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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • There are definitely technical reasons why saving mid-run is a lot more complicated. With Pacific Drive, right now when you save, it’ll save:

    • the state of your car - this will likely be done by looking each individual “equipment slot” the car has, assigning them a number, assigning each possible upgrade for that “slot” a number/letter, and storing its damage state (which is probably just a scale of 1-5 or whatever). So the game will store everything about your car in the format off “slot x, upgrade type y, damage z”, which can just be three values.
    • your quest state. The game won’t remember what quests you’ve done or how you’ve done them in the way that you remember it - it’ll just store that you’ve completed quest step 14a and that 14b is your active objective.

    It makes for a fairly simple, small save file. Being able to save mid-run would add a lot of complexity because it’d need to save a complete map state, including:

    • the map layout
    • your position in the map
    • the enemies and hazards in the map - their positions, states, etc.
    • what’s happened already in the map
    • the loot in the map, and whether you’ve collected it or not

    And so on. Not only does it massively increase the complexity, it would also increase the size of save files a lot and make saving and loading a lot more cumbersome. And that’s just a simplified breakdown; there are definitely other factors that can make it much, much more complicated.


    There are definitely some games where “easy mode” save systems could be implemented without much changing on a technical level, but I don’t think Pacific Drive is one of them.


  • I’m not sure I see how they’re comparable. Progressivism requires the ability to progress; if we somehow create a completely perfect utopia then there will be no room for progressivism, but otherwise there will always be some way to improve things and progress. In practice, there will always be some way to improve society which means infinite progressivism surely isn’t unreasonable?

    Infinite growth isn’t possible because infinite money doesn’t exist, it’s as simple as that. And if infinite money did exist, infinite growth wouldn’t be possible because everything would already be infinitely large and therefore unable to grow any further…

    … but beyond that, it also requires more and more people who can afford whatever the product/service in question is. Which requires either infinite people, infinite money or both. And as the product/service grows and prices likely increase, people will priced out of the market which is the opposite of infinite growth.

    It’s also worth considering that progressivism is a mindset that is aiming for zero - zero problems, zero inequality, zero bigotry, etc. It’s not about pushing for infinite anything, it’s about trying to reduce existing issues. And while it’ll likely never reach its goal, it’s not theoretically or mathematically unreachable. It’s much more realistic to attempt to reduce something to zero than it is to increase it to infinity.



  • I’m not cheering for the layoffs, of course, nor am I necessarily in favour of monopolies and the consolidation of the gaming industry (although, in this instance, I think it’s probably a positive thing for fans of Blizzard IPs). But layoffs during this kind of merger/buyout are expected. Microsoft has its own legal departments, payroll departments, marketing departments, etc, and while they might need expanding slightly as the company grows/absorbs new companies, they don’t need an entire second company’s worth of those departments.

    These layoffs were about cutting redundancy rather than just chasing short-term profits. It sucks for the people who were laid off either way, but I think it’s good to be realistic about why they happened.


  • I think it’s good that they asked here. The way the fediverse is structured means there can be plenty of people who use an instance - posting to it, browsing posts from it, etc - without being registered with that instance. If Beehaw says they’re contemplating leaving, only to be met with a “NO, DON’T GO” response from the rest of the fediverse, then that might give them reason to rethink their position. And if everyone just says “eh, whatever” or “yeah, go away” then it may reinforce their position.

    Obviously the opinions of the people who’ve registered there should hold more weight, but I think putting the question to everyone is a good move.





  • My usual go-to is to ask what their latest/current obsession is. It works really well for a few reasons:

    • it’s nice and simple to ask - it doesn’t require a monologue/wall of text to set up, and it doesn’t require you to know anything about them to ask it;
    • it’s both as personal and as low-stakes as they want it to be. They can give very intimate, in-depth answers if they feel like it, or they can just mention something like the latest film they enjoyed. There’s no risk of making them uncomfortable by asking it;
    • it lets you filter out boring people who don’t really take interest in anything;
    • assuming they do have interests, it often gives you plenty of opportunities to dive into deeper conversation;
    • it’s often engaging for them because they get to talk about something they’re passionate about;
    • it’s often interesting for you because people talking about things they’re passionate about is awesome (and often attractive).
    • it’s pretty much always relevant and fresh because their latest obsession will change over time. This makes it particularly great for things like dating sites/apps because people’s bios will often be out of date and/or they’ll have talked about the things mentioned in their bio so much that they’re kind of sick of them.

