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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • The article basically answers its own questions in the conclusion that we’ve pretty much reached the ‘final form’ for consoles - Just like with phones.

    In the early 2000’s phones were all manner of wild designs with weird shapes and crazy functionality, but now we’ve settled on the ubiquitous black rectangle of the smartphone. So too now has the console settled on this, a single screen with buttons on the sides.

    We saw the lead-up to this long ago with Nintendo’s own evolving line of handhelds, and Sony’s PSP and Vita, and now we’ve seen it on the PC side too with the Steam Deck.

    Even Sony are trying to move into making their main console a handheld - the only reason Nintendo were able to get there first is they were willing to do their classic move, and go with a low-power device without much grunt, and rely on the fun-factor of the games to make it good.

    Imagine if next cycle Nintendo came out with a dual screen beast, a-la the DS. These days, more and more games on consoles are cross-platform and work on all systems, with few exclusives. That doesn’t work so well if your system has super unique hardware and deviates too far from the single black rectangle. They’d be shooting themselves in the foot.

    I think if Nintendo do something truly off-the-wall again, it will only be because there has been some new tech shift in the market and Nintendo jump in to get first mover advantage. Like a new type of VR that works super seamlessly, or something none of us have though of yet.

    But for now here we are. The ubiquitous black rectangle has arrived.



  • I got lost a few times too, but I think they did a good job of providing mitigation for that with specific large landmarks you can see at least one of from anywhere, like the big tree, the mountain, the windmill.

    I understand what the devs were trying to do by not having a map. When a map is there, especially an always-on minimap, I basically spend my whole time with my eyes glued to that tiny corner of the screen rather than actually looking at the world. So I can respect the decision to try and do without any map.





  • Even at $100 it’s a pretty reasonable time/compensation ratio, assuming you only have to spend like 10 minutes on actual performance time.

    Of course there is potentially travel time and the overhead of communicating ahead of time to set up the prank.

    May not be worth it if you have a full time job already.





  • tiramichu@lemm.eetoFoodPorn@lemmy.worldHoo's Hoo of Coffee Drinkers
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    17 days ago

    I understand that “half caf” is supposed to be one-eye-asleep and one-eye-awake, but to me he instead gives the impression of being in that intensely pissed-off zone where he wants to drink coffee and is gagging for a full strength cup, but he’s been having heart palpitations recently and his doctor advised him to cut back and he promised his wife that he would but it’s Monday and there’s so much fucking work to get done but there’s this stupid two hour meeting and don’t even fucking dare talking to me about your bullshit Karen or I’m going to fucking snap I swear to God




  • Honestly, it’s absolutely disgusting.

    For a time my retired father was looking into buying one, but I’m super glad in retrospect now this has all come out that it didn’t go through and he walked away.

    These parks and the individuals who run them are intentionally scamming vulnerable people out of their entire retirement by painting a false picture that these holiday caravans are a sound investment just like owning a house, while all the while knowing fully that people will lose almost everything they put in.


  • While it may seem like “it” and “it’s” are different forms of the same word, in reality they are completely different words

    he / his

    her / hers

    It / its

    The above are all different forms of the same words.

    “it’s” however is merely a shortening of “it is” and on that basis is a totally different word that (very misleadingly!) happens to sound exactly the same as “its”

    EDIT:

    Another way of looking at this :)

    his & he’s (shortening of “he is”) are different words in the same way, but nobody makes the mistake of writing or saying “he’s car” instead of “his car” - it’s obviously wrong because the words sound different - ‘hiz’ and ‘heez’

    The same is exactly and identically true of “its” and “it’s’” but those words sound the same, so the mistake comes easily.


  • People were upset about this because it seemed deceptive.

    The first two words on the yelp page for their now-closed restaurant are “House made”

    “Most of my stuff from here is made from scratch” said the owner.

    So people who have that expectation in mind are clearly going to be upset when they find it was pre-made all along.

    It’s about honesty and expectation.

    If I go to some nationwide chain restaurant then I obviously expect all their breaded chicken is coming out the freezer in bags - and that’s fine because it’s not deceptive.

    If I go to a small restaurant which strongly implies in their wording and branding that the food is all made from scratch, then it’s deceptive when it isn’t.



  • I’m not a parent myself but I have plenty of friends who are, and of all their strategies I think my favourite is the one of encouraging children from a young age to “make good decisions”

    If all children hear is “Don’t do that, don’t do this, don’t talk to them” then ultimately and eventually they are going to rebel, just to see what happens (and I’ve seen that side, too.)

    Kids need to learn to make decisions for themselves, and sometimes that can even mean allowing them have bad and unpleasant outcomes (in minor and non-dangerous ways)

    When kids are empowered to think for themselves and also to understand consequence, I think they are much better equpped to handle anything, including weird Internet trends that can get you killed.


  • I think the reason non-tech people find this so difficult to comprehend is the poor understanding of what problems are easy for (classically programmed) computers to solve versus ones that are hard.

    if ( person_at_crossing ) then { stop }
    

    To the layperson it makes sense that self-driving cars should be programmed this way. Aftter all, this is a trivial problem for a human to solve. Just look, and if there is a person you stop. Easy peasy.

    But for a computer, how do you know? What is a ‘person’? What is a ‘crossing’? How do we know if the person is ‘at/on’ the crossing as opposed to simply near it or passing by?

    To me it’s this disconnect between the common understanding of computer capability and the reality that causes the misconception.