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How thoughtful of them!
  • Reminds me how several years back, the Calibre ebook reader software added a feature called "Polish ebooks".

    I thought it'd automatically add some random Andrzej Sapkowski and Stanisław Lem titles to my library. Nope, it was just a feature to clean up messy document conversions, apparently.

  • Ubisoft EULA demanding consumers destroy delisted games adds fuel to Stop Killing Games movement
  • You know, I was mildly ambivalent about Ubisoft recently (just burned out by their games and not wanting to buy them until I've slept for ages) but... Really? This is the hill they want to die on? Well that does say a lot about them, now doesn't it?

  • Ok, I'll pay you the 1995 price
  • I didn't like talking to other people in 1995, and I sure as hell aren't going to start enjoying it now.

  • The signatures are still coming and it's already making an impact
  • This initiative sure would make things more complicated for the game publishers, yes.

    Because they're currently not doing the bare minimum.

    If they weren't so accustomed to not doing the bare minimum, maybe they would have different opinions! Just saying.

    Edit: Just signed the petition. Didn't think this was necessary before because, as soon as I heard of it, Finland was already top of the list percentage wise. But I did sign it, just for the hell yeah of it.

  • There was optimism in the air way back in 1999.
  • Oooooh, I'll annihilate the bible-thumpers. Then I'll annihilate the capitalists, because they already knew what's coming for them.

  • Sci-hub has created a cryptocurrency to fund open science
  • Sorry, cap'n, that ain't the way to do it. You shall be marooned with one Bottle of Powder, one Bottle of Water, one small Arm, and Shot.

  • There was optimism in the air way back in 1999.

    ...if you haven't played Sid Meier's Alpha Centari before, I have to say this does frequently lead to conflicts later on.

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    Taxed indeed
  • Video games spending by young Americans is dropping sharply, report suggests
  • I'm not young or American, but I can tell gaming has been changing. I can't even remember what was the last "AAA" game I bought, because it must have been a couple of years ago.

    Most games I buy are 40€ connoisseur titles or 20€ indie games. I don't hear about any "must-play" AAA titles through the grapevine these days. I do hear about interesting indie stuff all the time, though. Most of the 60€+ games I hear about are kind of niche stuff.

  • Is anyone else not feeling that patriotic for July 4?
  • I thought you guys don't celebrate it that much any more? Heard it got replaced with a Trump Birthday Military Parade Day or someshit. And it sucked so much that nobody is doing holidays anymore. Sorry, I'm in Europe, the news are coming in slowly from the US these days

  • The Fediverse Passport: A needed tool.
  • What Fediverse could use was some kind of equivalent of Linktree. "Here's my personal accounts on Fediverse. Here's some related to my projects. Here's some other random links."

    Because currently I'm like "maybe check out my Mastodon profile, it has links" - it works, kinda, but I'm not sure it's the best solution. For example, you could include support for this in the fedi software, so once you specify where your link page is, it'd pull the links and show them on your profile.

    ...I know, this would be too beautiful for this world and it'd get run over by spammers. But for glorious few days we'd have sensible Fediverse profiles! Think about it!

  • What's a really popular game franchise you just can't get into?
  • For me, soulslikes are pretty weird. I've loved the art direction and gameplay of Dark Souls and especially Elden Ring, and I get why people like them and I appreciate what they're trying to do, but something in them doesn't click the addiction button. It's not even the core gameplay that is the problem - I get flattened by some enemy and I'm like "oh I'll get you one day". But I booted up Elden Ring last time months ago. I'll be done with the game in 10 years I guess. It'll happen though!

  • Tesla's Self-Driving Mode Causes It to Get Hit by Train
  • Inb4 they put Grok inside the things

    Tesla® (Powered by Grok®): "Where do you want to go? Wait, never mind, let's talk about white genocide in South Af—" [gets hit by a train again]

  • An official US Government account posted this
  • Dunno about that. Most reptiles I've seen don't really give a damn about ephemeral human concepts like "borders". Now, they can be territorial but it's usually in the sense of "you go there and I go here and we'll be fine OK? OK." Just neighborly behavior really.

  • >:(
  • Well elements are elements. All of them are just protons and neutrons and electrons at the end of the day. They have different properties but all of them behave by the same rules.

    But there's some big differences between the various kinds of bodies orbiting the Sun and how they're orbiting the Sun. Big asteroids were considered planets, until we discovered there's a shitload of them and they're all in roughly the same area. When it turned out Pluto is basically in the same situation and there's a lot more of the transneptunian objects, it was pretty clear that Pluto isn't special. If you compare it to planets it's pretty weird. But I think it's good that they created the dwarf planet classification because that also elevated Ceres back, hell yeah.