    I’ve actually had multiple people on dating sites tell me how great a question they think it is, and that they’re going to use it themselves in the future. So obviously it’s not just me who thinks it’s a great question!


  • Well I’m just glad Harry Mack managed to release his 100th episode of “Omegle Bars” this week. He decided to take a break from doing Omegle-based content at the right time, it seems.

    For anyone who doesn’t know, Harry Mack’s a freestyle rapper. He has (had) a series where he’d ask strangers on Omegle to give him a handful of words and then create a full song out of them on the fly. And not just saying those words then immediately moving on like most freestyle rappers do; he actually creates entire verses on the topics he’s given and really raps around them. Plus he’d be calling out things the people were doing as they react to him, responding to things they say, mentioning things he can see in the room, etc, as he raps.

    Here’s one of his freestyles that’s really stuck with me ever since I first saw it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehcA4zCeaPI

    He takes what are some fairly negative, “cry for help” words from the girls and turns them into a really beautiful, positive rap overall. He’s a very positive guy in general, and I’ve watched him consistently since I discovered him. Binging his videos got me through a breakup, in fact.


    My own experiences with Omegle have either been penises or just bland, and it’s not something I’ve used for many years as a result. But videos like Harry Mack’s show what wonderful things could come from it and I do think it’s a huge shame it’s gone. It feels like another part of the old internet’s gone, and that we’re moving even closer to the sanitised, heavily-monetised internet run by megacorporations. I hate that.






  • So a few things:

    • sorry that’s been happening to you, it must suck
    • the Reddit admin’s response doesn’t seem great
    • this isn’t a relevant place to be posting this
    • your tone in the DMs with the admin and in the comments comes off as overly panicked and alarmist. It’s going to be hard to win anyone over like that. Take some time, write it up with a more calm and informative tone, add proper context, etc.
    • you’re not going to get your story out there by spamming it in random, inappropriate fediverse communities. If you’ve got solid evidence, email a journalist at a place like The Verge or Ars Technica about it. Just don’t expect them to care if you don’t have evidence - right now, it just mostly reads as “user upset that Reddit admin didn’t ban other user”. Yes, it sucks, but it largely just reads as a social media drama piece at the moment, and not anything with any real substance to it.
    • or just report it directly to law enforcement

  • Klangkarussell - All Eyes On You - this is probably my favourite music video ever. I’m a sucker for one-takes, and the fact that this one is nine minutes long makes it so impressive on a technical level. But also, the video really feels like an experience. I feel like there are a lot of different ways the characters and situation, and what they represent, can be interpreted; it feels like everyone reads into the video in their own way (and I’m totally down to discuss anyone else’s interpretations once they’ve watched it). Plus the atmosphere of the video really enhances that of the song - I like the song well enough, but combined with the video I find it so hypnotizing and engrossing. (Plus, it doesn’t feel cheap by any means but you can see it was made on a shoestring budget, so it gets extra points for that as far as I’m concerned.)

    All India Radio - Rippled - long-exposure light stop-motion is so damn cool. It’s such a pretty video, and I love how authentic it feels - it obviously took a lot of time, energy and talent to make (over 6 months according to the description) but it has so much personality to it, and you can obviously see the people in the background moving the lights around which makes it feel far less “clinical”.

    Delta Heavy - Get By - musically, it’s a slightly above-average 2012 dubstep track, but the video is so fun (and terrifying, I suppose…). Again, I love the stop motion, but it’s also just really fun on a conceptual level.


    Anyway, all of these are a decade old, so I guess maybe you’re right about modern music videos. I can’t say I watch many music videos, though, so there are probably some good ones I miss!



  • Communism does work on a communal level - it’s no coincidence they’re rooted in the same word - but it absolutely needs a level of accountability at the top that can only come from actually knowing the people they’re responsible for. Once you get beyond a couple of hundred people in a community at most, and it stops being an “everyone knows everyone” kind of thing, communism is just far too susceptible to corruption.

    My gaming group takes a somewhat communist approach to starting out in survival games - Minecraft, ARK, etc - and it works well. No-one’s going to destroy any friendships over half a stack of stone and two bits of cooked food so corruption isn’t an issue. Plus it’s more efficient for us to work together at that point rather than all try to individually collect everything we need. Sure, it’s just video games, but it shows the system can work and have benefits. It just doesn’t scale up at all.