This is a real problem with changing your mind.

I can’t believe how many times I’ve been told I’ve changed when I no longer found something funny or said something that I wouldn’t have in my teen years.

One of the longest-running opinions of mine that hasn’t been disproved yet is that many people just don’t really mature or age mentally, it seems; they just grow older, without accumulating much if any wisdom.

TLDR it’s like Don’t look up from 2020, but about the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2024

The original picture (in Russian) critisizes the people’s unwavering trust in authority, the childish belief that those in power are more capable in general and have some secret knowledge that makes their decisions properly weighed and correct, despite what the commonperson thinks (this, of course, does not apply to the out-group, like leaders of other nations).

The original was created shortly after the (bigger and overt) invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2024 by Russia. It’s supposed to hyoerbole and show the desperate attempts to act like everything is actually okay or preserve the less-distressing routine, primarily taken as a severe coping mechanism. Change is scary, especially when it’s so big and coming from an even bigger actor, and in many people, this results in this kind of defense where they try to suppress the irritant - in the case of the latest invasion of Ukraine, the people that oppose it and its perpetrators.

Feels weird seeing this as template in a completely different context, though. No offense.

This looks like a very classical and well-known case of executives copying each other.

That other company is doing layoffs and seems fine? Reports the line going up? Let’s do it, too!

The guys across the street are already implementing AI? Investors love it? Let do it, too! We may have taken a risk with blockchain, but this one is just sure to work better for us!

The big name is going for the money, predator-style, and they’re still afloat? Finally, we can cash out, too!

It’s usually a place where you’re not bombarding your brain with stimulation all the time, so your brain tries to use the downtime to work with all the information you’ve been putting into it.

This is actually a big part of learning anything, called diffused learning. Think of how you suddenly get something after a period of rest or not doing anything, some time after you’ve initially focused on a thing for some time - your brain has actually been using the downtime to structure the data and make better sense of it.

This is also why a lot of people that know how a human brain works suggest mediation and walks, especially without listening to music or podcasts, as well as spending little to no time reading, watching or stimulating your brain in any other way before bed. It needs that time, it’s crucial for development. Journaling helps here, too, because it’s both reflection and somewhat of a downtime.

Doing chores and not listening to anything counts, too.

But it’s all easier said than done in this age of constant hunt for one’s attention so they spend more time on your app, giving you more data to sell and more metrics to make the line go up (gotta keep the investors and stakeholders happy, can’t afford to not show constant growth).

I think it’s just true for the vast majority of countries, unfortunately. A country has to have a lot of things figured out and done right before it can regulate and train its police force so well that its population doesn’t nearly universally agree with the ACAB sentiment. Or at least doesn’t belive they’re all incompetent.

Who says the Linux community is crappy to newbies?

Don’t worry, we have that, too. ;) It’s a whole package!

Jokes aside, glad to help. Feel free to drop me a private message here or in Matrix if you have any more questions or something. Happy Linux’ing!

Not to mention Valve’s effort with Proton, allowing non-Windows gamers enjoy what they pay for on multiple platforms with great ease; their efforts have been massive for gaming on Linux, and without it, I wouldn’t have paid for a lot of games, earning their developers a whole lot of absolutely nothing.

Also the community hub, the workshop, the review system, the cloud saving, the functional wishlist, the gifting system, the shopping cart, the anti-cheat (you’re better of with it than without it), the discovery queue, the sales dedicated to specific types of games that actually help people discover games and drive the revenue up for the developers, the (I think) complete transaction history, the refunds system, the friends and the chat and profiles - and probably many more things that I’m either not aware of or couldn’t list off the tip of my tongue, combined with internal works that, again, do help the devs in the end.

Steam is much more than a place where one pays for a game to then simply download and play it. It’s much greater and more functional than that. None of the developers have to put their games on Steam - nobody forces Epic Games Store or GOG to be this subpar in comparison. Same way nobody forces gamers to use Steam. People use Steam because they love it - or because there’s no good-enough alternative, but that’s hardly Valve’s fault.

Steam charging 30% is not just worth it, but also surprising, given what putting your game on Steam gets you as the developer, and what it gets us, the players.

