vord's recent activity

  1. Comment on How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been? in ~tech

    vord
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    This is ultimately where I arrived. This tech would be exponentially cooler if: Everything was done genuinely in the open and not behind closed doors. Nobody was going to see their livelihoods...

    The same technology within the context of an exploitative capitalist society is bad.

    This is ultimately where I arrived. This tech would be exponentially cooler if:

    Everything was done genuinely in the open and not behind closed doors.
    Nobody was going to see their livelihoods drop out from underneath them.
    Global temperatures were already leveled or going down.
    It wasn't being shoved up every orifice as fast as possible, regardless of quality.

    9 votes
  2. Comment on How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been? in ~tech

    vord
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    I'll just leave it at this: People mocked the people pointing out the housing bubble in 2008 too. Right up till the moment it popped. Sure, the guy who predicted the end of Citigroup was wrong....

    I'll just leave it at this:

    People mocked the people pointing out the housing bubble in 2008 too. Right up till the moment it popped.

    Sure, the guy who predicted the end of Citigroup was wrong. But not as wrong as we all would have liked.

    Ed's wrong about a lot of stuff. I'll feel more confident in that wrongness when I see the big AI players reporting more than ARR.

    Best I can tell, his big reccuring point is the giant circular chain of money. And that hasn't gotten better, and will keep the monstrosity shambling until the correct person notices that the emporor has no clothes.

    Oh and I take issue with Gemini's alleged user base. Of course 750 million people use it daily when it opens by default on the most popular search engine in the world (see also Microsoft's Copilot) Let me know when there are that many paid users.

    14 votes
  3. Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games

    vord
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    I for one would pirate every title I cared about, then do what I do for audiobooks and music: buy from my preferred DRM-free source, and pirate it otherwise. I'm convinced Valve is only as good as...

    I for one would pirate every title I cared about, then do what I do for audiobooks and music: buy from my preferred DRM-free source, and pirate it otherwise.

    I'm convinced Valve is only as good as they are because they know they stand on a house of cards.

    1 vote
  4. Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games

    vord
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    I'm convinced that half of all consumer protection laws only exist because the company pissed off the wrong person on the wrong day, who then took a solumn vow to get justice no matter the cost.

    I'm convinced that half of all consumer protection laws only exist because the company pissed off the wrong person on the wrong day, who then took a solumn vow to get justice no matter the cost.

    5 votes
  5. Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games

    vord
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    The most infuriating thing in the USA is clauses that are like "You have these rights if you live in one of these three states, or fuck off."

    The most infuriating thing in the USA is clauses that are like "You have these rights if you live in one of these three states, or fuck off."

    1 vote
  6. Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games

    vord
    (edited )
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    I mean, clicking the 'free game' button on Epic every time it popped up whenever I loaded up Fortnight gave me a library that easily rivals my Steam library. Yet I almost never play any game on...

    I mean, clicking the 'free game' button on Epic every time it popped up whenever I loaded up Fortnight gave me a library that easily rivals my Steam library. Yet I almost never play any game on it, even games that were on my wishlist from Steam, and some which I later bought on Steam anyway. Their attempt to jumpstart giant game libraties is almost definitive proof that it's not *just" about the game library.

    Because Steam invested the time for Linux in a way that no other company did. They developed an amazing control accessibility framework that works with literally any game that lets the Steam Overlay work.

    Blizzard was the second-closest because all their titles worked virtually flawlessly in Wine.

    GoG had my business for awhile. But not supporting Galaxy on Linux basically further entrenched me on Steam.

    Uplay? Origin? Any store from Microsoft? Hot garbage. I refuse to trust any Microsoft game store after losing several games.

    The barrier to releasing a new game storefront is huge now, especially since I have one simple requirement: It has to work on Linux (the Steam Deck in particular) with virtually 0 futzing.

