Lurker > adjl

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Bees get treated better than human serfs a couple hundred years ago, vegans are morons.

It varies a lot from beekeeper to beekeeper. Some honey producers treat bees pretty poorly, others genuinely care about them and give them vastly better lives than they'd have if they were in the wild. For somebody who does care about their welfare, it's certainly possible to do some research and find some more ethically produced stuff, but I can understand why somebody would just skip that effort and avoid honey altogether.

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Mead posted...

not YOUR cows maybe

Actually, they are in my cows, but that's just because I had a cow carcass modified to have a refrigerator inside of it and I store all of my dairy in there. I just presumed most other people would not have done such things and therefore could not make the same claim.

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Yogurt and cheese aren't in cows.

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Yellow posted...

Secure your Google account, use 2 step verification and have your phone and e-mail connected, use a random password for every account. I don't believe I've ever heard of a properly secured Google account getting hacked. The same way there's never been a documented identity compromised on the tor network that wasn't user error.

That you haven't heard of it happening doesn't mean it won't ever happen, especially if "just rely on Google to log into all of your stuff for you" becomes a common mentality and Google ends up falling victim to a major security breach. It really doesn't matter how secure that one point is, having a single point login is significantly more risky than having multiple points.

Yellow posted...

If you have your passwords in an unencrypted txt file then you might as well only have one (the one that accesses your computer remotely or otherwise, the second you get a virus you're compromised)

If you have your passwords on a piece of paper on your desk you can lose the paper and all your accounts. Or someone can find it and access everything you own.

Alternatively, I can limit myself to a small enough number of accounts that I can memorize all of my passwords and not need to store them anywhere. That's the most secure option of all, which is why I so resent efforts to erode its viability by fragmenting services like Epic is trying to.

FourthDimension posted...

Competition is generally good for the consumer, which is highlighted by the fact that I now own Civ VI, and I didn't have to pay s***.

That's less an example of competition being good and more an example of Epic giving you a gift to try and convince you to ignore how noncompetitive they are. Competition is good for the consumer if it drives companies to provide better services, but Epic's chosen to throw money around instead of trying to provide a better service, which is not a healthy way to compete.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

That is a level of logic that just hurts my brain...
A=X
B=X
C=X
A=/=B
A=/=C
B=/=C

Solve for X, well good luck with that...

A=Isoceles
B=Scalene
C=Equilateral
X=Triangles

Basically, it's saying that the the elements of the trinity all fall under the umbrella concept of "God," but are distinct enough from each other to be considered separate concepts.

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Whenever it's a Nook Miles+ objective. I also used the feature for hint arts in Mario Odyssey, which I'm pretty sure is exactly what they intended, and when I was working my way through Xenoblade Chronicles 2 I made a point of screenshotting the tree of combo options that followed each elemental special so I could reference them easily. Other than that, I've got the occasional shot that I though looked good or was fun, but not many.

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Firefox on my desktop and phone, Chrome on my laptop. Dunno why I went with Chrome on my laptop, but that's how I do.

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blu posted...

When you process dodge do you think b to dodge?

Not usually, but I do reach for whatever button I instinctively associate with the action I want. The problem with Dark Souls and Monster Hunter is that they are very similar games (combat-wise, anyway. The overarching game structure is very different), and I started them at around the same time, so I was trying to develop the same instinct for two different button locations (usually with very little time to process that, given the nature of dodging), made worse by the fact that if I did try to think about which button I needed to make up for the underdeveloped instinct, I couldn't remember where the button was. It just didn't work well, so I focused on one of them (MH, as it turned out) and went back to the other one later, when I didn't have that confusion.

It also wasn't just dodging. I was hitting X/Y for attacks in Dark Souls and R/L for them in MH, neither of which worked very well (more so in Dark Souls because one relies so much more on staggering there, whereas it just meant a missed opportunity in MH), dodging instead of opening doors, and all kinds of other control mix ups. It just worked better to separate the two games.

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LinkPizza posted...

Try to keep in at a lower number at a time? That's a good idea. I get into too many at once. Though, switch helps since I can play it anywhere...

