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A very short survey on attitudes towards biological immortality
  • Agree. I added something like that in the "other negatives" box. There's that saying, society advances one funeral at a time.

    I like to think that myself, I'm very good at being open minded and adapting to the times (though honestly only time will tell). But I know many people don't do that. This is clearly evident in electoral polling as well as polls for social issues (eg, US 2023 support for same sex marriage is 89% among 18-29 but only 60% among 65 and older).

    Perhaps social changes could help with this problem. Clearly older folks can still change because the stat I just quoted was far worse in the not too distant past. Maybe our problems are with how we run news media or how we basically write off old folks as unlikely to change. Maybe it's because our society focuses on education being something you only do when young and you're never really expected to go back to school after that. Maybe we need to better teach empathy from a young age? Maybe us losing religion will make the biggest difference.

    Maybe we don't deserve this kinda advancement yet. To quote one of my favourite parts from the show The Orville:

    Technology and societal ethics have to progress hand in hand, each one supporting the other incrementally. Anything else is begging for disaster.

    • a member of an advanced, "space communism" version of humanity, talking to someone whose species has not yet advanced to the same point and wondering why they don't share their advanced tech with less advanced people.
  • Is it me or are games really not fun anymore
  • Live service games, MMOs, gatcha games, and many hardcore multiplayer games are the worst for this. They love to waste player's time on some repetitive grind because they want players to keep playing their game. They usually have either microtransactions (often for cosmetics) or a subscription.

    Personally, I love MMOs, but I try to avoid playing any grindy content (or at least as long as I don't think I'll genuinely enjoy it). So I'll usually play a game for a few months (they're really big games) and then quit for years, if not permanently (I have a bunch of MMOs I intend to someday return to, but have not yet).

    Single player games are generally much better at being genuinely fun. Especially story driven games. I also love open world games because you largely get to make them your own. It's perfectly valid to beeline the story missions if that's all you care about. Or you could do just the side quests. Or you could additionally explore like crazy. e.g., with Tears of the Kingdom, you really can ignore most of the shrines and largely focus on the story quests. None of the side quests are necessary, either. You don't have to explore the depths except for a tiny few places for the story. The vast majority of sky islands can be ignored. But I personally had a lot of fun exploring, so I explored nearly everything and loved it (except most of the depths -- they were way too big, empty, and repetitive).

    Some people don't like long games, though. And that's fine! There's tons of short or more streamlined games out there that you can have fun with. e.g., The Last of Us is a fantastic one. The sequel is about 24 hours long for the story and it felt like it flew by in the blink of an eye for me cause I was having so much fun.

  • Reddit remnants [initialisms explained]
  • To be honest, I rarely noticed the votes tally. I think the bot just applied a flair to the post eventually? It wasn't that relevant to me. I could see from the comments what the top posts were saying. For most posts, it's usually obviously leaning in one direction, anyway. I always went to the comments for the discussion and drama, anyway.

    I do think the existing voting options are good. And think that all top level comments should contain either a clear vote or INFO, because I think the sub doesn't really work if people aren't voting in some way.

    One rule of perhaps interest is the not accepting your judgement rule. I'm not sure if I care for that rule in the late subreddit. On the surface, it makes sense, since why post here if you're not going to accept the judgement? But I think we have to be honest here. The sub exists because it's amusing. The cases where OP doesn't accept their verdict can be quite dramatic and fun in a certain sense. That seems like it's conductive to the true goal of the sub. Also, I'd rather have an OP that argues against everyone than one who never replies (especially when there's so many requests for info).

  • *Permanently Deleted*
  • I also can't stand the fact that smokers can take unlimited 'breaks' whenever they please just to come back stinking up an entire room with their smoke.

    That feels like a workplace problem. Why would a workplace give them unlimited breaks? And why would nonsmokers not be allowed comparable breaks? This feels odd to me. My recent jobs have been ones where nobody is micromanaging my time, so anyone can take whatever breaks they want. As long as productivity doesn't obviously suffer, nobody cares. My past jobs in retail didn't allow smokers to take extra breaks. They'd get the same breaks as everyone else (for an 8 hour shift, that meant a 30 min lunch and 2 x 15 min coffee breaks).