    Last I checked,Valve isn't throwing their dominance as a storefront to force adoptions of other products like Microsoft, Google, or Applr do. They're (to the best of my knowledge) not mandating exclusively contracts for developers to sell their game on Steam. They're not even stopping someone from flashing their own OS on the Steam hardware, Epic could swoop in tomorrow and deploy "Epic OS" if they so chose.

    Valve is seemingly the one company that has not succumbed to enshittification, and I think their relative openess is no small part of that.

    10 votes
  7. Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games

    vord
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    Steam laid a good groundwork with Family sharing I think. All they need yet is an account-transfer function with some reasonable requirements (5+ years in the family group or something, max of X...

    Steam laid a good groundwork with Family sharing I think.

    All they need yet is an account-transfer function with some reasonable requirements (5+ years in the family group or something, max of X games per month/year).

    It would be better to have formally legalized account transfer/sharing, but that has a snowball's chance in hell of being passed.

    3 votes
  8. Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games

    vord
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    Regular pitrate with a libro.fm sub right here. If I can get it on libro.fm, I'll buy it. If it's not, I'll check the library apps. If not there, I'll pirate it.

    Regular pitrate with a libro.fm sub right here. If I can get it on libro.fm, I'll buy it. If it's not, I'll check the library apps. If not there, I'll pirate it.

    2 votes
  9. Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games

    vord
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    When Netflix lost The Office, it kicked up my piracy mechanations that had largely fallen dormant for 7 years. Sure, I was grabbing an odd show or two, but Plex was gone, none of the...

    When Netflix lost The Office, it kicked up my piracy mechanations that had largely fallen dormant for 7 years. Sure, I was grabbing an odd show or two, but Plex was gone, none of the autodownloading functions were setup.

    Now it's back to 2002 when I was broke and media was harder.

    4 votes
  10. Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games

    vord
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    That standard I think can be reasonably applied to videos under 20 minutes. The friggen intro was almost that. This is a 6 hour video about a topic that I experienced in-depth when it happened. I...

    That standard I think can be reasonably applied to videos under 20 minutes. The friggen intro was almost that.

    This is a 6 hour video about a topic that I experienced in-depth when it happened. I learned more about what happened towards the end and even had 'but there were good things brought up' moments in the decade since.

    I feel confident asserting what I asserted because I've been down almost every one if those ToC items before.

    At the most generous, the 'real' core of games journalism is nonsense. It's like acting shocked that trade rags for cars get stipends from car companies for favorable reviews.

    It has happened in virtually every medium that game reviews ever took well before "Gamergate", and was more or less an open secret to anyone who dared scratch even the slightest surface.

    Would I be shocked if Roger Ebert got kickbacks for good reviews? No. I frankly don't trust him as a reviewer for my tastes and as such, I just moved on to a different review source.

    17 votes
  11. Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games

    vord
    Link Parent
    Ok, I'm just straight up debunking this right now: Gamergate was nothing more than a trolling harassment campaign against women born and fostered by 4chan. Every other mildly plausible discussion...
    • Exemplary

    Ok, I'm just straight up debunking this right now:

    Gamergate was nothing more than a trolling harassment campaign against women born and fostered by 4chan.

    Every other mildly plausible discussion about it was fostered as a cover for it, entrapping otherwise well-meaning people into a hot mess of almost completely manufactured outrage.

    I'll drop this as a counterpoint by the excellent Innuendo Studios: Why are you so Angry?

    I say this as one of those people caught up by the "games journalism integrity" people.

    And a personal note: This is not national policy or geopolitical events. It's friggen video games. Journalistic integrity is a joke, and it always has been. The stakes are virtually 0, especially with even a passing semblance of a return policy.

    63 votes
  12. Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech

    vord
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    My brother in law is not a pro musician, but definitely an up-there amateur. He switched over to Linux/Reaper because the rage at Windows overcame his desire for perfection. JACK with a realtime...

    My brother in law is not a pro musician, but definitely an up-there amateur.

    He switched over to Linux/Reaper because the rage at Windows overcame his desire for perfection.

    JACK with a realtime kernel is the backend audio solution that you are looking for, particularly if you're looking for live performance.

