For whatever it’s worth, I never finished it, as an avid crpg fan. It’s not the hours it takes, it’s the constant feeling that you’ve got so much to do but no real idea where to start, or where to go, or what to do. If it was a world map with clickable places, like the original baldurs gates or even the somewhat intimidating but still much more digestible owlcat’s pathfinders style “railroad” experience, it’d been much nicer. But the free map to roam just makes both decisions harder, and also the seashell collector inside me awaken and suddenly I have to explore each pixel of the map in case I miss something, which is very exhausting on top of the already exhausting freedom.

Well, just an anecdote:

I simply deleted my WhatsApp and moved to signal. Just did it.

People installed the app, at least the ones that cared about staying in touch. Which was most everyone I cared about staying in touch with. A few of my friend groups also moved the group chat to signal, though all of them do have other ones with the people who didn’t care enough to move too, but I hear it isn’t that big a deal, they had multiple groups before and will have in future, doesn’t really feel like any extra hassle they say.

It’s been fine. No problems. I’ve had more trouble trying to explain to my extended family why I’m no longer posting on instagram. Those I never had in WhatsApp either back in the day, so they “stayed in touch” by watching my pictures I suppose. But I just consistently tell people they can reach me always via signal or plain old sms.

I guess the biggest thing to be scared about would be fomo for most, but I don’t really care enough, I’ve got so much going on already that it’s more of a blessing that I don’t have to be involved in every conversation or meme sharing or whatever.

It really gets so easy after simply switching. Just do it and that’s that. The people worth anything come with you, it’s just another app and another group chat or personal chat. Most already have discord and the meta messenger whatever its name is these days anyway. I know zero people with only one messenger/chat app and unsplintered groups across them. It’s not a big chore, and if it is, there’s always sms.

Yeah. The controls, the fighting. Even with all the patches and community stuff laid on top, it was a bit too uncomfortable to actually play through for me.

The second one was brilliant. And to this day, despite me having almost 200 hours in Witcher 3, the only Witcher game I’ve actually finished. I think second’s format was perfect. 3 is just too open and beautiful, I get lost in wandering around too easily.

This is a sane take, though I personally do generally tend towards understanding and even valuing the walled garden to some degree. But this is what I’ve always felt underneath it, you found the words.

Just an anecdote, but I have a much smoother experience playing with the original steam deck than I did on my desktop. I mean the frames aren’t as high, the screen is small and resolution is low, but for whatever backwards reason, it just feels so smooth to look at and play with. I guess you see and feel the graphical artifacts better on a large screen with large resolution, and everything feels so uncanny somehow with high refresh rates and 100+ fps. Can’t really explain it though. Weird stuff.

Just finished the last of us 1 remake and 2 remaster with the deck. It just looks so gorgeous, I ran both with mixed medium-high settings, and it was an amazing experience. Before those I played cyberpunk with some crazy 500+ mods, and it was just excellent to play. Same with Witcher 3, though that’s getting old by now, so less surprising it runs so well.

In fact, I’m yet to play any lightweight games on this thing. Or even indie ones. These graphically intensive games have been such a joy to play, I haven’t even had the time or motivation to attempt anything else. I’m finally getting through my dusty, cobwebbed library, especially these more expensive games, and that’s been almost miraculous! A desktop requires sitting down, dedicated time and focus, but I can bring this thing with me pretty much anywhere and play a checkpoint or two or whatever while on a bus, a train, waiting for an appointment… anything. And it fucking runs all these games I’ve dreaded to play on the gaming rig because it just never felt good because I couldn’t hit ultra settings on everything, and the artifacts just were too noticeable and things weren’t as immersive as I’d have liked.

But this small little thing? So enjoyable, it’s so weird.

This is something I want to yell so loud every time I see anyone underestimating this thing talking about playing less demanding, smaller or older, indie, or otherwise more basic games. Thanks to some black magic I can’t make any sense of, the exact opposite is what you’ll want to do I bet!

Well initially it was. Later down this thread in my second reply I was just trying to point out why it got the reception it got. As I said initially, I agree with the sentiment, it was just not well put at first, even I misread it. I get you now.

You should’ve probably responded with something like this from the start, but I’m glad it was my misunderstanding your message, not you advocating for what I, along with some others apparently, interpreted from it.

Sorry about the tone in my first reply. I hope you see it came from a well meaning place in defense of safety in terms of staying alive and unharmed, not in opposition to being bold, as the inverse of “safe”.

We lose a lot in the translation when our only medium is text, and we are all from across the globe, trying to communicate in a language that is foreign to me and many others, I bet. But c’est la vie.

Please stay safe, AOC

No, don’t.

That is a direct quote from you.

What would you yourself deem “not being safe” to mean in context of people in general? Now what would you take it to mean when the commenter you quoted there said that the opposition is dangerous and deranged, hoping AOC stay safe, and you responding hoping AOC not to stay safe. In the same context where the clear danger and derangement is stated? In fact, quoting the very comment doing just that?

You can keep acting shocked and mistreated as though everyone around you is stupid or malicious or both… or, you know, you could maybe consider that maybe whatever way other people interpret your words might just be reasonable and you could perhaps stand to benefit from admitting that, then elaborating what you meant, instead of lashing out on everyone and playing a victim with overly dramatized tone that is pretty much guaranteed to get people confused and vocal about your behavior.

Just saying.

You can tell yourself what you want, but I agree with your view, and still had to downvote just to reduce the toxicity hogging space from up top. I use the votes as signal boosters / signal dampeners. Lower voted, for most people, end up in the bottom, where most don’t reach them.

Some people don’t want to hear it, because they know it by heart already. Some because it’s not productive and only serves to lower morale. Some, because that’s just defeatist and/or escalatory. Whatever the reason, I’m certain most people do not need to hear that shit. What purpose would it even serve? Things are not as dire as that and you know it too, you are just being sensational for whatever reason you’ve conjured yourself. I even agree that things have to hurt before meaningful action starts to happen at a meaningful level, but hoping specifically someone to get hurt and/or not stay safe is just you being a prick. Nobody needs to be exposed to that.

Before even reading the article, I’m thinking they’re maybe selling it as a good thing along the lines of “do you hate to see those ads you don’t care about? Taking space on your apps and pages? What if there was a way to make them actually useful! Make them feel like content, just for you!”

I feel like I have to point out that this is horrific either way

Edit: I actually talked about this quickly with a few almost tech-illiterate friends and they were honestly excited about that at first, when I didn’t preface it with my reasoned disdain for it or the privacy implications… so despite the way we here react to it, I’m almost sure this will sell amazingly.

Well, I guess sufficient is subjective…

However, consider that whatever you have now in today’s world, not just physical things but also your life experience and expectation of things might not line so well with those that you’d have in a scarcity scenario completely unlike today’s world. What you now consider sufficient might be entirely unacceptable in different frameworks of thinking and living.

That’s probably the worst possible addition. Something like this, you need to be able to depend on. In a no-room-for-errors kinda situation you really don’t want to have a language model hallucinate something and burn potentially ruinous amount of scarce resources in the process, not the least being time. For example with crops.

Edit: and also that’ll burn through the power compared to just reading pdfs… if that’s scarce too, it’s a no go. Not to mention it’d have to really have some bulk for the capability to even run a basic model with extremely hit and miss results and definitely zero chance of retaining any sort of context long enough to be actually useful in this kind of use case. I think people are probably a little bit pampered by the cloud models of today. No chance you’ll be running anything like that in a small device with limited power.

And even if technically notable enough, you still need some objective sources for any claims made, even simple things like profession, even if your works speak for themselves. And what the mods deem an acceptable source seems arbitrary.

I listen to a lot of indie music or local smaller bands, and often, even though they gig a lot and have several albums practically on every digital platform, I can’t find the bands in there, nor any of their members.

Often there’s a red page there with some contributor discussions where they argue with each other about these things.

Seems so wonky to me, since I just came from their gig, having listened to them for 10+ years.

That’d be perfect.

I can’t believe how hard it is to find people willing, even on a completely theoretical level, to live in a little bit more closer knit community with some shared facilities and land for common goods. Even if I say it need not be the cliche hippie commune, it can just be people living co-operatively and having just a bit more together time, simultaneously even saving some money and resources, by having shared facilities and lands. Most recognize just one thing about it. Energy and water treatment self-sufficiency seems to interest people, but not enough for them to even consider a shared community “hall” with a kitchen and room for everyone to eat, so that a every single house need not have a full, everything included kitchen. Same for bath and toilet stuff. And electricity utility rooms. Or anything, really, that isn’t your own personal and private as usual living quarters with the basic facilities so you don’t need to be social every time you need to pee or have a breakfast.