  • A very short survey on attitudes towards biological immortality
  • I filled it out, but let's discuss in the comments because filling out a one sided form isn't as fun as being able to have a multi sided discussion.

    I personally find biological immortality super appealing. Despite the word "immortality" in it, it actually just means you can live as long as you want, which takes away many of the downsides to immortality that often get discussed. Since I'm not religious, I don't believe in any kind of afterlife, so scientific advancement letting me live longer is the only way I can avoid death (which I'm afraid of). And more than just avoiding death, I want to avoid being a frail senior whose quality of life is severely diminished.

    That said, for me, I ranked the positive advancements with the disease prevention, medical advancement, and QoL above simply extending human life. I think these all do of course go hand in hand. But fewer people dying young is better than fewer people dying old. Dying young is really tragic, because there's so much of life you won't have experienced. Similarly, the big issue with growing old is age related diseases, which impact your quality of life. At a certain point, Alzheimer's and dementia seem worse than death. I feel conflicted because I don't want to die but if I had a disease like one of those, it seems like I'd no longer be myself and it's unlikely there's any hope for recovery before the disease eventually kills me. There's also the fear that perhaps I would be myself, but feel trapped inside a body, constantly confused and afraid by what's going on, which sounds horrible.

    On the negative impact side, by far my biggest concern is imbalance in access to this immortality. My fear is that regular folks (including myself) won't have access but billionaires will. That's worse than not having immortality, since billionaires are generally terrible people and not who we want living longer. Overpopulation is a bit of a concern, but one that I think we can eventually solve. e.g., with social changes to expectations about having kids, automation improvements to reduce our need for people to work, and eventually moving beyond just living on the surface of earth. Wealthy nations already have a declining birth rate, anyway. As well, I'm a bit skeptical about true biological immortality, as opposed to, say, extending life on earth for a good chunk of time, but eventually moving to a digital afterlife, where overpopulation is less of a concern.

    I didn't know how to answer the regulation question. I think most things need some level of regulation, but the options were "strict regulation" vs "unrestricted", neither which sound right to me. As well, regulation would likely be completely situational. e.g., obviously safety is a vital part of any form of medical treatment. We shouldn't be reducing any existing regulation there. But I certainly don't want research into the area to be unnecessarily held back. For a large part, I see this as no different from researching a cure for any other disease. Aging can be viewed as a disease.

  • A very short survey on attitudes towards biological immortality
  • It's not in kbin. It's a Microsoft Office form (similar to a Google Form or Strawpoll).

  • The Supreme Court strikes down Biden's student-loan forgiveness plan, blocking debt relief for millions of borrowers
  • Well... I'm not surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised. We all knew this Supreme Court was not in favour of its citizens. The Supreme Court should have been stacked long ago. Leaving it be with its insane appointments just because stacking it might start a war with the GOP was a short sighted move, as the GOP is always going to play underhanded (that's how they managed to get so many SCOTUS appointments in the first place). Biden's insistence on trying to play nice with the GOP has always been his weakness.

    This really sucks for those with student loans who were depending on this. We're already in an economically rough place for the kinds of folks who would have student loans. Inflation has been sharp in recent years and wages have not kept up. In my field of tech, layoffs have been widespread and new grads would be the most severely impacted (they already struggle to get hired and now they're competing against an increased number of experienced people).

    As an aside, it's also a shame that lawmakers have not managed to pass a law for this debt relief. My understanding is that the strike down is specifically because it's not a congress passed loan forgiveness. But congress isn't willing to do the right thing (not in enough numbers to pass a law, anyway).

  • Canada will soon have new rules for clean fuel. Here's what they'll cost when you fill up | CBC News
  • And that's just what the Parliamentary Budget Office predicted. The article also has another prediction:

    "There's a zero per cent chance it would be worse than what the Parliamentary Budget Office is saying," said Wolinetz, who predicts a cost impact of under 10 cents a litre by 2030.