    Caveat: Realtime kernels are not optimal for a typical desktop experience. They're optimized for low latency for a small handful of apps, which means interrupting literally anything that isn't top priority.

    Edit: And a forum

    3 votes
  13. Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech

    vord
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    The thing about security is that it's directly opposed to convenience. Half the reason I use a desktop at all is so that I don't have to manage this stuff. Linux has enough weird gotchas adding...

    The thing about security is that it's directly opposed to convenience. Half the reason I use a desktop at all is so that I don't have to manage this stuff. Linux has enough weird gotchas adding mobile-OS level file protections just seems like a lot more pain than gain.

    Ansible works fine for declaritive config and layers on pretty much any distro if that's what you're looking for. IMO it's far less painful.

    All that said, I am looking forward to the evolution of a desktop that, as you mentioned, essentially containerizes all the things.

    1 vote
  14. Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech

    vord
    Link Parent
    Alien may be of interest to you. Converts between different package manager formats.

    Alien may be of interest to you. Converts between different package manager formats.

    1 vote
  15. Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech

    vord
    Link Parent
    Printers have never been good, regardless of OS. They never will be good. The best printer in the world is still a finkicky physical thing that will break with moderate usage. I've come around to...

    Printers have never been good, regardless of OS. They never will be good. The best printer in the world is still a finkicky physical thing that will break with moderate usage.

    I've come around to only ever printing at work or the library. Sure, it's mildly more inconvenient to wait. But now I don't need to have a cursed printer in my house for the 2-3 prints a month.

    Related: I miss the old dot matrix printers with the tear-off feed holes. So satisfying.

    4 votes
  16. Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech

    vord
    Link Parent
    Old monitor club checking in. Still using some old 1080p IPS displays from circa 2010-2012. One Ultrawide LG with 75hz Freesync, and a basic but nice looking HP. Sure, they predate HDR. Their...

    Old monitor club checking in. Still using some old 1080p IPS displays from circa 2010-2012. One Ultrawide LG with 75hz Freesync, and a basic but nice looking HP.

    Sure, they predate HDR. Their response time is meh by modern standards. 75hz is pretty low for monitors today. But colors still look good, and if I do want a full eye candy experience I switch to the 4k TV.

    At least I don't need to accept a terms of use to use them.

    2 votes
  17. Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech

    vord
    Link Parent
    https://alternativeto.net is a great resource to help. I'd throw a root systemd timer on your wife's laptop to do updates.

    https://alternativeto.net is a great resource to help.

    I'd throw a root systemd timer on your wife's laptop to do updates.

    2 votes
  18. Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech

    vord
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    Unlke Mac and Windows, by default Linux just hands you raw sound input. Which is great if you're an audio engineer who wants control over these things, but much less good if you want to use an...

    Unlke Mac and Windows, by default Linux just hands you raw sound input. Which is great if you're an audio engineer who wants control over these things, but much less good if you want to use an average mic.

    Discord's Krisp also doesn't work right.

    EasyEffects + a few tutorials about setting up a basic filtering chain will get your mic sounding amazing. Resources from musicians will be most useful for theory, but the quick and dirty is (use seperate filters if you can):

    Low band pass
    High band pass
    Echo Cancellation
    Denoise
    Gate
    Exciter
    Derezz
    EQ

    I may have some of the order mixed up, and it's somewhat subjective anyhow.

    3 votes
  19. Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech

    vord
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    OpenSUSE Tumbleweed was one of the least bad from that bleeding edge breakage perspective. I've noticed sleep is much less bad (still not great) on full AMD systems and Thinkpads. I have no doubts...

    OpenSUSE Tumbleweed was one of the least bad from that bleeding edge breakage perspective.

    I've noticed sleep is much less bad (still not great) on full AMD systems and Thinkpads. I have no doubts Valve's Steam Deck work is why AMD stuff has been smoothing out.

    Agree that's probably one of the biggest archilles heels.

    1 vote
  20. Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech