able to make a threat assessment for themselves, and no browser wants to be known as less secure than their competitors, regardless of how theoretical these risks may be.

    19 votes
  17. Comment on Google Bard is now Gemini; Gemini Advanced launched in ~tech

    Wes
    Link Parent
    LLMs don't really "think" in that way. They don't have a subconscious that you pull information out of to form a response. They work by generating a list of possible tokens, ordered by relevance...

    LLMs don't really "think" in that way. They don't have a subconscious that you pull information out of to form a response. They work by generating a list of possible tokens, ordered by relevance to the previous tokens, and will pick one option at each step to produce the next token in the sequence.

    They don't always pick the most relevant option because that can generate very sterile sentences, and can sometimes result in loops. So a "temperature" variable is introduced which adds a little randomness, and helps spice up the responses. Often tools will let you regenerate a response where it'll adjust the random seed to produce completely different chains of tokens.

    LLMs are very cool, but they're not really capable of premeditation or cheating. It's best to think of them as very capable text prediction engines.

    5 votes
  18. Comment on Why you should consider a smaller keyboard in ~comp

    Wes
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    I love the passion you showed in this post. And the idea of a split spacebar to act as an additional modifier key is really clever. Personally I don't think I'd be able to go below a 65% keyboard....

    I love the passion you showed in this post. And the idea of a split spacebar to act as an additional modifier key is really clever.

    Personally I don't think I'd be able to go below a 65% keyboard. Probably with enough work I could learn the new layer system and adapt my muscle memory, but I expect there would be a lot of friction. I make pretty frequent use of the arrow keys, home/end, page up/down, and delete.

    I'd definitely be willing to give up the numpad and various Locks (caps, number, scroll). Some other nearly-useless keys like Pause Break, and the menu button could also go.

    As for F row, I'm not sure. It seems redundant, and easily replaced with a modifier+regular number. But they are used fairly often in gaming. And there's a lot of shortcuts I've ingrained over the years (F2=File rename, F5=Browser refresh, F12=Dev tools, and so on). Doable with just a little pain, I guess!

    I won't be ready for a new keyboard for another few years I expect, since mine is holding up well. But when I do I'll definitely be looking into different form factors to find what works best for me. Even if I'm not ready to jump in, it's interesting to see just how deep this rabbit hole goes.

    2 votes
  19. Comment on OpenAI releases Sora: Creating video from text in ~tech

    Wes
    Link Parent
    You're quite right! I noticed that a lot of people had missed the light grey text under the glitch reel, but in trying to clarify I'm afraid I just spread more confusion. So my apologies there. It...

    You're quite right! I noticed that a lot of people had missed the light grey text under the glitch reel, but in trying to clarify I'm afraid I just spread more confusion. So my apologies there.

    It does look like the red pandas video shows the same "multiple actor" problem they explain, though not quite as badly as in the puppies video. In a weird way it gives me "Conway's Game of Life" vibes, where different automata can interact, combine, or split away at a moment's notice.

    2 votes
  20. Comment on Humble Choice - February 2024 in ~games

    Wes
    Link Parent
    You can still subscribe to the month after the games are revealed, and then unsubscribe immediately after redeeming them. You'll only be charged for the one month.

    You can still subscribe to the month after the games are revealed, and then unsubscribe immediately after redeeming them. You'll only be charged for the one month.

    1 vote