an_angry_tiger's recent activity
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Comment on Apple has kept an illegal monopoly over smartphones in US, Justice Department says in antitrust suit in ~tech
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Comment on Folks in those $100k+ jobs, corporate types, office workers... What would you say you actually do? in ~life
an_angry_tiger LinkThrow justification out of the window, it doesn't matter, this is the world. Teachers in America (or elsewhere if you live somewhere where it also pays poorly) are paid badly because of politics...How is that work? How does that justify earning 4x+ what I make?
Throw justification out of the window, it doesn't matter, this is the world. Teachers in America (or elsewhere if you live somewhere where it also pays poorly) are paid badly because of politics preying on teachers liking what they do and putting up with the situation for as long as possible. Office workers get paid more (the ones that do get paid more) presumably because companies haven't been able to get away with paying less, nothing more nothing less.
Anyway I work in software development, what I do in a day: write code, review other people's new code, sit in meetings talking about features and such, monitoring metrics and making sure things aren't breaking or going to break, investigating issues. I get paid a pretty penny, and that's because of a labour shortage in qualified software engineers, causing companies to have to pay more to attract talent, also due to the way software companies tend to work out, they get a lot of investment money, scale up quite quickly, have low margins, and are able to have a lot of cash on hand to use stock buybacks and handing out RSUs as a way of bolstering compensation for employees.
It could change though, lord knows capitalists would love to get away with paying as little as possible. Outsourcing to low cost of living countries is one way companies have tried, with varying degrees of success. AI is going to be another one, trying to replace expensive people with inexpensive software to do the job.
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Comment on Apple has kept an illegal monopoly over smartphones in US, Justice Department says in antitrust suit in ~tech
an_angry_tiger Link ParentWell luckily you can read the lawsuit and see what makes the Department of Justice think so here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/21/technology/apple-lawsuit.html The complaint starts...Well luckily you can read the lawsuit and see what makes the Department of Justice think so here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/21/technology/apple-lawsuit.html
The complaint starts on page 3, page 26 has "Apple Unlawfully Maintains Its Monopoly Power" up until page 49 where it goes in to "Anticompetitive Effects", etc.
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Comment on Jared Kushner says Gaza’s ‘waterfront property could be very valuable’ in ~misc
an_angry_tiger Link ParentIf it's only 4 years, and if it's only a presidency. It's a bit of a sky is falling kind of thing to say, but there is a very real risk that if Trump wins it won't matter if there were protest...In the 4 years of a Trump presidency,
If it's only 4 years, and if it's only a presidency. It's a bit of a sky is falling kind of thing to say, but there is a very real risk that if Trump wins it won't matter if there were protest votes or not that people in the future can look back on. That seems to be the express desire and intention of Trump with this election, and the overall goals of his followers with Project 2025.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
an_angry_tiger LinkTimberborn Only picked it up after the latest update (5?) with the badwater introduced. Fun game, but feel like once I get past the early to mid game, the challenge leaves. Can't imagine how the...Timberborn
Only picked it up after the latest update (5?) with the badwater introduced. Fun game, but feel like once I get past the early to mid game, the challenge leaves. Can't imagine how the game would have played without badwater, the droughts would exist but they seem trivial to deal with once you get some floodgates up, even with badwater its just a matter of redirecting the stream somewhere.
Excited to see how it develops, I think it's a great start. Only thing that really bothers me is that it's just kinda slow, even on 3x (max) speed I have to wait so long for things to get built or for a new drought/badwater cycle to test things out.
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Comment on Restaurant advice Astoria, Queens, NYC in ~travel
an_angry_tiger Link"Bund Dumpling House", 25-08 Broadway. Small little Chinese (Shanghai specifically) place, but amazing food, love going back. "Pye Boat Noodle", 35-13 Broadway. Thai food, has a neat patio in the..."Bund Dumpling House", 25-08 Broadway. Small little Chinese (Shanghai specifically) place, but amazing food, love going back.
"Pye Boat Noodle", 35-13 Broadway. Thai food, has a neat patio in the back, great food, great cocktails. Waiters all seem to wear similar hats for some reason.
"Nuevo Jardin de China", 32-05 Broadway. Haven't been, but heard about it, Cuban & Chinese mix of food.