  • Canada will soon have new rules for clean fuel. Here's what they'll cost when you fill up | CBC News
  • Good. Some people will try to phrase this as a bad thing because yes, you will pay more (eventually, anyway -- article says they don't expect "any real bite until around 2025"). But we should be paying more given the environmental damage that burning this fuel causes. We should not be effectively subsidizing oil companies by paying the cost of their negative externalities.

    If anything, I think there should be even more than this. We should have Norway style taxation on fuel. They have a massive savings fund that massively dwarfs our own closest equivalent.

  • Family of missing Barrie woman fears human trafficking, expands search | CBC News

    It's been over three weeks since Autumn Shaganash, a woman from Barrie, was last seen or heard from by her family. They are urging the public to help with the efforts, and told CBC Toronto that police in Barrie need to follow more leads.

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    Stabbings at University of Waterloo send 3 to hospital, 1 person in custody
  • Some degree, I think is imported from the US. Let's be honest, US news dominates our internet more than Canadian news. I have to go out of my way on sites like this (or formerly reddit) to see Canadian news. I would actually say I am more familiar with American politics than I am Canadian politics (which isn't to say I'm unfamiliar with Canadian politics, but rather that I'm really familiar with American politics despite not being American). That means the current US culture war, which is very heavily attacking trans people and anything gender non conforming, is being a heavy influence on Canadians right now.

    But that's only "some degree". We aren't blameless. While it's nice that we have a PM that has a mostly pretty great on gender matters (no matter your opinion on Trudeau for his other faults, I think we can all agree he's very progressive on LGBT+ topics), that only goes so far. Canadian news media often leans right (and we're currently seeing a risk of the Toronto Star being acquired by a right leaning US media company). Pierre Poilievre has been stoking these alt right flames. And now we have a bill that is going to see more people using US media because Canadian media won't be found on Google search. And that's because of our own, badly written bill (it should have been written just so that sites couldn't copy/summarize most of the story without sending clicks to the original site, but for whatever reason they instead wrote it as requiring payment to link to news at all!).

  • Doug Ford’s right-hand man, PC MPP went to Las Vegas with Greenbelt developer: sources
  • They don't even try to hide their close friendships with developers.

    I guess it wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that the PCs clearly cannot separate business from friendship, too. We do need development in the province. But not at the cost of the Greenbelt. Nor do we need things like selling off highways or healthcare for profit.

  • How do I give a community to another user?
  • Honestly, I'd suggest just leaving it be and waiting for an eventual feature change. I don't think it's scalable to be manually requesting all these kinds of changes from the (sole?) admin and this isn't particularly critical. I think Ernest has a lot on his plate just maintaining and developing this site.

  • Will it ever be possible for kbin to federate with PeerTube?
  • I think the main way that could be achieved is if Kbin and Lemmy had a convenient "upload video" option that actually uploaded the video to peertube. Convenience is king. Back before Reddit offered image and video hosting (and you'd usually upload to a site like imgur instead), there'd constantly be people commenting that they didn't know how to upload their content.

    That said, I'm personally cautious of PeerTube. Hosting small images is one thing, but video is something else. I don't really understand how PeerTube will keep running if it gets too much usage. Presumably, like most of these sites, it will depend on donations. I don't know if that will cut it for hosting video. My fear is that it'll be fine with low usage but as soon as it gets too high usage, we might see it going down (and taking a ton of content with it).

  • Losses of the Russian military to 30.6.2023
  • Does anyone know what special equipment includes? (I asked this last time but don't think I got a response.)

  • bread rule
  • Unsliced? Greatest thing since never.

  • How to create a decentralized kind of wiki?
  • Yeah, to be clear, MediaWiki is open source and also has alllll sorts of really cool extensions. You also already can download the entire contents of Wikipedia.

    I think this desire to federate everything is going too far. Most things don't benefit from this and in fact just become over complicated. If you can host a regular copy of a site easily... that's frankly most of the benefits there.

  • The Steam Summer Sale is on now!
  • That is the best part and honest one of the best parts of gaming in general.

