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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I wonder when, if ever, Warner Bros. Is going to learn that players are actively pushing back against corporate greed and live service games are already way past the limit of microtransactions that players deem acceptable.

    Some time after that actually happens.

    Yes, there are a lot of players in various social networks loudly complaining about the phenomenon (although I suspect many of those are not even in the target audience to begin with), and there are even some actively boycotting these games, but so long as there are enough of them left willing to play ball, and especially some with an exploitable addiction-prone personality that can be hooked on loot boxes and microtransactions until they spend more than they have, there just isn’t anything for these companies here to “learn”. Other than “hey, this is insanely profitable”.

    They may get insulted on Xitter for it, but who cares, everybody gets insulted on Shitter…



  • I have been sort of following Wayland’s development for over 10 years now. I have been using Wayland for over 2 years now. I have been reading and watching various lengthy arguments online for and against it. I still don’t feel like I actually know it even is, not beyond some handwavey superficialities. Definitely not to the extent and depth I could understand what X11 was and how to actually work with it, troubleshoot it when necessary and achieve something slightly unusual with it. I feel like, these days, you are either getting superficial marketing materials, ELI5 approaches that seem to be suited at best to pacify a nosy child without giving them anything to actually work with, or reference manuals full of unexplained jargon for people who already know how it works and just need to look up some details now and then…

    Maybe I’m getting old. I used to like Linux because I could actually understand what was going on…





  • Honestly, this should be a bigger discussion, and not limited to just games. If a software company sells a software license for perpetual use to someone, they should not be allowed to use copy protection mechanisms that prevent the licensee from using it in perpetuity.

    If there’s some other technical reason why the software won’t run any more after ten or twenty years, that’s another story. But if they just can’t be bothered to keep running the licensing servers, then they need to bloody well remove the stinking copy protection.




  • waigl@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldXXX
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    4 months ago

    Corporations holding residential real estate are a growing part of the problem, but still a small one. The vast majority of single famliy homes are still owned by either their residents or small time, non-incorporated landlords.

    Never mind increasing the supply of housing would drive down prices and remove pressure regardless of who owns the existing stock.


  • waigl@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldXXX
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    4 months ago

    Okay, this bullshit. It’s not shareholders who would be negatively affected by this, and it’s not shareholders who are actively working against doing something about the problem. Shareholders are just an easy acceptable target to point your fingers at, whether it makes sense or not.

    What needs to be done to tackle the homelessness problem (not the only thing, but probably the most important one) is to zone much, much more land inside or directly next to cities for affordable mid-rise multi-family homes. Guess who is opposed to that and has the power to do something about it? Existing property owners. Specifically owners of detached single family homes. Because doing that would negatively affect their property values. Personally, I think that shouldn’t matter, because what good is living in home that is worth absurd amounts of money on paper going to do you if society is falling apart because of it? But home owners are always massively concerned about their property values and will torpedo anything that might threaten it. Of course, pointing your fingers at home owners is much dicier than pointing them at shareholders, because even in a bubble like this one, you are bound to point at some people here who will feel personally attacked by that…

    “Shareholders”, on the other hand, aside from those that are also home owners at the same time, don’t really have much reason to care one way or another about effective projects to reduce homelessness.






  • In all seriousness, digging tunnels is a military tactic that gets some use sometimes. The Russians have done it in the southern part of Avdiivka. I haven’t heard of a case where militaries used an actual tunnel boring machine, though.

    Tunnel boring machines are not just extremely expensive, they’re also extremely bulky and highly visible when on top of the ground. If you ship one to where you want to start your tunnel, there is a high risk that enemy intel will spot it, ruining the surprise.

    The actual digging is extremely slow, meaning there is no way of knowing whether the tunnel will even still have some tactical use when you’re done.

    Once you emerge on the other side, it won’t be long until the enemy notices your exit and does something about it, like bombarding it, stationing troops there or sending something of their own back through the tunnel. That means even if you succeed, you only have a very short window to do something with your tactical advantage, and said something will very likely be a suicide mission.

    Tunneling through the loose mud of Ukraine would not be easy. You can do it if you send a work crew after the machine to immediately build strong walls behind it, but that would be even slower and more expensive.

    All in all, it would just be more useful to use either much smaller and shorter tunnels that don’t use tunnel boring machines or utilize some form of artillery or drones to achieve the desired effect behind enemy lines.