hungariantoast's recent activity

  1. Comment on What's a game that you wish you could play again for the first time? Why? in ~games

    hungariantoast
    Link Parent
    I found myself in this same place some time ago. My solution was to just start building fortresses above ground. The controls for designating the construction of buildings are pretty clunky right...

    I found myself in this same place some time ago. My solution was to just start building fortresses above ground. The controls for designating the construction of buildings are pretty clunky right now, but having as much of your fortress above ground as possible changes the "balance" of the game dramatically.

    My favorite thing now is to build castles surrounded by a village, with layers of walls and a moat or two. If invasions get too bad, I'll have everyone retreat to the keep and try to come up with a clever way to break the siege.

    3 votes

  2. Comment on Looking for some long book series recommendations in ~books

  3. Comment on An experiment to test GitHub Copilot's legality in ~comp

  5. Comment on Supreme Court curbs EPA's ability to fight climate change in ~enviro

    hungariantoast
    Link Parent
    Anarchy means not necessarily the absence of order but an absence of rule Thank you for always being willing to throw these kinds of ideas and thoughts out here and for letting us read them....

    Anarchy means not necessarily the absence of order but an absence of rule

    Thank you for always being willing to throw these kinds of ideas and thoughts out here and for letting us read them. Unfortunately, it's easier to just dismiss or poke holes in ideas like these rather than muster up the creativity or curiosity to actually contribute, but for what it's worth, I appreciate your contributions.

    4 votes

  6. Comment on How a worker-owned business model in Spain is keeping inequality in check in ~life

    hungariantoast
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    “The objective of the cooperative is not to produce rich people, it’s to produce rich societies,” said Igor Herrarte, an engineer at Mondragon Assembly, which makes solar panels and machinery to help firms automate their production. “We don’t have a lot of rich people — or not very rich — but on the other hand, we also don’t have poor people.”

    2 votes

  8. Comment on What is something you have changed your mind about in the last year? in ~talk

  10. Comment on Canada’s boar war - Wild pigs are invasive, destructive and dangerous, and their populations in Canada are exploding out of control. How can we fight back? in ~enviro

    hungariantoast
    Link Parent
    Well there were originally four, then the three mares each gave birth, so there were seven. Now there are eight, and soon there will be ten, because the gestation period for zebras was much...

    Well there were originally four, then the three mares each gave birth, so there were seven. Now there are eight, and soon there will be ten, because the gestation period for zebras was much shorter than we thought.

    So they’re doing really well. The first foal to be born was huge by the way. He was about twice as big as the two that came shortly after and is now almost as big as the adults. We’re hoping he grows up to be a monster 😄

    7 votes

  11. Comment on Canada’s boar war - Wild pigs are invasive, destructive and dangerous, and their populations in Canada are exploding out of control. How can we fight back? in ~enviro

    hungariantoast
    Link Parent
    Just from my personal experience, the unspoken part about pig hunting is that a lot of property owners who offer paid hunts, or other people who make money off of hunts, care little about the...

    Just from my personal experience, the unspoken part about pig hunting is that a lot of property owners who offer paid hunts, or other people who make money off of hunts, care little about the impact of boars and make very little effort to actually contain and control them.

    That’s what we did though, on the property @cfabbro mentioned: we inspected every single foot of the perimeter fence and reinforced it so pigs couldn’t get through (or under). Then, methodically, over a period of more than a year, we hunted them until we killed them all.

    That obviously doesn’t scale for the entire state of Texas, but it can work for big properties up to several thousand acres.

    Also, shoot the mamas. The babies will starve.

    7 votes

  12. Comment on Having been on Android for over a decade, I just got my first iPhone! What should I know? in ~tech

    hungariantoast
    Link Parent
    With a combination of Google Fi and a cheap Android phone every two years, I was spending about $415 a year on a smartphone, excluding accessories like cables and screen protectors. The Android...

    With a combination of Google Fi and a cheap Android phone every two years, I was spending about $415 a year on a smartphone, excluding accessories like cables and screen protectors.

    The Android phone I got was normally $300, but $150 on sale. It received exactly one major Android version upgrade, and stopped receiving security updates after two years. Battery life had heavily degraded after two years as well. Performance/smoothness was never great. If the phone had good LineageOS support, I could have tolerated using it for longer, like I did with my Nexus 5X that I owned for five years. It was not supported by LineageOS though, and I really didn't feel like figuring out how to build my own ROM.