    Kinda reminds me of burning the weed fields in Far Cry 3.

  • The Steam Summer Sale is on now!
  • That's the part that keeps me from doing it. While portability is nice, I have a really great desktop with an ultra wide. That ultra wide in particular is what makes PC gaming really great for me. I think I'd only use it on longer trips, which isn't that often.

  • The Steam Summer Sale is on now!
  • No, Who's on first.

  • Valve appear to be not willing to publish games with AI generated content
  • I really hope that lawmakers and AI companies can clear this up soon, because I think AI art could be a massive thing for gaming. In particular by generating small variances so that the world doesn't feel so copy paste.

    For example, consider a map with a large office building (like in the game Control). There's so many assets needed to avoid feeling copy paste. You'll notice if the game reuses the contents of whiteboards, which isn't realistic. In real offices, we can expect every single whiteboard will likely have different contents (with the exception of blank ones). They probably will have lots in common, but they wouldn't be exactly the same. A human creating dozens of hundreds of unique whiteboards isn't a very good use of time, especially if we're talking about one of many minor assets that aren't even meant to be paid close attention to. An AI, on the other hand, could generate the many variations we'd expect to see. We can even have a human design a couple and ask the AI to make similar ones.

    This isn't even all that new. We've had procedural generation (which is not AI) of stuff like height maps and trees for ages now. But we're finally able to generate entire textures (and perhaps eventually entire 3D models) very easily and while fitting into a specific theme.

    Finally, for indie games, developing art can be a major challenge. There's countless programmers who want to make games and are good programmers, but they're not good artists. AI generated art could help make being a one person dev more viable. And even when the dev is an artist, it could simply save them a lot of time on what's a very time consuming part of game dev. eg, AI would be good at generating the profile pictures of characters that RPGs often show during dialogue.

  • What are y'all doing for Canada day?

    There's once again separate Canada day events in Waterloo Park and Downtown Kitchener (and probably several other places, too).

    Last year I went to the Waterloo Park one mostly because of the drone light show (which seems to be returning this year), but found that they were waaaay overloaded for food options.

    What were the other events like last year and where are you planning to go this year?

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    TL;WR for June 26 through July 3 2023

    We probably should have signed the kids up for camp.

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    thesilphroad @lemmy.world CoderKat @kbin.social
    Squirtle Community Day Classic (July 2023) | Pokémon GO Hub

    On July 9th, 2023, Squirtle returns to Pokémon GO for a Community Day Classic event, giving players an opportunity to evolve a high-level Blastoise with Hydro Cannon once again. During the event, Squirtle will appear more frequently in the wild, and players will have a chance to encounter a shiny Squirtle. Blastoise’s exclusive Community Day […]

    0
    I'd like to discuss Horizon Burning Shores

    I just finished Horizon Burning Shores (I know, a bit late) and wanted to discuss it!

    FULL SPOILERS FOR THE DLC

    SPOILERS

    SPOILERS

    So, random thoughts in no particular order:

    1. The Horus fight was fantastic and a long time coming. I think we were all waiting for a chance to finally fight a Horus and it didn't disappoint. The initial sneaking past the invincible and very hard hitting tentacles set things up great. Seeing the whole thing rise up had me giddy! And then it just goes on and on and really makes us work for it (I would have been disappointed if a Horus -- even an ancient and rusty one -- was too easy).

    2. I liked Seyka and also liked that there was a romance option (but it also made it clear that saving the world is the priority). It's just nice for Aloy to have someone she can relate to in that way.

    3. I wish there were more machines. It kinda felt like the bilegut was the only new machine. The waterwing feels nearly identical to the Sunwing. The stingspawn don't feel like standalone enemies (more like a part of the bilegut). The Horus is great, but it's only a one off boss enemy. I was hoping for some fresh new enemies to make exploration more interesting.

