MajorHavoc

joined 2 years ago
[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

That's totally fair, and I'll keep it in mind.

I hope my habit makes your life a little easier by normalizing they/them (or just avoiding gendered terms) as an un-interesting default.

I hope for a world where they/them becomes accepted as "I'm not trusted enough by this person to be told their pronouns yet, and that's okay."

I think asking people to identify their gender, early in a (non-intimate) relationship, is a particularly unhealthy cultural habit. I hope I'm helping push back on that, a bit.

In the meantime, I'm trying to learn speech habits that don't force you to gender yourself, or to be noticed in not doing so. I hope to help make these kinds of situations easier for you.

You shouldn't have to decide at a random moment whether to share your gender identity with me. I'm committed to keep trying to learn communication patterns that make it natural for you not to have to.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is going to be a great time to be a lawyer... until the climate kills us all, of course.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

When unsure of what the Captcha is trying to learn from me, I find "Kill all humans." is a pretty good guess what the Captcha is really after.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 42 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I also use "they/them" until someone shares their pronouns.

Officially, I do this to avoid misgendering people.

Really, I do it because some snowflakes are too fragile to share their pronouns, and I enjoy annoying them until they do.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

My preferred pronouns are actually "none of your business/fuck off", but I settle for "they/them" for professionalism reasons. (Until I retire. Then my pronouns change officially everywhere.)

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 6 points 3 months ago

Oh, gee. A Microsoft product that worked perfectly locally is about to require a subscription. Who could have possibly guessed that would happen, yet again? (This is sarcasm.)

I really like OneNote, but I decided to learn something else when I realized which way the wind was blowing.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 19 points 3 months ago

Bosch has a lot of goodwill. Interesting how they decide to spend it. Also Consumer Reports needs to start considering Internet connectivity, because the risks from Internet connected dishwashers are real and scary.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Yeah. And, in fairness, as a non-pirate, I read along here for tips and tricks to get a non-shit streaming experience out of my home hosted hardware.

If I could still pay for a non-shit streaming experience, I would just do that.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 3 points 3 months ago

Yeah. Luanti following Minecraft is nothing new. Mineclonia was an early pilot game for the engine.

But there hasn't been much effort on copying Minecraft lately. Mineclonia is done, and it's great.

We've had more mobs, animals, plants, textures, and such than un-modded Minecraft for a long time. (Which is unfair, as Luanti is a mod-first design.) But my point is the core Launti dev team doesn't have to work on any of that.

The most noticeable recent Luanti updates have been to make the configuration screens much nicer, and add I think to add native support for more graphics tricks?

I'm not paying attention to graphics in Luanti. As others have mentioned, that's not why I play it. I actually had a conversation recently about the best way to downgrade Luanti default graphics to match un-modded Minecraft.

That said, the Minecraft team taking notice of Luanti would be new, as far as I know.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago

Yeah. I'm sympathetic to the whole "technology is hard" thing, and the idea that the SteamDeck is primarily meant to be for mobile gaming.

But switching from Nintendo Switch to SteamDeck really highlighted to me how good the Nintendo engineering team is, that I never had any of these display issues with a docked Switch.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Yeah. It's really that bad. They've been releasing quality of life patches, but Valve made a portable device that happens to support docking, not a device meant to be docked.

Based on your experience, I assume you have the official Steam Dock, which I find worse to use with the SteamDeck than any random USB C dongle that I have tried.

Edit: Be sure to check for updates. I recall some of the issues you mention (like the blank screen) were mentioned in SteamOS release notes this year.

 

I got tired of having to search and sign up for wherever my favorite movie is streaming this month, so I'm going back to DVDs for the foreseeable future, until the streaming overlords get their shit together. So... maybe forever. But at least for now.

It's nice. I put a disc in, and press play, and it plays.

I hadn't quite realize how much messing around the streaming services had added to my movie nights.

