zoroa's recent activity
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Comment on Valve announces new hardware: Steam Frame, Steam Controller, and Steam Machine in ~games
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Comment on Valve announces new hardware: Steam Frame, Steam Controller, and Steam Machine in ~games
zoroa LinkI'm really excited for Steam Controller 2. One of my core memories from the pandemic was playing Among Us, before they added controller support, while completely wrapped in a blanket since I could...I'm really excited for Steam Controller 2.
One of my core memories from the pandemic was playing Among Us, before they added controller support, while completely wrapped in a blanket since I could map the mouse controls to the gyroscope on my Steam Controller. If you put the time in, you could really make control schemes that transformed how you experienced games. Hopefully, Valve figured out a way to make that configuration a little less daunting.
I'm sad that I can't justify buying the new controller, since because I still own 4 of the originals (3 of them are still in their boxes) :(
Releasing a new Steam Machine right now makes so much sense. Valve has proved that they can provide a compelling console-like experience with the Steam Deck. This increased compute power addresses one of the Steam Deck's growing weaknesses without making Valve renege on their "no new Steam Decks for a while" promise.
The pricing is going to be so interesting. They could potentially go incredibly aggressive and price this around the Steam Deck's price, by leveraging increased spending on Steam to make up the difference. Which is notable given the context that the next Xbox is alleged to be a "a Very Premium, Very High-End Curated Experience" (translation: $$$$$).
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Comment on What are your favorite simple pleasures? in ~talk
zoroa Link ParentHyper specific When your band mate does unexpectedly does something sick, it takes you a second to process but then you get hype. (basically what happens at 7:03 to the bassist when the pianist...Hyper specific
When your band mate does unexpectedly does something sick, it takes you a second to process but then you get hype. (basically what happens at 7:03 to the bassist when the pianist hits a borrowed chord (?))
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Comment on What are your favorite simple pleasures? in ~talk
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Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
zoroa Link ParentIf I'm understanding correctly, the value you're getting here is that AI assistance is making context switching easier so you don't need continuous blocks of time to make meaningful progress?What's more, they don't have to be consecutive hours - I can work mostly in my head, thinking about the system design. The rest I can do with AI assistance with just minutes here and there: working my notes into a plan, having AI execute the plan, reviewing the work, these are all major units of work but only require a minute of my time here and there.
If I'm understanding correctly, the value you're getting here is that AI assistance is making context switching easier so you don't need continuous blocks of time to make meaningful progress?
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Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
zoroa Link ParentHow valuable to do you find the LLM's feedback on your art. Do you find that gives you feedback that leads to you making better art?LLMs can also be used to critique or get feedback on your art. The feedback is usually a bit shallow, but it helps you explore the domain a bit, serving as a first pass. If you're just making casual paintings, it's hard to get anyone to engage with you and provide constructive feedback.
How valuable to do you find the LLM's feedback on your art. Do you find that gives you feedback that leads to you making better art?
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Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
zoroa Link ParentHas there been a large paradigm shift away from "neuron activations", or are the architecture changes more along the lines of refinements of that idea. If you have any papers that you find...I can build and run predictive models on a single workstation now that outperform weeks or months of work on an entire cluster in the past.
Has there been a large paradigm shift away from "neuron activations", or are the architecture changes more along the lines of refinements of that idea. If you have any papers that you find interesting on this topic, I'd love to read them.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
zoroa LinkSkate Story (demo) Skate Story has been my most anticipated game since it was featured in Summer Games Fest back in 2022 (!!!). After 2 delays, it finally got a release date and dropped a demo. I...Skate Story (demo)
Skate Story has been my most anticipated game since it was featured in Summer Games Fest back in 2022 (!!!). After 2 delays, it finally got a release date and dropped a demo.
I am not a skater. I have no attachment to the sport, the culture, or any of the cult classic skateboarding video games. What I wanted out of Skate Story was for it to deliver on the vibes that it sold me in its 2022 trailer :
- gameplay that makes me feel cool
- great music
- beautiful graphics
- humor + philosophy (?) that comes out of parodying skate culture onto the supernatural.
My biggest worry going into the demo was that the actual skateboarding would get in the way of me enjoying the rest of the game.
It was immediately clear to me in the first 10 minutes that worry was going to be a non issue, and that Skate Story delivers. So much so that I put the demo down midway through the tutorial, so that I could just enjoy the game in its entirety when it releases.
Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved (Demo)
I was browsing through Steam for demos to try, and ended up stumbling on Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved. I don't remember what prompted me to click on it, maybe it was that it reminded me a bit of an anime I liked (Monster). Either way, I ended up playing through the demo and really enjoying it.
It made me nostalgic for anime/manga I've enjoyed in the past (the art of Monster, the detective work in Detective Conan, etc...). I really liked the music. The point-and-click gameplay seems fine, and the story seems compelling enough to make me want to see it through.
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Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
zoroa Link ParentI was under the impression that many of the models weren't as good at non-English languages, so hearing that you're getting value at a post-grad level is very interesting.Finding Chinese-language primary source documents (mostly Chinese-language news articles and government documents) is so much easier now.
I was under the impression that many of the models weren't as good at non-English languages, so hearing that you're getting value at a post-grad level is very interesting.
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Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
zoroa Link ParentBasically for the reason you outline in your second sentence. I've been "strongly encouraged" to use AI at work as much as possible, so I've had grapple with my feelings towards the tech. The...Why these things specifically, if I may ask? They seem to be doing a lot of harm in society with very little tangible benefit and personally I have no interest in using them.
Basically for the reason you outline in your second sentence.
I've been "strongly encouraged" to use AI at work as much as possible, so I've had grapple with my feelings towards the tech. The harms are very obvious to me, so much so that I found it hard to look past them and find those positives. The people in my life who "evangelise" AI don't do it in a way that feels genuine (influencers, company leadership). So I was mainly looking for genuine perspectives from folks who aren't trying to get me to drink the koolaid.
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Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
zoroa Link ParentIf you don't mind me asking, what inspired your trust in its output for this? I could see myself in the same position shying away from that because of the risk of wrecking my equipment/material.Helped me rewire a table saw that someone had improperly wired before I had it, and it has given me decent information on feeds/speeds for my CNC machine when I'm too lazy to calculate chip load on my own.
If you don't mind me asking, what inspired your trust in its output for this? I could see myself in the same position shying away from that because of the risk of wrecking my equipment/material.
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How has AI positively impacted your life?
I've been trying to get a more rounded understanding of the impacts that "AI" has had since ChatGPT went viral back in 2022. I've found it easy to gather a list of negative impacts, but have...
I've been trying to get a more rounded understanding of the impacts that "AI" has had since ChatGPT went viral back in 2022.
I've found it easy to gather a list of negative impacts, but have struggled to point to many positives.
I was curious if there were folks who have used any of these AI tools, and would willing to share any positive impacts those tools have had in their lives. I'm particularly interested in the text, audio, image, and video generation tools that have appeared since ChatGPT went viral, but please share anything else that you think fits.
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Comment on Who’s making these AI copies of my work? in ~tech
zoroa LinkI found this video really interesting, since it highlights how large language models have worsened the problem of freebooting (rehosting content for views and money) by making it much easier to...Over the past few years, I’ve noticed something strange on YouTube. When I search for an old video I made, I’ll find it — but right below, there’s often something else: copycats. Some are AI-generated recreations that twist my original scripts and visuals into something uncanny, while others are near-identical remakes stitched together from my own work. I set out to find out whether any of this was legal — and discovered how new tools are blurring the line between inspiration and exploitation.
I found this video really interesting, since it highlights how large language models have worsened the problem of freebooting (rehosting content for views and money) by making it much easier to automate the theft of ideas while "transforming" the delivery. The video also includes some discussion on why US copyright law would likely fail to provide protection against this.
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Who’s making these AI copies of my work?
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Comment on Modular storage systems? in ~life.home_improvement
zoroa LinkNecroing this topic just to close the loop. I posted this topic early in my "organization journey", and in retrospect I realize that I was trying to optimize for a need I never had. After getting...- Exemplary
Necroing this topic just to close the loop. I posted this topic early in my "organization journey", and in retrospect I realize that I was trying to optimize for a need I never had.
After getting rid of a bunch of stuff and taking stock of the stuff I wanted to keep, I realized that that I didn't have anything I needed to easily accessible and granularly organized in something like Gridfinity or a Drawer Grid.