Moving farther from Astoria in to Long Island City (short subway or bike ride away):
- Adda Indian Canteen as people have mentioned
- Dutch Kills Bar, cocktail bar founded by Sasha Petraske, who was an innovative mixologist, now dead, bar's still going though
- 929, cocktail bar on 42-45 27th St, haven't been, but it seems interesting, has a nice Asian cocktail menu and a small Cantonese food menu
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
an_angry_tiger Link ParentIt weirdly is a return to GT4 in the overworld map, with the same idea of different stores and championships and things being icons on like a "neighbourhood map". But the races themself, from all...It weirdly is a return to GT4 in the overworld map, with the same idea of different stores and championships and things being icons on like a "neighbourhood map".
But the races themself, from all the ones I played and from what I could google at the time (on release), were the same as GT: Sport and very same-y.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
an_angry_tiger Link ParentI played the Gran Turismo's a lot as a kid, culminating in GT4 being the last big one of my childhood. Didn't play 5 or 6, but came back in with Sport and then 7. I played a lot of Sport but got...I played the Gran Turismo's a lot as a kid, culminating in GT4 being the last big one of my childhood. Didn't play 5 or 6, but came back in with Sport and then 7.
I played a lot of Sport but got tired of it pretty quickly, all the races are just the danged same. 7 inherits that same issue, every race format in singleplayer is that you start at the back, it's a rolling start, the cars in the back are slow and you overtake them easily, the cars in the very front are fast and you'll probably only catch up to them near the end. You tune up your car to make it faster and then you're faster than all the cars, and its barely a race. I only played a few hours of 7 when it was released, for that reason, I'm just tired of that being the only format of races in the game.
They've captured a lot of cool stuff like the graphics and the photo modes and the idea of the beauty of cars and the driving physics and stuff, but they seem like they barely care about the actual racing part of it. Comparing it to something like the F1 games (which I've barely played), where the racing and overall racing season is the entire focus, it's sad, why can't Polyphony take some inspiration from any other racing game?
Maybe it's better with multiplayer where you race against other humans instead of really shitty and robotic AI drivers, but I remember Forza 3 being way better about this -- in singleplayer and multiplayer -- way back in 2009.
I don't see myself getting another GT game (also I don't have a PS5 and probably won't buy a 6) unless they have a full blown revolution and make the racing part not so incredibly shallow.
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Comment on Frustrations with Cities Skylines 2 are starting to boil over among city builder fans and content creators alike in ~games
an_angry_tiger Link ParentTaxation mostly affects demand, and I don't think companies move out of buildings that easily. What you end up with is spinning the roulette wheel and hoping the right kind of building will show...I don't remember if its in those video or the countless others I've watched where, even if you try changing what is taxed, the businesses weren't moving out and becoming the thing that is taxed less. I think the person I was watching was trying to get textile companies to move in because he was making the raw material for it or whatever, and just couldn't get them to move in no matter what he did. It's wild and all lies from their marketing material.
Taxation mostly affects demand, and I don't think companies move out of buildings that easily.
What you end up with is spinning the roulette wheel and hoping the right kind of building will show up, since you have no influence over what gets built. The only thing the game seems to like you doing is zoning more industrial until the right thing gets built. Constantly expand and hope the game figures it out, that's the thing to this game :/
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Comment on Frustrations with Cities Skylines 2 are starting to boil over among city builder fans and content creators alike in ~games
an_angry_tiger Link ParentI agree very much on it not really having much of "game" to it, and that the studio is quite lousy at developing games. Skylines 1 was really only good for having assets spawn in a city and laying...I agree very much on it not really having much of "game" to it, and that the studio is quite lousy at developing games. Skylines 1 was really only good for having assets spawn in a city and laying down roads in a city, it didn't have much depth to what was going on in the background, wealth didn't exist and had a proxy behind it of education -- you place schools and citizens get more educated over time and that makes the level of their house go up and it looks more wealthy.
But,
There's no simulation. It's a painter. You paint zones, you paint stuff like utilities and monuments and whatever bullshit their art department comes up with.
An actual simulation game has a game involved [...]
