balooga's recent activity
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Comment on All about (computer) love in ~tech
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Comment on Announced at the Consumer Electronics Show 2026 in Las Vegas, Lego's Smart Play system introduces new electronic components to the classic plastic blocks in ~hobbies
balooga Link ParentFrom TechCrunch:From TechCrunch:
Lego’s first two Smart Play sets — which are both Star Wars-themed — will launch on March 1, though preorders open on Friday. The “Luke’s Red Five X-wing” building set will retail for $69.99, while the larger “Throne Room Duel and A-wing” set will cost $159.99. These sets use the Smart Play system to animate characters like Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, allowing them to interact with Smart Tags, which enable Lightsaber duels among other Star Wars-related capabilities.
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Comment on Debunking the AI food delivery hoax that fooled Reddit in ~tech
balooga Link ParentYou might be onto something there. Honestly we’re so up to our eyeballs in scams, grifts, and pump-and-dumps these days that it’s legitimately tempting to join in. Feels like shooting fish in a...Market manipulation could be an easy movitation. Buy some cheap, out-of-the-money put options on Uber, post the 'whistleblower' report, and hope that the news media picks it up. If the story goes viral and especially if it catches the attention of regulators or politicians, the stock could drop 10-20% in a profitable manner.
You might be onto something there. Honestly we’re so up to our eyeballs in scams, grifts, and pump-and-dumps these days that it’s legitimately tempting to join in. Feels like shooting fish in a barrel and these modern fraudsters rarely face any consequences (on the contrary, they get elected President and amplify their grifts by factors of magnitude… but I digress). I’m over here struggling to make an honest living for my family when I fully believe I could be raking it in by ripping people off if I just ignored my conscience. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night but damn if I’m not a teensy bit jealous of the crooks these days.
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Comment on Debunking the AI food delivery hoax that fooled Reddit in ~tech
balooga LinkWe don’t know who the hoaxer was here, or their motives. Seems fairly amateur-hour, tbh, given the current state of AI tools. A properly motivated and funded disinformation campaign would know how...We don’t know who the hoaxer was here, or their motives. Seems fairly amateur-hour, tbh, given the current state of AI tools. A properly motivated and funded disinformation campaign would know how to make its fake badge and research paper less detectable as such.
The real danger of stuff like this is not that it slanders the good name of Uber Eats, but that it decreases our ability to discern truth from falsehood. In a few years we’re all gonna be so fatigued from questioning everything that we just believe nothing anymore. The zone will be utterly flooded with shit — with zero hope of ever draining it again. Which of course creates an environment for malefactors to prey with impunity, because everyone has conceded their ability to defend against it.
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Comment on Grok AI generates images of ‘minors in minimal clothing’ in ~tech
balooga Link ParentThanks for this. You make some really solid counterpoints that were worth taking the time to articulate. I appreciate it!Thanks for this. You make some really solid counterpoints that were worth taking the time to articulate. I appreciate it!
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Comment on Grok AI generates images of ‘minors in minimal clothing’ in ~tech
balooga Link ParentThanks for the clarification, I missed the point in the article where these are using real people’s likenesses. That’s not victimless. Well I’d like to say this is the first time I’ve climbed up...Thanks for the clarification, I missed the point in the article where these are using real people’s likenesses. That’s not victimless.
Well I’d like to say this is the first time I’ve climbed up on my soapbox at an inappropriate time, but that wouldn’t be accurate either, lol
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Comment on Grok AI generates images of ‘minors in minimal clothing’ in ~tech
balooga LinkI’ve had this conversation too many times online and I’m exhausted from playing the pedophile’s advocate (seriously it’s not a camp I enjoy aligning myself with)… but I still think it’s worth...I’ve had this conversation too many times online and I’m exhausted from playing the
devil’spedophile’s advocate (seriously it’s not a camp I enjoy aligning myself with)… but I still think it’s worth asking whether fictional CSAM of non-existing “minors” should really be treated by law the same way as real CSAM that only exists by actually victimizing real people.Think about sociopaths. In any population some n% of people will have that condition. I think most of us who have looked into sociopathy are aware of this, and try not to think about it too much, because we can’t just “purge” all sociopaths from the world, though we might fantasize about that. This is their world too, they have all the same human rights as anyone else. Better to find ways to coexist and help them identify their pathology and manage it, minimizing the damage they can do to others.
I think pedophilia’s probably not that different from sociopathy. These people are here, they live among us, and likely they don’t have a lot of control over the urges they feel. I’d rather extend some empathy about that, and help them channel those impulses in ways that don’t hurt anyone else, than shun and criminalize them for having a mental illness.
