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kbin.life

Engywuck , (edited ) to showerthoughts in They use to tell us we couldnt trust Wikipedia. Now we know. Wikipedia is the only website you can trust.

Wikipedia is the only piece of the internet I would save from apocalipse. Like, seriously.

MightEnlightenYou ,

Yeah, I have Wikipedia saved to a portable hard drive… Just in case

DevilOfDoom ,

How much data does it use?

joneskind ,
@joneskind@lemmy.world avatar

According to my app, the whole English Wikipedia with pictures weighs 102.62GB, down to 60,06GB without.

There’s also a mini version that weighs 58,29GB but I don’t know what it contains

Wikipedia 1m Top Articles weighs 43,53GB

kiwix

meekah ,
@meekah@lemmy.world avatar

Any idea how the 8gb from another comment might be achieved?

Edit: I guess zipping it should work pretty well

joneskind ,
@joneskind@lemmy.world avatar

TBH I have no idea

I just took a look at what my app is saying, but I didn’t dig into it

calcopiritus ,

It’s probably only the text. Images and videos weigh a lot more than text.

meekah ,
@meekah@lemmy.world avatar

According to my app, the whole English Wikipedia with pictures weighs 102.62GB, down to 60,06GB without.

60GB is still more than 8GB

LuckyBoy ,

The other comment checked a 10 year reddit link but didnt notice the date untill it went to search for it again because of this thread. Dumbass!

Source: it was I, the guy that did the comment.

Engywuck ,

I don’t know if you’re making fun of me, but, seriously, for me Wikipedia is an enormously valuable resource, much more than, for instance, YouTube (which I use, maybe, twice per year).

LuckyBoy , (edited )

There is a lot of People with a copy of Wikipedia, it only takes 8GB. Just for the case something happens. I dont think he is making fun of you.

Edit: this 8 GB was 10 years ago. From another article from 2022 it says 150Gb.

Damaskox ,
@Damaskox@lemmy.world avatar

Some folks enjoy reading articles. Some folks enjoy to watch, listen and read (captions) at the same time. Some folks rather ask around and learn through conversations.

I’ve understood that it’s generally easier to learn new things when you use many different channels (audio, imagery etc). To many people but not to all.

MightEnlightenYou ,

Wasn’t making fun of you, just agreeing with you and telling you my fix

rob64 ,

I remember in the mid-aughts my brother hacked his iPod — the wheel kind, this was pre-iPhone — to hold the entirety of the text of English Wikipedia at the time.

joneskind ,
@joneskind@lemmy.world avatar

I bought an app by Wikimedia CH that allows to download the whole thing. It’s called Kiwix.

sir_reginald ,
@sir_reginald@lemmy.world avatar

you “bought” kiwix? AFAIK it’s free

joneskind ,
@joneskind@lemmy.world avatar

There is a paid version on the Mac AppStore to support the project

nucleative ,

What if you need to remember how to procreate? I hear there are a number of informative videos about how to out there.

Engywuck ,

But there aren’t on YouTube :-P

Emerald ,

It would also be nice to have a p2p service still up in the internet apocalypse to share all the things we have left.

JadenSmith ,

Could work like the underground networks in Cuba (I say underground but apparently there’s wires everywhere?)

stillwater ,

IIRC this happens in the show or book of Station Eleven where a kid saves Wikipedia offline on his PS Vita (somehow) and it’s the only version of it out there post-apocalypse.

AngryCommieKender ,

It’s less than 90 gig to do a full backup. I can have the sum total of human knowledge on a 1TB external SDD, and still have room for Skyrim and my modlist.

possiblylinux127 ,

That’s interesting

Flax_vert ,

Even less so if you exclude images

Corkyskog ,

Those images are important, I would keep them. Wikipedia just scrapes the surface of information, a picture can give a bigger insight.

Flax_vert ,

True, if you have the space by all means

Frost752 ,
@Frost752@lemmy.world avatar

Is there an easy way of doing a full backup?

alphafalcon ,

Funnily enough, wikipedia has the answer

en.m.wikipedia.org/…/Wikipedia:Database_download

Frost752 ,
@Frost752@lemmy.world avatar

ah I see, ty lol

guiguinofake ,

That’s only the text without any media. If you wanted to save all media on Wikimedia Commons, that would be about 420tb.

AngryCommieKender ,

You get the images, just not audio or video files.

Pons_Aelius , (edited ) to nostupidquestions in Why do people road rage?

Have you heard of barrier aggression in dogs?

TLDR: Dogs use body language. smell etc to gauge wether another dog is friend or foe. When a barrier (like a fence etc) stops this assessment, they go straight to aggression as a defence/protection measure.

My guess is it a similar thing in humans.

We are stripped of our usual communication and threat assessment of the other person we would have in a normal encounter. We can't see their face, their body language etc etc. So if someone is prone to anxiety and/or aggression (two sides of the same coin), they jump straight to "That driver is a cunt who did that on purpose and to spite me".

Edit: This is also why I think online discussions so often turn into insult ridden shit fests.

Rentlar ,

This video illustrates it well

(loud barking warning)

nucawysi OP ,

anxiety and aggression combo is so interesting and makes sense explaining past interactions with people

superweeniehutjrs , to piracy in What's the best way to pirate a recent Windows OS?

ISO download from Microsoft directly. Use Rufus to make an installer USB. Click the “I do not have a license key” option. Who cares about the watermark.

greyjedi ,

You can permanently activate it with the scripts from massgravel: github.com/…/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

wolfshadowheart ,
@wolfshadowheart@kbin.social avatar

Didn't microsoft recently push something to prevent these from working?

hiddengoat ,

If they have it hasn't changed anything on four systems I've used it on in the past six months or so.

wolfshadowheart ,
@wolfshadowheart@kbin.social avatar

Hm, I could have sworn I had read an article around here (roughly the last two months maybe, likely more recently) saying that the MAS had been patched by Microsoft, but now I can't find anything about it at all. Odd.

Well, good that it's still functioning!

csfirecracker ,

They patched new HWID requests being sent, but any existing licenses made with those methods are fine. That was only one of several ways to spoof yourself legitimate, though. The rest still work.

Moonrise2473 ,

They thought it was patched for good but after a few days found a workaround

nostradiel ,
@nostradiel@lemmy.world avatar

As always. 😅

jws_shadotak ,

HWID is permanent, even after Microsoft fixed the method that massgravel was using. It only affected new installs because people couldn’t run the script to activate Windows permanently.

It’s fixed and activating permanently now though.

smolyeet ,

They recently broke hwid, but was recently fixed as of 2.2. The other method worked fine still

superweeniehutjrs ,

Don’t ever run random scripts from the Internet unless you understand every line.

000999 ,

but do run scripts that have been verified by reputable sources

skankhunt42 ,
@skankhunt42@lemmy.ca avatar

Personally, I’d never use one of these scripts.

Most PCs have a windows key burned in to the BIOS.

howtogeek.com/…/how-to-find-your-windows-10-produ…

I’d start there and see if it can be used for 11 or upgraded through the versions. Then I’d take a “clean” backup and use that to re-install in the future, instead of a new ISO.

RvTV95XBeo , to asklemmy in What silly inconvinient stuff would you outlaw if you could?

Billboards. Get them out of here! Everyone gets to put their name on the side of the building in at most 2m tall black or white Time New Roman.

Sprite OP ,
@Sprite@lemmy.ml avatar

I’m ambivalent on this one. If the ad on a building serves to keep the charges from tenants lower then I don’t mind (given the ad is somewhat tasteful). Ads for the sake of ads? Yea, fuck that.

ptz ,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

If the ad on a building serves to keep the charges from tenants lower then I don’t mind

Lol. That’s just bonus money for the building owner and tenants will probably get a rent hike just because.

Ookami38 ,

Funny joke, that. Passing on savings to the end user.

Iron_Lynx ,

Passing savings on to the tenants, eh? What incentive does the business owner have to do so?

rhythmisaprancer ,
@rhythmisaprancer@kbin.social avatar

There is so much unnecessary advertising in my country. Billboards, commercials on a screen at fuel stations, placards on park benches. None of it has any tangible benefit to regular people. None.

qdJzXuisAndVQb2 ,

Fuck that. Banksy wrote:

Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.

The longer quote is here.

AeroLemming ,

Unfathomably based.

rhythmisaprancer ,
@rhythmisaprancer@kbin.social avatar

Wow that's really solid. I feel challenged at implementation but that's a me problem.

captainlezbian ,

Huh it would be nice to walk around the city with less advertisements

Catoblepas ,

In the US there are 4 states that have outlawed billboards: Vermont, Maine, Alaska, and Hawaii. I absolutely would not complain if it became nationwide.

dingus ,

Some states also seem to prohibit billboards on certain stretches of highway. There was a state highway I used to take daily in Connecticut and there were no billboards anywhere.

miss_brainfart ,
@miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml avatar

I will never understand the Pay Attention to the Road type billboards on some highways here

Ookami38 ,

Broaden this to any ads on the streets. Billboards are the most egregious, but I’d actually kill for a society where I can get from my home to a grocery with nothing trying to sell me something.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

I am okay with the business itself having signage on its property visible from far enough away for travelers to make navigational decisions. I’m also okay with those state-issued signs on large highways that point out things like lodging, fuel and food which must conform to certain guidelines. And in this case, I’d prefer using clear and distinctive logos which are recognizable by color and shape so that motorists can recognize them faster and spend more of their attention on the road.

Ookami38 ,

I think those could be considered less ads and more just informational postings, particularly the food and fuel lines a la the signs at each interstate exit that tells you the amenities available near any given exit. Considering, as well, that they usually have several competitors on the same sign, and it feels even less ad-like

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

It’s closer to the scale of what “advertising” should be if it wasn’t the bloated cancerous mass that it is today. I want businesses to exist and I want interested customers to be able to find these businesses, but I don’t want to be told “I’m not a dish, I’m a man” nine times an hour. Signs along the interstate that say “Hey at this next exit there’s a McDonald’s and a Denny’s, an Exxon and a BP truck stop, and a Holiday Inn” are genuinely useful.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

I disagree with the requirement for plain labels. Trademarks exist for consumer protection as well as business protection; I want Gatorade to hold a trademark on clear bottles with lightning bolts on the front and orange caps, because I don’t want to be fooled into buying Negligent Uncle Greg’s Geterade. If anything, I would force companies to use fewer of them; no hosing Amazon with 900,000 differently branded permutations of the same product.

HeneryHawk , to asklemmy in Who was your worst coworker?

I had a brief stint in a shit hole during COVID lockdowns. This old dude started and it turned out his wife and the lady in charge were friends. He was one of the dumbest people I’ve ever met. He legit had someone else’s glasses on and didn’t know until the other guy was trying to find his. He said he thought it was weird that he couldn’t see properly. He also seen a few guys with face screens rather than masks and he wanted one. We told him you can get them from health and safety, so off he goes. Comes back and says they’re awful, you can’t see shit out of them. He hadn’t removed the protective covering…

I’ve worked with some apes in my time but I’ve no idea how this guy got so far in life without dying or something

assassinatedbyCIA ,

He’s survived through pure dumb luck

blackbrook ,

I traveled for a wedding where they’d rented out a whole place for guests to stay. They were just a little short of rooms and the first night I had to share a room with a friend. Older than me, has ADHD (I think I do too, but he has it in spades), kind of a mess. I woke up in the morning and couldn’t find my glasses. Sure enough, he got up before me, grabbed mine without knowing they weren’t his… Got them back later slightly mangled. Good times.

He wasn’t dumb, but he could be startlingly oblivious about some things.

state_electrician ,

My father had his own business and at some point he had an assistant who is one of the dumbest people I’ve ever met. Her husband was an idiot too. At one point she was angry with him because he bought a “real” leather jacket out of some Russian guy’s trunk on some rest stop on the highway.

Bishma , to asklemmy in What's a current or growing trend only you seem to have concerns about?
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Microplastics showing up in our organ tissue and managing to pass the blood brain barrier. We’re going to cure Alzhemers just in time for Plazhemer’s to take us down.

schmorpel ,

Roman Empire > too much lead US Empire > too much plastic

deadbeef79000 ,

It’s okay: our shareholders got their expected dividend growth this quarter.

