• 7 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • I worry the same way, but mostly just when I’m commenting on something hurtful. Like if a commenter is being agonizingly wrong about something really important, spreading lies, you know the kind. I’ll get worked up and start writing a comment, but realize that any point I make can be nitpicked and invalidated even if it’s broadly correct. So I don’t post those comments.

    But when it’s not in response to someone being inflammatory, I feel better about just doing my best with what I write. If someone has a correction, well that’s a good thing! I’ll acknowledge it and edit my comment to include the better info I’m given. I can hope that the people reading it don’t see that I was wrong on one point and decide I’m completely wrong because I try to interact respectfully.


  • The problem as I see it is that there is an upper limit on how good any game can look graphically. You can’t make a game that looks more realistic than literal reality, so any improvement is going to just approach that limit. (Barring direct brain interfacing that gives better info than the optical nerve)

    Before, we started from a point that was so far removed from reality than practically anything would be an improvement. Like say “reality” is 10,000. Early games started at 10, then when we switched to 3D it was 1,000. That an enormous relative improvement, even if it’s far from the max. But now your improvements are going from 8,000 to 8,500 and while it’s still a big absolute improvement, it’s relatively minor – and you’re never going to get a perfect 10,000 so the amount you can improve by gets smaller and smaller.

    All that to say, the days of huge graphical leaps are over, but the marketing for video games acts like that’s not the case. Hence all the buzzwords around new tech without much to show for it.







  • My understanding is that the IA had implemented a digital library, where they had (whether paid or not) some number of licenses for a selection of books. This implementation had DRM of some variety that meant you could only read the book while it was checked out. In theory, this means if the IA has 10 licenses of a book, only 10 people have a usable copy they borrowed from the IA at a time.

    And then the IA disabled the DRM system, somehow, and started limitlessly lending the books they had copies of to anyone that asked.

    I definitely don’t like the obnoxious copyright system in the USA, but what the IA did seems obviously wrong against the agreement they entered into. Like if your local library got a copy of Book X and then when someone wanted to borrow it they just copied it right there and let you keep the copy.

    ETA: updated my wording. I don’t believe what the IA did was morally wrong, per se, but rather against the agreement I presume they entered into with the owners of the books they lent.