• 25 Posts
  • 110 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 10th, 2023

help-circle




  • Plenty of people hated Steam when it first came out, it was a controversial thing when games started to require it.

    Steam has only become as popular as it is because Valve responded to much of that criticism, and improved it enough to become “acceptable” DRM in the minds of most gamers. People defend it because it came to work (mostly) seamlessly and offer additional beneficial features. Unlike many other far jankier platforms/launchers which have been developed with minimum effort as more transparent cash grabs.

    A DRM free world be be ideal, but we rarely get an ideal world, so people settle for the least worst instead.





  • thehatfox@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlNo take backs?
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    34
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    11 months ago

    The distributed computing explanation for purpose of the Matrix doesn’t seem to make much more sense than the power plant one.

    All of the nodes are continuously occupied by living in the simulation. Unless the machines had a desperate need to understand human society circa 1999, there is nothing useful the machines could do with all the brain power.




  • thehatfox@lemmy.worldtolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldCtrl+Alt+T
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    I see a lot of people saying they have to use a GUI tool for partition management, and I’ve never understood why.

    Text based tools like parted are fairly easy to use, at least compared to other terminal tools the same people are able to use for other tasks.

    What is it about partitioning that needs a GUI when other tasks don’t? Is it the visual representation of the partition layout? A general fear of borking a disk?




  • One model that seemed to work well was the pre-social media internet old people might remember: bulletin boards, forums, blogs.

    Ouch.

    The video makes an interesting comparison between online and offline communities, but I think it’s missed how common identities that gave offline communities cohesion have also broken down in the modern age. Increasing pressure for jobs and housing, among other things, have forced many societies to become a lot more internally mobile. This has resulted in a much diminished sense of local community because so many people rarely stay in one place long enough to form local bonds.

    Supporting the local sports team and attending the local church together once helped us overlook our differences, but those shared experiences are shrinking. That loss of offline cohesion is contributing to the alienation and polarisation alongside the troubles online.






  • Yes, if prohibition has taught us anything it’s that it doesn’t work.

    My country, the UK, is attempting to follow in New Zealand’s footsteps and recently announced its own “generation ban” on tobacco smoking. Despite the fact that tobacco usage has been declining here for many years and seems likely to all but cease naturally anyway.

    I’m no fan of tobacco smoking, but prohibition does not seem the right approach to take. It doesn’t seem helpful or necessary from a public health standpoint, and is also an impediment of individual liberty.

    Revoking such a ban for tax reasons isn’t a great angle either though in New Zealand’s case. However, from what I remember of USA history tax was a motivation to repeal alcohol prohibition in the 1930s, so maybe that’s an unpleasant taste we should be willing to swallow in this case.