Katana314

joined 2 years ago
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nothing bad happening anywhere that might need a serious tone haha. fun time happy good fun haha in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

Don’t just insult; provide the full chain of events. He’s moved to shut down programs that were investigating his interests in Ukraine, and in the FAA’s case, suing him for conduct with SpaceX, while stealthily staying away from the massive overspending in the DOD - which goes directly to him.

Even if there was anywhere near as much money as claimed going to waste, not one cent of that goes back to American taxpayers under Elon’s control. The man abuses his own employees, and cares only about himself.

it's good to look in the mirror and understand the material outcomes of voter behavior in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

It's pretty clear to me though, that the scramble with her campaign was far less to do with pushing ahead the party's corporate interests, and more a mistake of realizing age and perceived senility were affecting their chances with Biden, and being too afraid for buildup time to get another primary. I have no idea what you're citing around corporate interests, I've already agreed that she wasn't pushing a strong message.

The other problem is how you phrase your last paragraph, because you're highlighting the specific problem you'd like fixed, when voters all across America all had different issues they wanted prioritized, and many opposed each other on. Palestine, trans rights, government waste, federal aid vs education vs full employment, etc etc. It isn't so easy to pick and push one message that will uniformly win you votes. It's also easy for people like me to come under the belief that people felt life under Biden was fine and that the country was steadily getting better, and that change from that path would've been bad. It is very easy for that to be more of a communication problem of a rushed campaign, rather than insisting corporate corruption. Again: Basic mistakes. Mistakes not nearly so bad as "I grab treasury dept and gut the government"

it's good to look in the mirror and understand the material outcomes of voter behavior in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I have never respected this circular logic. You could use this argument to make any position a "bad one" as long as biases, foolishness or gullibility on the part of the listener override any convincing points. At some point, it is possible for recipients of a message to be bad listeners, and for voters to be irresponsible in their naivety towards a candidate.

it's good to look in the mirror and understand the material outcomes of voter behavior in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago (8 children)

I respect your argument, but I still refute it.

There was a saying someone shared recently: Give them the third best option. Because the second best comes too late and the best never comes at all. Essentially, do not let perfect be the enemy of the good.

I agree that Kamala should have developed more of a campaign around frustrated white young men, and working class America. That was a mistake, but I also think it was an easy mistake to make when scrambling to take over from Biden’s campaign.

If we go 4 years from now, 8 years, 30 years, I think every candidate we see will be imperfect and will make mistakes. The only time we’ll ever see a perfect candidate is when they lie about their accomplishments and overstate themselves. Americans need to be able to spot those flaws themselves, and that will not change in any election cycle. I should not get into the White House by promising every working American a trillion dollars.

Why aren't all of you as vocal about Trump as you were Biden and Harris? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

I also wish more culpability was on them.

I understand that we want local action to urge changes. But honestly, if we stopped giving them weapons, I’m fairly sure another far eviler world superpower would snatch up the chance for a new ally.

Israel had its September 11 moments, and being a more vulnerable nation, turned it into an outlet of rage. More can be done by convincing Israelis this approach harms more than helps them, even creating new terrorists, rather than just washing America’s hands of it while the killing continues.

Explaining green transportation policy to normies in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago

There’s a case in Ace Attorney Investigations where Edgeworth is investigating a kidnapping in front of a building. He makes the determination from witnesses that “only two cars passed through here this morning.”

Boy howdy if that had happened in America, that kid would still be caged up. Streets are so much nicer when we don’t need cars.

Ocasio-Cortez says if you feel burnt out by the news lately, that’s ‘exactly’ what Trump wants in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

The short answer is: Yes.

The long answer is: YEEEEESSSS.

Politicians come in varying types, and most want to hold what power they have. It’s all they have - they’re literally at risk of being fired every few years. Many of them know what the right thing is to do, but worry that more domestic issues are their voter’s real concern. So, if they confirm a whack job in Congress while taking a back room deal to boost employment numbers in their state, they’ll do it - perhaps reluctantly.

