Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Seems to be a misinterpretation of the data (Score 1) 26

Does prontodb contain ALL Windows games? I doubt it.
When are games added to protondb? Either when somebody knows that it is working on Linux, or when they with that it would be working.
So protondb is biased towards games that are working on Linux, and does not actually represent the Linux-playability of all Windows games.

ProtonDB is skewed towards games that are sold on Steam mostly because it's easy to get updates via the steam API. But for the odd game not on Steam, it can be added especially if it doesn't work. The goal is basically to share tips and tricks on how to run various games on Proton.

Comment Re:I can't believe... (Score 1) 103

You also save if you pick up the food yourself. I've seen people DoorDash food from the place across the street. Many places let you order food for pickup online so you don't even have to order and wait for it.

Yes, cooking yourself is the cheapest option. But if you go out, bringing it back yourself is cheaper than DoorDash. And if DoorDash is cheaper than bringing it back yourself, you likely make enough money that rent isn't an issue.

Comment Re:Oh goodie stack ranking (Score 1) 84

So it doesn't matter if you're doing good work you're still going to get a B or a C because there's a pecking order and we are going to maintain it.

AKA grading on a curve. It goes both ways - if a test was exceptionally hard and everyone fails, you might curve the grades so it's not everyone failing.

Likewise, if there's too many A's, the curve will spread it out again.

It happens. There are classes that routinely have midterms that average around 40%.

And sometimes, you have classes where everyone gets 100%. of course, it's much harder to scale grades if it's based on some objective test like multiple choice, but if it's free response it's a lot easier to spread the marks out.

Comment Re: Will it really matter? (Score 3, Insightful) 47

The problem is, do we want to replace coders?

RAD tools evolved in the 90s where anyone and everyone could create programs. One became especially popular (Visual Basic), and has a reputation not because it was a particularly bad tool, but because it was used and abused to the point where a manager created a tool that evolved into a giant mess that's now a critical business application.

No one wants to touch it, you must click things in a certain order, and looking at it funny will cause it to crash and corrupt itself and all the backups. And the byzantine logic and spaghetti code means it's impossible to figure out why it's doing it or how to fix it.

Vibe coded apps are going to be the next big thing in critical business applications and it's going to be yet more fun with poorly coded applications. The only good thing is that vibe coding has just as much chance of working as it has of destroying the program it was trying to create - as part of many revisions the AI decided to wipe out the core logic of the program.

Comment Re:Personally, I'm anti-D&D but pro-TTRPG and (Score 1) 36

The problem with D&D itself is Hasbro, because they need money machine go whirr. As in WotC (Wizards of the Coast) is making up close to a majority of Hasbro's revenue these days between D&D and Magic The Gathering. Both items are high margin goods, since they're publishing books ad playing cards which even printing inside the US is vanishinglly small and the consumer cost is relatively high at basically close to a hundred dollars per book. It's margins only exceeded by the software industry.

Of course, the biggest problem is Hasbro's traditional revenue sources faltered especially during the pandemic when the couldn't sell plastic toys to kids but the CEO needs to have the line go up, so they started pressing more on WotC. Now Hasbro is addicted to the line going up which is why they did all sorts of things - first by squeezing MtG until people were starting to complain and the CEO even said "Stop buying Magic" (which then consumers did). This led to them doing that whole Open Gaming License 2.0 thing that caused the D&D community to revolt.

But TTRPGs themselves are the perfect medium to get a bunch of people together and to have them interact - and cooperative story-telling (which is what TTRPG is) is a social activity. Sure it's associated with geeks in basements, but it's just a standard social get-together tnat we all say is only good for extroverts. Well, introverts have been getting together socially all the time. It gives structure and purpose because it's entertainment and if it's fun, people have a reason to look forward to the next get-together or play session.

It's a social activity as is getting seniors together for bridge or other thing.

Comment Re:There are many reason why big-rigs need... (Score 1) 89

There are many reasons why big-rigs need alert and attentive drivers at the controls at all times - the ability to respond to organic situations that require intelligent cone-placement is but one.

How many of these MBA's and marketing morons have been to driving school??

How many of the actual drivers themselves have been to driving school?

You know there's an ongoing joke about Swift drivers right? Because Swift, alongside all the other huge truck transportation companies are basically hiring drivers with fresh CDLs and paying them peanuts (LA to New York is only 2000 miles by the dispatcher mile). Of course, the rules say they need supervision, so for two weeks, they get paired up with someone who just finished their supervision period having been hired a couple of weeks earlier.

Trucking has lost its reputation because the huge trucking companies basically drove all the experienced drivers off the market with race to the bottom pricing and now the only ones that work for them are basically student drivers.

(Those experienced drivers meanwhile have discovered local trucking which lets them sleep in their own bed with their family every night and while they still get the same hassles at the loading dock, they're less dependent on miles driven and thus if the loading dock gives them problems, they can reschedule delivery).