This isn’t really a statement about xAI or Grok, I’m just commenting on the assumptions people tend to make about how certain unsavory segments of the populace ought to be treated. I’ve said things to this effect before (maybe not on Tildes, I can’t remember) and got piled on for being, apparently, pro-pedophile. I just feel this is one of those ethical/social issues that people 100 years in the future are going to look back on us as barbarians for not reckoning with sooner. Personally, if generative AI can (even partially) satisfy the demand for content that currently requires a whole absolutely horrific underground economy of child trafficking and abuse… well we should maybe do a more thorough cost/benefit analysis before writing it off entirely.
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Comment on The Muppet Show | Teaser trailer in ~tv
balooga LinkLooks like it’s a single “special” and not a series reboot. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but it will necessitate some pacing and structure changes from the original show. I’ve got a...Looks like it’s a single “special” and not a series reboot. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but it will necessitate some pacing and structure changes from the original show.
I’ve got a lot of thoughts about the Muppets. Under Jim Henson they really pushed the envelope of what was possible with puppets. They were edgy and hilarious, technically ambitious, and had an unmatched frenetic chaotic style. I know there have been a lot of really talented people at the studios in the years since he died, doing their best to keep Jim’s torch burning (with mixed results). The 2011 movie was a high point but there have been a lot of lows too. I hope that this is good, while expecting disappointment. I want the Muppets to succeed as an enterprise. Maybe not under Bob Iger’s Disney though.
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Comment on Did anyone play Phantasy Star Online? in ~games
balooga Link ParentI’ve never played an MMO (apart from some ancient MUDs and MUSHes eons ago)… the genre just isn’t really my type of thing. But as an old Dreamcast-head I always had some curiosity about PSO...I’ve never played an MMO (apart from some ancient MUDs and MUSHes eons ago)… the genre just isn’t really my type of thing. But as an old Dreamcast-head I always had some curiosity about PSO because of how viable it apparently was when played offline. This is unusual for MMOs, no?
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Comment on Street Fighter II - It sounds dumb but they really fixed a typo with a human leg in ~comp
balooga LinkPretty cool! Reminds me of some fun CSS sprite sheet hacks I used a decade ago before the industry moved over to SVG assets. I built this elaborate Gulp workflow that would ingest all the...Pretty cool! Reminds me of some fun CSS sprite sheet hacks I used a decade ago before the industry moved over to SVG assets. I built this elaborate Gulp workflow that would ingest all the individual PNGs in a directory and run a box-packing algorithm (MaxRects) to cram them all into the smallest possible footprint. I remember poring over all the sprites to figure out which were redundant… often different variants could be represented by a single base sprite and applying different CSS transforms, filters, borders, etc. That probably remains one of my favorite real-world coding challenges of my career.
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Comment on CGA-2026-01 🕹️⛵🛡️ INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker in ~games
balooga LinkHmm, I’m not sure if I have the means to play this month. I’ll need to poke around and see what I can do. I played decently far into the original GameCube version (on a Wii) years ago but never...Hmm, I’m not sure if I have the means to play this month. I’ll need to poke around and see what I can do. I played decently far into the original GameCube version (on a Wii) years ago but never completed it. Really enjoyed the parts I did play, though. I’d like to give it another shot.
I’ve never been a core Zelda fan. I’ve played a bunch of them over the years, almost all of them I think, but only managed to complete two, and those were kinda oddball ones: Phantom Hourglass and Skyward Sword.
The former is a handheld title for the original DS, notable because it’s the direct sequel to this month’s game. I played it before Wind Waker and found it really charming. The cartoony graphics translated well to the small screen. The puzzles are brilliantly constructed and surprisingly complex. Controls are weird — all based around touchscreen stylus gestures, but once you get the hang of them they’re pretty intuitive. My only real complaint about Phantom Hourglass is all the tedious backtracking you have to do. This one was overlooked by most, I guess it’s considered a spinoff more than a mainline series entry. I liked it.
I don’t have a ton to say about Skyward Sword but I liked the WiiMotion+ controller and thought the motion controls were generally great. It’s been years since I played and I don’t remember much of it. I remember that as the second Zelda title for the Wii, it was a lot more approachable and fun than Twilight Princess.
Anyway, yeah, with just those two Zelda games finished I’m kind of an outsider I guess. I’m not particularly interested in the lore of Hyrule or the well-trod tropes that link these games together. I like them, but just casually.
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Comment on Mystic Symbolic Generator in ~design
balooga LinkThis is a fun toy! Not sure what I’d use it for, but yeah the randomize button is entertaining.This is a fun toy! Not sure what I’d use it for, but yeah the randomize button is entertaining.