(Recover password, verify my email, sign up with a credit card, authorize the TV, remove the old iPad because of a device limit, sign in at least one extra time for no certain reason, sometimes discover I chose the wrong service and start over.)

 

Cory Doctorow details the path to the enshitifications of Facebook and Twitter.

"This is what changed: the collapse of market, government, and labor constraints, and IP law's criminalization of disenshittifying, interoperable add-ons. This is why Zuck, an eternal creep, is now letting his creep flag fly so proudly today. Not because he's a worse person, but because he understands that he can hurt his users and workers to benefit his shareholders without facing any consequences. Zuckerberg 2025 isn't the most evil Zuck, he's the most unconstrained Zuck."

 

Cory recommends a response for Canada to the USA's promised tariffs: break ranks on oppressive IP laws and build a local right-to-repair economy.

Edit: Corrected link. Sorry about that!

 

This came across my GamingOnLinux feed, and I figured y'all might share my interest.

I'm excited for this dock release because my simple JSAUX HDMI dongle has always been a more reliable SteamDeck dock, for me, than my official SteamDeck dock.

I understand recent patches to the SteamDeck official dock may have solved many of the issues I was having.

But it's still cool to see a brand I already trust adding a targeted SteamDeck product.

I don't see whether it accounts for my habit of keeping my SteamDeck in a protective case, though.

 

I'm usually the one saying "AI is already as good as it's gonna get, for a long while."

This article, in contrast, is quotes from folks making the next AI generation - saying the same.

 

"We need policies that keep middlemen weak."

stood out to me.

Many of my influences have railed against middle men, and I think that's unfair. I've worked with plenty of middle men that made everyone then better off.

I've also had the unique displeasure that at least half of all links shared with me in recent years have been to a site called "Instagram", where I am unable to access the content without an account (which I refuse to make because Zuckerberg is a creepy stalker.)

I find it deeply weird that such a locked ecosystem now controls so much attention.

I find Cory Doctorow's thoughts on the problem and potential solutions to be both hopeful and cathartic.

127
The Cult of Microsoft (www.wheresyoured.at)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by MajorHavoc@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
 

Kind of an inflammatory title, but I like to let it match for accessibility.

I've been enjoying Ed Zitron's articles lately, because they call out CEOs who aren't doing their jobs.

I'm sharing this partly because I'm honestly surprised to see criticism of Satya Nadella's leadership. I think Satya has been good for Microsoft, overall, compared to previous leaders. And I was as convinced as anyone else when the "growth mindset" first hit the news cycle. It sounds fine, after all.

TL;DR:

  • Satya has baked "growth mindset deeply into the culture at Microsoft"
  • Folks outside of the original study authors have generally failed to reproduce evidence of any value in "growth mindset"
  • Microsoft is, of course "all in" on their own brand of AI tools, and their AI tools are doing the usual harmful barf, eat the barf, barf grosser barf, re-eat that barf data corruption cycle.
  • Some interesting speculation that none of the AI code flaunted by Microsoft and Google is probably high value. Which is a speculation I confidently share, but still, I think, speculation. (Lines-of-code is a bat shit insane way to measure engineer productivity, but some folks think it's okay when an AI is doing it.)
 

You might recognize me from such comments as "All AI hucksters are scammers.", and "AI is just an excuse to enshitify while laying off real engineers.", and "I actually use current generation LLMs for a bunch of things and it can be pretty great."

In this article science fiction author and futurist Cory Doctorow is on my favorite AI soap box, and raises some interesting points.

140
PSA - MineTest on SteamDeck (blog.rubenwardy.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by MajorHavoc@programming.dev to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
 

MineTest on a SteamDeck is so fun, y'all.

(Edit: MineTest is a free and open source game engine that started as a clone of Minecraft, and has grown to be that, and much more.)

I would have tried it sooner, if someone had mentioned it to me, so I'm mentioning it to you.

Edit: Disclaimer, I'm not the author of this blog. It's the walkthrough I followed to start playing.

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