AOCapitulator ,
@AOCapitulator@hexbear.net avatar

But how will you make money curing Alzheimer’s? Old people have Medicaid and the government won’t shell out for the goods so they’d have to sell it cheap

ChaoticEntropy , to asklemmy in What's a current or growing trend only you seem to have concerns about?
@ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk avatar

The centralisation of all web browsing in the hands of a handful of aggregated front ends that basically monopolise on content provided by other people. Goodbye websites and independent communities.

Hello auto generated websites that exist to push ads and optimise SEO.

keepcarrot ,

waves lemmy flag

ChaoticEntropy ,
@ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk avatar

squints in to the depths of the internet at the fractional population of Lemmy

keepcarrot ,

Yeah… Yeah. I always feel kinda hopeless about this stuff because I’m not the sort of person that has the social clout to migrate my communities onto platforms.

stevedidWHAT , (edited ) to nostupidquestions in Should I just quit urban and social life for a rural and lonely life?
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

I wanna pose this very kindly and politely because I know a lot of people are against it sadly but

By the way you’re wording things it sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate right now and you’re losing your grip/stable footing and you should take that very seriously. Stopping a mental breakdown when it finally happens isn’t going to be possible on your own.

There’s a few options for online if you’d prefer but therapy really isn’t that bad of an idea to try. It’s nice having someone you can get along with and be vulnerable with and have help you out with “shit that’s stuck in your teeth” as mine says.

Some stuff is too tough and is way too bitter to chew on our own and this world is infinitely bigger than you and will swallow you whole if you don’t fight for a life you want.

Stay healthy bro. Fight for yourself. We’re all rooting for your best health mentally and physically 💜

Edit: reworded the beginning of paragraph 2, I’m not a psychologist nor do I have the training to be calling out “textbook antisocial behavior” considering how long it takes to go to school to become a psychiatrist/psychologist

PostmodernPythia ,

Therapy? As someone who’s benefited from years of therapy, therapy isn’t supposed to end rational responses when the world’s gone mad. I’m afraid far too many people confuse therapy with magic.

Entropywins ,
@Entropywins@kbin.social avatar

Even if the world goes to complete and total shit...I'm still gonna talk about it and process it with someone.

PostmodernPythia ,

That’s good and healthy. All I’m saying is that therapy won’t fix the problems underlying this. It can be useful in processing, but I’m tired of people acting like therapy will solve structural problems.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

Considering you know nothing about the severity of this situation or validity of the situation outside of OPs current head space and know fuck all about therapy apparently, just stop. You’re possibly hurting someone.

PostmodernPythia ,

Clearly, you didn’t read my post. Hard to spend years in therapy and not know fuck-all about it. I never said don’t go to therapy. I said don’t expect miracles. Therapy is good, but it’s not a solution to structural issues.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

You’re making that assumption though. You are assuming that it’s only structural and nothing else. There is 0 harm in talking with a therapist.

I did read what you said, you just didn’t understand what I was getting at. I’ve got a feeling we’re on the same page here believe it or not

PostmodernPythia ,

You said I know “fuck all” about therapy after reading and comprehending a comment where I said I’d spent years in therapy, and I’m the one with a reading comprehension problem? Sure, buddy.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

Going to therapy doesn’t necessarily mean you understand. Bring it up with you therapist.

Show ‘em the post, what I said, and what you said with 0 changed and I bet we’d both stand to learn something from it.

Domille ,

wanting to be alone is not an anti-social behavior… aggression and wanting to hurt people is… which the op is not expressing. Don’t know where you got this “text book antisocial behavior” definition from.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

While I disagree with you about this being antisocial behavior or at least the precursor, I’m not a psychologist so I should refrain from using language like this as it’s misleading as “fact” when it’s just lazy vocab usage.

Appreciate the call out

rakyat , (edited ) to asklemmy in What are some commonly known facts that are too bizarre for you to believe to be true?
@rakyat@artemis.camp avatar

Not exactly bizarre, but it’s fun to learn that the delicious fragrance of shrimps and crabs when cooked comes from chitin, and chitin is also why sautéed mushrooms smell/taste like shrimps.

And since fungi are mostly chitin, plants have evolved defenses against fungi by producing enzymes that destroy chitin, which is how some plants eventually evolved the ability to digest insects.

EDIT: a previous version of this post mistakenly confused chitin with keratin (which our fingernails are made of). Thanks to sndrtj for the correction!

sndrtj ,

Chitin is not produced by mammals.