    Now, because I am a student who receives financial aid, I automatically qualify for the Affordable Connectivity Program, that offers me a $30/month credit towards an internet access bill. Because home internet access is included with rent at my apartment, I decided to apply the ACP towards my phone bill. So my phone bill is now free.

    I could have bumped up the amount I spend on an Android phone and got a respectable mid-range device that would probably last me more than two years. This would have significantly reduced the amount I spend every year on a smartphone, but I specifically did not want another Android device, and am generally trying to move away from using any of Google's services.

    Enter Apple's iPhone Upgrade Program. Through the program, I spend about $40 every month, and can upgrade to a new iPhone after I make twelve payments. The total yearly cost of the program is $507. This also includes "AppleCare" coverage for accidental damage, and loss or theft replacement.

    So I'm spending about $100 more a year on a smartphone, but the smartphone I am getting is of much higher quality than before, and I get a new one at no extra cost every twelve months.

    I definitely could have stuck with Android and reduced my yearly average smartphone expense considerably, but I specifically wanted to get away from Android.

    Apple/iOS is not overwhelmingly better than Google/Android. It's a compromise at best, but what I "value" in a smartphone has shifted recently and this was the path that most aligned with those "values".

    Both companies are still terrible. Both companies should still be legislatively rendered unrecognizable. The smartphone duopoly sucks.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Having been on Android for over a decade, I just got my first iPhone! What should I know? in ~tech

    hungariantoast
    Link Parent
    This requires... surprise! Another subscription! Plex rent-seeks $5/month for the privilege to download media for offline access. This was the first app I tried. Not only is it not immediately...

    Also, the best way definitely is to just run a Plex server with your media on it. You can download media for offline viewing in the clients.

    This requires... surprise! Another subscription! Plex rent-seeks $5/month for the privilege to download media for offline access.

    Just get something like foobar

    This was the first app I tried. Not only is it not immediately obvious that you can just import music from a cloud service (on first launch, the app directs you to set up a FTP server instead), but that is yet another subscription. Sure, you could theoretically load your music, 15 GB at a time, onto your device, but that's a terrible experience.

    It seems like Finamp will work for me. It's a shame Apple's ecosystem is, at best, a compromise over Google's though.

  14. Comment on Having been on Android for over a decade, I just got my first iPhone! What should I know? in ~tech

    hungariantoast
    Link Parent
    Music? Subscription. Video? Subscription. Moving photos off? Subscription. Backups? Subscription. Installing apps? Subscription (or lifetime access for just $60!!!). Honestly, the only reason I...

    Music? Subscription. Video? Subscription. Moving photos off? Subscription. Backups? Subscription. Installing apps? Subscription (or lifetime access for just $60!!!).

    Honestly, the only reason I can pay what is essentially a subscription for a new iPhone every year, is because I don't waste my money on other subscription services whose content I can manage myself. Apple does not make that easy though.

    The first thing I wanted to do when I got my iPhone was put my offline music library on it. As far as I can tell, there are zero ways to upload my music to my Apple Music account via the website and download it offline on my iPhone using the official Music app. This was something Google Play Music excelled at, before Google did the thing they always do and killed the app.

    The only way I can get my music onto my iPhone, and play it through the official Music app, is to sync my music library from my Linux laptop to my Windows desktop, load and organize my library into iTunes, and then sync it to my phone. That's so much more complicated and a pain in the ass than it has to be.

    The easiest, immediate solution I found was to run a temporary Jellyfin server on my laptop and use Finamp to download the music so it could be played offline.

    Maybe I just need to get with the times and subscribe to ten different streaming services and an unlimited data plan, but I would rather not impoverish myself.

  15. Comment on Having been on Android for over a decade, I just got my first iPhone! What should I know? in ~tech

    hungariantoast
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I also got an iPhone recently. After reading your comment I decided to use Apple Maps for my three-ish hour drive from San Antonio to Houston, taking I-10. Traffic was great today, compared to how...

