cynar @ cynar @lemmy.world

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1,102

Joined

2 yr. ago

A home is (in many ways) a passive thing, we have long past that point. We have taken active control of too many of the life critical systems.

Valve are the only ones confident enough in their systems to do that. Valve's mindset seems to be that trying to lock people in is a losing strategy, long term. Instead they are just making sure that their offerings are better than anything else available. If done right, it has all the advantages of locking people in, with none of the downsides. It also combines with the perceived openness, which gains you a lot of credit with the geek community.

Microsoft are too reliant on lock-in to risk opening it up.

The upload is likely more of an issue. I was stuck with an annoying ASDL setup for a while. Download wasn't bad, but upload was extremely low. It also had no form of traffic shaping. As soon as one of our phones decided to back up our photos, the TCP return packets started getting lagged out. Basically webpages wouldn't load/timeout while anything was trying to upload.

Long pings are annoying. Insufficient upload can break a lot of 'modern' websites.

Blind spots for me.

I once got caught out in a new vehicle. A tree somehow managed to sneak past both my visual checks, and my reversing sensors. It put an impressive dent in my bumper. Damn trees are evil ninjas. The fact I was reversing had nothing to do with it!

Depending on your technical ability, it might be worth looking at something like this.

https://github.com/jthomas/ai-speed-camera

A camera aimed at the road can be used to gather numbers and speeds.

Proviso, I've not actually played with this one. It's a comparatively easy task for AI however, so I'd be surprised if there weren't several options.

If you've not encountered it yet, check out the steam deck.

To the novice, it's an excellent, simple to use, handheld console, with all their steam games as a bonus.

To the adventurous, a couple of clicks get you to a Linux desktop. You can install what you want (including emulators) and even plumb them back into the normal steam deck interface.

St Johns Wort can help. It's not as effective as prescription medication, but can help deal with mild 'low mood' type symptoms. It's comparable to the effect of a compression bandage on a joint. It will help with the equivalent of a pulled tendon, but will do next to nothing against the equivalent of a shattered elbow.

It is worth noting that there are 2 sorts of depression. Feeling sad, while unpleasant, is a lot easier to treat. It's generally caused by external stimulus. While this is harder to treat with drugs, it responds a LOT better to lifestyle changes. Basically, you need to figure out 2 things. What is making you sad, and how do you remove that effect. Implementing it can be an absolute bitch, but it's worth the effort.

The other sort of depression is proper "clinical depression". This is a chemical imbalance in the brain. It can be brought on by external stimulus, but it's not dependent on them. With this, your brain starts losing the ability to care. Motivation becomes a lot harder, and so the cost to payoff with positive activities gets worse. Internally, it's like having the chroma on a TV turned down. Everything gets muted and dull. Nothing is worth the effort required to do it. This sort of depression does need proper treatment. It's far more insidious and will grind you down. To beat it you need to change your very brain wiring. This can be done, but generally requires significant external support. If you could beat it alone, you likely wouldn't have become trapped within it.

I've experienced both. Neither are pleasant. Just keep in mind, both distort your thinking. Often, you can't fully trust your own thinking. Situations that seem impossible to cope with will just crumble when actually attacked. However, without enough motivation, you often won't even try.

An just to note, if you get to the point of intrusive, self destructive thoughts, that's when you need to seriously reach out to external help. Even if you think you can cope with them, they can send your mind spiraling downwards.

I'm guessing a lot of people don't use them optimally. They used them how they originally used a ICE car. Unfortunately, that means they are lugging a large battery around for no significant reason.

I would also query how the hybrids are being designed however. There should still be a saving due to efficiency gains, since the engine can run at optimal RPM most of the time. The values scream that the manufacturers have over optimised for performance, rather than efficiency.

Hiding it would work. You just have to make sure you don't miss any.

As for the danger. There are levels of exposure. You could leak something damning, but that could be played off as a 1 off. You might also be sitting on a huge amount of paperwork that proves it's endemic. That paperwork might also expose others who wanted things changed, but don't want to be outed. In this case, an initial leak can test the waters. The additional info can be rolled out, if it's needed, or the results justified.

E.g. Initial leak proves they did something nasty. The additional info massively backs it up, but also implicates a VP in its gathering. You might not want to show that hand until later, either to protect them, or to gather more info on their reaction.

