nothis's recent activity
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Comment on Messenger, a cute little 3d browser game in ~games
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Comment on Horror games to play during October in ~games
nothis LinkI just started Alien Isolation (and, in parallel, Alien Earth which I rather like so far). I meant to play this for ages and ultimately went with the Switch version because it's also a fascinating...I just started Alien Isolation (and, in parallel, Alien Earth which I rather like so far). I meant to play this for ages and ultimately went with the Switch version because it's also a fascinating technical feat (IMO the best looking game on the system, no idea how they pulled this off). I'm maybe 3 hours in and so far it's great! I'm not 100% convinced about the mix of typical space-survival-horror tropes (collecting scrap, crafting, audio logs) and the extreme focus on stealth and more "cinematic" moments (I love System Shock and whatnot but it seems the scavenging mechanics seem to mostly be used to drag it out into a much longer game than it had to be?).
All the new Resident Evil games are amazing, wholly recommended!
As for more obscure indie horror recommendations, I always bring up Lone Survivor. It's an ultra-low-res pixel art horror game with amazing music, survival mechanics and David Lynch logic. The true horror is that it came out 13 years ago and I thought it's like 5, lol. Fuck time.
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Comment on Horror games to play during October in ~games
nothis Link ParentThanks, these look great! I keep saying I want to play more "short games" and I like horror stuff when it's done well and these look like great picks!Thanks, these look great! I keep saying I want to play more "short games" and I like horror stuff when it's done well and these look like great picks!
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Comment on Deus Ex Remastered | Announcement trailer in ~games
nothis Link ParentYea, it’s so pointless, lol. I can rant about this all day but here’s me holding back—two points: Videogames have been looking almost the same for like 10 years now. I know there’s ray-tracing and...Yea, it’s so pointless, lol. I can rant about this all day but here’s me holding back—two points:
Videogames have been looking almost the same for like 10 years now. I know there’s ray-tracing and whatnot but… come on, Uncharted 4 came out in 2016. So in order to keep that race alive, console makers, channels like Digital Foundry and bored teenagers on social media shifted this discussion to two numbers: Resolution and frame rate. One result of this is “4K remakes” that blow up single polygons that were supposed to blur into the background into razor sharp triangles, looking sterile and synthetic. But it’s more pixels, so that’s how we measure “graphics” now, right?
Secondly, Deus Ex always looked bad. It has bad art direction, wooden animations, weirdly drawn textures, oddly proportioned, square-shaped level architecture and a color palette committing to an odd contrast of gray and garish primary colors. I thought that back in 2000.
So the lazily upscaled “remake” works doubly bad. It does not fix any of the problems in art direction and makes the sad, empty polygons of its environment look even more sharp and unnatural. It’s the worst of both worlds. The original Deus Ex, played at 1024x768, at least looks retro and authentic, with pixels taking up as much space as they are supposed to. I really don’t get what I would get out of a higher res version (that includes the many community mods out there, btw.).
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Comment on iOS 26 is here in ~tech
nothis Link ParentThis is what worries me the most. Apple‘s decision to turn the camera roll into a social media app interface (a while ago) was their first big blunder on iOS for me. The iOS 26 redesign could make...This is what worries me the most. Apple‘s decision to turn the camera roll into a social media app interface (a while ago) was their first big blunder on iOS for me. The iOS 26 redesign could make it even worse.
Concretely, it’s that they no longer allow to search by day. A nice list, broken up by date the photos are made, with a readable text line between each new day as you scroll. They ruined that with the stupid wall of squares.
I have an iPhone 12 mini (for device size). I was a bit surprised that iOS 26 supports it but I will hold off updating for as long as possible.
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Comment on “First of its kind” AI settlement: Anthropic to pay authors $1.5 billion in ~books
nothis Link ParentEurope, published and citizen. I guess not then? If you found a good explanation online relating to that case, I’d still appreciate it, I’m curious.Europe, published and citizen. I guess not then? If you found a good explanation online relating to that case, I’d still appreciate it, I’m curious.
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Comment on “First of its kind” AI settlement: Anthropic to pay authors $1.5 billion in ~books
nothis Link ParentCan you claim that shit from Europe? I found something I wrote years ago in there!Can you claim that shit from Europe? I found something I wrote years ago in there!
