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Programmer tries to explain binary search to the police
  • You did 200k years. You need to do 200k years as seconds (the 6.311e12 they mentioned). Their math is right.

    Not sure why you're acting like they claimed to invent the logarithm, either...

  • Here's the thing…
  • No, we are both dreaming butterflies.

  • Climate Activists Tell the EV Industry to Fix Its Filthy Supply Chain
  • I have an idea. What if we attached a power line directly to the car, so we didn't need a battery? Of course, it'd only be able to run on specialized lines. To get the most out of those lines, we could chain cars together. And since the specialized hardware doesn't make sense to own, we could have municipalities own them and charge a fare (or better yet, just make it part of taxes).

  • What do you mean is broken!?
  • You wouldn't have 13 feats at a time, though. It'd be one at a time and you just get to choose which one. Perhaps could be further limited by only allowing changing once per short or even long rest.

    But yeah, it definitely starts stronger than it ends. I was thinking the main ways it could sorta be used is as a jack of all trades, because you could probably have proficiency in any given thing so long as there's no combat involved.

  • New Jersey banning sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035
  • I get what you're saying and that's obviously a concern, but at the same time... doesn't it have to be reasonably far in the future? We don't have either the infrastructure or even enough supply of EVs to change this too quickly.

    That said, I wish they'd use a gradual approach. Start ramping up taxes on gasoline with the proceeds entirely going to EV infrastructure (and similar for purchasing new gasoline vehicles and licensing existing vehicles). Start small and increase as we get closer to the cutoff date. Start limiting gas station development and create zoning regulations for EV infrastructure (especially charging for apartments, which is a huge gap). Make all the laws ramp up gradually so that it's always small, incremental changes that are never too difficult to do at a time, but will get us in a better place in 10-15 years.

  • Biden joins Meta's Threads after White House rebukes Elon Musk for ‘anti-semitic rhetoric’ on X
  • Yeah, Meta sucks, but it doesn't suck at the Elon Musk level. Lesser evil and all.

  • The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now.
  • I am a bit curious where the balance is for how much shit you'll put up with if it means a lower cost of living (or bigger/cheaper home, anyway). I'm personally of the stance I will pay (or give up) a significant amount of money to live in a good, mostly sane place.

    It's obviously a balancing act. Nobody will give up all their money to have marginally better emotional safety. But where is the line? How much better do things have to be in a different place (or how much worse in your current place) to accept, say, a small apartment that costs a solid third of your income? Or inversely, would you put up with a Gilead situation if you got a sprawling mansion out of it?

  • Judges Are Clearly Terrified To Subject Donald Trump To The Rule Of Law
  • Heck, he doesn't even have to do anything. Trump could disappear for good and I bet his followers would come to their own conclusions and pull some shit.

  • Japan is on its own wavelength.
  • We are ridiculously inconsistent in Canada. I've seen all 3 of the most popular formats here (2023-11-22, 11/22/2023, and 22/11/2023) in similarish amounts. Government forms seem to be increasingly using RFC 3339 dates, but even they aren't entirely onboard.

  • Japan is on its own wavelength.
  • Huh, I've never noticed how much bloat was in ISO 8601. I think when most people refer to it, we're specifically referring to the date (optionally with time) format that is shared with RFC 3339, namely 2023-11-22T20:00:18-05:00 (etc). And perhaps some fuzziness for what separates date and time.

  • Ruletanic
  • I badly wish that I could get (competent) home assistants with at least somewhat customizable activation keywords. I understand why it's not customizable. They build it into the hardware so that it doesn't have to be truly listening all the time. But I'd love at least some options to buy versions that have different phrases.

    For me, I just want something that references some pop culture AI (eg, HAL, Glados, etc). I especially don't like Google's approach of saying the freaking company name.

  • does this code run rule
  • In Ruby, 0 and "" is truthy,

    What the fuck?

  • Deleted
    *Permanently Deleted*
  • I think the rat king would be a little bit insulted that you even had to ask.

  • Deleted
    *Permanently Deleted*
  • I like the idea of having a regulated, living, backwards compatible standard. Which seems to be what USB-C is now, for phones. The EU has soon to be active regulation that will make it a requirement for many things. Yet, it's not a single, set in stone standard, but one that's constantly being expanded (eg, version 3.2 and PD).

    Of course, the regulation has to also be living. Eg, at some point, maybe there'll be a strong enough reason to allow another standard (by no means do I think USB-C will always make sense). And the regulation has to very carefully choose the standard.

