[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 0 points 16 hours ago

It's such a shame nuclear power is such a non-starter politically. If we could go back in time, switching from coal to nuclear earlier would have been a massive change for climate change.

I'm still an optimist about this; at some point, if we keep pushing, we'll reach a political will inflection point and actually start taking serious action on climate change. With serious financial backing, we will be able to scale up technological solutions to anthropogenic climate change.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 3 points 1 day ago

Exactly this.

I'll never vote Green (as a Canadian) since it's strategically equivalent to not voting at all.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The whole article is sickening. Spoilers below for graphic/shocking content.

How are there so many people willing to pay >!to rape teenagers!!And cleaners just turning a blind eye on taking out bloody towels daily.!<

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 5 points 6 days ago

I played Superhot first on the Deck. Since time only moves (much) when you're moving, you have lots of time to practice aiming and getting used to track pads/stick + gyro controls. It requires precise aiming, and there are occasional times where speed helps, so it was a good "training" game for me.

It's still not as natural as KB+mouse, but I've been enjoying Ziggurat 2 a lot (on normal difficulty). I won't push into hard modes, like I would on PC, but it's working well for me.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 42 points 2 weeks ago

I'm having a hard time having sympathy for someone who was supporting anti-trans bigots, who were accusing teachers of being pedophiles, and (I suppose) attempting a coup. (Hard to take the last one seriously.)

Like... Of course this ended poorly. I'm surprised they paid any of the hydro bill from their camp, tbh.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 40 points 3 months ago

Did you drop a /s? This is a funny meme, so I'm assuming I just missed a joke.

Right?

(Speaking as a white male, white male entitlement, and privilege for that matter, are incredibly relevant to white men being sexist/racist.)

(You can trust me on this because I'm a white male. Also, I'm used to my opinion being listened to, so I expect you to as well. Just FYI.)

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 54 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

idk, Allman is very readable. Easy to scan vertically to find the matching open brace. Not quite as vertically-space efficient as the best way, but it's not offensive.

9
submitted 7 months ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

Fanatical is running a Steam Deck games bundle right now. Are any of these games worth the time?

I feel like I've heard good things about Arise, but I'm out of the loop. I don't recognize many of the others by name.

Prices are reasonable, so it's less a question about if it's worth the money, more if its worth the time. (3 for CA$6.79, 5 for CA$9.59, or 8 for CA$13.69)

Terror of Hemasaurus
Jack Move
Garden Story
Castle on the Coast
The Tarnishing of Juxtia
Arise: A Simple Story
Zombie Army Trilogy
Beyond the Long Night
ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree
The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf
Röki
Home Sweet Home EP2
Hero's Hour
Moonlighter
Pathologic 2

32
submitted 7 months ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

I'm just curious if anyone else tried to get one of the Limited Edition Steam Decks before they sold out. I tried for it (on 3 devices) but kept getting error messages until it sold out. I just ordered the 1 TB edition instead.

This will be my first portable gaming device since the DSi, so I'm really excited for it. Getting the clear LE one would have been cool, but I'm probably better off not spending the extra $40 CAD, lol.

So, what's your Steam Deck situation? Did you try for/get the LE? Do you already have one? Getting one? Don't want one?

41
submitted 8 months ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

All over Twitch, about half the streamers I usually watch playing turn-based strategy games are all suddenly playing the same new game. I watched a few streams, and it looked interesting. Normally, I never buy games when they just come out because I have such a backlog and can wait for a sale, but I figured if everyone (figuratively) is playing it, it must be amazing.

Turns out, they're giving the full game away for free during their "early access" phase as a "demo". But it's the full game, just with only 2 class choices.

I had a blast! And now I'm probably going to buy it on release.

The last time I remember doing this was for Minecraft. I see lots of games doing free weekends on Steam, which is very similar; doesn't work well for me since I only have a few hours for gaming each week, but I imagine that must be successful for a lot of games, too.

What do you think of that business model? And/or, what do you think of Backpack Battles, if you've played it?

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 96 points 9 months ago

This is really exciting to see. Enshittification is generating increasing backlash against incumbent monopolies, and encouraging more movement toward sustainable open source software.

See Blender, too.

1
submitted 9 months ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/parenting@beehaw.org

There's a big protest being organized across Canada to protest SOGI being taught in schools, and I'm fed up with it. There are so many vulnerable students who need to know that what they're experiencing is normal, and right-wing extremists are politicizing human rights and spreading manufactured controversy about children being shown pornography in schools.

The linked article is just one of many anti-SOGI protests happening across Canada on Wednesday.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up here is that some of these right-wing anti-SOGI [redacted; unkind] are parents of kids in our kids' classes, and a couple of them are close friends with my kids.

How do you handle that? Kids shouldn't be held accountable for their parents' beliefs. But what about playdates and birthday parties and such? Should we discuss the friendship? It feels wrong to ostracize the child. They deserve to feel safe and have friends.

Also, I'm thinking of taking time off work to counter protest, and making a sign like this one:

Not really related to parenting, but I think it's important kids feel supported and bigots are told their archaic world views are unwelcome. It'll be super awkward if a parent I know is standing on the other side of the protest.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 41 points 10 months ago

Do they have any other option than to stick to their guns on this one? That's sold the XBox Series S as having feature parity with the Series X. If they go against that now, then they've engaged in false advertising and will immediately get slapped with a huge lawsuit and/or fine, plus all the negative PR that comes from it.

