blindsight @ blindsight @beehaw.org

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753

Joined

2 yr. ago

This is a bit of a side point, but this quote seemed off base to me:

"People are paying for these games!," he exclaimed. "This is not happening for ... books."

50 Shades of Grey was an all-human alternate-history Twilight fanfiction that was largely plagiarised.

There are also entire genres that are becoming successful for independent authors, mostly self-publishing on Kindle Unlimited like LitRPGs (basically fantasy novels with videogame-like systems) or Jane Austen variations (like Pride & Prejudice retold slightly or very differently).

I think the Long Tail of the Internet is changing a lot of industries, creative or otherwise, not just indie games.

Nah. The need to regularly change passwords is unnecessary. If you use a sufficiently long password, unique passwords for every site, and 2FA/MFA for "important" logins, then you're good.

Businesses requiring their staff to regularly cycle passwords is outdated and makes their systems less resilient, since it opens more angles for social engineering attacks or password security carelessness.

That was my thought. This gives plausible deniability that it's not because of the Republicans and is, instead, about EV market fundamentals.

MAM has, effectively, no ratio requirements at all since it's so easy to get points. There's some system to reward seeding low-seed torrents and large-file-size torrents, and to stay in good standing you only need to seed for 72h. Hell, they give out freeleech tokens like candy, too.

If you start by downloading some low-seed books to keep the swarm alive, you'll have enough points to buy VIP status indefinitely. And because of that system, basically everything on the site is available and downloads in seconds. It takes me longer to transfer audiobook files to a phone than it takes to download.

I might have said this before ICE started kidnapping people off the streets with no due process. If AB became American, how would BC connect with the rest of Canada? Ain't no way anyone is going to drive around, and flying over is too expensive.

I'm not crossing the American border anytime soon; likely never again in my life.

By definition, it is. 85-115 is the 1 standard deviation range for IQ and encompasses ⅔ of the population (roughly). So, 115 is "average" or "high average".

115-130 is above average, while 70-85 is below average ("mild intellectual delay" used to be the term I think? Not sure if that's still current). 145+ was "genius" and 160+ was "super genius", back in the day; I assume those terms aren't used anymore, but I haven't looked into it. IIRC, about 97% of the population is 70-130 IQ.

My brother is a "genius"; I am not. (I was never told my exact score on the IQ test found for me as a child, but I know the range, and in both our cases came from a psychologist).

I'm more "successful" by most standard measures of success, but that might have more to do with his (undiagnosed and unsupported) autism than his IQ. (Career , house, family, etc.) In math, for example, he could get 100s without effort, until university. I could get 100s with significant but not extreme effort, or coast and get 80s-90s until university. We both got top scores on math contests at the local (academic) school level.

I don't really think IQ is very valuable for having a "good" life. Emotional regulation, introspection, mindfulness, and other soft skills are more important, imho, and I'm actively working on trying to build more capacity in those areas, and they're leading to more success for me than my speed at learning a narrow subset of things (what IQ measures).

I'm dealing with a lot of harm from how constantly being labeled "smart" was damaging for me, paired with my at-the-time undiagnosed ADHD. I struggle with a lot of imposter syndrome, need for external validation, and oscillating sense of self worth.

TL;DR: "Emotional intelligence" trumps IQ for life skills and general happiness, equanimity, and "success".

Isn't a cracked (old, I think?) Kindle the only way to pirate KU/DRM titles? At least, that's what I recall from the last time I looked into it. There's a book I really wanted to format shift from KU since Google TTS was fucking up all the proper nouns, but I gave up. (It was an obscure book that isn't available anywhere pirated.)

Yeah, I agree. I'm not at all interested in what score they gave the game; I'm more interested in what they liked/didn't like and, more importantly, why they felt that way. Then I can get a sense if the game will match my tastes/interests.

I think about the 5 games for $5 bundles with amazing indie games whenever this comes up.

You can still get deals like that from Humble, Fanatical, and a few others, but nothing like that on Steam anymore. I don't really understand why people buy so many games on Steam, tbh. 90% of my game purchases are bundles.

Then again, I'm a very patient gamer who prefers short and targeted indie games to AAA games, so that's probably most of the answer. I'm cool waiting 5 years for a game to be cheap. I have literally thousands of games I would be interested in playing sometime, so it's only the very rare game that I'll buy the year it's released.

Same experience for me on the other side of the country in small-town BC. I had a minor non-urgent issue that needed imaging. I just walked in and got it done immediately after my doctor appointment. It took me as long for me to change into the hospital flasher "clothing" as I spent in the waiting room.

That sounds really cool. Thanks for sharing; I hadn't heard about this one previously.

I was gaming exclusively on the Deck from January to the start of December...

...But Path of Exile 2 I'm streaming from my desktop to get acceptably clear visuals and smooth framerates. I'm back heating my house with my desktop.

I was wondering, lol. My numbers are very inflated, too.

What's funny about mine is that almost all of my "Windows" playtime is actually from streaming to my Deck, too.

Holy shit, that's huge. I was trying to wrap my head around those numbers.

Russia is about 3½ times Canada's population, so 30K deaths is, per capita, equivalent to about 8.5K deaths in Canada. That's higher than all-cause mortality in Canada from ages 1-35. Just from HIV.

Whoa. That's not good.

Or, another perspective:
More than 1% of Russians are infected with HIV. (Estimated 1.5mm out of ~140mm.)

Regardless, they need to have it in their terms of service that they can host the file, encrypted or otherwise, on their servers and reserve the right to serve the files to other users.

But yes, that's true that they can't necessarily access the files they're hosting/serving.

To be fair to Discord, it has to work that way. They serve the files to you anywhere in the world on any device you use, don't they? That requires hosting the content.

But it could very well be used for other purposes, too, of course.

1080p would also be great for streaming from a desktop.

There are university classes analyzing children's picture books. It's not about the difficulty of the book, it's about the level of the analysis.

1984 is quite unique as a piece of fiction, since almost a third of the book is an appendix about language and history. It's an excellent book to analyze.

Loving it.

On the Steam Deck, it was playable, but I couldn't find settings that looked good and were visually clear, so I finally got around to setting up Sunshine and Moonlight (in-house streaming) and it's amaze balls.

I'm using a script that switches my desktop to a virtual monitor that's the Steam Deck's native resolution, and I recently upgraded my house to a WiFi 6 mesh network, so it's working almost flawlessly. (I often get crashes on startup, but it's never taken more than 3 tries, then no issues.)

I'm still only in act 1 (limited playtime) but I'm so excited to be playing PoE again, and PoE2 is perfect for playing with a controller.

I'm a cis Canadian and I'm terrified for everyone in the US. Even the ignorant masses who viewed for him. Project 2025 is going to dismantle American democracy, and with a stuffed supreme court, there are no remaining impediments to reverse this for a generation, until it's too entrenched to change. If the USA lasts that long.

Literally wondering if an American civil war, or breaking apart into smaller countries, will be coming.

Longer term, terrified what this will mean for anthropogenic climate change and the world my children will inherit. (A climate-science denier is going to be the PM of Canada this time next year, too, and many are already provincial premiers.)

I didn't think this was possible, tbh. I don't understand how 51% of Americans can think the "grab-her-by-the-pussy" con artist is the best choice for president. He's literally told them, repeatedly, what he's going to do and they don't care, don't pay attention, or don't believe him. I can't even.

I'm going to go bury my head in the sand. No more news for me for the next long while. This isn't good for my health.