    4. Exploration sometimes felt a little disappointing. I enjoyed how absolutely gorgeous the game is. It is fantastic world building. But so much of the map just doesn't have anything actually there. It looks pretty, but besides machines and generic items, there is nothing to collect. I feel like a few more side quests were needed and for a several more buildings to actually have some kinda lore to them. As an aside, I don't understand why datapoints are so hard to find. I scoured every inch of the map and found fewer than half of the world datapoints

    5. Overall I liked the villain. It was good to have a single villain to focus on so that he could be built up more. I felt a bit bad for him when I learned his wife cheated with his best friend and that was the start of his rampant paranoia. But then I learned he was literally brainwashing people (plus the whole radiation space ship thing) and it was back to "yup, he's gotta die".

    6. I'm really glad this DLC takes place after the base game and takes advantage of this. Waaaay too many games these days are seemingly afraid to make DLC require beating the game. I guess they want to make the DLC more accessible? Putting the DLC after the story let it utilize the threat of Nemesis as well as carefully incorporate flying.

    7. I do kinda wish there were more returning character interactions. It was nice to chat with Sylens for a bit, though.

    8. I really liked Pangea World! It was a fantastic setting. Full of interesting old world sights, lots of potential for stealth, it was compact and had lots of depth, and I always like theme park levels in general.

    9. I kinda think Nova, Walter's AI, was a bit underused. A thousand year old AI from off world? I would have soooo many questions. But instead she almost immediately asks you to kill her and you do. Wish we could have sent her to live freely with Gaia so that she could lore dump us in the third game. And a bit more lore dumping in this DLC, for that matter.

    10. The Heaven¢ sanctuary was really neat. Stepping into that place and seeing all the gigantic posters of Walter's face was quite a moment. It was when we really started to learn what Walter was like. I felt bad for those Quen. To them, the ancestors are like gods. But they seem to know the ancestors are dead. Finding out an ancestor is alive and witnessing their god-like technology has to be seriously convincing. And those Quen thought they had a chance at a better life. A world where they wouldn't be constantly fighting against horrifying machines to survive. Only to find out it's a sham. Oof.

    11. Some of the new abilities are neat. Though a bunch are so forgettable that I don't remember what most of them are. I loved the grapple critical strike and used that a ton. I also found the valor ability that berserks all nearby enemies to be very fun for dealing with large groups.

    12. I like that we got a smidge of progress against Nemesis, in the form of Walter's notes where he lists 21st century arms companies that may be useful against Nemesis. I was kinda expecting the DLC to dance around Nemesis, leaving it entirely for the third game. Was good to get some teases. Similar for Walter's notes giving the first person perspective of just how Nemesis killed some of the Zeniths and how terrified he is.

    13. Perhaps I'm too used to other games where anything that looks interesting probably contains something. But this DLC is just chock full of buildings that look interesting but in fact have nothing. Can't be entered, nothing on top (I checked a bunch), nothing around them. In a way, this is probably just a sign of how great their world design is such that downtown LA is actually full of unique towers, but does feel a bit oddly disappointing when most of them are just for looks.

    Overall I'd give the DLC an 8/10. I enjoyed the story and setting a lot, but it felt empty at times and I really wish there was another machine type or two.

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    /kbin meta @kbin.social CoderKat @kbin.social
    Why do some Lemmy community not show up in magazine search (others on same instance do)?

    Yesterday I learned about https://lemmy.ca/c/ontario\_community\_directory (edit: I got a wrong link somewhere -- this one should have been https://lemmy.ca/c/ontario\_index) and my local city sub of https://lemmy.ca/c/waterloo. I can't find them in magazine search (eg, https://kbin.social/magazines?q=waterloo). They're not brand new (several days).

    If I visit the URL I expect them to have (eg, https://kbin.social/m/waterloo@lemmy.ca), I get a 404 and no option to subscribe (I heard some people mention before how Lemmy would show empty communities until the first person on your instance subscribes -- not sure if that even applies to kbin and I can't seem to subscribe anyway).

    I can see other subs on the same instance. The whole reason I learned about these subs is because I can see https://kbin.social/m/ontario@lemmy.ca fine. So it doesn't appear to be the instance.

    Anyone have any ideas what's wrong and how to fix it?