You can always dual-boot, i.e. have both Windows and Linux… or multiple Linux installations, if you please.

Start with Linux Mint for greater stability and familiarity. Soon enough you’ll learn that distributions are basically fancy pre-packaged collections and configurations of mostly the same applications (they’re also called packaged), which should make choosing your distribution a bit easier. There are differences, of course, but you’ll need a deeper knowledge and more of a nuanced list of requirements before it starts to matter much, so don’t stress about comparing them and choosing “the best” for you - you’ll always be able to switch the entire distribution or reconfigure your own to fit your specific needs surprisingly easily.

We should expect more of that with the upcoming UE5 titles. The devs that have devoted to releasing those seem to have very hard time optimising - they’ll likely expect us all to just own 4090s and still run their game with DLSS ultra performance or other fake frames.

STALKER 2 will have the janky soul we expect from the series, but this mostly, mostly due to engine choice and apparent attempts to visually impress the player. Or the investors.

Lemmy, too, has algorithms that determine what you see - how many upvotes a post has, how many comments, how recent, etc. The communities you subscribe to may have some high-quality, niche posts that you’re very likely to miss because they’re overshadowed by bigger, more active communities where posts simply gain more traction - RSS lets you circumvent that.

Catered feeds, for example.

You can create a feed that only includes Lemmy communities dedicated to a specific topic - like only those related to video games in some broad sense. Or a news-only feed.

It’s much more convenient that just subscribing to everything you’re interested in and then trying to filter out on our own (good luck not forgetting stuff), as you’re basically on the algorithm’s mercy as well.

What phones would you consider worthwhile in terms of price, i.e. those you can cheap out on, but not suffer the consequences of it being slow even in the simplest tasks?

One Android phone I had, Nokia 5.1, had to be replaced in less than 5 years because it often froze and lagged when I had to make or receive a phone call, open a single tab in some light-weight browser, etc.

I’m not a big fan of the smartphone industry and especially the reviewers because they seem to have a very twisted idea of a budget device. Or maybe I’m a cheapskate.

What if my phone isn’t supported by any ROMs? Is there an easier alternative to building it for your device on your own, following the given instructions, for example?

It’s not even about what we want, but what the stakeholders and decision-makers push for in order to rack in more profits.

The gaming industry was at its highest in terms of fun and variability and innovation when the industry was still figuring out best ways to make mad money, no matter how ethical or morally bankrupt - now they know they can use fear of missing out and predatory tactics to lure people into essentially gambling in a free-to-play online game, or pad out a singleplayer one with mechanics that contribute nothing to the gameplay, but manage to fool game journalists (the ones that weren’t already paid) into praising the game for its deep and branching loops, attracting more investor money or something.

A lot of people accuse us gamers of being a whiny crowd that cares too much and doesn’t like to have fun, but I guess yeah, we do care a little too much and that’s why so many of us try to actively influence the industry to go into a better direction when we vote with our wallets or write reviews or discuss games and practices in ways that can be hopefully seen by the industry’s decision-makers.

Not to say there isn’t just as many (if not more) gamers that don’t care enough and still pour money into games and practices that are ultimately making the industry worse, only to make the stakeholders and CEOs wealthier.

Given the predatory nature of our species, it’s gonna be a tough call moving your head without having your eyes snap to various objects around.

Can’t even begin to imagine.

Gottem balls in ya holes, haha gottem

oh shit

I should try something like that next time I try to go lucid. Somehow I only stuck to flying around and flying through walls whenever I knew I was dreaming… feels like a waste now that I think of firing guns or using telekinesis.

Star Citizen is a game that’s been in development forever, all while attracting money in forms of donations and sales of in-game ships. A single-player game by the same devs, Squadron 42, is a somewhat similar story, except that people can’t even play it yet (as far as I remember).

A whale is a tern that often means someone/something that brings you the substantial part of your revenue, so in case of the games above, whales would be the players that spend most money on the in-game ships or donations to support development.

The “whale fracking operation” in this context probably means that the entire trailer is a yet another bait for the community to go crazy and bring in the money so that the devs don’t starve and finally deliver finished products.

The punchline is, however, that it’s likely not gonna happen anyway lmao

name every hat

Fake science YouTubers are gonna milk contons hard.