    That way we get the benefits of standardization (from actually everyone using the same format), but we aren't unreasonably crippling ourselves to do it.

  • What the actual fuck?!
  • Yeah. There's literally nothing you can put on a prompt that will truly work. It's still a good idea to prompt cause it will reduce how many people approve the prompt, but there is a significant number of people who don't read prompts at all and just insta-confirm.

    At best, I think you could design it so there's no way for an app to request certain permissions themselves. They'd have to be opted in from the system settings and apps could only tell you how to do it. But that's a usability nightmare that is quite frustrating for legitimate usages. There's already some super sensitive permissions that do this. I think the ability to install apps, ability to display over other apps, and password managers for android.

  • What do you mean is broken!?
  • A random class every day actually sounds like a fascinating challenge. It'd be such a pain to gear up, since you never know what you'll be proficient with on a given day lol.

  • What do you mean is broken!?
  • Would it be close enough to balanced if all the classes simply have their own level and xp? So you effectively can get the abilities of every class at level 1, which I don't think would be overpowered. You'd also be effectively penalized for staying too long in any class except your main one, cause you'd be earning XP for an alt class.

  • Philosophical franchises
  • I think you can actually solve that one with enough C4 :p

  • BIRDS.
  • Or hired to do a show, since English isn't that specific. Being gifted someone dancing doesn't usually mean you own that person. It just means someone was paid to dance as a show for you.

  • What's going on with the wacky nesting of comments?

    The screenshot shows comments somehow being nested multiple levels without an intermediate parent. That's a bug, right? Nesting should only be increasing by one level at a time.

    !

    I've observed this happening a ton across many different threads. There's also some weird cases where the top level comment is just a link to "show parent" and... It's not actually top level??

    !

    14
    Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky

    I grew up with the Harry Potter series and loved it as a kid, but I can't pretend it's actually good writing. It's full of all kinds of plot holes, the wizarding universe doesn't make a lot of sense, there's thinly veiled bigotry (particularly prominent in the naming of characters), and Rowling as a person is all sorts of problematic that I can't endorse giving money to.

    But Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, or HPMOR for short, is a really unique and fascinating full length fan work for any fan of Harry Potter (and also anyone who read Harry Potter and just didn't get the fuss). Though you don't actually need to have read Harry Potter to enjoy HPMOR, as it mostly reuses characters and settings but is otherwise entirely original.

    The premise is simple: what if Harry was actually smart? In fact, not just smart, but a child genius. The wizarding universe as a setting with all its flaws isn't changed, but Harry recognizes those flaws and takes advantage of them. You can think of this book like someone very smart nitpicked over the Harry Potter universe trying to identify everything that doesn't make sense or would be "overpowered". It admittedly does often have "I am very smart" vibes that can sometimes get a little cringeworthy, but it's overall extremely entertaining and a one of a kind work that I wish I could reexperience for the first time.

    It's also not just Harry being smart, because that would be boring if it was just him. Voldemort is also recharacterized to be much more competent and intelligent. This sets up interesting conflicts that I won't elaborate on to avoid spoilers, but I can say that the way Voldemort is characterized is brilliant and far better than the actual Harry Potter books.

    Overall, it's one of the most entertaining books I've ever read and a fascinating critique of sorts of the original Harry Potter series that many of us grew up with.

    0
    Why is my profile's "posts" section always empty? I have a hard time finding any posts I've made

    Basically what the title says. My profile has only ever said that I've never made any posts, despite having made several in different servers (including this, my local one). They're not new posts either and I've made them across many days.

    !Screenshot of my profile's posts section showing no posts

    Even more than this, I actually seem to struggle to even find my posts by other means. I tried the search system, filtering to me in the "creator" field and all communities, searching for a key word that I know is in a post I made. And I know that post is visible because I got several replies in it and was able to reply to those comments. But I can't even find my own comments I made in that thread! The only results are from different threads.

    Fortunately, I can find the post via my browser's history. Here's the post I was trying to find, which I cannot find through any means within Lemmy itself. https://lemm.ee/post/930728

    It's not just this post, BTW. I can't find any of my posts via search or profile.

    5
    [Full spoilers] I'd like to discuss Final Fantasy XVI in full

    Full spoilers for the entirety of the game follows.

    SPOILERS

    SPOILERS

    SPOILERS

    SPOILERS

    So, I beat the game and couldn't find any recent discussions about it here, so thought I'd make one. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on the game (or on my thoughts). In no particular order:

    1. The combat system was very cool! I wasn't sure about it at first and I still admittedly miss controlling a party rather than an individual, but it sure is a fast paced and varied system. I switched my eikons up a few times, with the final set I found most useful being phoenix (ignition / flames of rebirth), bahamut (wicked wheel, gigaflare), and shiva (windup, diamond dust).