    9
    I created a sub (aka community/magazine) for the Waterloo region (Waterloo, Kitchener, Cambridge)
    kbin.social Waterloo, Ontario, Canada - kbin.social

    A subreddit for the Waterloo region, including Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, and several smaller towns.

    Waterloo, Ontario, Canada - kbin.social

    I intended this to be akin to r/Waterloo, since there's a ton of value in local recommendations and discussion. I've met some really cool people from the city subreddits and hope to rebuild that here.

    Link: @Waterloo !Waterloo@kbin.social

    10
    What do you want to see more focus on in future Pokemon games?

    Eg, particular features, types of pokemon, stuff like open world, etc

    1
    /kbin meta @kbin.social CoderKat @kbin.social
    [Guide] How to make the Imagus extension work with kbin

    The Imagus Chrome and Firefox extension shows image previews on hover. Currently with kbin, hovering over the thumbnail in the frontpage or magazine view just shows the thumbnail but slightly larger, which isn't what we want (especially since the thumbnails have a distorted aspect ratio). Here's how to make the extension show the full image when hovering over the thumnail:

    1. In Chrome, open the extension options from the extension menu (puzzle piece icon in the toolbar). The Firefox version likely is somewhat similar.
    2. Go to the "Sieve" tab and click the "+" button to add a new rule.
    3. In the img field, use: ^kbin\.social/media/cache/resolve/entry_thumb/(.*)
    4. In the to field, use: media.kbin.social/$1
    5. Save and refresh any pages that you wanted to use this on.

    What the rule should look like

    Before ----------

    Before screenshot

    After ----------

    After screenshot

    For non-kbin.social instances, you most likely just have to update the domain in the regexes above (steps 3 and 4) to whatever your instance's domain is. I escaped the dot in kbin.social to be safe (if you don't escape it, it matches any character), but it's unlikely to matter.

    1
    At least 59 people killed after boat sinks off the coast of southern Greece

    At least 59 people have died and dozens are feared missing off the coast of southern Greece after a fishing boat carrying migrants capsized and sank, authorities said Wednesday.

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    B.C. man questions 9-year-old's gender in 'gobsmacking' track-and-field incident

    A B.C. family has garnered sympathy online — and international media attention — after sharing what they described as an incident in which a man questioned their nine-year-old daughter's gender during a sporting event.

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    Spider-man Across the Spiderverse is a genuine 10/10

    Spoilers, obviously!

    Spoilers

    Spoilers

    Spoilers

    Saw the movie today. Went in completely blind, not even realizing it was a two parter. The animation style is stunningly gorgeous and unique. Just by aesthetics alone, it was a complete joy to watch. The use of colour was fantastic, including being a perhaps subtle hint that Miles wasn't in his own universe.

    The plot was fantastic. Full of the usual Spider-man quips that make his movies fun, yet also extremely touching (Gwen's moments with her dad in particular). I wasn't sure how they'd top the team of Spider-people from the first movie, but somehow they did it (with a whole freaking tower full of Spider-people).

    The music was also fantastic. I'm gonna lookup a playlist for work tomorrow because there was a lot of bangers that were unfamiliar to me.

    My only complaint is the lack of closure due to the "to be continued" ending. The chemistry between Miles and Gwen is great and has me excited for the sequel.

    Honourable mention to the daughter of Peter B -- she's adorable.

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    /kbin meta @kbin.social CoderKat @kbin.social
    Can the magazine subscribe option be made much more prominent?

    One thing that made Reddit great and scalable was that you'd typically not view all Reddit subs (or even all popular ones), but rather you'd subscribe to subs that interest you.

    Kbin has subscriptions. But they aren't the default and are quite hard to figure out. I had to look alllll over on mobile before I realized that the subscribe button is really far down (basically underneath the entire page of posts). It should be at the very top.

    It'd also be great if when you create an account, there'd be some wizard to help you pick magazines to subscribe to.

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    CoderKat CoderKat @kbin.social

    I write ̶b̶u̶g̶s̶ features, show off my adorable standard issue cat, and give a shit about people and stuff. I'm also @CoderKat.

    Posts 19
    Comments 232