Fingernails are composed primarily out of keratin (same as hair and skin).

rakyat ,
@rakyat@artemis.camp avatar

Oops! I stand corrected.

Mothra ,
@Mothra@mander.xyz avatar

Wow I didn’t know this and I’ve never felt a similarity between seafood and mushrooms either in flavour or smell. But, still a cool fact.

Squids ,

It’s one of those things that feels really obvious if you cook a lot of east/south Asian dishes - shrimp sauce and mushroom soy sauce have a pretty similar aftersmell to them because they’re so concentrated

Mothra ,
@Mothra@mander.xyz avatar

I’ll be honest, I’m not much into cooking Asian. I’m also not a frequent crustacean eater, but I eat mushrooms regularlish. I’ll pay more attention from now on, but I would have never otherwise thought of making a link between the two

chatokun ,

Huh. Oddly I am allergic to shrimp and lobster, but love mushrooms. To me they don’t smell the same though. Though this fact probably explains why veg oyster sauce is mushrooms.

autumn , to asklemmy in Why do people not hire experts?

Some broad answers:

  1. Fee is higher than people are willing to pay
  2. People don’t trust the experts
  3. The experts don’t exist yet
  4. People have no idea how to find the experts
bismuthbob ,
@bismuthbob@sopuli.xyz avatar

Adding on to this: people overestimate their own expertise.

PetDinosaurs ,

Dunning-Kruger also has a corollary: the very intelligent under estimate their intelligence.

givesomefucks ,

Ask a really smart person if they know a lot about a topic they know a lot about…

And they’ll tell you about all the things they don’t know about the subject.

Ask an idiot about a topic they know nothing about, and they’ll bullshit about how they know everything.

It’s why the smartest people at any company are rarely running shit. Overconfidence always sells better than being realistic about your ability.

PetDinosaurs ,

Yes. You have summarized the Dunning-Kruger effect.

dingus ,
@dingus@lemmy.ml avatar

Except it’s completely normalized to teach people to “sell themselves” to be able to get a job. It’s not necessarily that they think they know more than they do. They might be very aware of their limitations, but have no shame and are willing to bend the truth to “get ahead.”

If you go in trying to get an expert position and start talking about all the things you don’t know, you’re probably not getting the job, you know?

agent_flounder ,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.one avatar

Outside of the context of job interviews, I find when talking informally with someone who truly knows a shitload, they tend to know enough to know how much more there is to know and may make mention of that along the way. And those that don’t know how much they don’t know of course can’t really mention that because they can’t even convince of all the stuff they don’t know.

I always pay attention to people who are like the former and who are comfortable with maintaining an appropriate level of uncertainty because it usually means they think more scientifically.

Or put another way, he who speaks loudest knows least.

PetDinosaurs ,

I find when talking informally with someone who truly knows a shitload, they tend to know enough to know how much more there is to know and may make mention of that along the way.

Good answer!

dingus ,
@dingus@lemmy.ml avatar

In other words, people saying they know everything are selling something. In your example, themselves.

bjorney ,

Very much 4

We wanted to get an engineer to audit something we set up, talking like 1 hour phone call, maybe 1 hour of work beyond that if something needed to be adjusted

We wasted like 4 hours on the line with different agencies (talking to sales people) who wanted to connect us with a DIFFERENT agency to do the actual work, who wanted us to sign a 3 year service contract.

Like no, “please just let us talk to one of your senior engineers and bill us $500/hr for his time”

zero_iq ,

While a 3 year service contract was clearly overkill, your estimate of 1 hour is ridiculously tiny. Nothing of any worth can be audited with a 1 hour phone call.

PetDinosaurs ,

Not true at all.

It’s just a bad idea. You need to have a minimum contracted price.

There’s plenty of “$0.10 for the screw $1m for knowing that’s the solution” stories.

bjorney ,

In this case, by “audit” it was more of a metaphorical “here is our setup, do we plug this into slot A or B, we don’t want to read the 300 page manual”, so 1 hour was literally all it needed

Spoiler: I ended up reading the 300 page manual, it took a week. That was 3 years ago and we have never touched it since

ImplyingImplications ,

The experts don’t exist yet

This is something that people often don’t know about. For certain things there can actually be little to no experts. One example, ski lifts. There are only a handful of people in the entire world who know how to splice together ski lift cables.

