[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

I assume the red is the least used.

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago

It means the fight may continue well over 10 pm. I'm in.

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 days ago

It's an easy jab, but there's probably a place for a three-part documentary why they (and other historical butchers) deteriorated to such a state.

What matters is the difference in conditions between ukrainians under Kursk and russians in Butcha. UAF now has experience, discipline, logistics and clear goals, not to say they know they are under a constant threat of enemy's forces and under a surveiliance from the whole world. Bucha's troops who had no previous experience, no plan to stay there for long, were left to their own devices, without discipline, logistics and objectives, so these armed frat-boys who were indefinitely placed there started small with looting food and gas, but as it progressed, they started to feel safe and like they own the place, and as you can read in many accounts about occupation, they quickly normalized violence and dehumanized local population not only for the sadists in them who ignited the fire, but for everyone in here. Alcohol, drugs, paranoia, boredom and a lack of any responsibility for the power given to them by weapons created the pests who loot, rape and murder at a whim, like the worst hordes we can read about. And I can't see how a tight operation with a precalculated strategy can turn into that nightmare. As a lowest common denominator for those who believe these troops are equal: don't worry, ukrainians just don't have time to degrade like this even in theory, they have too much on their hands, so Bucha 2.0 is impossible.

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 days ago

You know these countries profit from Russia too, right?

What's this margin vs their GDP, for example?

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 8 points 4 days ago

Yeah, okay, but that means China, Iran and NK would keep pumping Russia up with weapons to keep obliterating Ukraine. One-sided cutting of supply wouldn't work now or in the future.

No one officially said it even started, lol. There wasn't a note to proclaim it from either side. Yet, you can notice it wasn't like in the 50s when in the 90s and 00s the relationships between countries got warmer.

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Smoke from Запорізька АЕС (Запорожская АЭС) (not запорижжия or whatever) is questionable for the black smoke we'd seen is pretty weird for that kind of facility.

What can end this war in your opinion? As it seems, if Ukraine give up, after a period of violence and filtration against locals, it won't stop Russia from planning another SMO on Kazakhstan, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldavia or other countries state officials officially threatened. If Russia give up in this war and stop this bullshit there wouldn't be any conflict and it's own standards of living would slowly return to pre-Crimean levels.

added Ukrainian naming as the first one because for some reason I thought it's in contested russian territories, because, well, why our news scream about it that much?

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 12 points 4 days ago

Bluetooth headphones when I want to use them:

Bluetooth headphones when there's someone calling and I can't answer because I can't find them:

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 days ago

OG Nier took a slightly different twist on that. Mild spoilers ahead!

Somewhen in our lifetime the plague-like white virus destroyed human bodies turning them into ash, so there was a project of dividing the soul, the Gestalt, from the body, and then joining it with an autonomous Replicant android.

This project failed, and we, as a player, discover a curious consequence: Replicants conserved\built themselves a human-like society, the one we find ourself many replicant generations ago, not even knowing or caring if they are humans.

But at the same time these replicants are utterly afraid of catching a black scrawl - that's when Gestalts-souls, traversing the ground as black spectral beings, sometimes even agressive, consume the replicant as it was designed to, covering them in dark patterns, and slowly turning them under control of these stray souls, some of them even vile and powerful like demons.

You as Nier and the Shadowlord, your arch nemesis, are a Replicant and a Gestalt of one person, fighting to keep your transforming sister on your own side, while two of your worlds inescapably collide and destroy each other.

That's not the most dramatic reveal there, so you'd be fine playing it even after that.

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 11 points 4 days ago

Blonde is not his type, like really.

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 19 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

It works well with an old as our monarchy satyrical saying, бей своих чтобы чужие боялись, beat your kin so the others would be afraid of you.

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 11 points 5 days ago

Some people argued that a градирня (is it heating tower in English?) doesn't have much to burn, especially with that black heavy smoke. I'm no specialist, but with how loud the news about this fire are, I suspect there was indeed something else entirely and I've not seen any confirmation it has been hit by ukrainians yet. May be it's a false flag self-attack from the beginning.

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 19 points 5 days ago

A few Z-bloggers suggest that it's all a trap to let the troops go in and then circle them, but most of their own crowd tell them to touch grass. A rare breed of atomic vatniks suggests a tactical nuclear strike inside the russian territory since it won't (supposedly) trigger any reaction, and I can't tell if they are trolls or not. Either way, this situation, even downplayed and excused, doesn't seem to sit okay even with the TV-headed net-users.

49
Star Trek's Putln (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works to c/tenforward@lemmy.world

Even Quark chose not to follow him.