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Comment on Help me enjoy Baldur's Gate 3 in ~games
balooga Link ParentSo here’s the thing: BG3 is HUGE. I also like to stretch out most games’ playthroughs as much as I can, but in BG3 it can become a slog. I had to actively resist that tendency otherwise I’d never...So here’s the thing: BG3 is HUGE. I also like to stretch out most games’ playthroughs as much as I can, but in BG3 it can become a slog. I had to actively resist that tendency otherwise I’d never complete it. What I recommend is, particularly for your first run, commit to the main story and don’t waver too much from it. You can explore the things that tickled your curiosity, in subsequent runs.
Each origin character has a distinct personal quest that will take you deeper into specific places. Those don’t overlap a ton, so by following them organically you’ll get a lot more exposure to the game’s major content. Maybe pick two or three companions to do that with per playthrough, plus yourself if you’re playing origin. More than that is, IMHO, spreading yourself too thin and reducing your ability to actually complete the game. That’s when it starts to feel more like an obligation than fun.
BG3 is definitely intended to be experienced over a diverse range of multiple playthroughs, not a single one that tries to do everything.
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Comment on Help me enjoy Baldur's Gate 3 in ~games
balooga LinkBG3 is long, and detailed, and intricate. It’s chock full of secrets to find. You’re not gonna see it all. I quickly found that my own min/max and completionist tendencies were not going to be...BG3 is long, and detailed, and intricate. It’s chock full of secrets to find. You’re not gonna see it all. I quickly found that my own min/max and completionist tendencies were not going to be satisfied by this game and if I kept indulging them, I’d never make it through.
The solution for me was (like others here have said) to just embrace role-playing and see where the game takes me. Accept failures… often they lead in unexpected new directions. Get into the story. Don’t explore every nook and cranny. Don’t try to take on every side quest. And for goodness sake don’t look up stuff online!! Just go with the flow. Allow the game to surprise you. At least for your first run, maybe just stay focused on the main quest. Trust me, there’s plenty to see there. You can entertain your FOMO in subsequent plays.
BG3 is pretty good at catering to your favorite playstyle. My favorite playthrough was this deliciously chaotic bull in a china shop run — I played a durge half-orc berserker and joined up with Karlach, Astarion, and my true love Minthara for an evil run. Respecced them all as berserkers too. Spent the whole game chucking heavy furniture at our foes. Smashed down every door we couldn’t open and every chest that was locked. Ascended to supervaillainy with nary a spell slot in sight. It was glorious.
I actually recommend that for your first playthrough, try one of the origin characters. The nice thing about that is it gives you some stronger narrative direction from the outset, and a lot more scripted interactions with your party members. BG3 has a pretty awesome custom character creator but you’ll have a much more immersive experience if you give it a pass. Shadowheart has a really good storyline. I thought using a premade character would be more constraining from a role-playing perspective but I might actually prefer it.
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Comment on Half way through the 2020's. What's your favorite games so far? in ~games
balooga Link ParentIt's absurd that 2020 would not be part of "the '20s", but 2030 would. Maybe there was no year 0, but there was a year 2020 and we have to put it somewhere. I'm fine with saying 2020 was part of...It's absurd that 2020 would not be part of "the '20s", but 2030 would. Maybe there was no year 0, but there was a year 2020 and we have to put it somewhere. I'm fine with saying 2020 was part of "decade 202" the way you explained, but I disagree that "decade 202" and "the 2010s" are equivalent. There's a difference between the two nomenclatures:
"Decade 202": 2011-2020
This is basically the same convention we use for centuries; counting starts at 1. It's numerically defensible. Nobody uses this colloquially but it's reasonable."The 2020s": 2020-2029
This convention is based on the linguistic expectation that the numbers in the range all begin with the digits 202. It's useful because it rolls off the tongue and doesn't require any mental math to figure out what years qualify. It does get awkward in the first two decades of a century ("the '00s"? "the aughts?" "the '10s"? "the teens"?) but we're through that part now and have a solid 75 more years ahead of us for this scheme to make sense in casual use.I guess what I'm saying is, both ways of labeling decades are valid but they should be recognized as different conventions and not conflated.
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Comment on Are you still using social media? in ~tech
balooga Link ParentI don’t know what “social media” actually means but you included Tildes in that list so I guess all of us reading this use it, by that definition. Discord, too, doesn’t feel like it fits under...I don’t know what “social media” actually means but you included Tildes in that list so I guess all of us reading this use it, by that definition. Discord, too, doesn’t feel like it fits under that umbrella to me.