To anyone out there who hasn't played it before: it has a simulation to it, a somewhat complex one, but it's not a simulation game.
It does track household wealth, and people pay rent, and businesses buy resources from other businesses and transform it in to another good that they can sell to someone else, and that company wealth is tracked, and yadda yadda yadda, it's there.
But for some strange reason, they didn't provide any levers for players to pull, and it doesn't have much effect on what you do. They spent a lot of effort on making a simulation and then the result is that it may as well not exist to the player, it's opaque and doesn't overlap with gameplay.
Take grain for example, in my city I have a deficit of grain, a huge one, much larger than other resources. The first thing to come to mind is I could reduce this deficit by building farms, but the official maps only contain small distributed spots of arable land, and even if you fill out every single little spot, I don't think the farms would be enough to cover the deficit. So what do you do? Well you ignore it and it's all fine, grain gets imported from outside connections, you notice no ill effects from the grain deficit, you're still making money hand over fist so you're not missing anything by ignoring it, your city goes on like normal.
The simulation also has many bugs that can cause whole parts of it to self destruct and cause issues with your city. On release there was a bug with garbage incinerators, where they just collected garbage and never burned them. If you placed one of these buildings, your city would eventually accumulate with garbage, happiness goes down, companies go bankrupt, things fall apart. What was the workaround before it got fixed? Just don't build them. Trucks will come from outside the city to pick up the garbage, then go right back outside the city and deal with the garbage. As a result, doing things would actively harm your city, and not doing things would make the game run like normal. It was the same deal with other buildings like cargo railroad hubs, airports, etc., where they were broken and building them would harm your city, but not building them would cause.....nothing bad to happen, the city would go on fine without them.
A prominent youtuber for the game posted a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIdH28QExQc) recently detailing his frustration with a bug around land value -- namely that it would keep rising to absurd amounts and cause your city to die from within. Single family home zoning will cause land value to rise, renters won't be able to afford rent, they'll leave, the house will eventually be abandoned and then bulldozed, and no new single family homes will be built in its place. You're left with a vacant lot that's so absurdly valuable that no single family homes will be built there, but the value also won't go down. The only thing to do is zone higher density in the area because of how the game treats density and rent.
Also, after you get offices in the game, you start making so much money that you don't know what to do with it. I have lowered my tax on everything in the game to negatives -- literally paying people to live in my city -- and I'm not in any harm of going bankrupt, also hell, I couldn't even tell what the effects of it are, my city doesn't seem any different from when I was taxing people the default amount.
There is a simulation, there's very few ways of interacting with it as a player, there's numerous bugs causing it to go haywire, and the whole thing is built on dubious design decisions. The core game-loop is mostly the same from C:S1, but it's lacking mod support and assets that the first one had, so its just a boring game built on shaky ground.
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Comment on Frustrations with Cities Skylines 2 are starting to boil over among city builder fans and content creators alike in ~games
an_angry_tiger LinkIt's been close to four months since the launch of Cities: Skylines 2, and the community is starting to run out of patience waiting for improvements. Ongoing frustrations with the game have been boiling for some time, and now that several of the game's biggest content creators are starting to air their issues in a major way, it seems like the community is reaching a tipping point.
Cities: Skylines 2 launched back in October, and was pretty much immediately raked over the coals for its abysmal performance issues. The severity of those issues varied from player to player, but it seemed not even the most powerful gaming rig was truly immune. Performance problems were certainly a big factor in the two-star Cities: Skylines 2 review I published for GamesRadar+, and these sorts of problems continue to be the subject of most of the game's post-launch patches.
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Frustrations with Cities Skylines 2 are starting to boil over among city builder fans and content creators alike
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Comment on The quiet death of Ello’s big dreams in ~tech
an_angry_tiger LinkI remember when ello was first around and gaining some hype, some kind of minimal black and white facebook. I thought it was dumb and lame back then and now I feel kind of vindicated! Yes yes my...I remember when ello was first around and gaining some hype, some kind of minimal black and white facebook.
I thought it was dumb and lame back then and now I feel kind of vindicated! Yes yes my reasoning was petty, but it's the small things in life.
