Yeah I get they’re trying to do something to connect these stories that take place in completely different time periods and locations. But does anyone really care about that?

There’s some lore about Assassins and Templars in the storyline. I didn’t care about that either (I just want to be a pirate) but maybe some people like that, and it’s enough to connect the various time periods together. But ocassionally warping people into the present day sometimes? It’s just just dumb. I just want to be a pirate!

Only Assassin’s Creed game I ever played. The worst part was the parts where you’re in the present day and had to do some boring computer shit for some reason? During the whole time in those parts I was just angry and thinking “just let me be a pirate again FFS!”

Microsoft is currently pushing everyone to use office on the cloud, so they kinda are making office work on Linux (in a web browser).

Outlook running natively on windows is currently being phased out, Of course the cloud services version of outlook sucks eve more than the native version, and that’s saying something. It looks like it’s just hotmail to me. But that’s what they’re pushing everyone to. I wouldn’t be surprised if the start phasing out other office products running natively in the coming years. Office already does everything it can to save files to one drive.

Cloud services are making them money, so much like how they’re putting AI into everything, they also seem to want to put everything on the cloud because… more cloud money! After all you can’t just continue to use the older version of excel installed on your computer when excel exists in the cloud. You’ll have to pay a subscription to continue using their software because it lives in the cloud.

Yeah your strategy would make sense if Microsoft were still the machiavellian schemers they used to be. But now they just seem to be chasing after money in the short term in whatever looks to be growing (cloud services and AI) with no real long term strategy at all. And they really really want people to pay a subscription to use their software. But in their greed they just might kill their Windows business.

Yeah but did those scientists ever point the James Webb Telescope at that creepy house at the end of my street?

Sodium Ion is a real game changer. But I doubt it will compete with Lithium Ion on energy density anytime soon.

But that’s not necessary to make major changes in the power grid. Solar and wind is already cheapest form of energy generation even considering the expense of Lithium to store the energy when renewables aren’t generating. If you’re just installing stationary battery banks, you don’t care that much about the energy density as you would for a battery in a car or phone. Set up banks of cheap sodium ion batteries strategically and not only do you have plenty of power stored for when it’s not sunny or windy, you may avoid widespread power outages when power lines are downed.

People tend to use a lot of jargon when they’re trying to convince others they know what they’re doing.

Ok… so why are we in “Late stage capitalism” now, and we weren’t in the 1930s? Things were way worse in the 1930s than now.

Perhaps there were some changes in economic policy that fixed the problems then? What reason do we have to believe the solutions that didn’t work in the past (ie. communism) will work now, and the solutions that actually did work in the past won’t work now?

“Late stage capitalism” is not a call to action, it’s a call to apathy. It’s used by monetized “socialist” influencers to give a permission structure for people to continue buying from their merch stores.

The logic is the failure of capitalism is inevitable so you don’t need to do anything. So you may as well buy some swag to signal to others that “you get it”. It’s the slogan of those that want to fall in line with the “socialist” aesthetic, without thinking about how socialism is just another thing packaged and sold in a capitalist system.

Everyday I go on here and see people attacking the politcal opposition to the fascists, people creating distrust in the free press, and pushing for violence.

If you had any kind of education in politics, you’d understand who it is that’s creating the kind of atmosphere fascism thrives in.

Ideology is bullshit. Politics is primarily tribal, ideology is just a rationalization about why your tribe is better than the other tribe.

There are issues to be sure, but if you talk with someone about politics for 15 minutes you’ll usually find all kinds of ways their ideology is inconsistent and hypocritical… unless you consider that they’re just repeating the talking points their tribal leaders told them to say. The only consistency about politics is “my tribe good, other tribe is bad.”

This comic exemplifies that. There’s no actual issue being discussed, it’s just green vs. orange. You’re expected to agree with green, and hate orange. And have even more disdain for anyone that seeks compromise. Which green issues does the character agree with and which orange issues they agree with, there’s no discussion on any kind of issue. Unquestioning loyalty to the tribe is consider good, considering any ideas from outside of the tribe is considered bad.

It’s obvious to anyone outside the tribe how counterproductive it is to attack anyone that might consider ideas outside of the tribe. You cannot build a broad coalition needed to accomplish anything in this way. It’s so painfully obvious. Even as the other tribe grows it’s numbers by not being so judgemental, even as your tribe shrinks and is manipulated into helping the other tribe you don’t notice because you’ve been conditioned by the tribe to never question tribe.

