Crotaro @ Crotaro @beehaw.org

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10

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251

Joined

2 yr. ago

I can see how most people would be turned off by having yet another website have their email address (even if it's honestly just for sending them the newsletter), but, at the risk of sounding like an advertising agent, there are solutions to that.

On the general topic: I feel for anyone who is trying to get into journalism and stuff like voice acting right now. Any article that reads a little weird and too stiff (same with voice-over in YouTube videos), I almost immediately scoff off (is that a word?) as being AI-generated and not worth my time. I wouldn't be surprised if, doing this, I already skipped one or two pieces of media that were actually from humans but those humans were still novices in their field.

Oh Germany, how I love your rules. A protest against the AfD in Hamburg was dismissed by the police because of the announced 10,000 people between 50,000 and 100,000 actually showed up.

Leider nicht geil :c

Ooh it sounds like it has great potential, once the bugs are ironed out!

Thank you, I'm sure that in the next days my father and his friends will post those type of memes ("If globe is warming, how snow cold now?") in the WhatsApp group chat

That last half-sentence really isn't in good faith. Just in the past couple years Valve made three "beloved products" that come to my mind immediately. Valve Index (the VR set), SteamDeck (the handheld PC) and the Steam Controller (although that one could be a bit older than "just in the past couple years").

Like @Pea666@feddit.nl , I'm unfamiliar with the boardgame but from what i see and read in the rulebook, it seems very fun.

I am a bit confused about game-ending scenarios because I did read that a set of cards determines the objective (for each player?), to increase the replayability. But it also states that you can win either by destroying the entire fleet or by having the highest score (hostile ships destroyed) after six rounds with no victor. If it is the case, that you have objectives but you can also win by having more points after six rounds, I'd just get rid of the "win after sox rounds with highest points" clause. If there are no set objectives, I would sit down with your son and come up with interesting and fun objectives that, upon completion, declare the winner instead of this "technically you can win by killing one ship and running away for five more turns", because that does sound like a boring base rule.

Thanks, your obvious question prompted me to take another look at that issue. My first thought was "Yes, but it's not quite there because....actually, why?" Since I couldn't come to a good answer anymore (because by now the AFD really seems just as bad as the NPD always was), I did some digging through the constitution-equivalent, the Grundgesetz.

1. Art. 20 specifies that Germany is a democratic and social state and clause 4 states that any German citizen has the right to resistance/opposition against anyone who seeks to abolish that order/construct, if other means do not work out (it's not specified what kind of "resistance", so armed resistance is also on the table, especially with the wording "if other means do not work out")
2. Art. 21 states that political parties can be formed freely and that their inner structure must equate democratic base values. It also says that political parties which (in their stated goals or their behaviour) seek to disrupt or disable the free, democratic foundational order, or endanger the German Federal Republic, not only are illegal but also may not receive governmental funding.
3. Art. 26 states that actions which seek (and are able) to disrupt the peaceful coexistence of the countries (internationally speaking), especially the preparation of an offensive war, are illegal.

So, why is the AFD still not banned? I read through two or three news articles and it seems to boil down to a couple good arguments:

1. Currently the AFD has been given the classification of right-wing extremist, which could possibly threaten the democratic order. This allows the German intelligence agencies to insert so called Vertrauenspersonen (basically spies), whose function it is to gather as much evidence as possible and needed to support a ban of the AFD.
2. Evidence may only be gathered before, not during, a trial procedure. So unless you are absolutely confident that you have more than enough (or at the very least exactly enough) evidence, you shouldn't initiate a ban-trial.
3. If a ban-trial fails, it could give the AFD additional support because "if the government, despite using literal spies, couldn't find evidence to ban us, we can't be that bad!"
4. Those ban-trials can take multiple years to go through. During that time, the AFD could gain the support of impressionable, but not yet swayed, people by claiming "Omg, we told you! They are trying to ban us for speaking the truth! Please, help us against the oppressors!" (if you've seen the scene in Revenge of the Sith, where Mace Windu wants to kill Palpatine then and there, because he's too dangerous and Palpatine goes "See, Anakin? I told you, the Jedi are evil!", its basically that scenario)

I would be so happy to be rid of the AFD, but unfortunately it seems to not be a quick process :c

Oh, People Make Games have not one but two vids on Valve? I never noticed that, thanks. I'll watch them after work and possibly (because PMG really are good at the whole journalising stuff) change my stance on it.