They're stuck until the next console generation, which is a long way out. And I wonder if PS5 will continue to gain ground against XBox for the rest of the generation as a result.

It will be interesting to see if they continue with their two-model tiering next gen, but I'm guessing they won't.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 103 points 10 months ago

Copyright has completely jumped the shark. There's absolutely no balance between the public benefit of the public domain.

30 years ought to be enough time for anyone to extract any reasonable value from an IP. If you haven't made your profit in 30 years, then let the public benefit from it.

Or at least let preservationists (data hoarders, let's be honest) keep our cultural history alive and accessible for future generations.

12
submitted 11 months ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

Saskatchewan is fairly conservative leaning, from a Canadian perspective, so perhaps this isn't surprising, but it's a shame that drug use continues to be viewed through a criminal lens instead of a healthcare and mental health crisis.

My understanding is that even suicide is generally covered by life insurance policies after a two-year vetting period; I would have thought that drug overdoses would at least get the same treatment. It doesn't say in the article how long this policy existed, but the context implies it was longer than two years and I would have thought it would have been a relevant detail to include in the article if it was a newly opened policy, so the omission of that detail further supports it being an older policy.

I have great sympathy for his family, especially because of the long legal battle that I'm sure has retraumatized them over the intervening years.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 78 points 1 year ago

I just wanted to say that I feel very strongly that, should it be implement, the community be called WorkReform, not AntiWork.

In the spirit of Beehaw, I think AntiWork goes against the ethos of "Bee Kind" as it sets the entire community up to be adversarial to anyone who enjoys work/finds work meaningful. Work reform is a much more inclusive goal.

I had a hard time with that one since I would not join an anti work community, but I was fairly active on /r/WorkReform.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 42 points 1 year ago

It sounds like this was done without any warning, too. Subs can, and have, changed their rules many times. Users voting to allow NSFW content is already precedented.

Unilaterally removing mods who are in direct compliance with your order to reopen the sub isn't a good look, particularly since one of the biggest drivers of this protest is the lack of communication with mods.

6

My context / use case

I got Fire 7 tablets for my kiddos a few years ago and they're dreadfully slow and can't really run many apps at all. With my daughter needing some educational support at home, I was looking for a cheap replacement that actually had enough power to manage recent education apps, and hopefully be future proof for a while.

Alternatives

The cheapest tablet at Costco.ca, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite, is $500 CAD, has a weak processor, only 4GB RAM, and 64GB storage.

I'll never touch Apple products for a zillion reasons, but cost was completely prohibitive for a device my child could drop any day. Even used ones are insanely priced. And the app ecosystem for education on iOS is almost entirely paid apps, increasingly using a subscription model. (Or so it seems.)

Newer Amazon Fire "HD" tablets suck, too, but at least they're cheap. And they might be powerful enough to run some things? idk. I wasn't enthused.

Then, I thought to check AliExpress and found an 8GB tablet with 128GB storage, a processor better than the S6, and a 2K (1440p) display. After reading reviews to check if it's legit, I ordered one.

Informal Review

The great:

Price/value for the specs. I paid ~$240CAD for a bundle that includes a nice case, screen protector, charging block and cable, and a child-size Bluetooth keyboard. (It doesn't have a digitizer, so I skipped the stylus.)

The good:

The tablet is snappy. The battery lasts a long time. The screen has plenty enough resolution to render everything crisply on a 10.4" display.

It's a perfect tablet for my kids use as an educational tablet. It's great for PDF ebook reading (mostly picture books and early reader chapter books to date, lol!) and has handled all the education/edutainment apps without any slowdowns.

3.5mm jack. 18W fast charging. Build quality feels solid. Well positioned hardware buttons and 3.5mm jack make it easy to use in either orientation. The included case works as an angled stand. SD card slot for expansion. SIM compatible for phone/data.

The bad:

The viewing angle is pretty terrible. It's completely fine for solo use or for applications where colour accuracy isn't important, but it's very noticeable.

The speakers suck. I'm not a sound geek, so I don't know the correct terms, but the sound is muddy and distorted. They also have a fairly low maximum volume, and become increasingly distorted at higher volume. They work well enough, but it's not enjoyable for music. I would definitely use headphones for music/video/games.

I haven't tried the camera at all, but I've heard it's not great. Can't comment on that.

The purchase

The vendor I ordered from (ALLDOCUBE Direct Store) swapped the EU plug for a US plug at no extra cost. It arrived quickly (3 weeks?) from China.

The package arrived with the retail box crushed, so the included screen protector broke. After using it for a day, I decided to buy a second one for my other child, and asked them to include a replacement. Not only did they include a replacement, but they pre-installed the screen protector on tablet #2 so it couldn't break, without my asking them to.

I would recommend the seller, but ask them to pre-install the screen protector (if you plan to use one) so there's less risk of damage in transit.

Discussion

Anyway, not sure if this is the kind of content people want here, but I thought I'd do my part to add something!

Has anyone else experimented with cheap AliExpress/Chinese Android devices?

Based on my success with these, I'm considering getting a phone for my wife there. I'm a bit more worried about data vulnerabilities and software support longevity on a daily driver phone, but it's really hard to find a small quality phone for a reasonable price. Also, it needs to have a good camera or it's a nonstarter.

Do you have any experience or thoughts on this?

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blindsight

joined 1 year ago