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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • I’m not surprised. I know people who don’t even know what an ethernet cable is. I’ve worked enough IT to realize that a tangled mess of 6 cables can be as horrifying as a Predator to people. It doesn’t help that everything is slowly going to POE, POE+ and even ++ now so it’s doubling as power as well. In analog video days I could look at the back of a random device and instantly figure out it’s purpose. That’s rapidly becoming a rarity. For a worrisome section of the population, plugging in an ethernet cable is the equivalent of building a table or performing a back flip.

    And when it comes to hacking, good god nobody knows anything. I remember we had a dozen students in high school (around 2000ish?) get suspended for “hacking” and really it was just that a section of the student body found a network storage location without any password protection and were using it as a flash drive on school grounds. Literally they just suspended anybody who signed their name on the homework assignments stored there.

    The real crime was that drive had lunch pins for all the accounts in plain text to run their system, without a password!




  • Well the entity system adds an entirely new branch of research, that works separately from workbenches. To make fast progress in the darker research you need mutliple sources of dark research in the form of trapped entities. A LOT can go into the containment of some of these entities, basically making sure you have a room that can actually hold some of this stuff. So from there I actually prefer the research loop to the main method. Not only that it doesn’t take AN ENTIRE PAWN’S DAY to actually perform. I haven’t caught anything SUPER nasty yet, but I see the pieces that will require a supermax of entity containment. I kinda feel like I could forgo research and move direct into the darker research. Make an army of ghouls.

    Honestly I feel like it’s definitely bigger than the royalty DLC, and I’m only about five hours in.


  • Perhaps the main use for technology is increasing the amount of inequality society can tolerate without collapse. I can’t fix inequality – that just seems to be what the humans want.

    However by investing in surveillance technology, computer vision, and AI I could perhaps help our society to bear unbounded amounts of inequality indefinitely, without collapse. Social collapse is a less-than-zero-sum game, whereas an unequal society is still generally more-than-zero-sum. So I posit that the latter is objectively better.

    … Are you suggesting that we increase inequality to make the world better? Like we need an overlord, be it robot or human, and the rest of the population needs to be placated, worked to the bone, and easily replaced?

    I gotta assume I am just vastly misunderstanding something in this argument, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is. Is it just sarcastic?




  • I mean, that’s a quest at it’s core but a good game works it into a narrative and makes it blend. Ideally making all 6 steps anything but tedious. Ideally interesting and fun, but at all times avoiding tedious like the plague.

    Best example I’ve seen is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4ADco41g9s&ab_channel=Nathidraws

    Two identical "perform quest for NPC"s, which is your step 4. Negotiate for a thing in a briefcase from somebody who probably will double cross you.

    Which one is more tedious? Now combine a 4 minute run in a barren wasteland in your steps 1 and 6…

    A few other things that Cyberpunk did, There are several ways to handle that mission, those several options can cause 3 major shifts in that faction. Which affect other missions later on, indeed any time you deal with the maelstrom gang.

    Cyberpunk had a lot of flaws but, they’re at least innovating. I’ve never been in a legit standoff like that in a game. It’s always been in a static looping animation at 8 paces.


  • Which, genuinely, if it was cheap I wouldn’t care about. If it had no wifi or heated seats, no touchscreen or self driving. If it was just a cheapass vehicle for point a to point b and back, I would not mock it. It would have a place in the world and it would fulfill a purpose.

    But currently it’s place in the world is for the people who are unable to touch Elon Musk, but want to caress his face or be stepped on in a masochistic fashion by him. This truck is as close as they can get.




  • right?

    I remember starting to read Isekai Vending Machine solely because I thought it was going to be garbage but they fully commit to “nah this guy is a vending machine”. It was way better than anticipated. I hate it when the protagonist is never in danger and just has to sneeze to get out of things, but a protagonist that can’t move and uses the only thing keeping him alive to upgrade and output a shield? That’s how you make something interesting.

    How it ever got an anime is beyond me.


  • In another world with my smartphone

    … He barely used the smartphone, he just scrolls with it in the credits and occasionally uses it and his OP protagonist powers to just melt things. I was really hoping it wasn’t just a “I am a god” power trip anime but it was one of the worst ones I ever saw.

    Honestly they only gave him a smartphone so that they could give it a unique title. Then they proceed to forget they gave it to him.