TheHarpyEagle

To be fair even the most technically adept person can have tunnel vision where they start digging before ruling out all the simple stuff. Yes it can feel tedious and a little condescending to follow all those steps, but you get humbled the first time it really is just an unplugged cable.

I feel like there’s a specific peak between total technical ignorance and a weary understanding of how fickle technology can be. On this peak is the height of arrogance, where you believe you’ve really got everything figured out. Part of learning is understanding that, yes, sometimes you really did just forget to plug the modem in.

I mean, that’s kind of the whole problem. What is the point of ingesting The Great Gatsby if not for its artistry? It’s fiction, what information do you get out of it?

Unfortunately that popularity directly translates to the AIs ability to digest and paraphrase a book. LLMs have been trained on what is available in computer text format, which means mostly internet sources. English has an outsized presence on the internet compared the to actual number of native speakers, so there’s magnitudes more training data for it than any other language. The models of other languages will be severely limited, if AI companies have spent the resources to train them at all.

My real concern is that AI in its current form is not great at context and continuity. I see it similarly as translating between languages: Google can do a decent job of directly translating a phrase, even adjusting grammar a bit, but it can’t tell when it needs to explain or replace an idiom, or which details it definitely needs for symbolism and which can be safely disregarded, or detect when a word is being used in an archaic or unusual way.

So I think this would be a great project for a human with a keen understanding of literature to undertake, but honestly I think an AI paraphrasing without a large amount of editing would would give you a fairly bland and possibly confusing read.

Sync, I’ll be sure to let them know. Thanks!

Weird, I did format it that way but it doesn’t seem to stick on editing

I had someone with a super long scarf play basically the entire second half of the game with me. So fun to find ways to communicate with just the little pulses we had.

!Also absolutely heartbreaking when wet froze together at the end!<

I also played their other game Flower, on the PS3. Probably the only time I’ve enjoyed using motion controls on that system.

I’ve also used hacker keyboard to ctrl+c/ctrl+v when apps block the regular context copy/paste actions, pretty handy.

Yeah, cause remasters always go well coughGTAdefinitive ahemWarcraft3cough.

Even then, what motive is there to prevent people from getting the original if they want to? Well, other than being able to charge $20-$40 for a 20 year old game.

I think the rub here is that most developers aren’t developing/publishing their own software, but honing their skills on writing proprietary code while also putting food on the table. To that end, a permissively licensed library is better because the company will actually use it and the developer will gain experience with it that they can then use outside of the proprietary environment to contribute to FOSS projects (some of which may well use GPL). If a GPL end user product gets popular enough, it will eventually be able to use all of that gained experience to compete with the propriety alternatives, so I do think the two can work in tandem.

Indeed, I think it’s just two philosophies that don’t necessarily need to be at odds. Permissive licenses help speed the adoption of languages and libraries, which ultimately feeds into the slowly building momentum of the copyleft projects that use them.

I think we generally agree, but I worry that a new platform couldn’t do more than GoG+Lutris already do. Perhaps, though, it could be done with a reputable foundation.

And the lawsuit is more or less what I was radio referring to with Steam’s price rules. I would definitely be on board with striking the requirement for publishers to offer the same price on all platforms at the same time.

On that note, though, I wouldn’t take the whole case at face value, as I think parts of it are pretty frivolous (unless they prove that Steam is actually actively stifling competition and, you know, not just a decent platform that entered the space first.) I also think it’s silly to point out Epic’s lower commission rate since they’ve been giving out free games like candy and actually making third party games exclusive to their platform in a very clear attempt to compete with Stream. There’s absolutely no guarantee that they won’t raise their commission once they have a foothold in the market (though I do concede that their licensing terms for Unreal Engine have remained fairly reasonable).

On the one hand, yeah it’s absolutely important not to idolize any company, because they have no sense of loyalty or generosity. Telling yourself otherwise is a guaranteed path to disappointment.

On the other hand, of all the shit sandwiches we’ve been served, Steam is one of the fresher ones. Though they developed Proton for their own benefit, it’s pretty undeniable that it has made gaming on Linux way more viable than it has ever been, and it’s open source. I mean no shade to FOSS solutions like Lutris, but having paid developers work on a project full-time certainly has its advantages.

I do think that the concerns about Steam’s pricing rules are valid, as are gripes with its DRM for first party games. But, overall, they’ve brought a lot of convenience to PC gaming that is hard to find elsewhere in the gaming world.

Nobody would want to get into a game that requires hundreds of hours of homework before they can finally start to become good at the game.

This is a huge issue I have with a lot of established online games. A lot of the advice is just “watch this video, follow this guide, use this meta build or we’re not going to play with you.” I play games to have fun learning mechanics, experimenting with builds, and organically exploring the world. I may eventually use guides to get caught up, but the game has to be fun at its core before then. At least in smash, you’re the only one who has to worry about your performance.

I remember trying out the beginner mode on DotA a few years ago. Good idea in theory, but in practice I made a single mistake and was blamed for the loss of the entire game. They probably weren’t wrong that I tipped the balance towards the enemy side, but it would’ve been nice to get some pointers or guidance instead of just “GG Harpy”. Made me not want to touch the game again.

It’s also really easy to lock yourself out of questlines by completing seemingly unrelated objectives. I get that being inscrutable is kind of a hallmark of these games, but I found myself unable to dig into some of the plotlines that really intrigued me.

Oh yes absolutely, there are bots constantly crawling any open source code. A friend of mine accidentally leaked their discord API key, nuked a whole server within minutes.

I kinda like using emoji that are similar to my skintone. Not really making a statement, but somehow it feels a little more “me.” Hard to explain why it matters, it’s not like I won’t use the yellow ones if that’s all they have. Just kinda like “hehe, that’s a lil me in that message.”

It could be credibly called an homage if it had a new punchline, but methinks the creator didn’t know what “sanitize” meant in this context.