All I really needed were a couple of bins that don't look terrible out in the open (example box and lid combo).
first-must-burn shouting out the container store also came in handy
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Comment on What's a product or service that you use but don't want to pay for and why? in ~life
zoroa Link ParentTotally fair. The calculus of price to enjoyment never really worked out for me, so I just stick to their free stuff and move on. My dream would be if they offered something like VIZ or Shonen...Totally fair. The calculus of price to enjoyment never really worked out for me, so I just stick to their free stuff and move on.
My dream would be if they offered something like VIZ or Shonen Jump manga subscriptions , which as far as I can tell are just a flat fee to read as much of their catalog as you want.
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Comment on What's a product or service that you use but don't want to pay for and why? in ~life
zoroa Linkhttps://webtoons.com They're a website where authors can publish "long-strip" digital comics (i.e. webtoons). And relevant to me, it's one of the primary places you can read official translations...They're a website where authors can publish "long-strip" digital comics (i.e. webtoons). And relevant to me, it's one of the primary places you can read official translations of Korean comics (i.e. manhwa).
For the most part, I generally do enjoy using their site. They're one of the more "generous" webtoon platforms. Almost every series that's still in serialization is readable for free, barring 3-10 most recent chapters. You generally just have to pay to read series that have completed, or the most recent chapters of series that are still in serialization.
And you can even use the platform using some 3rd party comic readers (which is bizarre given how litigious their parent company is).
Now that I'm an "adult" and have been wanting to do a better job financially supporting the things I like, I thought about whether it made sense to pay for webtoons in some way. There are a couple completed series that I wouldn't mind reading. But ultimately, I decided against it because their pricing structure is insane.
On a lot of webtoons platforms, https://webtoons.com included, you pay-per-chapter using a virtual currency ("coins"). On webtoons, it's usually around 3 coins (30 cents) a chapter. So if I ever wanted to binge a decently sized manhwa (~200 chapters), it'd cost around $50 dollars. Which I find especially egregious, since I could probably blow through that many chapters in 2-4 hours. I think webtoons does (did?) offer ways to unlock chapters for free, but they were either gated by time (1 chapter/day) or by ads.
(It also doesn't help that there's tons of examples of fan translations with better translations and WAY better typesetting than the officially translationed manhwa on Webtoons)
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Comment on What game is your personal "Silksong"? in ~games
zoroa LinkIf I can bastardize the prompt a little bit, my current Silksong is the Katana Zero DLC. Katana Zero's main story is short and leaves you with more questions than answers. But I still really...If I can bastardize the prompt a little bit, my current Silksong is the Katana Zero DLC.
Katana Zero's main story is short and leaves you with more questions than answers. But I still really enjoyed the 2 hours I put into it. Enough to put another 60 or so into the hard mode/speedrunning content, whose gameplay is way more fun than the gameplay in the story.
I waned off the game after a couple weeks in Summer 2020, and read that the developer was planning on releasing DLC. I would have been (and still would be) totally happy with just "a bit more Katana Zero", and just waited for more news. That wait lasted 2 years, when the Katana Zero discord held an event that ended with a developer walkthrough of a demo level (HD Footage). And that shot my expectations WAY up, since even that slice was showing a bunch of ways the game was improving in all areas (art, gameplay, writing) but developer was still insisting that the DLC would be free. And then we got more silence. For another 3 years. Until randomly, right at the end of a indie video game showcase (iii initiative) we get a new trailer for the DLC that blows me away again.
I'm starting my 6th year waiting on the DLC at this point, and I'm still riding the expectation that I'll eventually get a DLC that's just "Katana Zero, but better everything".
I don't really mind the wait either. It'd be nice if this was another Silksong situation, where the dev is happily making a banger game at their own pace that's out when it's done™.
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Comment on Three Cheers for Tildes: App updates and feedback (April 2025) — Version 1.4 adds a text size setting in ~tildes
zoroa Link Parent1.4.5 seems to have fixed it, thank you again1.4.5 seems to have fixed it, thank you again
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Comment on Three Cheers for Tildes: App updates and feedback (April 2025) — Version 1.4 adds a text size setting in ~tildes
If I remember correctly that was a pretty common complaint when it was released. I ended up growing to like it, since I found the trackpads so effective at replacing the trackpad and the dpad. It's to the point that my initial reaction to the new Steam Controller was "oh wow this looks crowded, did we really need a trackpad and a d-pad?". Granted I've never touched a Steam Deck, so maybe it's a non-issue.