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Comment Re:Does anyone else worry... (Score 1) 72

That glamorizing this sort of game is directly responsible for the recent phenomenon of crime in US cities? Street take overs, rampant looting during peaceful protests and even sports team wins(or losses), shoplifting, carjacking, etc?

I could get behind GTA3 back in the day, and even Red Dead Redemption, but I think the evidence must be SOMEWHERE that kids, sadly, glamorize this type of behavior and emulate it in their every day lives.

That you Jack Thompson ?

Comment no thanks (I'm an author) (Score 1) 30

Won't happen, at least not with my books.

There is a reason writing the last one took two years. Many of its passages have very carefully considered wordings. Intentional ambiguities. Alliterations. Words chosen because the other term for the same thing is too similar to another thing that occurs in the same paragraph. Names picked with intention, by the sound of them (harsher or softer, for example).

I've used AI extensively in many fields. Including translations. It's pretty good for normal texts like newspaper articles or Wikipedia or something. But for a book, where the emotional impact of things matter, where you can't just substitute one words for a synonym and get the same effect - no, I don't think so.

This is one area where even I with a general positive attitude to AI want a human translator with whom I can discuss these things and where I can get a feeling of "did she understand this part of the book and why it's described this way?".

Comment Re:It'll be a previous generation MacBook Air (Score 1) 70

Dumb response. I ran the same applications I run on my windows laptops: Office (full suite), Firefox, Edge (works better for some work SaaS apps), etc. Almost exactly the scenario you mention "doesn't do so well" on Windows. On a 8GB Windows machine it would have been painfully obvious it was resource starved. How the OS manages swap makes a huge difference so no, the OS is not irrelevant here.

Comment Re:What do they care? (Score 1) 44

I don't use an agent but I use AI to find the exact thing I want on Amazon and it gives me the link and I buy it, without having to wade to the crap that Amazon's "search" throws at me.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed that over time Amazon's search feature has enshitified. If that's the correct verb. It used to be fairly good. These days, nah, unless I'm looking for a book or other product from Amazon directly, as a search for the marketplace it's crap.

And since it used to be better, something must be responsible for that. Greed, most likely.

Comment Re: Cue the hate... (Score 1) 68

Not 99% but definitely some of the most useful ones. And yes, stack traces are one of the things that only Linux users send you without an explicit request.

And the advantage of debugging a (this specific exception) error in (this specific file) on (that specific line) over a "hey, the game crashed when I jumped out of the car" bug report cannot be overstated.

Comment Re:It'll be a previous generation MacBook Air (Score 5, Interesting) 70

I have the exact same spec M1 Air, also bought for testing when it first came out. I used to use it for onsite meetings back when those were still a thing for me as well since it was lighter than my windows laptop at the time and the battery life was just so much better. I keep it around the house these days for web browsing and such. I never had an issue with it when it came to performance. I've come to the conclusion that MacOS is just miles ahead of Windows when it comes to memory management.

Comment Re:When a crisis, isn't. (Score 1) 37

While i share the general sentiment of this post, may i suggest the elderly are supposed to do physical exercises like anyone else ? The are also much more at risk of losing their health fast if they don't move enough.

I didn't realize owning a gaming console and physical exercise was an either/or situation.

Comment Re:"reimagines" (Score 1) 49

I was right, /.ers really will complain about anything!

Seriously though, I kind of agree. I forget they are still around. They do still make sound cards and a bunch of other audio gear (speakers, headphones, DACs, etc) but it's a name you almost never hear anyone talk about, at least in the present tense.

Comment Re:Cue the hate... (Score 5, Interesting) 68

As a game developer: Even a few percent are, as the article points out, millions of users. Us indie devs cannot compete with AAA studios in marketing. It's not that the playing field isn't level, it's not even the same playing field.

But in a niche, you have a good chance to be noticed and word of mouth spreading. And that means grabbing as much of the niche as you possibly can.

And it matters to you Windos users as well, because it means games are developed without being tied to a specific OS or driver feature. Which means your new game will run even if you're not running it on the latest hardware.

And finally, it matters because Linux gamers are more useful to a game developer. Maybe 3% of the Steam users run Linux, but for my last game, at least 30% of the useful bug reports came from Linux users.

Comment nope (Score 1) 149

No, it is not. "Too big to fail" is just bullshit bingo. The reason banks et al managed to get saved by taxpayer money with that phrase wasn't that they were. It was that they had a solidly entrenched lobby and connections at the highest levels. "Too big to fail" was simply the icing they coated the shit with to make the public swallow it.

Comment Re:"2% of Amazon.com’s sales" (Score 1) 149

This. I'm so sick of the "They haven't made a profit..." tripe. They are in their growth phase in a rapidly growing and evolving market. None of their investors expect them to be making a profit right now. They could make a profit tomorrow if they stopped reinvesting their revenue in building out the company and started to coast. Of course they would be quickly outpaced by their competitors.

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