      • I found that phoenix's "o" ability was the most useful most of the time but mostly used it for reaching flyers. I usually didn't otherwise find I had time for o abilities.
      • I found that most normal enemies were extremely easy, so it was best to build largely around staggering + heavy hitting the toughest enemies.
    2. The ending was really sad. Though also a little confusing. It seems like Clive tried to heal Joshua, couldn't, and sacrificed himself to... I think completely destroy magic for good? Sounds like the blight would still be there, though presumably wouldn't progress anymore?

      • I like that the game used the red star again. I felt so bad when Jill realized Clive was gone.
      • TBH, "confusing" was kinda a recurring theme in the game for me. But at least some of that was surely intentional (Ultima's monologues).
    3. The game sure had a lot of really badass, dramatic fights! Ifrit really helped to make some fights feel massive in scope without having much "ludonarrative dissonance" (since early game, you couldn't control Ifrit and it was supposed to be extremely taxing to fully prime). The Titan and Bahamut fights are perhaps some of the most epic Final Fantasy battles I've ever done (and I've played almost all of them)!

    4. I thought it was a bit weird that the bulk of the game is based in a Fallen airship, yet you never actually restore the airship, even when you need to fly! When Origin rose, I was like "aha, time to finally restore the airship!", but nope. Felt like a tease.

      • I also really wish the game had more lore on the Fallen. They're such a prominent centerpiece of many maps, and yet the game barely delves into them at all. I kept expecting they were saving it for some big bombshell later, but nope, nothing.
    5. One thing that confused me is that Ultima talked a lot about Clive needing to absorb the other Eikons, yet no Leviathan? I noticed early on that the game said there is one Eikon for each element and listed 8 elements, yet only 7 Eikons (plus Ifrit) were ever mentioned. "Leviathan the lost" even gets named dropped by Joshua and yet Ultima doesn't even seem to notice the missing Eikon. Wonder if they're saving this for DLC? Either way, it feels poorly executed considering how central Clive absorbing Eikons is to the plot.

    6. Oof, Waloed was depressing. I was so hyped to see Ash, after going so long without ever even seeing this whole 'nother continent. Only for it to be a graveyard of dead and Akashic.

    7. Fuck Annabella (Clive's mom). She was such a piece of shit. I kinda wonder if Ultima was influencing her from the start, or if it was only later? I suspect she betrayed Rosaria out of her own free will, considering how terribly she treats Clive from the start.

    8. The treatment of Bearers was sickening. At first I was noticing parallels to American chattel slavery, but it quickly became more of a Nazi Germany kinda thing. It was a great design choice to make Clive a "bearer" so that you'd experience the bigotry firsthand. I wanted to outright murder most NPCs I met because they were so horrible.

      • It's especially sad when you later find out why Bearers are treated bad. They were originally freaking blessed and people in power were just jealous/afraid, so had to scapegoat Bearers.
      • I also felt so bad for L'ubor. He was the centerpiece of his village and yet the people who loved him turned on him so fast the instant they learned he was a Bearer. And they acted like it was some big betrayal, as if they couldn't understand why a Bearer would want to not be a Bearer.
    9. The map design is very meh. The game is pretty, but aside from the mothercrystals and Fallen ruins, everything feels so grounded that it may as well be our world during medieval ages. I want a fantasy world that feels fantastic! And aesthetics aside, most maps are fairly linear. They often have some branches (many used only for specific side quests), but felt like they didn't give enough reasons to explore. The movable parts of the map feel narrow and restrictive.

      • For whatever bizarre reason, you can often find larger enemies off the beaten path, but they're rarely worth the time. The XP/AP/gil they give is hilariously bad compared to just a pack of normal enemies that you might be able to beat in a single AoE spell.
    10. Early game side quests are terrible, but they get great later in the game. It's really weird. IDK why they made the early game quests so bad. It set me up to expect side quests to suck. And the game has a lot of side quests, so they probably could have trimmed a few to make the early game side quests suck less. In particular, the early game quests within the hideaway feel very forced and awkward.

    11. Ultima was a decent villain. Very creepy (those eyes!). I'm not entirely sure I understand where he and his "collective" came from, but am thinking from another planet, since his final form fights in a cosmic setting and Origin is described as a ship, but looks far more like a spaceship than anything else.