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Comment on Over twenty-one days of talking with ChatGPT, an otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced he was a superhero in ~tech
nothis Link ParentThe "go eat" part is striking, but the rest is also basically a jumbled version of the same reply. LLMs are exceptional at taking a sample sentence and outputting multiple variations. I wonder if...The "go eat" part is striking, but the rest is also basically a jumbled version of the same reply. LLMs are exceptional at taking a sample sentence and outputting multiple variations. I wonder if the reason for that is that they are very good at finding the common thread and linguistically playing around it. While the general target stays fixed.
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Comment on Xbox Series X and S: Microsoft has reportedly sold less than thirty million consoles this generation in ~games
nothis Link ParentWhat I find so yucky about Microsoft is that they never acknowledge mistakes. They never say, "we tried this and failed", they act like all is going according to plan and we just don't get it. And...What I find so yucky about Microsoft is that they never acknowledge mistakes. They never say, "we tried this and failed", they act like all is going according to plan and we just don't get it. And that makes it hard to trust anything they claim to commit to since you just know they'll pivot to the sleaziest money-grab the moment they have a chance. I don't want them to hold any power over the future of gaming for that reason alone.
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Comment on Over twenty-one days of talking with ChatGPT, an otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced he was a superhero in ~tech
nothis LinkI found the last bit fascinating: They gave 3 LLMs (ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude) the same (rather unusual?) prompt and they answered with different words but exactly the same content. Like, the...I found the last bit fascinating: They gave 3 LLMs (ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude) the same (rather unusual?) prompt and they answered with different words but exactly the same content. Like, the second to last paragraph starts with:
"So now eat something. Hydrate." (ChatGPT)
"Now please — for the love of Chrono — go eat something." (Claude)
"Now, go grab something to eat. Fuel the machine." (Gemini)
You see it mentioned that LLMs are "not deterministic" but while these are different words, the content is eerily identical. This might be well known behavior but I have never seen such clear examples before. It means that LLMs might use some level of randomness ("temperature"?) to stay out of infinite loops and same-y answers, they probably cannot escape a fairly deterministic path without deteriorating accuracy. In other words: LLMs always giving the most likely answer means they are exceptionally bad at breaking out from their training data, maybe more so than we think. GPT 5 seems to be showing signs of plateauing performance. Maybe this is a real wall, even for less crazy scenarios.
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Comment on ‘Star Wars’ “looks terrible” in screening of long lost original 1977 version in ~movies
nothis (edited )Link ParentI tuned out of this whole drama a while ago but you say "years" and now I wonder how much happened since I last checked. I distinctly remember that the original print was considered "lost" for a...I tuned out of this whole drama a while ago but you say "years" and now I wonder how much happened since I last checked.
I distinctly remember that the original print was considered "lost" for a long time and most attempts by fans to restore it awkwardly stitched together random old versions, i.e. "20 seconds of VHS footage in-between 4K material". The article seems to talk about the real deal, a properly stored original print.
Is "4K77" a scan of a proper original print or that stitched-together monstrosity I remember seeing footage of?
EDIT: Who am I kidding, of course I had to spend half an hour researching this. From the official 4K77 website: 97% are from a perfect-ish scan of a 1977 Technicolor print. The rest is sourced from a few other prints and like 400 frames from the blue ray. Quote: "There are no frames from VHS, laserdisc or DVD." This seems pretty much perfect. The wonky version I remembered was likely Harmy's Despecialized Edition.
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Comment on Nintendo Switch 2 launch topic in ~games
nothis Link ParentThank god. The Switch 1 store UI is the most baffling thing about the Switch for me (I think it runs as a website in its webbrowser which is slow as hell). It is the most "broken" part of the...UI-wise, things also run smoother, especially the store, which often had weird hiccups when scrolling on the old switch
Thank god. The Switch 1 store UI is the most baffling thing about the Switch for me (I think it runs as a website in its webbrowser which is slow as hell). It is the most "broken" part of the device after the joystick drift and they never bothered to fix it in 8 years.
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Comment on Which unanswered questions do you want to see an answer for in your lifetime? in ~science
nothis Link ParentNow I'm actually curious how that would work, even in theory?disproof of other life in the universe
Now I'm actually curious how that would work, even in theory?
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Comment on An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip in ~tech
nothis Link ParentThis is what truly bothers me about AI. The copyright issue is real but can potentially be solved with money. But the actual danger is more sinister: If no new solutions to interesting ideas have...This is what truly bothers me about AI. The copyright issue is real but can potentially be solved with money. But the actual danger is more sinister: If no new solutions to interesting ideas have to be come up with, where does that leave creativity? The “Alien” alien, Indiana Jones, Predator, John McClane and the Terminator were invented. There were no characters like them before (although, of course, there were stereotypes and inspirations) and someone came up with them and then there were. Now we can get hung up on the definition of “stereotypes and inspirations” but very clearly AI isn’t “inspired”, it plain copies shit. Let’s train them on whatever the difference is, maybe, but whatever it is: they have not figured it out.