But that CHANGES if their office is flooded with calls, or even just signed emails. It is a BIG oh shit moment: “Wait, people actually care about what’s happening in Washington as opposed to here??” The biggest problem reps have had, as repeatedly echoed in interviews, is they don’t know which issues are most significant to their voters. The result may be a matter of trading favors to be given table scraps, etc.

It is OUR problem too - we thought it was a common sense, braindead position not to vote for a diaper grandpa that spends 90% of its time drooling over Fox News, but the active voting population disagreed! So don’t think it is a hard mistake to make!

Every time people with experience judge these issues, they have recommended the same thing. Even if you live in a red state that won by 30 points, even if you live in a blue state that won by 20.

I encourage you to watch the movie Darkest Hour. London Parliament did NOT think it would be an obvious decision to oppose Hitler, AT ALL. They insisted Britain would chew them up for pushing them into a “pointless” war against a legitimate machine of progress and industry. It finally took Churchill going nutso and taking a subway ride in public to get a chance to actually see how people felt.

Ocasio-Cortez says if you feel burnt out by the news lately, that’s ‘exactly’ what Trump wants in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

I have found with admittedly sometimes-annoying tools like "Resistbot" it's a bit easier to write my opinions to representatives. That matters quite a bit more if you're in a redder state than mine, but it still helps to send words of encouragement/reminders to reps that are working their asses off as a minority.

Ocasio-Cortez says if you feel burnt out by the news lately, that’s ‘exactly’ what Trump wants in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago

I have started to want this to become an extension of hate speech laws - if a lawmaker makes remarks or policy advances that target a specific marginalized protected class (eg, race, sexuality) while also engaged in other policy decisions, they must provide EXTREMELY compelling evidence of those policy advances (just about always impossible) or face extended criminal prosecution for attempting to use the threats as a distraction.

Ocasio-Cortez says if you feel burnt out by the news lately, that’s ‘exactly’ what Trump wants in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 23 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

AOC talked about exactly this in her video (it's over an hour long, but when you have time, I'd say it's worth a watch). There was a specific effort to start this madness after Congress adjourned for the week, and there's been a scramble to get back for continued pushback.

And, even for democrats we presume to fight for these issues, there is complacency where people only whine on social media without making themselves known directly to their representatives. That's important both for people in Democrat, and Republican districts, to make it known their constituents are not blind to these problems.

Definitely feels this way as a therapist right now in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I'm reminded of the scene in Office Space where Peter goes to his therapist to "transfer" his negative energy, and the therapist has a heart attack on the spot.

Woke furry hijacks social media of right-wing group that published 'DEI Watch List' in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Buddy, I've tried to be more patient with you than other commenters, but that truly crosses a line. Taking someone else's experiences, and selectively quoting them to suit your own agenda, so it fits your definition of discrimination, is disgraceful.

If you'd read on in my comment, I described how literary agents are inundated with thousands of requests. It is literally an industry anyone with Word or OpenOffice can try to enter into. There are probably hundreds of minority authors also getting turned away just like me. This is not an instance of "defending one's presence" the way that minorities need to in their workplaces, the way the current administration is scrutinizing them in Federal offices. This is just me trying to be the one in a thousand shot to publicize a book - which is a rare accomplishment. So, NO. You don't get to "own" and weaponize someone else's hardship in that way. Not ever.

Shame on you.

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(OneDrive) Senator Sal DiDomenico speech at Massachusetts State House: "There are many more of us than of them" (1drv.ms)
6
Lynn teen was arrested after pushing her brother. Then ICE took her (www.masslive.com)
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Teen in Lynn, MA was arrested after pushing her brother. Then ICE took her (www.masslive.com)
635
Sony finally surrenders: PSN accounts will be 'optional' for games on Steam, but they'll give you free stuff if you sign up (www.pcgamer.com)
162
'Very troubling': Leader of 'Abandon Harris' movement now anxious about Trump appointees (www.rawstory.com)
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23598266

Summary

Key leaders of the “Abandon Harris” movement, which encouraged voters to oppose Kamala Harris due to U.S. support for Israel during the Gaza war, are now expressing unease about Trump’s incoming administration.