    Apple Maps (in the US) is hilariously more useful than Google Maps for navigation. I never thought I'd see the day, but it's like Google wants to lose marketshare here.

    I also got an iPhone recently. After reading your comment I decided to use Apple Maps for my three-ish hour drive from San Antonio to Houston, taking I-10.

    Traffic was great today, compared to how it usually is. With no slow downs, I cannot say if Apple Maps does a better job redirecting around traffic and saving time, but the app didn’t give me any warnings about objects in the road or speed traps. Google Maps reports that info to me every single time I make this trip, which is far more often than I would like to, and each trip the information turns out to be useful.

    Then, when I actually got into Houston, Apple Maps straight up broke and stopped giving me directions or updates. I already had the route memorized so I actually didn’t need the app, but Google Maps has never just stopped working or crashed.

    Thankfully restarting navigation is easy and hands free using Siri. Apple Maps also actually handles the Katy tollway unlike Google Maps that freaks out and endlessly reroutes until I get back onto the interstate.

    I’ve noticed in some instances Apple Map’s auditory instructions are more detailed and useful than Google’s. Today it told me something like “not at this light, but at the next, get in the left lane to turn left”.

    I’ll try Apple Maps again when I make the trip back (bleh) and hopefully my experience today was just a fluke. I actually want Apple Maps to work better for me than Google’s, because getting an iPhone was part of a process of removing Google from my life.

    For anyone curious:

    Through Apple’s upgrade program and a $30 ACP credit for my phone bill, I only spend about $100 more per year on a smartphone than I did with Android/Google Fi, but the phone I get is of much higher quality, I have five times more data on my plan, and two instances of theft/loss replacement every twelve months. If I upgrade every twelve months I’m basically getting a new iPhone at 50% off, and thanks to the Affordable Connectivity Program my phone bill is free.

    6 votes

  16. Comment on Adobe plans to make Photoshop on the web free to everyone, beta in Canada in ~design

    hungariantoast
    Link Parent
    Yeah as a student I get free access to Photoshop and Illustrator but because my laptop runs Linux I either need to: Use pirated older versions of the software under Wine Run the software in a...

    native Linux port

    Yeah as a student I get free access to Photoshop and Illustrator but because my laptop runs Linux I either need to:

    • Use pirated older versions of the software under Wine
    • Run the software in a virtual machine with weird pass through rules for my drawing display
    • Just install the software on my gaming computer and deal with syncing files between machines

    All of those options suck and as a result I just don’t and won’t use Adobe’s products. GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape are good alternatives. Krita is a downright better program for digital painting. I also recently got an iPad and Procreate because I wanted something more portable for digital art and I’m slowly falling in love with it.

    I’ve spent $1500+ on software, hardware, and donations because Adobe sucks and won’t support Linux. In a different timeline that money might have gone to them.

    2 votes

  17. Comment on The late Shamus Young in ~games

    hungariantoast
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    I don’t think I ever talked about it on Tildes before but I have Shamus to blame for setting me on the path of wanting to be a game developer, learning to program, and getting a computer science...

    I don’t think I ever talked about it on Tildes before but I have Shamus to blame for setting me on the path of wanting to be a game developer, learning to program, and getting a computer science degree. Years ago he made a video about Fuel and how the developers of that game could fit such a large map on a single game disc. That video was the first time I encountered the term “procedural generation” and I really just fell down the rabbit hole from there.

    Recently I actually emailed Shamus with a sort-of response to a video he made about “breaking in-game economies” with some ideas I came up with to solve the issue in a game I am designing. I didn’t expect him to respond considering it was a lengthy email even by my standards and actually responding to it would probably have required as much “thinking time” as just writing a blog post or script for a video, and that’s fine, but there was definitely a part of me hoping he would respond and now

    fuck

    6 votes

  18. Comment on Starfield sounds way too big in ~games

    hungariantoast
    Link Parent
    Yeah it seems like the game has huge potential for mods. Hopefully it'll be possible for modders to create their own planets. I'm sure we'll also get a Sim Settlements-like mod at some point too.

    Yeah it seems like the game has huge potential for mods. Hopefully it'll be possible for modders to create their own planets. I'm sure we'll also get a Sim Settlements-like mod at some point too.

    3 votes

  19. Comment on Starfield sounds way too big in ~games