I like the focus, though I also like having a bit of variety, which is especially important these days where I have so much free time. Having the games be too similar can also lead to control confusion, like the time I tried playing Dark Souls alongside Monster Hunter. B is the dodge button for both games, but the B button is in different places on the 360 and WiiU controllers. I don't think I need to explain any further why I quickly stopped trying to play both of them at once.

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I generally focus on 2-3 games at a time. Anything more than that and some of them inevitably get neglected to the point where it's hard to pick them up again. I usually try for fairly different games, too. For a while it was Dark Souls 3 and Animal Crossing, but I started up a new modded Minecraft world and Dark Souls has taken a bit of a back seat (Minecraft and Animal Crossing have more overlap, though where I'm playing a modded game, there are enough differences to keep things interesting).

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I suspect you'd see a similar correlation with any well-conceived diet plan. Putting any effort into eating well (provided it's a viable diet) will tend to have positive effects on the body and mind, and doing so successfully requires a certain degree of intelligence in the first place, to say nothing of the financial means to support it (SES being pretty strongly correlated with IQ).

Granted, the article linked seems to be supporting the opposite conclusion from that stated in the topic title, so this probably isn't a very serious topic.

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agesboy posted...

free with optional ingame purchases

there's a subscription service, you can purchase more inventory slots and storage, and you can use money to roll the gacha (which is almost entirely fashion)

the only thing i'd say is almost a required buy is 50 more inventory slots eventually, which is around ten bucks during sales. the subscription's main draws are mitigated in necessity these days; you can sell to other players via a pass that's not terribly hard to get from a free currency gacha that's farmable, and priority block access doesn't matter as much as it used to before multi-block matching. if you want to do EVERYTHING on one character, another ten bucks will let you get a mag for all attack types

for the most part, people spend money in this game on cosmetics.... or to sell those cosmetics to make ludicrous amounts of money. almost all cosmetics are tradable in this game

you can get by as a casual without spending money very easily, and the game is ultra casual friendly

Nifty. Playing for free except for spending some money expanding my stash after playing for a good long while is exactly how I played PoE, and I was quite happy with how well that went. Good to know.

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Yellow posted...

In 2020 creating a new account is as easy as clicking the "sign in with Google" button.

Unless you don't want everything you own locked behind one password, given that that is generally a very bad idea. It's fine for stuff like forums that don't matter, but when there's actually money on the line? Not so much.

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Sarcasthma posted...

Snipper Clips seems pretty fun.

Seconded. Snipperclips is a blast.

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Most people with Prime have it for the shipping and don't pay much attention to the video aspect of it. It wouldn't surprise me at all if most of the people excited about Avatar being on Netflix didn't know it was on Prime Video because they rarely - if ever - explored its library.

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I mean, physical media is itself a sort of DRM. If you don't have it, no game for you. A few publishers released their own no-CD patches, often for the purpose of facilitating LAN play (Starcraft comes immediately to mind), but the standard was usually to not let people play a game unless they possessed a copy of it. In many ways, DRM for digital games seeks to emulate that, since without it, a single purchased copy can potentially be played by any number of people. It very often ends up being needlessly restrictive in its efforts to achieve that, including eliminating second-hand ownership and interfering with people's ability to play games they have purchased, and when that happens it's worse than the limitations inherent in physical media, but it's very much not the case that we've ever had no restrictions on our ability to play games. Those restrictions just used to come from basic physical reality instead of a publisher's rules.

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Krow_Incarnate posted...

The hassle of having an account in the first place was a pain. Steam's just as bad as Epic.

Having at least one account is inevitable, as bothersome as it might be. You can't have digital shopping and distribution without tying those purchases to a single person, and having an account is the simplest way to do that. It's a pain, but it's a pain with some kind of purpose, which makes it more tolerable. The Epic Store, however, serves no such purpose except to access exclusives that they chose to throw money at to secure said exclusivity. Nothing about it is necessary, nor are they offering a genuinely competitive service to offset the inconvenience of the additional account.

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LinkPizza posted...

I love X the most, but havent finished.

Honestly, you're not missing much by not finishing X. The ending of the story leaves a lot to be desired (like at least one sequel, if not 2-3. They answer basically nothing and raise several new questions), though I suppose it might unlock some additional sidequests (I really don't remember). Most of X's appeal is in the worldbuilding and exploration, which it does an excellent job of.

