kfwyre's recent activity
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Comment on What server location should I use for a VPN? in ~tech
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Comment on What game are you terrible at? in ~games
kfwyre (edited )Link Parentđ¤ You are not alone! It is a running joke with my friends that I am genuinely bad at games, and they're 100% right. I'll watch them play something and it's like I can see everything falling into...đ¤
You are not alone!
It is a running joke with my friends that I am genuinely bad at games, and they're 100% right. I'll watch them play something and it's like I can see everything falling into place for them: their mastery of the controls, their understanding of the mechanics, etc.
When I play, the opposite happens. I'm clumsily making my way around; I don't fully understand how everything works together. I play nearly every single game on easy/casual difficulty, if it lets me. Even then, I still sometimes have trouble.
I've actually thought a lot about why this is, and I've settled on four different complimentary theories:
- I'm fairly uncoordinated.
In real life, in games, in general -- I'm clumsy. I'm whatever the opposite of "graceful" is. This is especially true when things get tense, so when the action ramps up, or there's a boss fight or whatnot, I tend to do even worse.
- I've got bad working memory.
I'm amazed at people that can like, take in a lot of information, process it, and hold on to it concurrently. I'll learn a board game with my friends, and we'll be 30 minutes in and they've already mastered the mechanics and strategies, all while I'm still just trying to remember the basics of what to do and how to play. If a video game tutorial shows me something once (e.g. a special move or something) and doesn't come back to it for a bit, you'd better believe that I'm going to forget about it. I genuinely have to give myself a conscious mental narration for when I'm learning a game to try to help remind me about what options are available to me.
- It's hard for me to mentally "shortcut" information.
Back when Slay the Spire came out, a friend was getting us into it so we hotseatted it and took turns playing. The group found my playthrough EXCRUCIATINGLY slow because I had to read each card each time -- even when I had already read the card multiple times before and knew what it did. All of them were very good at seeing, say, "Shiv", processing it once, and then incorporating that information into their wider understanding of the game. When "Shiv" came back up, they automatically knew and understood its use. Meanwhile, I had to sort of process all the information given to me each time in order to make an informed decision. It wasn't enough for me to just go "oh, that's a Shiv" because I had to evaluate my understanding of that card against the different cards in my hand each time, or the new enemies that I was facing, etc. The same goes for every other card. There was too much information for me to hold on to, which was why I had to "refresh" that information each time.
I think this is basically just an extension of what I talked about in #2 because I think it's also a product of my working memory. My friends can just sort of slurp up a whole bunch of info all at once and convert it into a shorthand that they can work with, whereas I have to deliberately focus on different things to make them make sense. My visual metaphor for this is they've got a desk full of papers, all facing up, and they know where everything is and how to access whatever they need immediately. Meanwhile, I've got a stack of papers, and I have to shuffle and read to even find the right one in the first place. Despite all my attempts, I'm never able to lay them all out at once like they seem to be able to do. They'll stay stacked, and I'll always have to spend time shuffling through them.
- Something is up with my (family's) perception.
My husband always makes fun of me (in a loving husband sort of way) for not being able to find things. I will open the fridge to find, say, the ketchup. I know what the ketchup looks like, and where it is likely to be, and yet it will still take me some genuine effort to locate it. At other times, I'm genuinely unable to locate it. Meanwhile, if I ask him where the ketchup is, he will be able to tell me exactly where it is. From the couch. Without even looking.
My brother-in-law experiences the same thing with my sister. They have a "game" called "Can I Point at It?" where she'll ask where something is, and he'll ask the titular question, which means that the item is literally within line-of-sight. She'll then stubbornly say "no" and insist on continuing to look at it herself.
At our most recent full-family vacation, my brother was looking for a specific drink. The place we were staying in had two different fridges, so he opened the first one, didn't see it, went to the second one, didn't see it, and then asked us where it was. My husband, again, from the couch, described where it was in the first fridge. My brother went back, opened it up, and, lo and behold, there it was. I excitedly said to my husband "see, it's not just me!"
Immediately following this, my dad walked into the room and asked where my mom was. My mom was sitting on a chair literally right in front of him. I grabbed my husband's arm excitedly and again said "SEE, IT'S NOT JUST ME!" We had a good laugh, and our in-laws then bonded over their shared experiences of dealing with my biological family's bizarre inability to find things.
As this pertains to games, well, it means that what's intuitively obvious to a lot of other people isn't necessarily the case for me. Instead, I'm often oblivious. Gamers will complain about things like obvious quest markers or lighting guiding your way, and, well, the devs probably put those in because of people like me who, for some strange and unexplained reason, somehow can't see what's right in front of them.
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What server location should I use for a VPN?
I'm asking "I" in the sense that I'd personally like an answer to this question, but really this is more about using VPNs in general. Currently, I just use the server with the lowest latency...
I'm asking "I" in the sense that I'd personally like an answer to this question, but really this is more about using VPNs in general.
