Blocking AI bots from Microsoft, others has been “pain in the a**”: Reddit CEO | Huffman says companies must pay to scrape Reddit data even though Reddit itself relies on free, user-generated content
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    Mic_Check_One_Two
    3mo ago 100%

    On the other side of the same coin: When I mass edited my comments before quitting Reddit, I got site-banned. Basically, my first account’s automated edit got me auto-banned from several subs with pro-spez mods. Some subs had set their automod to detect when people were using the more popular methods of auto-editing, and set the automod to ban for using them. Then when I did the same with my second (and third, and fourth, and fifth, etc…) account, it almost immediately got site-banned for ban evasion.

    Basically, account 1 was banned from a sub, so when account 2 started doing the same thing on the same IP address, it was flagged as ban evasion. And ban evasion is one of the few things that will get you banned site-wide instead of just from a specific sub.

    I went back and checked a few months ago, and all of those site bans were lifted and the edits were undone. Likely because a site ban prevents the comments from showing up (which hurts Reddit’s bottom line, because they show up as a bunch of [removed] comments instead,) but also prevented any of the edits from actually being published. So when they lifted the site ban (to get those old comments to show back up again) it was as if I had never edited them at all. I had probably a million karma spread across my various accounts. I was extremely active at one point, so Reddit had a direct incentive to unban those accounts with literal thousands of comments.

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  • Elon Musk says his posts did more to ‘financially impair’ X than help it
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    7mo ago 100%

    Many have theorized that the MuskJet Tracker account was the biggest reason he purchased Twitter. Because Twitter refused to ban the tracker, so Musk started rumbling about buying it, in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance. Then that backfired on him when Twitter forced the sale.

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  • games
    Games 7mo ago
    Jump
    Larian publishing director on mass layoffs: 'None of these companies are at risk of going bankrupt. They were just at risk of pissing off the shareholders'
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    7mo ago 100%

    Oh and there's probably less of an emphasis on hiring business majors since the workers on the floor tend to have a better idea of how damaging decisions that seem to make more money on paper can be.

    There’s also the idea that as employees rise through the ranks, they have a better understanding of how their old jobs are done. Let’s say you’re in a manufacturing job: Nothing is worse than being managed by a business degree who doesn’t even know how to turn on the equipment you use every day. Because that manager has no idea what is and isn’t possible to do with the machinery, what kinds of timeframes to expect from jobs, etc… So you’ll end up getting unrealistic expectations, based purely on numbers on paper.

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  • Fuck ads at the gas pump
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    7mo ago 100%

    Yup. Anyone from New Jersey who says otherwise has simply drank the Kool-Aid. The mandatory pump attendants are purely for a jobs program.

    I remember when it became legal to pump your own gas at certain stations, and a ton of people who had never left their home state were on Facebook ranting about how it was so dangerous to pump your own gas. It requires specialized training. It’s messy and gets gas everywhere. You mean I have to get out of my own car when I park? On and on…

    Meanwhile, everyone in the surrounding states have been tired of their entitled bullshit for decades, because every time someone goes out of state and needs gas, they end up screaming at a gas station cashier for not immediately leaving the cash register unattended to run out and pump their gas.

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  • Man Thinks Games Were Better When He Was Blind to Their Blatant Political Themes
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    7mo ago 100%

    There’s a huge difference between a game featuring politics as a sandbox for players to play around with, and featuring political themes as a main story driver.

    Civ is a good example of the former; It has politics present in the game, but the politics aren’t presented in a hero/villain way. They’re presented as potential advantages for the player, potential disadvantages for opponents, etc, but the actual policies themselves aren’t central to the system.

    The game pulls from historical political systems as a way to present them to the player, but it could just as easily forego that and call the system some made up word besides “political systems”. Because the politics and policies aren’t actually important to the gameplay; All that matters to the player is what potential benefits and drawbacks they provide. You don’t actually care if a particular civ is “democratic” or “totalitarian”, because those titles could just as easily be replaced with “A” and “B”. The only thing that matters to the player is how that particular civ’s political affiliation will affect their actions.

    But if a game heavily features political themes and messages as part of a plot line, then it’s not something the player can avoid or ignore. If it’s central to the story, one side (likely the side helping the player) is inevitably going to be presented as the hero, and another side (likely the side working against the player) is going to be presented as a villain. Final Fantasy X, for instance, is a good example of the latter. It heavily features anti-religion themes and messages. It’s impossible to play through the game without receiving “religion bad” messaging, because they’re central to the game’s plot line, with religious leaders as the main villains. We can draw direct parallels to real-world examples. And if you’re someone who is religious, those parallels may make you deeply uncomfortable, because religion is being portrayed negatively no matter how you play the game.

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  • Lara Croft Crowned Most Iconic Video Games Character of All Time, According to BAFTA Poll
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    Mic_Check_One_Two
    7mo ago 87%

    Yup, this list is biased as hell. It was trying to determine iconic characters. Put Mario and Lara Croft in front of a 90 year old person. They’ll recognize Mario immediately, but almost certainly won’t recognize Croft. Hell, I’d put Bowser, Peach, and Luigi over Croft.

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  • What is something that is completely legal that should be illegal?
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    7mo ago 100%

    Yeah, the issue with implementing this is that it’s one step away from straight up eugenics. The full plan is “implement child licenses, (then restrict who those licenses go to.)” The quiet part isn’t even quiet.