I have only had two AirBnB experiences in the past years (one of which was just a week ago). Maybe it's just different in Germany or I got lucky, but our AirBnB hosts were always available (and actual locals instead of unknown house moguls) for questions, offered very decent apartments (especially for the price) and were at most half as expensive as the cheapest hotel in the same area (not even gonna mention the fact that getting a hotel with two dogs is hard to impossible anyway).

Yes, there was the sudden cleaning fee of 20€ and the stupid AirBnB fee but it only bumped it up from around 60€ per night to around 80€.

Reading the entire article, it seems that they still want to tread very carefully with this whole AI ordeal. Valve isn't just opening the floodgates, as the title would make it seem.

While yes, a healthy dose of skepticism is good to have, I think if I had to trust someone to navigate AI in gaming in the gamers' favour, I would pick Valve. Or maybe I'm overestimating Gabe's involvement in the happenings of the legal department's section that is currently responsible for AI stuff.

EDIT: Shame on me, @princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone , I think I had already seen the PMG video about the Steam Marketplace and its lootboxes and the gambling sites. But because I neither play these titles nor participate in the marketplace, I forgot that these serious issues exist. And the documentary concerning actually working at Valve rocked my stance back and forth. On one hand, I love the concept, but there are big problems here as well.

Once more, a genuine thank you for pointing me at these two video documentaries, even if I had already seen one of them.

Could you elaborate, please? I tried looking it up and I only found a post from 2010, asking if VBA for Access and Excel will stop being supported in 2012" and a couple articles that state how much MS apparently dislikes VBA (the lack of some feature-updates are shown as evidence for that).

I currently rely on a couple VBA scripts at my job that I wrote myself. I understand that they likely won't just stop working tomorrow (too many companies use VBA in important documents), but if it's already clear what will replace VBA sooner or later, I'd like to know so I can get a headstart, kind of.

Wow thanks, I recently installed OsmAnd~ and found it kind of clunky to have to actively look for, and remember to fill in, missing map data.

This gets me to walk new dog walk routes, too!

Thanks for the clarification!

I will squoosh and squeeze him, since he enjoys that more generally lol

That's sad, but at least they made the choice themselves.

I'll check out Shadow Gambit,though! It sounds really fun!

Might be a bit wrong on the piracy instance, but I never regretted paying for the Square Home Launcher (one-time purchase). I just absolutely love the Windows Phone style layout so much more than what other launchers offer.

Similar to what @azerial@lemmy.dbzer0.com described for the Total Launcher, adding or editing stuff requires you to enter a special "Edit mode" and it might seem unnecessary at first to ever leave this mode. It's just so nicely customizable and thanks to cube-"folders" and regular folders nested into the cube sides, I have about everything I regularly use on one page.

The initial prologue cutscene in Okami. It's about fifteen minutes and unskippable. But, the lore being delivered by textbox, you can't just do something else because you have to press a button to advance the text.

I love that game dearly. If I had to pick one game as my most favourite of favourites, this would be it. But please, let me skip the first fifteen minutes once I, iunno, progressed beyond the tutorial.

Assuming that the premise is, they will actually magically play it even if they would usually go "Oh...nice...", I would give Sky: Children of Light to a former classmate who was (haven't talked to him in 6 years) the sort to throw his controller when he lost particularly bad in Call of Duty.

Sky is kinda like Journey (made by the same developer as well), but with an increased multiplayer- and social experience, to keep it short.

Ooh sounds pretty neat, thanks!

Oh hey that was a short but interesting read. Not sure if that fits me, but I honestly don't care that much about the specific term/label. I am what I am and don't want to spend a lot of time just to try and fit all kinds of niche labels onto me, if that makes sense.