Pigeon @ Lowbird @beehaw.org

Posts

10

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205

Joined

2 yr. ago

I specifically avoid most gaming sites and forums because I hate this type of casual spoiling. I don't want to have to avoid beehaw gaming too.

I know a lot of people don't care about spoilers, and that's a-okay and a valid way to enjoy games. But surprises are very important to the way I enjoy them. I hardly ever replay games either, for this reason. I totally understand why some people don't care at all, but nonetheless, spoilers like this do affect my enjoyment of games. This one admittedly probably less so than most, but even so, I'd have rather not known ahead of time.

Edit: ah, apparently this was part of a marketing campaign? That's more forgiveable, then, for people to be chatting about it, though I still don't want to know.

I dunno, if you use them infrequently, having to string out a cord shouldn't be any more of a hassle than for a vacuum, no?

And if you're buying a cheap, probably-won't-use-this much tool, I think you can get better power out of a corded tool for the price, which seems like a god tradeoff to me.

I think it doesn't truly mean "Japanese RPG's", even today. There are lots of Japanese games that don't get called JRPG's even though they are RPG's or have those elements (there is ambiguitiy in what an RPG is too, admittedly), like Resident Evil games and Dark Souls games and Zelda games and Pokemon. Dark Souls especially, since they have the character building and stats as well as the roleplaying.

People don't call Elden Ring a JRPG because JRPG is supposed to mean one thing but really it carries a lot connotations about mechanics, graphics, and the derogatory connotations about quality.

And Pokemon! Pokemon is very clearly a JRPG in the mechnical and graphics sense, but it doesn't typically get called a JRPG. I think this is because of the negative connotations of JRPG, personally.

And on the other hand we have things like Chained Echoes, which is in all mechanical and graphical ways is a textbook JRPG, except it's not made in Japan at all, but rather inspired by Japanese games.

I agree this is complicated, but I found Jimquisition's video on the topic really persuasive. I recommend that one even for people normally don't jive with Jimquisition's style.

Within any group, there will always be some who don't find a term offensive even while others do, but I think probably the best outcome in this case is for the general populace to move away from the term, while leaving space for Japanese video game devs to reclaim it and use it themselves if they wish to.

Maybe it will truly lose the negative connotations with time, but I don't think we're there yet, when people are only just starting to sometimes acknowledge it ever had those connotations in the first place.

Granted, most genre words are vague and confusing as hell - JRPG isn't special in that sense - but most don't have the racist history/implications or negative connotations. And when I try to think of another genre label that is used as an insult, the first that comes to mind is Visual Novel, which is another one that is heavily associated with Japan.

Valve isn't showing us their methodology (sample size, sample selection mechanism, rate at which people decline the surveys, how the hardware information is gathered by steam once the survey is agreed to, etc), so it's hard to say whether or not a 0.52% increase is accurate, or whether would meet the p-value test of being less than 5% likely to be the result of chance.

Statistically speaking, sometimes if you flip a coin ten times, it'll land as heads ten times in a row, even though every flip could go either way. Based on that particular sample of 10 coin flips, it'd look like the chance of a coin landing heads up is 100% - obviously not the case in reality. Another time, you might flip a coin ten times and get ten tails, seemingly the exact opposite and equally dramatically wrong result. Larger sample sizes reduce the risk of such a coincidence occurring across the entire sample, and P-values are helpful for checking the likelihood of whether a fluke such as this may have affected the result of a study.

Even when studies and surveys do have p < .05 (aka, the likelihood that the result is purely caused by chance is less than 5%, aka statistically significant), there's still that up-to-5% chance that the result is just random luck affecting the sample. And p-values don't account for things like sample bias or other methodological errors, like if valve were preferentially serving the survey to more Linux users than Valve users, or if Linux users are just more likely to respond to the steam survey (because they want that Linux number to go up so Linux gets more support) than Windows users, and that kind of thing. Or for p-hacking shenanigans.

All that said, a small increase makes sense intuitively if it's including the steam deck, and especially considering the unpopularity of Windows 11, and especially since I'm given to understand the Linux numbers have been slowly increasing for a while? But even so, the point I'm making here is I don't think we know enough to definitively say that it's not just luck.

That's a good point. There are a heck of a lot of people primarily on game pass, now, especially.

I also wonder if they account for people who dual-boot Linux and Windows, and who game only on Windows or who use both depending on the game.

Does a steam deck owner with a Windows desktop gaming PC turn up twice in these numbers, in both the Linux and the Windows users count, do you think? Because then the Linux number would go up 1 without the Windows number going down.