Many in the movement, including prominent Muslim leaders, voted for Trump hoping he would bring peace to the Middle East.

However, concerns are growing over his Cabinet picks, such as Mike Huckabee and Tulsi Gabbard, which some see as troubling for Muslim communities.

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Team Fortress 2's storyline has concluded with a 7-year-delayed comic (www.teamfortress.com)
 

Storyline? What kind of lore-addled whackjobs needed a storyline to get invested in two teams of knuckleheads killing each other endlessly in the Nevadan wasteland? Back when I played video games, it was two bleeping and blorping pixels that would gladly use their own guts as a rope to strangle the other. And you were lucky if you got any blorping!

Anyway, it ends on a happy note so you may as well enjoy it. Merry Smissmas!

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Name a game game: "...and then it ends with you fighting A GOD." (lemmy.world)
 

Trope or not, gods just end up being a common target for games about heroes escalating in power while fighting increasingly world-destroying consequences.

So, for each post, name a game and describe it, with the assumption being that every description automatically ends with the phrase:

"...and then it ends with you fighting a god."

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Stories and Mechanics around punishing over-aggression (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
9 comments fedilink
 

For game designers, encouraging aggression is often a good thing. Too many players of StarCraft or even regular combat games end up "turtling", dropping initiative wherever possible to make their games slow and boring while playing as safe as possible.

But in other games, often of multiplayer variety, hyper-aggression can sometimes ruin pacing in the other direction. Imagine spawning into a game with dozens of mechanics to learn, but finding that the prevailing strategy of enemy players is to arrive directly into your base and overwhelm you with a large set of abilities, using either their just-large-enough HP pool, or some mitigation ability, while you were still curiously investigating mechanics and working on defenses.

Some players find this approach fun, and this may even be the appropriate situation for games of a competitive variety, where the ability to react to unexpectedly aggressive plays is an exciting element for both players and spectators.

Plus, this is a very necessary setup for speedrunners, who often optimize to find the best way of trivializing singleplayer encounters.

But other games have something of a more casual focus, which can give a sour feeling when trying to bring people into the experience without having to reflexively react to players that are abandoning caution. Even when a game isn't casual, aggression metas can trivialize the "ebb and flow, attack and defense" mechanics that the game traditionally tries to teach. This can also lead to speedruns becoming less interesting because one mechanic allows a player to skip much of what makes a game enjoyable (which can sometimes be solved by "No XGlitch%" run categories)

So, the prompt branches into a few questions:

  • What are fun occasions you've seen where players got absolutely destroyed for relying on various "rush metas" in certain kinds of games, because witty players knew just how to react?
  • What are some interesting game mechanics you've seen that don't ruin the fun of the game, but force players to consider other mechanics they'd otherwise just forget about in order to have a "zero HP, max-damage" build?
  • What are some games you know of that are currently ruined by "Aggression metas", and what ideas do you have for either players or designers to correct for them?
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Switched to Mint with a rocky setup (DAY 3 update) (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
9 comments fedilink
 

For those who want a summary; it's been going okay, but could've gone better. I decided to space out my tinkering and keep going with life, since these days my life is not so bound to my desktop. (It's also possible some details weren't recorded quite right. Many search tabs were closed)

I've been aware of the impending death of W10 in October 2025, with fears that hackers will start taking over the OS at that time. My main reason for avoiding Linux was game support, but Valve has been handling that well.

I decided to set up a Linux Mint 21 drive, which at first was difficult because my first USB stick had corrupted sectors (took some time to determine that was the issue). Then, when I booted in...it didn't support my wi-fi (it claimed it did, then couldn't connect, even when pairing with my phone). My first plan was to set up a nice, isolated 500GB partition on my nvme SSD (a drive I'd mostly used to store games) for Linux, and have it refer to the NTFS partition for games. (I would later learn this doesn't work well, and Linux is optimized for ext4).