So the true negative effect of AI on society is less a lack of copyright revenue but a sharp and tragic drop in creativity. I personally (maybe naively) like to think that people will notice that and “AI-generic” imagery will grow to be considered cheap and low quality (more so than it already is).
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Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and US influencers bash seed oils, baffling nutrition scientists in ~food
nothis Link ParentAt this point I’m just assuming the paranoid take to be correct if it favors right-wing lunacy: This is a way to humiliate vegetarians. Half the people celebrating this trend might not give a...At this point I’m just assuming the paranoid take to be correct if it favors right-wing lunacy: This is a way to humiliate vegetarians. Half the people celebrating this trend might not give a flying fuck about how healthy their French fries are but they gleefully start to „consider the science“ if it would mean fast food restaurants becoming required to use beef tallow to fry vegetables so you could smugly lecture vegetarians that consuming beef is for the greater good.
There was a time when I dismissed trains of thought like that as too cynical but we are absolutely 100% there, now.
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Comment on Obsidian is now free for work in ~tech
nothis Link ParentOh, it‘s iCloud compatible? That would work for me.Oh, it‘s iCloud compatible? That would work for me.
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Comment on Obsidian is now free for work in ~tech
nothis LinkI've been looking for a more advanced not taking app and find myself mostly just overwhelmed by choice. Does Obsidian stand out as particularly good? And do I see this right, it's $4/month if you...I've been looking for a more advanced not taking app and find myself mostly just overwhelmed by choice. Does Obsidian stand out as particularly good? And do I see this right, it's $4/month if you want to sync between your laptop and your phone?
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Comment on reCAPTCHA: 819 million hours of wasted human time and billions of dollars in Google profits in ~tech
nothis Link ParentThat‘s how the algorithm learns to select a pixel with 0.5% intensity, thank you.That‘s how the algorithm learns to select a pixel with 0.5% intensity, thank you.
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Comment on US$ 30 million to reinvent the wheel (Bluesky vs. Mastodon) in ~tech
nothis Link ParentYup. A classic case of idealist open software projects shooting themselves in the foot by not realizing that people make decisions emotionally. A lot of unpleasant things go through my head just...Yup. A classic case of idealist open software projects shooting themselves in the foot by not realizing that people make decisions emotionally. A lot of unpleasant things go through my head just reading the name but certainly reading a “primer” of how mastodon even fucking works, which is not how any other social media app ever worked in this millennium. And the techy idealists crowd (which I’d include myself as being a part of, to a large degree) largely ignored any issues with onboarding and confusion for potential users. Like, almost rolling their eyes at your aunt and uncle not being able to read a short readme.md and do a little research on potential instances. How deluded and out of touch is that? I was a little more open at first because it honestly would have been great if it succeeded, but who are we kidding? It has always been bonkers.
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Comment on Revisions of ‘hateful conduct’: what users can now say on Meta platforms in ~tech
nothis Link ParentGlad you brought it back to TikTok. It turns out the “internet” of the late 1990s to early 2010s that, I assume, lots of Tildes users grew up with, was an anomaly. Average persons had to learn how...Glad you brought it back to TikTok.
It turns out the “internet” of the late 1990s to early 2010s that, I assume, lots of Tildes users grew up with, was an anomaly. Average persons had to learn how to deal with duct-taped-together technical artifact that made thousands of unique attempts of forming communities, setting policies. Forums, video game servers, niche interest websites. You had communities form that, in size, resembled real-life communities where you could know everyone, see different personalities and have human discussions.
All that stuff has been absorbed into maybe five major “hubs” that unify policy and tone. Meta is certainly the largest. This headline is an example of why monopolies are a bad idea. Ironically, both the rich and the left would agree. Only that the right’s solution is to take over the monopolies rather than to break them.
Even Tildes is a place where I generally do not recognize usernames (with a few major exceptions). It’s as if I was screaming replies at a disembodied opinion. It could be a Russian troll farm employee. It could be an AI. I do not even really care. It’s bizarre. And a place like TikTok, X or Reddit is the same but increased by a factor of 1000 or more.
This is amazing. How does this run so well and look so good? Is it just Unity? Any story of how this came to be? The website just says "we craft interactive real-time experiences" and nothing else.