Edit: aside from this, SteamOS and desktop Linux distros aren't necessarily comparable enough to be throwing together in the same category. A lot of the things that make SteamOS a smart choice for the deck, where they can control and optimize for the hardware, don't apply to desktops the same way.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when Windows 12 comes out, since people are unhappy with 11 and thus maybe more willing to jump ship, and Microsoft has a tendency to alternate between releasing good and bad OS's.

Your own friend group is the definition of selection bias, though - at the least, they know you and probably have similar interests/hobbies to some degree, and I daresay you've probably said something about Linux to them before.

And there's a whole, active subreddit for people who put windows on steam deck - apparently the initial problems people had with it have been getting ironed out more and more.

I don't know which is more common but I'd need to see actual data, either way.

The user experience, and required troubleshooting, is still obnoxious. Even on the steam deck it's obnoxious. It's just not reliable, much as people hype it up. You'll have to do a lot of troubleshooting at unexpected times when you really don't want to be troubleshooting or might be pressed for time.

If you have an nvidia graphics card you can expect trouble with drivers, too.

If you have Windows 10 pro (or I think there's a workaround to enable it if you just have the Home version), you can go into the group policy editor and disable those annoying pop-ups. You can even disable auto-updates, if you want to, or control how they work. And you can disable most of their telemetry. Windows 10 has a lot of flexibility if you know where to look/figure it out. They make it annoying to deal with, yes, but it has never been has horrible as Linux is for me whenever I've tried it, and it's actually reliable.

Edit: also worth mentioning, depending on the games you play, a lot of multiplayer games' anti-cheat systems do not work on Linux at all, so you can't play those games on it.

Worth noting, you can get a diagnosis and then choose who you do or don't disclose it to, including doctors to whom it is not relevant.

Game Pass is great if you want to try a lot of different games and see what you like without having to do research or worry about whether or not a particular game is worth your $$. Especially if you like playing small indie games and tend not to replay them anyway - this way, $10-15 and you can play multiple new and old indie games for the price of one (or less), plus try a few of the big games, and maybe get surprised by games you didn't think you'd like but gave a shot because they were included. And if you do want to replay any eventually, by then, the price will have dropped and you've still saved $$.

This is offset however by the fact it's still buggy and frustrating as all hell sometimes. I hate the way it works with virtual drives. And it doesn't work for stuff you want to mod or play the dlc for (no way no how am I actually buying a game/dlc on that platform).

I don't think so, at least not usually. If anything, regular dry pet food is closer to a scam, especially cat food - wet food is just a lot better for them.

Regular (especially dry) petfood also uses a lot of meats and plants that a cat would normally never eat in their regular diet. And this meat is usually the cheapest, least desirable scraps from farms, because pet food isn't usually subject to the same safety and testing regulations as human food.

Meat based on fish can contain contaminants from ocean pollution (like mercury) that accumulates in the food chain and (I speculate) might be a bigger concern for some pets than others, like if they have kidney problems that make it harder to filter out toxins.

Prescription pet food can be used to address a vitamin deficiency, to avoid an ingredient the cat can't digest, to add more fiber to help with digestion, to avoid an allergen, or so on, just like a human diet.

The vet should tell you why it's prescribed in a particular case, though, especially if you ask. If they can't then maybe I'd be doubtful, personally.

Edit: if in doubt, get a 2nd opinion from another vet, like you would with human doctors.

The article says there was a fix for a specific set of server CPUs, but not for consumer 3000 and 4000 series CPUs until December-ish.

They're just introducing the population size of the cou try, for comparison with the number of people affected. Saying "a country of over 34 million people" is a quick way to do that, though it could've been rephrased as "Peru - which has a popularion of over 34 million people -" or something.

Point is, it's just an incidental redundancy in the way they phrased their delivery of the population number, I think, not an attempt to tell people "Peru is a country."

What the fuck. What the fuck.

And just look at all the young, horrible GOP house reps. Or the young neo-lib reps. They're certainly no better than the old ones.

An age limit would just result in the same exact situation as now, but with everyone younger.

The house and senate are old and terrible, but they're not terrible because they're old. The system just happens to promote both things.

I don't think they agree with that lower limit either. They didn't say anything to make me think it's not included in the age limits they're talking about.

Some people also young better than others, though. There are 18 year olds in the world I've have no problem voting for, if I could.

But yeah, a lot of age limit sentiment seems to be just straight up just ageism to me, as if every person becomes senile as soon as they turn 80, or even just 70 or 60, which just isn't remotely true. Intelligence can remain sharp as ever, and sometimes elderly wisdom is indeed a thing. And every politician is surrounded by aids who will notice if something starts to go wrong.

I'd be sort of okay with a very high age limit, like 90, I guess, but on the whole I agree term limits are better anyway.

The problem with a super cool item of clothing is you then have to make the rest of your outfit cool enough to match, or you look like a goof. Chunibyo territory.

It's doable but requires effort and wardrobe expansiveness.