I signed up for Facebook (then known as Thefacebook) and MySpace back in the heady days of 2004 or so. I didn’t stay on MySpace very long but stuck with Facebook until maybe 2013. I haven’t touched any of the big platforms within that category since then. Oh I just remembered I was on Google+ for a while too, lol.
I was pretty into Reddit for over a decade. Survived a number of blackouts and exoduses until I finally said enough is enough and jumped ship for good. This one hurt because there are legitimately some great small communities on there and good content continuing to be posted despite the gradual decline. I still find myself landing there from time to time when searching for things, because it remains one of the better sources of quality info. Leaving was a matter of principle for me because I was so sickened by the way the admins kept steamrolling the users with impunity, knowing that blowback was always temporary and a userbase would always remain regardless of what they did. I had to put my foot down and do my small part to stand against that. I suspect other Tildes folks can relate.
By the time the industry shifted over to junk-food video feeds (I guess Vine, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, etc.) I had already long since washed my hands of social media, but this particular shift really rubbed me the wrong way. Just seemed like a really concerning new evolution of the formula for engagement-optimized addiction in an app. My opinion on this hasn’t changed in the years since, if anything I feel more strongly about that now and blame these platforms in part for the shitty state the world is in today. I get the same feeling watching people swipe through TikToks that I do wandering through a labyrinthine Vegas casino full of zombified retirees feeding slot machines.
I’ve never used any of the social features of YouTube but it remains a great source of great long-form content. I use FreeTube, a FOSS desktop app that doesn’t always work but when it does… it strips out all of the algorithmic bullshit, social junk, ads and traffic. I can subscribe to my favorite creators and it’s all managed locally without sending any metrics to Google.
I have mixed feelings about Discord. I’m a member of a bunch of servers but I’m not really active in them. I have these completionist tendencies that want to read every message and that impulse is completely overwhelmed by Discord. There’s just no way to keep up. And that’s liberating in some way because I just have to come to terms with the fact that it’s chaos in there, and I can navigate that at my leisure without needing to feel like all the checkboxes have to be ticked.
I do sometimes feel like all the ways I’ve disconnected from social stuff online have made me rather antisocial. I have some FOMO about limiting my exposure to a broad range of news and ideas. But I still generally feel like this is the right path to be on, and I’ve seen the absolute insanity suppurated by social media echo chambers, so I don’t think getting into modern platforms would help with that problem anyway.
I’ve been really prioritizing my real-life relationships over my digital ones, since the pandemic; my introversion ran rampant in ‘20-‘23, having been emboldened by all that social distancing and remote work. My social life was reduced to embers that are just now getting rekindled. And it feels really good. I’m going GOLFING tomorrow. I don’t golf. I’m over 40 and I’ve never golfed. I’m scared shitless about golfing. But also — I have friends now who care about me and want to take me golfing and dammit that is a wonderful feeling. I never got that feeling from a website or app.
Well, apart from @kfwyre‘s game giveaway threads, that is. 😉
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Comment on Pope Leo, on Christmas Eve, says denying help to poor is rejecting God in ~humanities
balooga Link ParentDisappointed that christmas.merry was removed. That @mycketforvirrad is such a Scrooge! Humbug!!Disappointed that
christmas.merrywas removed. That @mycketforvirrad is such a Scrooge! Humbug!! -
Comment on King Air autolands in Colorado in ~transport
balooga LinkDoes this system communicate with air traffic control? What stands between today’s implementation and full self-piloting from terminal to terminal? I don’t know anything about piloting (and flight...Does this system communicate with air traffic control? What stands between today’s implementation and full self-piloting from terminal to terminal?
I don’t know anything about piloting (and flight deck instrument panels are horrifyingly complex so I know there’s a lot to account for there) but it’s always seemed to me that autonomous passenger aircraft are likely an easier nut to crack than self-driving cars. Mainly due to the unpredictability of road conditions due to construction, traffic, wildlife, pedestrians, other obstructive hazards, weird one-off exceptions to normal rules of the road that require reading signs and improvising, nonverbal driver-to-driver communication, and so on. Ground vehicles are insanely hard to automate. Yet progress is being made there. I’ve always heard that takeoff and landing are the hardest things about flying a plane, and it sounds like this tech has half of that taken care of. Makes me wonder if airline pilots’ days are numbered.
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Comment on What do you leave out for Father Christmas? in ~talk
balooga Link ParentNow that’s a tradition I can get behind! Prost!Now that’s a tradition I can get behind! Prost!
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Comment on What do you leave out for Father Christmas? in ~talk
balooga Link ParentPOW! Straight in the nostalgia! I forgot about that ad.POW! Straight in the nostalgia! I forgot about that ad.
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