Anyway, don't trust people who take VC money and purport to only be doing a social good, they're incredibly hard concepts to reconcile. It was no shock reading what the creator of it went on to do:
After leaving Ello in 2016, Budnitz returned to his Kidrobot roots with the launch of Superplastic in 2017, a vinyl figure company that expanded into NFTs and the metaverse in 2022, raising a total of $68M in seven rounds of funding, led by Amazon. Superplastic appears to have abandoned its NFT projects last year as the market cratered, and Budnitz stepped down from his CEO role in September, replaced by the former president of blockchain gaming company Dapper Labs. They are now focused on “synthetic celebrities” and AI influencers.
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Comment on Prison Architect 2 - Coming March 26th! | Announcement trailer in ~games
an_angry_tiger Link ParentThey (Introversion) sold it entirely to Paradox back in like 2019 or so. So it's all new devs on this, and entirely under Paradox as publishers. On the other hand, they were also the developer...They (Introversion) sold it entirely to Paradox back in like 2019 or so.
So it's all new devs on this, and entirely under Paradox as publishers. On the other hand, they were also the developer studio responsible for a lot of the DLC/content for the game, and have experience working with Rimworld console ports.
Hard to say how it'll go, but as a fan of the first game since it came out, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
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Comment on Roughly halfway through the NHL's 2023-2024 season: what are your thoughts on the season so far? How is your team doing? Any surprises? in ~sports.hockey
an_angry_tiger LinkLeafs, not fan, but from Toronto: haven't watched much yet, seems on-track to reach playoffs. I look forward to our playoffs exit this year, last year's wasn't embarrassing.Leafs, not fan, but from Toronto:
haven't watched much yet, seems on-track to reach playoffs. I look forward to our playoffs exit this year, last year's wasn't embarrassing.
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Comment on ‘Impossible’ to create AI tools like ChatGPT without copyrighted material, OpenAI says in ~tech
an_angry_tiger Link ParentWhat if I started a blog where I read NYT articles and then paraphrase them. I'll change the text enough that it's not direct plagiarism word for word, but the sentiment and research is coming...What if I started a blog where I analyze and critique NYT articles? Suppose for each article I excerpt and respond to the text paragraph-by-paragraph.
What if I started a blog where I read NYT articles and then paraphrase them. I'll change the text enough that it's not direct plagiarism word for word, but the sentiment and research is coming entirely from that one source that I'm not paying for.
I don't have an answer for this! It's, to me at least, a genuinely good question. If a human did what LLMs are doing in regards to processing text to respond with later, would you be able to get away with it? Is it fine if simply the words are different?
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Comment on Unpopular opinion: Capitalism is a better ideology than socialism or communism because greed is a more tolerable emotion than fear/envy in ~talk
an_angry_tiger Link ParentI'm trusting the person called "nukeman", sounds like they know what they're talking about :pI'm trusting the person called "nukeman", sounds like they know what they're talking about :p
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Comment on Unpopular opinion: Capitalism is a better ideology than socialism or communism because greed is a more tolerable emotion than fear/envy in ~talk
an_angry_tiger Link ParentUhhhhh, what? The Manhattan Project was mostly active before the end of the European theatre, no Nazi scientists were involved with it. Heisenberg was a big figure in physics, and did work for the...Nukes didn't exist without Nazi scientists. Remember that? The nukes we dropped on Japan were a calculated bluff. We had only a small handful of nukes. They thought we had 1,000's. If they knew we only had a few the war might not have ended.
Uhhhhh, what? The Manhattan Project was mostly active before the end of the European theatre, no Nazi scientists were involved with it.
Heisenberg was a big figure in physics, and did work for the Nazis as one of the main scientists in the Nazi nuclear weapons program, but during the war there wouldn't be any crossover in research between them. The nuclear program under the Nazis was a huge failure that was nowhere near close to being useful to apply to anything, and most of the research he had done that would contribute to the American development of a bomb would have been before the war, when afaik, he was not affiliated with the Nazi party.
By the numbers, there's probably way more scientists who were persecuted by the Nazis or feared persecution and fled or stopped their research than there were scientists who worked with the Nazis on particle physics.
Framing the development of the nuclear bomb as not being possible without Nazi scientists is a bizarre framing and I'm not sure why you would do that.