One of the less mentioned aspects is that a dead man switch should be difficult, if not impossible to detect and neutralise. If you are to the level of being unalived, you're likely also a target for significant directed hacking. Such a dead man switch should be as resistant as possible to this. A simple email could let them detect and disable your dead man switch.

Apparently that quote was where a scriptwriter almost screwed Bush over.

The full phrase is "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Bush realised he was about to give the media a sound bite of him saying "Shame on me".

Given the context, it's far more understandable why he flubbed it.

I personally make use of the sonoff pow smart plugs, with Tasmota firmware. Though any Tasmota compatible smart plug with power readings will work.

The key thing is that with Tasmota, you can properly calibrate the readings. I have a friend with a high quality power meter. I used that to calibrate my smart plugs, they seem to track within a few % of the expensive one, once calibrated.

Depending on if you have access to an expensive meter or not, this will either be the best bet, or completely useless to you. Your local Hackspace might also be a good option for getting your hands on an expensive meter for an evening.

Adrenaline does weird things to your brain, when controlling a car. When startled, we default to getting low and stable. That's good when standing, however, it putting your feet flat on the ground is extremely bad when in the driver's seat.

I've actually witnessed this in action. A slip resulted in 2 cars written off, 1 pushed through several gardens. I can easily see someone doing something similar, with a Tesla. Alcohol would just amplify the effect.

The question is, how that trend develops. Right now, our footprint is dropping, due to efficiency improvements. At the same time, that might change again. E.g. large scale Comms between a home world, like earth, and other planets.

There is also the problem of older civilisations. Any approaching type 2 will be VERY visible, as the spectrum of their star changes. In terms of human history, we are a long way off. In ages of the universe scales, 10,000 years is practically a blip. We see no evidence of Dyson swarms or anything of that nature. An extra 13 billion years is a LONG time for no one to leave a detectable footprint.

I quite like cottage pie (or shepherds pie, depending on my mood). I've found mixing sweet potato into the mashed potato topping makes a HUGE difference. Only 1/4 to 1/3 is needed, anymore and it can be overpowering.

To further add to this. The concern is related to what is nicknamed "the great filter". The drake equation tries to estimate the number of communicating civilisations within range of us. Even with quite pessimistic terms, it still implies there should be lots of them. Therefore, a term is likely missing or wrong. This is known as the great filter.

If the great filter is behind us, that's fine. E.g. abiogenesis being vastly harder, and so less likely, than we think. However, it could also be ahead of us. If it is, it likely won't be far. We are already entering the era where we are detectable on an interstellar distance. Nukes and climate change have been raised as potential "great filters".

An alternative idea is that we are not typical. If we are one of the first civilisations to reach this level, at least locally, then we would see very little. An older universe makes this significantly less likely.

Ok, and how many of those points would be improved by going public?

People want sequels because they trust value to to them justice, not roll out stale cookie cutter versions like FIFA etc.

Would investors demand that valve take a smaller cut, or would they demand they take a bigger one in future?

Would they cut support for older games?

Would they add ads to the overlays?

Would you then be able to get "Steam Premium" for an ad free experience?

Please let me know what bit of steam's business model would be improved by them constantly chasing a higher profit every quarter?

Both line pockets. The difference is the focus. The shareholders for valve have been invited. You can't just decide to buy a bit of valve, then tell them what to do. Publicly traded shares mean that the people investing are often only interested in the value and dividends, anything that boosts that is good. If the company dies from it then who cares, they'll jump ship and invest elsewhere.

Valve's current mentality is that keeping the customers happy keeps the money flowing. It has now reached the point where compounding effects make up for the short term reduction in dividends.

Customers are happy, share holders are happy, and no-one can barge in, demanding a piece of the pie.

Stock market shareholders want constant growth from their investments. Enough of them also only care about short term growth, even at the cost of long term.

Valve, being privately owned, only answers to its own shareholders, no-one can just buy in and start demanding more profit seeking. They have collectively decided that slow but reliable growth is better. This results in them not actively pumping their customer base for ever more profit. They have no intention of killing their golden goose.

He is/was extremely camp. It's now strongly associated with being gay, but wasn't always. Austin Powers somehow managed to pull off macho-camp extremely well.