PK_Spam posted...

The DLC comes with a bunch of free Love Sources, which basically max out Trust in 4-5 uses.

And you can easily grind out the items for free and craft it yourself very quickly and easily.

That's good. I went through the game and maxed out all of the blades before most of the DLC was out (I think I might even have finished with it before they added NG+), so I've missed out on a few QoL improvements since then.

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The hassle of needing yet another account is a pain, as is having to check multiple storefronts for sales on games I'm interested in. It's also a hassle to remember which storefronts have which exclusive games, which is a particular issue with Epic because their exclusives are so arbitrary and sporadic (as distinct from Origin or Uplay, whose exclusives are the releases from their respective owners). Being able to boot up a single launcher to access my entire library and browse all the sales I'm interested in has been a strength of PC gaming for a long time, but that strength is being eroded with each new distribution platform that comes out. Humble and GOG have been contributing to this, but they at least occupy their own niches and contribute something to the market that Steam does not (DRM-free and older games in the case of GOG, bundles in the case of Humble), which cannot be said for Epic.

Quite simply, Epic is offering a subpar platform that provides nothing new except the exclusives that it obtained purely by bribing publishers, which is not the kind of competition anyone should want. Toss in their very questionable sale practices (their first major sale entailed forcing developers to discount their games whether they wanted to or not), and I'm not exactly in a rush to support them. I'll take the free games, but it's going to take a lot to convince me to spend any money there.

Of course, the whole "single launcher" issue can be solved by GOG Galaxy 2.0, which very kindly unifies all libraries into a single client. Still doesn't streamline the shopping process as much as I might like, and the last time I looked their library organization features were a bit lacking compared to Steam's, but it's definitely something I'll be adding to my desktop if I ever get around to "upgrading" from Windows 7.

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Have subsequent patches made affinity grinding suck any less? Mashing A for hours to buy and give affinity items was pretty boring, though it was easy to do while doing other things.

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Judgmenl posted...

It's purposeful ignorance to make a game only work on one platform.

Not really. Compatibility testing takes resources, as does solving any compatibility issues that such testing finds, and publishing a game only on your platform means you don't have to pay a cut of sales to the owners of other platforms. The extra work might be worthwhile from a pure dollar standpoint, but where this is a low-profile porting job that I'm guessing Microsoft isn't expecting to make much money from, I'm not surprised they don't want to dedicate the manpower to it.

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Very early in the campaign, we came across a pit that had some absurd number of giant rats in it, which we murdered en masse by throwing a molotov cocktail into the pit. We then proceeded to tie a rope around our dwarf and use him to fish out 30-odd freshly-roasted rat carcasses, which we carried around for a while and subsequently fed to a troll and a small dragon to subvert the intended boss fights and cause them to ally with us. It was a good time, albeit very much not what the DM was expecting.

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Judgmenl posted...

Around 80-90% of games on Steam work under Linux (70% rating is Gold+ But anything above Borked usually works just fine)
https://www.protondb.com/

So... you knew setting up your current operating system was going to result in 10-20% of games not working properly for you. I think I can rest my case.

Sure, it could be made compatible, but it's really not reasonable to expect publishers to do things differently from how they want to just so such a tiny subset of potential players can play the game.

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Yellow posted...

"No you can't have 30000 cups" (they were free unlimited and weightless, come on, just play along, "you take 23457 cups and starve to death")

I can't take D&D serious, it's D&D, I'm here to have fun, not write bad fan-fiction. Competitively I'd take it seriously, but 30,000 cups is an objectively competitive advantage.

In the campaign a friend of mine ran last year, while we were creating characters and picking out starting equipment, I pointed out that backpacks could carry 30 lb and weighed 5 lb each, which resulted in all of us carrying a backpack with six other backpacks inside of it (not that he really bothered worrying about encumbrance and whatnot since he played it fairly loosely with mechanics, but it was nonetheless a fun bit of silliness).

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TheWorstPoster posted...

As a one-time thing, no.

If the Democrats get their way, and we get another check, then yes (on top of a bankrupted economy).

Dude you don't work at all and live entirely off of government money. I really don't think you're in a position to criticize this idea.

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RedPixel posted...

caseinpoint.gif

You aren't exactly doing that claim any favours, credibility-wise.