So what are you saying about being a loyal member of your tribe? You’re just saying you don’t actually want to think about the issues, you certainly don’t want to discuss issues, and you don’t want to be effective. You only want to prove your status to the other narcissistic people in your shrinking tribe.

To me finding the right dialog option or getting the right item just doesn’t cut it. In real life a lot depends on the head space both people are in and what’s going on in their lives when they’re talking with each other. You could have a max “score” with someone, but they’re kinda seeing someone or maybe you have a family emergency you need to deal with and things don’t work out. If you have characters that are just waiting for you to select the correct options and have nothing else going on in their lives, it’s all very flat and oversimplified.

Some things just don’t follow the rules of logic, or if they do, it’s too complicated to model mathematically. But maybe people would get value from an approximation of a cheesy romance novel? Not really sure what the goal is tho. Is it realistic encounters or something emulating something not at all realistic but some people enjoy anyway?

Romance isn’t the most logical thing, and a video game lives in a computer and kinda has to be logical.

So it’s either going to be some scripted events written by a human which the player doesn’t have control over, or it’ll be along the lines give item X to character Y, select dialog option B and now she loves you. The first doesn’t fit the medium and the second is a really terrible way to portray a relationship.

Maybe some LLM algorithms might portray romance better? But I don’t feel good about that. Don’t want to burn crazy amounts of electricity talking to a LLM character in a video game and the game would have to be online only, which means it cold be shut down at any time.

Even if we have the tech to have an LLM kind of algorithm that wouldn’t use too much power and could run locally, it would really suck if you couldn’t progress in a game because the LLM decided they don’t like you. So it would still be a side thing, and not important to the main story of a game.

LOL WHAT?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.upscrolled.app

That’s why it used to be not orange, obviously.

I legit think streaming sites have become worse than video rental places.

It seemed like a big advantage that you could have unlimited number movies on a streaming site while a video rental store had limited shelf space. But it turns you you have to scroll through endless pages of crap to try to find something you actually want to watch.

Also the shops would eventually have any movie you want to watch. With streaming sites many things will never appear there because the corporation that owns the movie owns their own streaming site and will keep it exclusive to them. In the past it wasn’t a thing where you’d have to keep track of which video rental shop had the rights to rent the movie you want to watch.

There was a time when it was just Netflix and pretty much anything would come on there eventually. That killed video rental. But it’s been a long time since you could find everything on one streaming site, and it’s gotten to be more expensive and time consuming to find a good movie to watch, so going to a video rental shop might actually make more sense now. But they’re all gone now.

Luckily there are websites with dubious legality you can find everything on. I’m willing to pay for a streaming site that’s actually convenient, but they don’t exist anymore, just like Blockbuster.

Whenever I hear news of China, they built a new electric railway, invented something new, or made massive tech progress.

A lot of things in China fall apart in a few years. You can build things fast when you don’t care about people’s rights and just force them off whatever land you need, and make people work insane hours. A lot of the amazing things China brags about is a Potemkin village, just made to show the authoritarian leaders they did got the project complete on time and they in turn use it in their propaganda. Authoritarians always love to brag about making the trains run on time, right? The reality is often different from what the media portrays it to be in an authoritarian country.

But still, China is slightly preferable to the US at the moment.

Eh if you’re a peasant and stay at home you might be conscripted to fight for your lord against the people lord the next county over just because they have a disagreement or maybe because they’re bored or whatever. Probably gonna die a gruesome death either way. Going on a pilgrimage you at least see some of the world before you meet your gruesome death.

Yeah China is like the Soviet Union.

My grandparents had to hold their noses and be allies with the Soviet Union for a while.

But unlike the Soviet Union which was way behind the West in technology, China is ahead of us on EVs and we will have to catch up. But before worrying about that, we gotta take down the US.

US is the same as China now. Well that’s not true, US foreign policy is way more batshit insane than China’s. If you can even call it a foreign policy… it seems to me it’s just the whims of a deranged old child molester surrounded by fucking Nazis.

And China is further away and there’s pretty much zero probability China will invade my country. With the US, who knows? Kinda stupid to send money to a country I may have to be fighting against within a year.

How high are you right now?