Currently, I just use the server with the lowest latency because that gives me the least friction.
However, thinking about the GDPR in the EU, or California's data privacy protections: should I be strategically choosing a server based on those? Is there any benefit to having my traffic routed through a jurisdiction like that, or does that not really matter?
EDIT: To further clarify: will all the different websites out there log less data or treat my data differently if they believe my traffic is coming from the EU/California?
16 votes -
Comment on McDonaldâs built a 515-page dossier on me in ~tech
kfwyre Link ParentI guess for me it's the idea that large stores of data like that are liabilities that only increase in size and potential "severity" over time. Like, right now it's just McDonald's doing...I guess for me it's the idea that large stores of data like that are liabilities that only increase in size and potential "severity" over time. Like, right now it's just McDonald's doing McDonald's things with our data, but if there were a breach, or if a data broker or AI company came along with the right price...
For example, Google just bought Spirit Airlines' data to train their AI. Granted, Spirit is defunct and the article claims that it doesn't include passenger information, but it still speaks to the idea that all this data could find itself somewhere else given the right circumstances, even if it currently isn't being used that way right now.
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Comment on CGA-2026-08 đĄď¸đĄď¸â¤ď¸đş INSERT CARTRIDGE đ˘ The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in ~games
kfwyre LinkThe latest version of Super ZSNES just came out and it features enhancements for this game. Might be worth looking into if anyoneâs starting late.The latest version of Super ZSNES just came out and it features enhancements for this game. Might be worth looking into if anyoneâs starting late.
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Comment on McDonaldâs built a 515-page dossier on me in ~tech
kfwyre LinkAs a California resident, I have the legal right to access the data a company stores about me. So, I decided to request that information from McDonaldâs to better understand what one of the major fast-food companies is collecting about its customers. A few days after I visited the McDonaldâs Privacy Rights Center site and requested access, I received a 515-page file in my inbox with the iconic golden arches stamped across the top.
Much of my data report contains a detailed account of past McDonaldâs transactions as well as offers the fast-food company sent me and how many loyalty points I accumulated. Essentially, every time I opened up the app to grab a bite to eat, it created a detailed record about when, where, and what I purchased. The log was even more thorough than I anticipated, including a record of every time Iâve scanned a code as part of its returning Monopoly sweepstakes along with the prize I received.
While the sheer amount of data McDonaldâs stored over the years caught me off guard at first, the way it was used by the companyâs predictive algorithms was what I found most concerning. The company predicted how often I would visit in the next six weeks (2.16 times), what I would spend on average ($13.49), and what I would spend in total ($29.15). One reporter at WIRED joked that McDonaldâs had created a Minority Report-style dossier to predict my next snack wrap purchase.
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McDonaldâs built a 515-page dossier on me
35 votes -
Comment on American Red Cross declares second-ever national blood supply crisis, urges immediate blood donations in ~health
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Comment on I'm not ready to let this place go in ~tildes
kfwyre (edited )Link ParentI'm happy to report that it worked! The additional markdown characters increased my file size from 9.6 MB to 10.4 MB. :) Again, thank you so much. It feels SO good to have an archive of all the...I'm happy to report that it worked!
The additional markdown characters increased my file size from 9.6 MB to 10.4 MB. :)
Again, thank you so much. It feels SO good to have an archive of all the writing that I've done here.
EDIT: I took the comment column from LibreOffice Calc and posted it into Writer to do a word count. Writer froze for approximately 10 minutes before finally catching up.
The final count?
1.35 million words đą
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Comment on I'm not ready to let this place go in ~tildes
kfwyre Link Parent1.0.7 worked on Firefox for me. OH MY GOSH I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW HAPPY I AM I HAVE WANTED A BACKUP OF MY COMMENTS HERE FOR YEARS NOW Thank you so, SO much. (Also, in case anyone was curious, my...1.0.7 worked on Firefox for me.
OH MY GOSH I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW HAPPY I AM I HAVE WANTED A BACKUP OF MY COMMENTS HERE FOR YEARS NOW
Thank you so, SO much.
(Also, in case anyone was curious, my .csv file is a whopping 9.6 megabytes!)
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Comment on I'm not ready to let this place go in ~tildes
kfwyre (edited )Link ParentDidn't work for me in Firefox or Vivaldi either, though I'm not sure how to check error messages so I'm not sure if it's the same problem. Nevertheless, thanks for working on this kmcgurty1! I'm...Didn't work for me in Firefox or Vivaldi either, though I'm not sure how to check error messages so I'm not sure if it's the same problem.
Nevertheless, thanks for working on this kmcgurty1! I'm always amazed at the programming wizardry that people like you can do.
Also, if this does end up working, I highly recommend making a separate top-level topic about it. There are probably a lot of people on the site who would want backups of their comments but who might not see your post since it's deep in the comments of another topic.