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RedPixel posted...

I could write a 500 page topic all by myself-- if I wanted to make the time-- on discrete structures, probabilities (10,000 conspiracies, when analyzed separately, would be mathematically impossible to write off without research, and connections could be drawn without a doubt even if the truth couldn't be pinpointed), and explain why it's a mistake to accept any 1 conspiracy by itself, and nobody would fucking read it, so it's more fun to push buttons and prime people for what's coming in this way than to waste my time.

Edit: As a truth seeker, I already "waste" my time. I enjoy learning, not shit talking. This is definitely the wrong forum for that.

"Nobody would read what I said if I put actual effort into it so I'll just say obvious nonsense instead and then attempt to mock people for pointing out that what I say is absolute nonsense."

okay.gif

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You never try to point anything out, though. Everything you say is some vague "this is some kind of conspiracy and you're all fools for not considering this" statement, not anything concrete that could actually qualify as a point. I've seen flat earthers with more robust positions than you. You get laughed at because you're ridiculous, not because you're presenting any genuine challenges to anyone's world view.

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I accidentally ran into a scorpion the other night. The way stuff was positioned, I didn't even see it until after it had stung me already. That was fun. I'd already caught a few others before that, though.

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RedPixel posted...

Pan-dem-ic = Dem--PANIC

Yes, that's exactly how elaborate global conspiracies work. They try to hide what they're doing by shuffling around syllables before naming the scheme. Thank God we have somebody like you who's intelligent enough to also shuffle around syllables and reveal their true intentions.

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Judgmenl posted...

I'd love to play PSO2.
The problem is because it's Microsoft it will not work with Proton/Wine.
Because it's Microsoft I will not be able to purchase in-game items through Steam
Microsoft is literally the worst platform for everything imaginable.

I mean, you knew setting up your current operating system that it was going to result in compatibility issues with games (since anything other than Windows inevitably does), and if the worst complaint you have beyond that is that you have to buy stuff through a store that isn't Steam, I don't think you really have that much to complain about. It'd be nice if it came to Steam instead, obviously, but given that Microsoft is doing the publishing themselves, I understand why it isn't.

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funkyfritter posted...

(Except for the dub, which is terrible in all the best ways)

I wonder how many of those actors/actresses actually include it on their resumes.

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streamofthesky posted...

It's been almost universally my experience that players will make things light-hearted and eagerly derail a serious moment if there's a joke to be made or they can build off one someone else has made. (I'm very "guilty" of this myself when I'm a player, too)

So I think in general, the DM should mostly keep things serious and on track, b/c the players will be pulling the lion's share of the weight in turning the game into a campy comedic romp regardless. The occasional humorous event or NPC is fine, though. I enjoyed in my last campaign running duels between summoner mages/psions as pokemon matches w/ a running gag that all of the rival pokemon trainers were super sketchy weirdos and delinquents that probably belong on some kind of watch list.

This sounds about right. Having something more serious to act as a backbone for the whole thing is good, but players will inevitably do stupid things to have fun with it, and it's important to be able to roll with that instead of trying to shoehorn them into "no-fun-allowed" mode. Trying too hard to make the whole thing ridiculous is also risky, because the players will also be silly and then the whole session ends up being one note, which gets boring. Don't take your campaign too seriously and feel free to throw some jokes in where appropriate, but still try to keep it grounded so it can have some direction.

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Krazy_Kirby posted...

16.

33.

Your analogy relies on the assumption that driving isn't regulated to minimize the risk for those participating (your position being that nobody should be subject to regulations to minimize the risk of COVID spread). That assumption is clearly false. Basing your entire analogy on a false assumption is going to take more to defend than "unregulated driving would be more dangerous than unregulated COVID spread."

bod2050 posted...

The spread would cause more fatality in a large number of people who are not at risk of this overhyped flu because there's more people who have it but it isn't a risk for them.....what?

There's nobody who isn't at risk at all for this. The risk is much, much greater for the elderly and otherwise unhealthy, but there's no shortage of young, healthy people that have been killed by it, and that rate will only go up if treatment capacity is overwhelmed. Even at a 0.1% fatality rate (which is roughly what it seems to be among low-risk people with treatment), an extra million cases (very easy to end up with without restrictions in place, given how virulent this thing is) is a thousand people dead who would otherwise have been perfectly fine. And that's not taking into account how much higher that fatality rate would be without treatment (which would happen with an extra million cases) or the potential for other long-term health consequences.

bod2050 posted...

their health is their responsibility.