  • Computer drive sizes over the years
  • Off the top of my mind, stuff that I've used and still have lying around:

    • 5.25" floppies (DSDD, Commodore 64; I think I may have a few HD floppies for PC but I'm not sure if I have a drive for them)
    • 3.5" floppies (HD and some DD, mostly for PC; I have a few PC carcasses that have floppy drives, but I do also have a working USB floppy drive)
    • Cassette tapes (Spectravideo, Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64)
    • ROM cartridges (same as above, plus game consoles)
    • Iomega Zip (not sure if the Zip floppies I have have anything relevant; the USB Zip drive is in box somewhere)
    • Iomega Jaz (two disks; not sure if the drive I was actually working last time I used it, could be completely hosed by now, Iomega didn't exactly have a good reputation)
    • A few IDE/PATA hard drives (not sure of the condition)
    • Bunch of CD/DVD/rewritables, I think I have a few unused CD-Rs/DVD-Rs too, never had a Blu-Ray drive for computers
    • USB sticks and hard drives of various descriptions
    • microSD cards used with Raspberry Pi

    Funny thing is, I think I have no extra SATA hard drives and modern SSDs lying around, because most of the computers I have that use them are still in operation.

  • Listen here, Little Dicky
  • Computer science: 2+2=4 (for integers at least; try this with floating point numbers at your own peril, you absolute fool)

  • 'Every word has come back to haunt me': China cracks down on women who write gay erotica
  • Antarctica
    Data unavailable

    Why am I reminded of one old comic? It went like this:

    (Scientists on an Antarctic base)
    Scientist 1: (Finishes talking about something normal)
    Scientist 2: (Disheveled and visibly unhinged) "Well none of that shit matters. Do you know what happened to my stack of Playboy magazines?"
    Scientist 1: (Now also suddenly disheveled and visibly unhinged, whips out a knife) "They're mine now!"
    Scientist 2: (Also whips out a knife) "Oh yeah?"
    Scientist 1: "Yeah! What are you gonna do about it?"
    (Altercation ensues)

  • Carbrain. Carbrain is why. They practically live in the damn things.
  • I can think of few places that are more uncomfortable to dine on than a car seat.

    ...actually, car seats are pretty uncomfortable places to do anything, really. You expect to be able to do stuff comfortably there, but you just can't. It's weird. And at the same time it's not so uncomfortable that you stop doing stuff there entirely. And you're like "what's wrong with me?" but then you realise it's not your fault after all - it's the cars that are weird.

  • US to withdraw from NATO under Republican bill
  • Oh yeah, they have a plan all right.

    Now, the plan isn't any good and everyone gets screwed, even them.

    But it is, technically speaking, a plan!

  • Brazil's supreme court rules that platforms like Facebook and X can be held liable for user posts, requiring them to remove content even without a court order
  • On the other hand, I think safe-harbour laws are very much necessary if we want the Internet to work for the positive good of the world. We want the companies to take reasonable precautions and act on problematic stuff if it crops up, but that's probably enough.

    But on the other hand, jeez, have you seen what kind of discussion shitholes Facebook and Twitter have cultivated? If your company is being described as an accessory to genocide, maybe something has already gone horribly wrong.

  • This is my favourite educational picture in Wikipedia! Turtles have this thing called the Turtle Mode.

    (Original picture by Brocken Inaglory, 15 April 2010)

    Alternative title: Michelangelo: "Oh no! DUCK!" Leonardo: "...you made me look stupid, didn't you?"

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    Finally finished dumping my entire library of GameCube and Wii discs for Dolphin!

    Plus I cloned my Wii's NAND so I have all of the Virtual Console games and savegames, and I also dumped all of my GameCube memory cards and put everything to the Dolphin memory cards images.

    Everything is cool and future-proof now!Highly recommend doing this if you have a working Wii - just install Homebrew Channel and CleanRip.

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    ✍️ Writing @slrpnk.net Rose @slrpnk.net
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    Tusker - Desert Tune - Metal Version Remix

    Commodore 64 remix. Original: Matt Gray. I know what you are saying: This game is an Indiana Jones ripoff. Yes. Yes it is. And I wish there were more metal covers of Indy songs.

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    umbraroze Rose @slrpnk.net

    I'm just one random nerdy trans girl. ...Oh come on, you've been around fediverse, surely you've seen us around?

    Mastodon: @umbraroze@tech.lgbt

    Posts 6
    Comments 245