Then, I learned this NVME had an "MBR" partition table, and I still had to convert it to GPT. While there's several tools for this, they complained due to the placement of my partitions, not leaving enough space for the table. I tried moving the entire gaming partition 1MB to the right...and got the same error.

After deleting the (backed up) partition to finish GPT conversion, I learned two things. One, that it was actually complaining because when giving the converter the target Device, I had given it the "Device:" labeled in the Disk management, which was "/dev/nvmen0p1". Guess what the P stands for at the end? So, gentle tip: The "Device" is not the "device", it's the partition - and diskpart does not present the resulting error well. Second thing I learned was that Windows had somehow put some of its boot setup on the NVME back when I had installed it on my computer; so now Windows wouldn't boot. (I'll see if I can fix this later. Windows' fault, not Linux's)

The good news is, I had downloaded a copy of Mint 22 (1 up), and THIS got full wi-fi and audio support. A little strange I had to go so recent for basic old-hardware support, but it could've been something else odd going on. I installed Steam, got a cryptic error about 32-bit NVidia drivers I ignored, and with my library moved back (and fixing ownership through chown, something Steam thankfully provided a relatively clear error message on) it's been able to run a few test games!

Having my browser and some basics up, I can kick back on YouTube and tackle whichever pressing things I think of first. I don't have replacements for 2 or 3 Windows products I like, but overall the setup has gone well, and a few of my annoyances actually go to my USB drive store, and Windows. Overall, much better than a decade past when I last tried Linux.

To keep Windows as an option, I'm planning to run a Windows installer repair boot to my original drive; but am admittedly worried whatever caused it to install boot info to the NVME against my instructions last time will, once again, screw up Linux. I may also try seeing if GRUB can locate Windows and boot it successfully. I feel somewhat blind on the topic of setting up / fixing the OS bootup.

I can tell this process is much simpler if someone has only one drive, backs things up to an external device, and then installs cleanly. Only on that vein, I wouldn't mind recommending it to others. Still, that's only in part because Microsoft has steadily made things worse and worse on the Windows front. (And, of course, I'll still be using it for work)

EDIT on day 3:

It's still been rocky. I became a bit pinpoint-focused on Hitman 3/"WoA" as my testbed to verify gaming was working; as it was more demanding and had proton dependencies ready. I selected a mission, got into the loading screen, and...got a black screen on the level, before a crash to desktop. Interestingly, the system was pretty unresponsive during the crash. Checked ProtonDB, nothing familiar about the issues. Failing so early felt like a dead end for Linux Mint as a gaming system, especially as it was one of my favorite games.

I had mentioned in prior comments I had skipped Bazzite worrying it would be the equivalent of RGB lighting and mostly unnecessary for gaming. But, if it's their claim to fame, I may as well try it. I had partitioned the OS away from the /home folder where I had copied my backup Steam games, so I went ahead with the reinstall. The Fedora-based partition selector was not so clear about its errors/required fields, or good at suggesting defaults for /home, /boot, and /boot/efit mounting; I ended up looking up recommendations (200MB boot? etc) on another laptop. To be fair, it's probably a less common use case, but still worth highlighting this part could've been clearer.

Bazzite worked! It was quick to put up a working Steam install, and Hitman levels loaded great. It took some time getting used to the new OS layout, but I'm not strongly opposed to it - it's a bit tablet-like, which makes sense since the OS targets ROGAlly users as well. That, in itself, is something I can live with. Of note, I wasn't terribly offended by Windows 8's largely hated tile layout and lived with it for years. I did not even need to compile the Xbox One dongle controller driver from source, as I had from Mint - worked out of the box!

Some things that stood out to me as annoying: The distro obviously makes efforts to cut down on options/buttons to simplify the experience and avoid overwhelming people. The biggest place I saw this is the file explorer, which insists on keeping you out of "/" and hopes 90% of your interactions will be with Documents / Pictures / Music. Given how many drives I had to interact with, this felt pretty crippling. Even after auto-mounting old drives I'd like to fetch things from, it still didn't show them in Open File dialogs within apps.