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  • Life Hack
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    Mic_Check_One_Two
    7mo ago 100%

    Yup. Rand() chooses a random float value for each entry. By default I believe it’s anywhere between 0 and 1. So it may divide the first bill by .76, then the second by .23, then the third by 0.63, etc… So you’d end up with a completely garbage database because you can’t even undo it by multiplying all of the numbers by a set value.

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  • ))<>((
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    7mo ago 100%

    For real though, I have written some truly monstrous operations in Excel.

    What do you mean you want to use Excel to manage everyone’s calendars? And now you want to export that horribly built calendar management spreadsheet to Google Calendar? What do you mean you want the Google Calendar entries automatically formatted based on who is working on a particular day? I mean yes it’s possible but-…

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  • ))<>((
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    Mic_Check_One_Two
    7mo ago 100%

    And every piece of code you think you write for one-time use is guaranteed to be reused every day for the next 5 years

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  • Microsoft opens a "high priority" bug ticket in ffmpeg, attempting to leech the free labour of the maintainers
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    7mo ago 100%

    The scheduling demand thing is referring specifically to the project manager going “we need this for an upcoming major product launch, so you need to fix this before the launch.” It feels like Microsoft cracking the whip to try getting free labor, because it is.

    If they truly can’t do without it for their product launch, they can fork it and fix the bug themselves. Surely Microsoft has the resources and brainpower to do so. But the PM didn’t want to do that, because it means they’d be spending their own time and resources on it.

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    Jump
    Gunfire From Deputies Killed Teen Who Had Been Reported Kidnapped, Video Shows
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    7mo ago 97%

    Yeah, it’s always interesting to see how newspapers will twist the English language to keep using passive voice with cops. It’s not “cops kill innocent” it’s “innocent killed by police’s gunfire.” Notice that in the former, it’s the cops actively killing, while in the latter it’s the victim who is listed first, then the gunfire is what is active. It’s a small bit of psychology to make the police’s actions seem more distant and removed from the situation.

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  • Yeah we are not like that
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    7mo ago 60%

    I think a lot of that is over-correction due to trolls. Because “both sides are the same” is a common trolling tactic to discourage democrat votes. So many democrats will assume by default that criticisms about Biden (even when true) will eventually lead to “both sides” trolling. So they just automatically skip straight to step 5 of the argument and start calling you a troll.

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  • What are some games you find yourself frequently coming back to?
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    7mo ago 100%

    I actually enjoyed the story. Some of the themes and motifs were heavy handed, but that’s par for the course. Honestly, the biggest issue with the story is that players have come to expect a big plot twist. Bioshock 1’s twist hit first-time players hard, so later games have tried to replicate that. But the issue is that it only hit players hard because they never knew it was coming. They only remember it because it was truly shocking the first time you played through it.

    So now players have come to expect that from the series, which means the series can’t replicate it; When players are looking for a big plot twist, you can’t really hide it anymore. Because as soon as you start foreshadowing it, players catch on. And if you’re too subtle with your signals, then players who have been looking for it will say that doesn’t make any sense.

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  • What are some games you find yourself frequently coming back to?
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    7mo ago 100%

    For what it’s worth, I wasn’t a huge fan of the story at first. It took me a few hours and a few quests to actually get into it. It suffers from Kingdom Hearts 2/The Witcher 3 Syndrome: The two hour long intro/tutorial is absolutely the worst part, which is a shame. The game really begins to shine once you get to Meridian, but that’s several hours in.

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  • 196
    196 7mo ago
    Jump
    rule
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    7mo ago 100%

    Typically speaking, you’d want to cut instead of boost. Cutting is easy; You just reduce the volume. Boosting is much more complicated, because you need to “add” signal where none exists. So boosts tend to be noisy and/or outright distorted, while cuts will maintain a clean audio signal.

    Need to boost around 2KHz? Try cutting everything else instead.

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  • Switch performs better running games through an emulator emulating the switch than natively.
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    7mo ago 100%

    That copyright thing was never actually tested in court though, because they settled before the trial began. The “copyrighted keys” argument was what Nintendo originally used to bring the lawsuit, but it was never actually tested because it never went to trial. In fact, many legal experts say it likely would have been thrown out in Yuzu’s favor. But Yuzu didn’t have a legal fund, so they couldn’t afford to actually take it to court and fight it.

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  • What is a bad video game that you enjoy?
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    7mo ago 100%

    Was going to say the same. It’s not a bad game by any metric, once you consider what it was competing with. The biggest issue is that the English release has NPC’s flat out lying to you about puzzles.

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  • GitLab confirms it’s removed Suyu, a fork of Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu
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    7mo ago 100%

    FWIW, the PlayStation was meant to have the Nintendo button layout too. In Japan, O is synonymous with “yes/good” sort of like a check mark (✅) and X means “no/bad”. So the X and O buttons were meant to be used in that way. But western game devs didn’t know that, and designed their games with X as confirm and O as decline.

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  • FitGirl call for donations
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    7mo ago 94%

    Take it a step farther. Why is cheap grain available on the market? Because European import regulations were relaxed to support Ukrainian grain exports.

    In case you weren’t aware, grain is one of Ukraine’s largest exports.

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