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Comment on Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker in ~tech
kfwyre LinkFirefox for iOS includes an optional ad blocker that can help reduce unwanted advertising while you browse. It uses a filter list based on EasyList to block many ads before they load.
Ad blocking is turned off by default, so you can choose whether to enable it.
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Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker
55 votes -
Comment on I'm not ready to let this place go in ~tildes
kfwyre Link ParentI would 100% appreciate something like this. Iâd love to be able to archive all that Iâve written here.I would 100% appreciate something like this. Iâd love to be able to archive all that Iâve written here.
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Comment on Epic Games Store will support Linux "soon" in ~games
kfwyre (edited )Link ParentCongrats on the switch! Iâve heard good things about CachyOS. And Plasma is indeed awesome. Honestly, I think Linux has SEVERAL banger DEs and thatâs one of its very best features. Donât like the...Congrats on the switch! Iâve heard good things about CachyOS.
And Plasma is indeed awesome. Honestly, I think Linux has SEVERAL banger DEs and thatâs one of its very best features. Donât like the look and feel of your computer? Get a completely different one!
Iâm currently running COSMIC on my main computer, Cinnamon on my couch laptop, and Plasma on my Deck (I spend more time in my Deckâs desktop mode than anyone probably should). I used to run GNOME and itâs also awesome. Seriously, weâre spoiled for choice over here.
Meanwhile Windows 11 is only just now considering the idea that I might want to move my taskbar to the side of my screen instead of the bottom.
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Comment on Over 1000 games on GOG lack updates, languages, and additional content in ~games
kfwyre (edited )LinkBack in the mid-2010s I briefly switched to GOG as my main gaming platform, trying to move away from Steam. So, I got to experience this firsthand. The article mentions Nuclear Throne...Back in the mid-2010s I briefly switched to GOG as my main gaming platform, trying to move away from Steam. So, I got to experience this firsthand.
The article mentions Nuclear Throne specifically, which was one that I personally got bit by. I bought it when it released on GOG, and then it didnât receive updates for literal years, putting it well behind the Steam version. It soured me on the game, the devs, and even GOG itself a little bit. I donât really fault GOG for it, but it made me more gunshy in buying things from them. The same went for a lot of gamesâ Linux builds on GOG, which were often non-functional or out of date.
That said, itâs worth pointing out on balance that GOG has some better versions of games as well. For example, the recent Dino Crisis re-releases have DRM in the Steam versions but none in the ones on GOG.
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Comment on Over 1000 games on GOG lack updates, languages, and additional content in ~games
kfwyre LinkI wrote the title here myself instead of using the published one. If anyone feels it needs edits, let me know.I wrote the title here myself instead of using the published one. If anyone feels it needs edits, let me know.
The spreadsheet catalog contains a list of 1,140 games with at least one issue. There are 1,531 issues in total. Those numbers are not typos. Sure, some of the issues are less severe than others, but that doesn't mean GOG customers should receive an inferior product.
The catalog tracks the following issues:
- Missing updates (308 total issues)
- Missing languages (100 total issues)
- Missing free DLC (51 total issues)
- Missing paid DLC (200 total issues)
- Missing features (111 total issues)
- Missing soundtrack (439 total issues)
- Missing builds (278 total issues)
- Region locking (12 total issues)
Sources are provided for many of the games listed as having issues, and others are sourced directly from first-hand experiences.
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Over 1000 games on GOG lack updates, languages, and additional content
28 votes -
Comment on Epic Games Store will support Linux "soon" in ~games
kfwyre LinkGenuine question: did Windows/Microsoft do something recently to spook companies into Linux support? Both GOG and Epic have announced that theyâre leaning that direction (though these could easily...Genuine question: did Windows/Microsoft do something recently to spook companies into Linux support?
Both GOG and Epic have announced that theyâre leaning that direction (though these could easily be empty words), and Iâm reminded of when Valve first started putting real resources into Linux because the Windows Store was an existential threat to them.
Iâm curious if these recent announcements are just coincidences, if theyâre a product of Linux actually gaining mindshare, or if theyâre a response to something Microsoft has done recently.
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Comment on Epic Games Store will support Linux "soon" in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentHeroic is indeed awesome. The only thing a native launcher would add for me would be playtime tracking and achievements. Neither are truly necessary for me, but theyâre nice to have.Heroic is indeed awesome.
The only thing a native launcher would add for me would be playtime tracking and achievements. Neither are truly necessary for me, but theyâre nice to have.
cc: @bitwyze
Basically what you said. I'm in the US where ISPs are awful with their customer data. I figure my home internet, where I spend the bulk of my time, has a LOT to say about me as an individual, so shifting the trust from my ISP (a known bad actor) to a (hopefully trustworthy?) VPN company feels like the right thing to do.
I don't really use it to get around geoblocks or anything like that. It's essentially entirely because I don't trust my ISP.
Like you identified, I often have to drop it or change servers on account of services blocking VPNs, but I figure, even then, 90% VPN usage is better than 0%.