Bazzite tries to rise above the package managers of other distros by running any other necessary OS in containers. I'm no container pro, I've used docker for my job at times, but I tried going ahead with documentation. Treating it as an Ubuntu or a Fedora install, I had an extremely hard time getting VeraCrypt (a familiar app from Windows) working; using official .deb downloads on the website, or the package managers that had it listed. When I did finally get it installed off COPR, the "distrobox-export" command documented to add the app to my "Applications" did no such thing, nor did it explain what kind of filesystem entry it was trying to create.

As of yet, I still don't actually know where Bazzite's list of Applications is physically located, even after running some "find -iname" / locate commands. This might be nice to get to because the right-click menu on each one is sparse (again, simplified for users), and doesn't let me customize a few .desktop files not launching how I want them to. (A long time ago, something that really bothered me was Windows calling Steam's taskbar entry "Steam Runtime Helper" with no known way for me to fix it. But for Linux to also seemingly lock me out of solutions feels frustrating)

Some other things became worse. I set certain preferred keyboard shortcuts for window management, and Bazzite overwrote them to defaults - MULTIPLE times. That really set me off. When in the Activity View, many of the GUI apps did not have close buttons. I'm practiced with using tapping WIN+1 multiple times to go to the "third open Firefox window" - this is something apparently not supported on Linux, and I can't understand why. The OS takes a long time to recover from sleep mode, and needs ~10 seconds to re-discover my mouse. A few times, I came back to find the visuals garbled from some sort of display driver failure.

And, while Bazzite was very very good with games, as we all know falling just short of what we're used to niggles at our senses. Helldivers 2 worked - but a white-bar border at the edge only went away after tweaking launch options from ProtonDB. I launched Dead by Daylight, and while everything was visually fine, there was notable input lag, most visible on the game's reflex-based "Skill checks". I play a lot of games, and had gotten VERY used to "Install > Play > Done", so thinking about being so unsure on every game purchase worried me.

I have a number of small indie games that don't receive Steam's attention - often coming in from the web browser as .zip files with an EXE somewhere at their root. It's common for me to only spend less than 30 minutes downloading, trying it out, and maybe commenting on the creator's page. This is not a good workflow for Linux, given that launchers like Lutris make you fill out a long form with the position and title of the app before you can launch it - and give no immediate feedback or log output towards its launch failures.

I did research some of the many things annoying me, but of course Bazzite is still a niche offering and I was unsure at times whether to expand my searches to, eg "fedora disable screen anchors" or "gnome disable screen anchors". Often, I guessed I was the first person getting an issue.

When browsing the web, handling basic communications, even some games, I'm kind of comfortable with Bazzite. It's very very possible that a number of these issues would go away with some time and practice. But, I'm at an age where time is at a premium and it's VERY valuable to get a number of things "just working" without much concern. For those reasons, I'm definitely strongly considering going back to Windows.

I really hesitate to blame the strong array of choice for linux distros here - it's highly possible some comment will shout "Try XXXdistro!" and that would be the one where I'd magically run into zero problems, and all UI annoyances are things I could configure. But, getting that right so quickly seems unlikely. I may have shot myself in the foot with Bazzite, but I knew I wanted gaming as a focus, while as a consequence I got a lot of things locked down - to the point I couldn't even find configuration to tweak the things most breaking my workflow.

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Steam Now Warns Consumers That They're Buying a License, Not a Game During a Purchase (www.cgmagonline.com)
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Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Dev Says Big Budget Games Are Failing in Part Because Teams Are Over-Scoping Their Projects (www.ign.com)
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Paper Perjury - Indie Pixel Art AA-styled game (store.steampowered.com)
 

Another game with a unique pixel art look to it that runs its gameplay using interviews and finding contradictions. A demo is out, which is basically only a set of 3-4 testimonies and moves pretty quickly.

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