Again, you would rather high-risk people become unable to leave their house for basic things like groceries than suffer some minor inconveniences? Perhaps it wasn't obvious because of how much else was in my post, but this was the primary point motivating the "get over yourself, diva" comment. A position like that cannot be described as anything more defensible than "being a selfish prick."

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It's a real shame the PT movies are so bad, because if you pay attention to them the PT trilogy as a whole actually tells a really interesting story. It's just painful to pay such close attention to the individual movies.

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The Nooklings were selling a Hamster Cage today (complete with tiny pet hamster), so I bought one and gave it to Hamlet (who is himself a hamster), who seemed pretty pumped about it. I'm not quite sure what to think of this.

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I'm largely ambivalent about it. I have no objections to going to a mall to buy something (usually something I'm specifically looking for, not aimlessly shopping), but I'm not one to go just for fun.

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Sonicplys posted...

With no more Switches around. Yeah, what a master plan.

It worked a little too well, it would seem.

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I'm going back to work on Friday, for the first time in nearly 2 months. The bakery I work at is still just doing delivery and curbside pickup, as they have been since shortly after closing, but that business has expanded past the point where the two owners have been able to keep up with it on their own, so they've been gradually bringing people back on. It'll still be just 1-2 shifts a week, since they're trying to keep part-time people below $1000 a month so we still qualify for CERB (which is very considerate of them), but it'll be nice to get back to it.

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pionear posted...

This so much...and it was a small Computer screen, not a real TV...

Eh, monitors are still valuable enough to be potential targets for theft, as well as being significantly easier to jog with. I don't think that part of the plan was particularly flawed.

Zeus posted...

The vast majority of people who steal tvs don't get shot.

He also probably wouldn't have been confronted, accosted, or had the police called on him, which is the broader point he was trying to make (that is, that black people are more likely to be presumed to be criminal and treated accordingly, not that black people are specifically more likely to be shot). Again, though, doing this in his own neighbourhood almost certainly influenced the results to such an extent as to render them meaningless (not that n=1 is ever particularly meaningful on a broader scale, but he would at least have successfully made his point).

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SilentSeph posted...

I want an indicator that I have something in my catalog already when shopping. Similar to how there's an indicator for recipes that you craft, have in your pocket, and have in storage.

Also, I hope they fix the way clothes shopping works because buying a full set of clothes is super tedious.

Finally (yet another shopping thing) streamline shopping from Saharah by trimming the repetitive dialogue and not making you start a new conversation to buy more than one item. Actually a lot of NPCs could use their dialogue trimmed... (glares at Orville)

I would agree with all of these. An "add to cart" button for the fitting room would be so amazingly useful, rather than having to go in and out repeatedly and try to remember what I've already bought.

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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Now? It wasn't that long ago people were complaining everything was a JRPG.

The mainstream JRPG craze has died down, but RPG elements have been playing an increasing role in games for several years now, largely because including some kind of progression system keeps people engaged for longer (which, from the perspective of the cynical corporate types, creates additional opportunities to squeeze some cash out of them). Less cynically, many people do like some sort of sense of progression or growth in their games, which is part of the reason formal RPG's were so popular, so it is still catering to the tastes of many gamers.

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Krazy_Kirby posted...

the death rate is lower than what the left is claiming. just because someone had it when they died, doesn't mean that is what killed them

You're not going to do anything to defend your earlier driving comment?

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teddy241 posted...

lol yeah lets just walk naked into the forest. nevermind the various types of weather, insects, wild life, poison, adverse weather effects, food, etc necessary to achieve a solid hike

Generally speaking, "gear" in the context of a recreational activity refers to equipment obtained specifically for that activity, beyond what one would normally own for everyday purposes. You can very easily go for a decent hike with nothing but a water bottle, some sunscreen, and your everyday clothing/shoes. If you want to get into more serious hikes, then yeah, you might want some extra equipment, but even then you don't need much. I know a guy who literally writes hiking guides for a living who does nearly all his hikes in sandals, and that includes some pretty rugged terrain. It's only once you get into multi-day hikes and really rugged routes that you need to start seriously considering equipment.

