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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • Unless you are also complaining about it when white male characters are also surface-level, 2-D, copy-and-paste characters then all you are saying is “Only white male characters are allowed to be simple or a stereotype/trope.”

    What? Where am I saying that?

    Yes I would complain about all kind of stereotypes. Even the “white muscular tough guy” could be considered sexual objectification. IMO CoD is sometimes pretty gay coded.

    Lets be honest, not every game needs a complex and well written character, and that is fine. If they choose to go that route it doesn’t matter what race, religion, or gender the character is in the first place. So it doesn’t matter if they are a white male, a latina woman, or a black non-binary person.

    I wasn’t saying that. You can have games without a single character. Or where the character doesn’t really matter, because it just an empty shell you are driving around and not more.

    But IMO I mostly play story driven RPGs, where you are someone, and where you want the environment to react to you. It would be awesome if when you run around with colorful hair or tattoos, it would slightly change the disposition of the NPCs or cause them to comment on your appearance. Don’t let this stuff be just cosmetics, it should be more meaningful, and embedded into the game world.



  • Sure, but you might be missing the point of the post in the picture. This isn’t about solving wealthy inequality, it is about demonstrating how bad the inequality is.

    You have to develop better tax policies to fight it, policies that takes more money from the rich and feeds it into the government, for it to redistribute where it is needed most, the social security and welfare services.


  • Well, if everyone has equal shares, and trading them becomes as common as exchanging money, you could just use your shares (or fractions of it) to buy something at the grocery.

    I am sure that people will find solutions for what you describe, if they want to.

    But sure if you don’t effectively prevent developing wealth-inequality after you redistributed it, it will slowly move back to a similar situation, but not sure what your point here is, you cannot simply fix capitalism by redistributing wealth one time and not changing the underlying incentive structure. But that is not what is expressed here.


  • Well I worked for a while at a large international corporation that maintained (and AFAIK is still continuing) a managed Linux system, which worked well enough. And there where a lot more people, especially the people that were the most productive, interested in it.

    Sure that might have just been a nice island inside the larger company, but the people there were the internal consultants, which often had to pull other projects out of the gutter.

    If you over your specialists ways to use the tools they need, you will improve the whole company.



  • Linux on a corporate desktop is mostly about how well you know the IT guys and do they trust you. And of course the software stack.

    I would say it depends more on the commitment of the IT admins to support and manage a fleet of Linux workstations. There are Linux “Active Directory” servers, configuration provisioning tools, ways to centrally and automatically rollout updates, etc. It really depends on if the IT guys invest the same amount of effort to support them or not.



  • Wherever Stanley Parable is a game or not, isn’t really important. Someone could make the argument that open ended games, without a clear winning or completion state aren’t games, but instead simulations.

    Someone could argue that the winning or completion state of Stanley Parable is seeing all endings.

    Other people say that to be a game, you need some kind of adversary or challenge to overcome, but that would depend on the definition of challenge. Is figuring out what to do in order to see a ending you haven’t seen before a challenge? If not, that would exclude many other genres.

    So I just do not want to down the road of making useless distinctions, and be liberal in my understanding of words, and just ask if something is not clear.

    I just call Stanley Parable a game, because the creators call it a game, you can buy it and games similar to it for game consoles and on Steam under the game category. Wherever you can or cannot find enjoyment in experiencing it, does not depend on wherever it is a game or not.


  • I would say many games with procedural generated worlds, like Minecraft, No Man’s Sky, etc. Where the main task is deciding where do I go next, where do I settle down, maybe there is some better place over the next hill, next planet, etc.

    There are other games, where it is also sometimes not quite clear what to do next. Like games have a lot of progression and rebuilding of stuff that was done before because of it. Like Satisfactory, Factorio, etc.

    And on a more literal sense, where you actually redo the game over and over to progress, like The Stanley Parable or Outer Wilds.

    Some games have a very labyrinthine level design, where it also isn’t really clear what to do next, like Dark Souls, Subnautica, etc.

    Or environment puzzles, where you have to figure out how to progress, like the Myst series, Riven, etc.



  • Valve is private and already takes a 30% cut.

    Yes. That is rather high, but AFAIK the same on Xbox, PlayStation and GOG. Itch.io is on 10%.

    It’s not possible for valve OR epic to enshit according to the definition of the word.

    What do you mean by that? Enshittyfication is when companies try to offer a good platform first to reach many content producers and consumers and then, once the consumers and producers depend on the platform, it goes bad for them in order to favor profits of the company owners or stakeholders.

    Just because a company is private, it can still change to favor short term money extractions from all their customers.


  • GOG doesn’t need a launcher, because the games don’t have DRM. It is just nice to have, in order to keep games up to date.

    Steam, Epic, Origin and the Microsoft thing needs a launcher, because DRM. The non-optional part is what is annoying, it is not a choice, if you buy something there, you have to use their launcher software, that needs to run in the background all the time (Sure it doesn’t need to run all the time, but just having to start it in addition to the game, is annoying).

    With Steam being the first one to require a launcher, it was annoying at first, but became useful and people started considering it the standard game delivery solution. Now we need another one for Epic and all other stores that peddle DRMified games.

    If Epic would be just another store, where you buy and download games, nobody would complain, but Epic created (reinvented) an additional incompatible game delivery solution that required their launcher, that is what people are mostly annoyed about.

    If the industry would come together and create a vendor neutral and compatible software and game delivery mechanism, where people are free to choose where to buy their software and games, and with which launcher they want to keep it up to date, that would be awesome, but sadly capitalism favors short sighted, wasteful and monopoly building competition instead of cooperation.




    • Sometimes you need to move a thing that is oddly shaped and doesn’t fit within the confines of an enclosure

    Like what? And is that a common use case?

    • Depending on what you’re hauling, you may want separation between the cab and the payload. Like if I’m moving dirt, I’d rather not have it rolling around my cabin

    Or just put down a nylon sheet, put the dirt on top, fold the nylon sheet over it and bind it down. Now it is covered under and over and will not fly around.

    In most cases I guess people will just buy prepackaged earth in bags. That also doesn’t fly around.

    Sure, if you are one of the very few people that work in the woods or on a field, where this common use case, then alright. But that would not explain why those cars are so common.

    • Easier to clean, just take a hose to it without needing to worry about soaking the cabin

    Buy a bus with removable carpet, then you can just hose it down as well. Many buses have a small step, which separates the cabin from the back, so water will not flow into the cabin.

    • Access isn’t limited to just the door, which can be useful when unloading something

    There are many different rear door types and sliding side doors on the side that provide ample and easy access. This isn’t difficult or complicated.

    That didn’t convince me that pickup trucks are not a very specialized vehicle for just some uses, while transporters and mini busses are much more useful for all kinds of purposes. Be it furniture, tools, sport equipment, electronics and other sensitive equipment, and people. While also being good at hauling the occasional dirty stuff, if you just put something underneath.



  • What is up with those pickup trucks anyway? Why do so many people in the U.S. (and elsewhere) buy them?

    Everything that you put in the back is subjected to weather and one of first additions people buy is a cover.

    Compare that to a mini bus or transporter, you can transport as much or more than with a pickup truck, protected from weather, and you can add or remove chairs, if you need to transport people.

    If you have a transporter, you can also much easier furnish the inside with racks etc, to improve space use.