The nukes we dropped on Japan were a calculated bluff. We had only a small handful of nukes. They thought we had 1,000's. If they knew we only had a few the war might not have ended.
There was only enough material for two bombs after trinity at the time, but the next set of nuclear tests was in 1946, Crossroads, with 2 devices fired, after that 1948 with Sandstone, another 3 devices fired. That's enough material to devastate most major Japanese cities or infrastructure. The Japanese was also facing heavy shortages of materiel for the war, including oil, kind of the main reason behind the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbour? The US embargoing exports to Japan of crucial materials they would need for the war?
I don't think saying that the Japanese only stopped fighting because they thought America had 1000s of nuclear bombs (which would be a tremendous overestimation by them, considering the difficulty in manufacturing fissionable material in 1945). Even if they knew the 2 devices ready in 1945 was all America could produce at the time, firebombing campaigns in Japan already killed 100,000s of civilians and devastated their cities and industrial output. Facing a shortage in materiel for the war, devastation of cities and civilians, and knowing the Americans are now not only way beyond the Japanese Empire's military industrial capacity, resource availability, and now technological capabilities, and knowing that the next nuclear bomb may not be that far away -- i.e. 1 year for the next series of tests, and that could be a bomb exploding over Tokyo -- I don't think it would have taken much more for them to end the war.
Needing 1000 nuclear bombs as a threat to stop the Japanese Empire seems like a bit much.
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Comment on There are two types of airport people : Some travelers love being late [2019] in ~travel
an_angry_tiger (edited )Link ParentI tend to arrive decently early, 2 hours or so before departure, because I don't want to miss my flight. These days I think I'm turning it around and am just going to leave less time for myself....I tend to arrive decently early, 2 hours or so before departure, because I don't want to miss my flight.
These days I think I'm turning it around and am just going to leave less time for myself. Because I'm anxious and like self-harm? No, strangely, because these days it seems like the line for security and customs pre-clearance is pretty short, so I show up 2 hours early, breeze through to my gate, and sit there for ages waiting for my flight.
What I do experience anxiety-based procrastination in (or used to), however, is sleeping. I used to dread going to my job, so at bedtime I'd stay awake lying in bed, finding something else to do well past when I should until caving and finally going to bed.
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Comment on What are some highly praised comedians you don't find very funny? in ~talk
an_angry_tiger Link ParentIs it just filmed stand-up specials you don't like? Or live ones too? I definitely get it with almost all stand-up specials, they're all shot really in a weird stilted way, and the comedian has...Is it just filmed stand-up specials you don't like? Or live ones too?
I definitely get it with almost all stand-up specials, they're all shot really in a weird stilted way, and the comedian has usually polished the routine for the hour so much that it feels robotic. I came across this video essay a while ago that touches on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjH8oztEiPI
I think stand-up CDs (if new ones of those even come out) fare better, since there's no artificiality injected from filming it -- it's the same routine they do at any of their shows, but this time recorded from a soundboard.
I used to watch more stand-up comedy, but at some point I stopped entirely. Podcasts replaced it and feels so much better to me. Same comedians, same humour, even sometimes the same jokes, but told in a conversational style where there's more intimacy and improve and thoughts coming off the cuff instead of workshopped. I've gone to the Comedy Cellar in-person a few times and that's also been pretty good and less stilted, I think mainly because the comedians only have 5 or 10 minutes for their sets, so its a combo of whatever jokes they think will work on the audience, and some impromptu crowd-work, and figuring out what works in the room, instead of being honed and rehearsed.
Apple ended 2023 with a reported cash on hand amount of 80 billion USD. That's $80 billion that's sitting in bank accounts, unused, without Apple knowing what to do with it, just loose change they have laying around. That would fund 160,000 highly paid reviewers, if the reviewers were paid $500k each per year.
Apple has the money, they've had the money for a long time, they're not scraping by, they're one of the most highly successful companies in the world today, and it would be highly impressive if something were to actually meaningfully affect their profitability.
Apple isn't doing it because they don't seem to want to -- not because "gosh darn they just don't have enough money to pay people to make sure apps work, if only they could take an even bigger cut of app store profit, oh well".