I recognize this is practically just an apartment building, but in a horizontally laid out format, I guess, with some space between the apartments for personal space even outside, and some extra niceties like an all-inclusive kitchen with a full set of tools and facilities to cook practically anything, without everyone having to buy all of that individually and also with a fraction of the cost for being shared between all. And some crops for a bit more self-sufficiency, same for electricity and water facilities.

People are fine with large apartment buildings where you can practically always hear your neighbors and have some minor shared stuff like saunas and very basic recreative rooms and the usual utilities like electricity and water and yard maintenance handled by someone else.

I feel like a close knit community — with shared spaces for stuff you don’t need 24/7 but rather only occasionally and in limited periods each day, and increased self-reliance and independence and more national-catastrophe-resistant facilities, with the understanding that some of the lots are saved for specific professionals like an electrician, farmer, animal handler, plumber, etc and require minor extra investment, shared between all, to pay for them handling the day-to-day — would win in almost all fronts against an apartment building, except maybe in that it would have to be a little more remote in location because extra land needs and need for appropriate soil for crops etc. But a commune like that could easily just have a shuttle or two and arrange co-rides even each day to the nearest town or city. Could even save on personal cars by having that.

I don’t know, I’m rambling now.

I get frustrated because I’m probably not seeing the value other see in living alone, separate from others living alone all around you. Or the proximity to more densely populated areas maybe? Or whatever it is that makes people not even consider a community such as the one described. There must be a lot of things I’m not seeing that normal people see, and it makes me so anxious that I can’t see them. But then again I’m not neurotypical. Not the first area of interest I seldom get to share with someone, anyone.

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Yeah, did the whole dance too, and tried multiple providers, but no dice. Some got through to others and some to others, but none was even good enough getting through to most.

This was just a few years ago.

I don’t think these safety/security signatures or protocols or whatever, work, as they are supposed to. If the IP space you get has bad reputation, nothing matters, you’re sol.

If you mean self-hosting email, then good luck.

It’s a lottery with the IP and even the IP space you get, whether anyone will actually receive your emails.

I hosted my own for a few years, but god fed up telling everyone to dig through their junk folder for my emails, and not being responded to very often, probably because of just that.

Maybe some providers have it better, but I tried a few and each was just not good. I really think Microsoft, Amazon, Google and other big players have intentionally separated the good, trusted IPs, ones they use for email services specifically, and made the other worse

I love the thing and use it extensively whenever I can, but it is bulky and hard to fit into bags with other stuff. If there was a way to separate the palm rest bits and have most other things be flat, and thin enough, that’d make a huge difference. But the bulky palm rests attached to the thin body, it just unavoidably wastes some space, and even more if one wants to be safe and use the case.

But it’s not that bad, easily lived with. Doesn’t remove the fact that it could be much better in that regard though.

Still easily more portable than a laptop though! And much more comfortable to use for gaming, if that’s going to be the most common use case for a computer while you travel.

I use signal too, exclusively apart from sms or the rare iMessage my grandparents send. It’s been fine. I can’t recall if it was app setting or it just works™, but I get no sounds, and still get notifications so I can check them when I have the time and energy to deal with all that.

Yeah same here, and I haven’t missed it a bit. As a downside, I constantly misplace the thing and have to search for it when I hear the specific rhythmic vibration somewhere. If anyone had something extremely urgent, they’ll be able to call my partner or neighbor or something. And I do check the notifications daily, too, so Im never completely out of the loop.

I’ve noticed, also, that I’m much better at actually answering the phone or answering messages. Former since I so seldomly get any noticeable feedback from the phone, so it feels fine to grab it and answer if it rings and I happen to notice it. The messages, because I read them when I have time, so then I also have time to answer. I used to get messages and read them and I’d be in middle of something, so I’d just think to myself “I’ll reply later”, and I very rarely remembered and actually did.

It feels counterintuitive, but I’m not complaining. Life is much more peaceful. I get all the busy notifications and contacts and news and all that on my own terms, when I’m ready, and it feels great not to be disturbed while I’m working or cooking or whatever.

Okay, consider my interest entirely piqued. How does it feel watching something like that? You seem like the kind of guy to go have a beer with. That’s a total mad lad move, I would watch something like that in a heartbeat, drop work and all, just go enjoy this absurd result of a gem the universe has bestowed upon us. Even better if it was me in there, not some internet genius I don’t know, but I kind of need to see Empire Strikes back but everyone’s the same guy and sounds the same now