The big trucking firms are also why automatic transmissions on semis are basically standard as they know those new drivers haven't quite got their shifting skills, so they buy automatic trucks en masse. The added cost is minimal compared to the savings in using newly minted drivers.

Makes me wonder why those companies aren't trying to eliminate the need for a driver per truck - between Swift and others an autonomous truck would be ideal for them to put the other trucking companies out of business.

Comment Re:Lessons? (Score 1) 50

Dunno about this, but Cisco has offered a LPI cert prep course via NetAcademy for quite some time, and it uses Ubuntu as its distro (and has a pretty freaking awesome browser based VM that runs a system for doing labs, etc in)

Not exactly unique - I've seen many lab sessions using Ubuntu. They usually use some form of web-based VNC client running over some websocket-based VPN. WebAssembly is neat in that way.

I've always wondered how they secure the things since it's basically a free for all shell prompt.

Comment Re:More assholes claimign first amendment (Score 1) 89

We have kind of the opposite thing going on here in Canada.

Faced with consumer-protection provisions aimed at false corporate environmental claims, some companies have stopped making them entirely.

And that is a bad thing how? It means they can't make false claims about being good for the environment. Companies that do make the effort get to keep it on the label. Consumers can decide if those claims are worth the extra cost and vote with their dollars accordingly.

Meanwhile if they could put those claims on without doing a thing (aka greenwashing), it dilutes the meaning and worth of the entire thing. Saying you have recycled plastic in the product when it's all new fresh from the dinosaur oil embeds distrust in the consumer and devalues products that are actually making the effort to recycle plastic (which costs more money), so the companies "doing the right thing" lose out over the ones simply putting bold face lies on the packaging.

It's like truth in advertising laws. Or organic labels.

Comment Re:Garbage (Score 1) 35

It's all fun and games until one of those AI generated textures looks an awful lot like Mickey Mouse and by the time people notice it, it's been released to millions and Disney gets to sue for trademark infringement. And if there was a physical release, all those discs will have to be recalled.

And with many other content industries hurting, they're looking for easy lawsuits with rich pockets.

Comment Re:Nuke bugs need to give it a rest (Score 1) 99

It's obvious to you and to me that nuclear is the most capable and scalable and should be our primary choice moving forward.

No, nuclear is limited in that it's non-dispatchable power. It's like solar and wind in the opposite way. While solar and wind are erratic, nuclear is stable. But both are non-dispatchable in that they cannot adapt to changing loads easily. Solar and wind are obvious in that they can only produce power with the sun and wind, and can only produce up to what the sun and wind are producing. Nuclear is static - it cannot change its output rapidly and it takes several hours for it to change. So the duck curve is important to nuclear because they have to use it to scale the reactors up and down as needed.

The SMRs that are the future are still the same - they still take time because it's still a huge mass of heat that needs to be moved.

So for baseload demand, nuclear is great. It's great if you have a data center that's taking a constant amount of power. However, you might think the cooling of the data center being a huge problem because you can't bring on such loads with a nuclear reactor - you can't jump its load 30% and have it react instantly (and cooling is approximately 10-30% of a datacenter power consumption). It's possible with current technology to use inverter technology (aka variable frequency drive) so instead of the on-off control you have with thermostats, you run the cooling continuously at the appropriate setting so load comes on and off smoothly - as the heat increases you ramp up the reactor knowing the cooling load will increase and can also ramp it down as the day cools off.

The problem is nuclear only solves base load and is just as bad at dispatchability as solar and wind. You still need dispatchable sources like batteries, heliostat, hydro, and natural gas to take up the difference (both the peak load and the fact the load varies so nuclear much run lower than demand because too much power is just as bad as too little). Batteries are fast, but they complement nuclear well because they can supply shortfalls and absorb excess instantly but have to be sized to the nuclear plant so they can handle the excess and supply shortfalls in the time it takes for the reactor to move. Heliostats are efficient and have a built in heat battery which can supply power for days on demand since the heat input and output are somewhat independent, and if too much heat is coming in the mirrors can be turned away to reduce energy input. Hydro and natural gas can adjust their output in minutes and are the traditional wwy to add dispatchable energy.

Comment Re:It's mostly money laundering (Score 1) 66

In other words, it's more about Valve trying to bring the "game" back. Money laundering be damned, they have to make sure the CS2 community is a healthy one with active players who are actually playing the game.

If the stuff is used for money laundering, they want to get out of that and likely they don't want to have items with so much rarity that every sale has to be reported for being over $10,000.

Anyhow, the market is irrational, and reacts irrationally. I'm sure in 90 days when the dust settles we'll find a new balance in prices. Meanwhile if you own those cheap items that are going for more money now, I suggest cashing out. If you own something that went down in value, I suggest holding it and waiting. The market's just reacting with shock, it will find a new equilibrium point, which usually means things return mostly to where they are.

Meanwhile I'm sure Valve is trying to tame the CS2 economy. There's no reason for it to have a market cap of a few billion dollars over digital trinkets.

Slashdot Top Deals

Torque is cheap.

Working...