      • Barnabas was also great. Super intimidating in ever scene. The battle you're supposed to lose was well executed, as you've seen a few of those "press the attack" moments by then, but it's the first one that can't be finished fast enough (I kinda wonder what happens if you cheated?).
    12. I liked the twist that the crystals and magic were bad for the environment. Kinda wonder why no academics or something at least noticed that before, though. Isn't the pattern of the blight's movement kinda obvious to its cause? Kinda feels like they missed an opportunity to draw analogies to climate change, where we know what's causing it and simply refuse to do anything about it.

    13. The contextual codex was a neat idea, but the execution felt lacking. It only seems to work for the main quest, despite the fact that side quests populate a huge number of codex entries. I also found that despite regularly checking it, I often would not see the new codex entries I expected to see (until I went to visit Harpocrates). New pages of existing entries were also written as if you'd only read the newest page, with lots of repetition for minimal (if any) new information. I love lore, so codexes are super appealing to me. It was sometimes disappointing for new entries to not actually say anything new.

      • It generally didn't do a good enough job at explaining new things (e.g., at the very beginning of the game, characters are talking about how they're on a mission to kill a dominant and for so long I'm like "WTF is a dominant"). And it took a little while to understand the high level global politics because the game is slow to explain them.
    14. Damn, the game is long. Took me about 60 hours, doing basically everything except the cronoliths (I tried those a couple of times and gave up -- too hard and not fun to me).

    15. The game does fantastic at updating NPC dialogue. I noticed so many changes to dialogue throughout the events of the game, including side quests. Lots of games barely update dialogue and it's sad cause I want to know how characters are reacting to some big event.

      • The hideaway really needed to be more compact. You spend soooo much time walking around to visit quest givers and hear updated dialogue.
      • For whatever weird reason, some major NPC dialogue (shop keepers and such) isn't fully voiced. I don't get why. It felt incomplete. I mean, I'm glad that dialogue didn't get outright cut, but would have preferred it being fully voiced.

    Overall, it was a very fulfilling and fun story driven game with action packed combat. I'd give it a 9/10 (though I am a Final Fantasy fangirl, so am biased).

    0
    What games have great cinematography?

    I've come to really appreciate when games aren't merely graphically pretty, but that they also take great care with their use of camera angles and animation in general. I speak particularly of cutscenes and dialogue, but frankly this question applies to the entire game.

    I find there's a lot of games that do take cinematography in mind for cutscenes, but nothing else. Or at least the rest of the game is considerably less impressive than cutscenes. e.g., rather than animate something, some games will just have a text box say what happened. And dialogue in many games is very basic back and forth (often with very lackluster quality lip syncing).

    RDR2 is perhaps the best game I've played so far in this regard. It felt like it animated everything carefully, even had a cinematic mode for horseback riding that I found very pleasing to use, and cutscenes often felt movie quality.

    What other games (of any kind) put a lot of effort into cinematography?

    13
    Loaf.
    imgur.com imgur.com

    Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users like CoderKat.

    imgur.com
    0
    [Resolved -- just extra slow] Post successfully submits but isn't visible in the community

    I made a post over an hour ago and realized it hasn't shown up in the community, the community on its host site, nor my profile's posts section. I thought at first it was maybe just a delay, but an hour seems suspicious and I'd expect it to still show up within the lemm.ee site even if not the community's host site.

    I tried reposting it in case it was a fluke, but it exhibited the same effects (and I deleted it just in case it is in fact there, cause I didn't wanna spam a duplicate.

    What's happening here?

    0
    Perhaps well known, but if you're looking for amazing wall art, the NASA Exoplanet series is fantastic
    exoplanets.nasa.gov Take a virtual trip with NASA

    Book your trip to the imagined surfaces of planets outside our solar system, with NASA's interactive Exoplanet Travel Bureau

    Take a virtual trip with NASA

    This is a poster series in a retro style. They look fantastic in large prints. The space telescope series is also on the page. I personally adore the JWST poster and have a large print of it in canvas form: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/2294/james-webb-space-telescope-poster/?layout=magic_shell&travel_bureau=true&cid=4,travel_bureau_missions

    3
    The corona of black hole J1820+070, revealed by X-ray echoes mapped by NICER

    I've been using this as my phone wallpaper for a while. Had to reverse image search to recall where it was from. It's found on this page: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/station-science-101/astrophysics/

    0
    CoderKat CoderKat @lemm.ee

    I write bugs and sometimes features! I'm also @CoderKat@kbin.social.

    Posts 12
    Comments 868