21
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works to c/gamedev@lemmy.ml

As most of us play games, we sometimes encounter elements or routines that suck all the fun from a shipped product. They can be a dealbreaker, so it's better to be aware of them. I'd exclude platinum challenges and MTX as they are their own beasts, and start with a couple of examples I hated in older titles:

  • NFS: Hot Pursuit (2010). Before and after you enter a race, there are motivational unskippable cutscenes about your rating and unlocked vehicles. Instead of inspiring me to play more, it felt like visiting the web without an adblocker. Although it plays nice on Linux and I liked how vehicles drive, I deleted it after a couple of hours.

  • NFS: Underground. Besides a difficulty slider you have before every track, there's a trend to make every other race longer. 6+ 1.5 minute laps become a chore and make you notice how broken and random it is under the hood. The strenght of the game in the short flashy arcade runs, but as devs couldn't find any way to make it more difficult, they make it a useless test of endurance.

  • TES: Skyrim. Lots of quests are built on a premise of making you explore the global map more without any means of transportation, unlike Morrowind. They probably assumed there'd be some, or that fast travel would solve this, but I remember this one time I was to take the head from the witch and this region was completely unexplored at that time, and there was no obvious way but going there by foot.

  • CoD 2+. Replenishing health is a cool mechanic, but it isn't followed by a repercussion for sitting and recharging. Finite number of enemies makes it trivial. I feel like something akin to WW2 southern front could've used the mechanic of endless onslaught before you complete the objective.

  • FarCry. It've began as a tacticool shooter where you can choose where to start your infiltration, and it was good at that, but after introducing aliens it went weird. The latter levels are close-quarter skirmishes where only savescumming is a viable strategy. Game loses it's primal value to scale the difficulty in a wrong way once again.

What's your examples of wrong decisions?

28

I guess the meta is installing them via Lutris\Bottles and then launching them via Steam to have a modern controller support and overlay, is that's so? Does emulation make it better in any way (it seems easier)? What would you use playing them now?

I've watched a couple of vids on games from NFSU to Pro Street forming some kind of a saga, and felt nostalgic enough to once again jump in this cringe pool.

I won't spoil my own opinion on these games besides one point: Pro Street was probably the last one to have a decent, influential OST. Won't lie, they've introduced me to my current favs and made me research their genres further. For that I can excuse EA, or rather BlackBox from crticizing too much, although wanting to play their older games instead of new ones says it all.

13

For your civil discussions

1

I watch an episode of a series, and then it randomly starts to heat up my CPU. The most reproducible case is when the episode ended while I'm not looking at it, then the PC get locked and the screen gets turned off, and VLC then, on a pause, starts to use 20%+ percents of my CPU and get completely unresponsive before I kill the process of it. If it was in fullscreen before, it'd show just a dark screen before I alt+f4 out from it. It doesn't use as much resources when it plays videos, so I guess it's VLC not reacting right to some system conditions? I'm a noob so it's just a guess.

As a side note, what do you use for watching shows? I still can't find a player that I'm 100% comfortable with. MPC-HC is what I used on Windows for years and I'm too used to how it works it seems, but I'm open to try something lightweight with simple controls to choose languages on the go.

52
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works to c/tenforward@lemmy.world

The Gamma Quadrant is now the Kazakh Quadrant. I don't make the rules. Wait for Sasha Baron Cohen to film another movie about how we mistakenly see guests from the wormhole.

PS: Nechayeva is probably the most annoying character in the franchise.

44

For right there we see him stating he can not read clues from women or he's not signaled enough to notice it.

Does it mean he's more accustomed to signals from men or he's just completely senseless?

I don't really question my gay sadistic Odo headcannon, but I find that quote to be a welcome guest in many redpill threads,

85

I'm yet to do my first one if this post dosen't count, so I'm learning here.

103

After writing a lot about it referencing my last playthroughs, I started it once again via OpenMW with official expansions and nude mode only, for it became kind of a habit.

So, initially it looks like an RPG, and we see these stacks of numbers in a character sheet affecting our speaking capabilities or our impotency to kill a crab, okay. If we dive more into it, we'd learn our ways not only around that, but also to become the most potent mass killer Nirn ever had. Alchemy loops to boost your intelligence and brew a better potion of intelligence are known for 20 years already, even in Skyrim, and the ways this game is completely broken are meta-knowledge making us love it even more.

But is it only an RPG?

More, than in other TES games, I encountered a lot of NSFL content. No, I don't talk about Suran's harlots, but about customs of danmers and the Sixth House.