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bod2050 posted...

Then those people need to take their own precautions. Not me and the overwhelming majority of people who are not at risk.

You would rather high-risk people become unable to leave their house for basic things like groceries than suffer some minor inconveniences? And that's not even considering the fact that uncontrolled spread would almost certainly overwhelm hospitals and cause a sizable increase in mortality rate even among those who would otherwise have been fine, nor the fact that surviving treatment - though obviously better than not surviving - is a thoroughly miserable experience that seems like it will likely have longer-term health consequences. All because a handful of people got uppity because masks are uncomfortable and they want haircuts.

Get over yourself, diva.

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blu posted...

How was cooking school? That sounds fun to go through.

It was a baking/pastry program, so it didn't have much on the culinary side of things, but it was generally a pretty good time. The theory classes didn't go quite as in-depth on the underlying science as I would have liked (but that's me with a science degree in a community college course targeted at people with nothing past high school, so that's understandable), and the practicals focused a bit too much on certain products (way too many mousses and genoise), but I enjoyed myself and the co-op term landed me a job at a lovely little bakery.

blu posted...

I should learn to sharpen myself.

You can get knife sharpeners fairly cheaply (like <$30) that do a reasonable job of it without having to learn much of anything in terms of whetstones or whatnot. I don't know how good they are long-term, so you'd want to do more research before using them on a knife you want to last, but I've definitely seen some favourable results from them without much time, effort, or expertise needed at all. Might be worth looking into.

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I was always taught that length is the longer side, though if its an object whose orientation is absolutely defined, width is horizontal and length is vertical (or parallel to my view for 3D objects, with the Z-axis being height).

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dainkinkaide posted...

If the number of active cases is greater than treatment capacity, then the CFR is only going to get higher. And how do we prevent that from occurring? Barring a vaccine, we stretch the infection rate over time out by limiting social contact and thereby limiting new infections.

Pretty much. I wish I could say I was surprised by the number of people saying "we've been following all these infection control measures and the pandemic hasn't been that bad so we should stop following all these infection control measures," but alas, people are rarely very good at understanding cause and effect when it comes to medical matters.

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blu posted...

Do these products really enhance the experience?

Sometimes. There are certainly countless examples of stuff that's far overpriced for how much it improves the experience, but there are also countless examples of things that do significantly improve the experience. To use your example of cooking, you certainly can get away with dollar store knives, but getting yourself something decent is really very nice (I say as the $500 Wusthof knife set I had to purchase for school is currently trapped inside a locker I'm not allowed to access and I'm stuck using the significantly lower-cost ones I've got for home use, but I'm not bitter). That doesn't mean you need a $600 chef's knife, by any means, particularly where knives are much more of a personal preference thing than a "this is more expensive so it's better" thing, but you will have to spend a bit of money to get something well-balanced that holds an edge well.

Really, that's where the forum discussions come in. People talk about what they've bought to improve their experience and how well that worked (albeit often tainted by a bit of sunk cost fallacy/buyer's remorse that may lead to overstating the usefulness of the products), and people who are looking to get deeper into the hobby draw on that experience to advise them on what to buy moving forward.

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ListerineStrips posted...

The problem is the mask helps in preventing you from spreading it but does minimal in preventing you from contracting it. People would rather avoid minor inconveniences than look out for the whole. Just look at anti-vaxxers.

I've seen numbers (albeit ones that weren't fact-checked) that indicate that wearing a mask (presumably a proper one, though anything helps a bit) reduces the risk of being infected by about 30%, compared to a 70% reduction in infecting others. That 30% isn't a huge difference, obviously, but it's notably better than nothing, and given how serious this has the potential to be, I'd say it's worthwhile.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

why risk your health driving?

I'm really not sure why this is such a popular analogy from people who want there to be no more precautions against the spread of this infection. Driving has countless precautionary regulations surrounding it that help to make an otherwise-dangerous activity safer for everyone involved. Asking "why shouldn't I go hang out in a crowded bar during a pandemic?" is roughly akin to asking "why shouldn't I drive on the left side of the road?", if we're making analogies to driving.

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