We can go back to the Planescape: Torment, the game that starts in a morgue that people don't play these days (sorrely), russian Pathologic that hbomberguy praised and where kids with dog heads exchange stuff for razors and drugs, or that cringe project called Hatred, but non of them combined have the same amount of what is now considered non-publishable.

Besides encountering racism and cop's attention at any step (even if you are a dunmer, because you are still not a native), we have stories of imperials coming from Ilunibi and dying horribly due to corprus, that seems like a radiation poisoning. We have a cult that eats flesh and is one second from overthrowing the government, killing everyone who doesn't meet their criteria. We have all dunmers having dreams that make them insane and irrate, one step from starting a murder spree. We have gods, who by a treachery took their powers, and the center of the island being guarded by their weakening powers and literal bone ash from local funerals. We have a real gestapo from local officials, and we can participate in glory kills that are a custom of this wicked land, with us still be a member of churches and guilds. And don't even start talkimg about Fyr cloning himself into daughers, fucking them, and having a whole dungeon for adventurers to find either their award or a sudden death. Or that one quest when you search for a sex slave. And that all continues in a completely corrupt world where a duel or a bribe can significantly change the political landscape.

There's so much I can put Horror, Thriller, Grindhouse lables on, or those I don't even know. I'm glad it happened in my life and I can replay it now on any system, even on mobile phone. But it's even more vile than Fallout and it's one of the reasons it clicked with me. Morrowind is very russian, and it's popularity on our 4chan clones cements this. If your friend ever get vocal about moving here, get them Morrowind as a testing experience and then ask, if they still want that. Guess, they wouldn't, for their own good.

I would love to hear your stories about how beautiful or grim this game is.

1
528

(Sorry if it's a miss, this community looked the most fitting)

After mentioning them somewhere in comments, I actually bought Shokz after years of sitting curious. There are a few brands that do them, so it doesn't matter what's the brand is. I bought what I've heard of and the cheapest model I could find at that.

So, what's the trick? As I'm cycling, walking and running a lot, I needed a headphone solution to be aware of my surroundings. They don't cover ears and don't actually emmit sound - they vibrate and make your bones serve as a membrane.

The obvious minus is that in a bus or other loud setting you can't hear shit. That's by design. And, logically but somehow absurdly, by shutting your ear with a finger, you can make yourself hear it okay. I did a full circle here, returning to the old headphones isolation problem, heh.

But what impressed me more, they do feel like some kind of a cyberpunk prosthetic. You can wear them all day and even the cheapest one that promises 6hr of activity lasts days on the idle. But as you call someone or watch a vid – here they are, with a little to no latency. Honestly, I feel like if there'd be implants, that's one of the basic ones we can try first. It's hands-free device with a bonus of being more stealthy and not isolating you from the world.

As a cheapskate audiophile who stayed with cords for a long time, I can say that the sound is okay. Keeping in mind that producers can't control the skull of a wearer, they can't nail the ideal sound, but I'm impressed with how nice IDM and metal plays on them - something akin to budget Senh, AKG and Audiotechnica. And unlike cheap Sony, they don't put up low freqs, that's a plus. BUT when I shared it with others, people in body reported less effectiveness due to thickness of skin and under-dermal stuff, so it's better to test it if you aren't skinny as a skeleton.

After being so open about plus sides, I'm to talk minuses. Since the software is proprietary, it doesn't have many controls and is very weird sometimes. As I bought a model that was for internal chinese market originally, it talked to me in Chinese, and it can only be switched to another language before any pairing, so only after unpairing I could've chosen English – and the same combination of button presses when paired was reserved to calling the last called number, so I fucked up a lazy weekend morning for a friend of mine calling them 4-5 times, damn it. Ah, and it supports dual pairing with a PC and a smartphone, but as I tested it this function worked weird and I sometimes manually disconnected them. Walking&working distance from a source device is around the second or third room, that fits most office and home listening cases. I could've probably wished for it to have an option to pick lesser distance since I don't usually have even a meter between my smartphones and them.

Ah, and going back to the bus problem - the obvious downside that you want to turn them to 100% volume that you don't feel, but your ears do. After the first day when I needed to move a lot in loud contexts and thus put them on max, I had a headache, because although I didn't register the volume, my head had a first row concert experience. So if you use these, keep that in mind too.

Have you tried them, is there a topic I haven't covered? As you can tell, I'm happy with them, so I would be biased. It's just with VR stuff, even from Apple, I feel like we underlook existing tech that already serves us as expander of our life experiences and powers.

1

Said a terrorist, securing a black plastic bag over one's head for their transportation.

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andrew_bidlaw

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