A more concerning one is nuclear engineers. There’s been such a stigma against nuclear power that the amount of people who know how to build a nuclear reactor has fallen to incredibly low numbers. Also, the US had to reverse engineer some of their own nuclear weapons because the people who built them all died and the knowledge of how they were built died with them.

claycle ,

#1.

Don’t you just know it?! I work in media and I have pitched commercial projects to business executives many times only to see them completely choke on the costs. They say things like “Can’t we just film the commercial on an iPhone, I see that on YouTube all the time?” FFS. I’ll be like “Sure, we can. What’s your budget for that? You realize I still have to pay the cameraman, the makeup artist, the writer, the producer, the director, the gaffer, and the talent. Do you want music with that, too? Oh, you want a Credence Clearwater Revival song in the background? That’ll cost you.”

I’ll pull out some sheets explaining what they see on YT that they think is so cheap… I mean, sure, it’s less expensive than other options, but crew and talent gotta eat and pay bills, too.

People have no idea…

MasterBuilder , to android in Why is text selection such a broken mess on so many websites? Why does this have to be such a hassle??

All I can say is that it is kinda cathartic that someone other than me is experiencing this nightmare.

Also, this pages where it is impossible to select any text at all.

Dee ,
@Dee@lemmings.world avatar

Also, this pages where it is impossible to select any text at all.

On android, you can still select text on those pages from the switch apps screen (swipe up from the bottom, hold, then release on Pixels). Found that workaround on accident lol

jennwiththesea ,
@jennwiththesea@lemmy.world avatar

Whoa, thank you! I can’t select text in the Liftoff app, but this one weird trick works.

MaggiWuerze ,

That seems to be OCR based though. Sometimes when I do it like that I get complete gibberish

Bebo ,

Seriously, I thought I was the only person clumsy/stupid enough to mess up on text selection.

zephyr , to showerthoughts in Most people unconciously associate the pause symbol (Two vertical lines) as currently playing and the playing symbol (sideways triangle) as paused.

Ah, the old debate of “display current state” vs “display current action”…

Sigmatics , to showerthoughts in Big Tech companies are finally getting the names we thought dystopian megacorps would have

I still think it’s hilarious that Facebook renamed to Meta, and anything they did with the “metaverse” was a huge failure. It’s like they didn’t learn their lesson from Second Life.

AphoticDev ,
@AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Second Life isn’t owned by Meta. And just by the amount of money Second Life earned, and somehow still earns to this day, it was a pretty huge success. The only real success in the “virtual world” field. It’s not surprising somebody else would try to emulate that success.

Sigmatics ,

They don’t own it, that means they can’t know about it?

IsThisWhereWeGoNow ,

I think the confusion begins with your statement that Meta didn’t “learn their lesson from Second Life.” What’s the lesson they should have learned? Why should Meta have learned a lesson from something they didn’t own?

HakFoo ,

The big lesson from Second Life to me is that it’s a novelty for 95% of potential users, and a fixation for a few true believers.

VR and AR are in that era of radio in the 1920s, or personal computers in 1977. They’re interesting, people might gawk at one for a little while if given access to it, but right now, the long-term audience is going to be primarily enthusiasts who are passionate about the technology for its own sake.

We’re still waiting for a lot of details to snap into place to make it broadly appealing:

  • The hardware and setup needs to be turnkey. Newer kit is getting a lot closer, but I think it’s going to be hard because you have to factor in things like “setting up a wide enough floor space to avoid injuring yourself when using it” and “we haven’t really resolved that this gives a fair number of people violent sickness”
  • There need to be killer apps. Some of the VR experiences seem like they’d be fun, but eventually exhausting. It’s sort of like the motion control (Wii/Kinect/PSMove) trend-- people enjoyed them, but it seemed like it burnt through quickly, rather than becoming a core part of new gaming experiences going forward.

AR likely has an easier road to “killer app” because it can be applied to a bunch of vertical use cases; I’m picturing a fry-cook with a heads-up display that tracks how long each patty has been on the grille and its internal temperature, for example. Even if mainstream consumers never buy AR gear, there might be a million devices sold to businesses. Makes me think of Windows CE; the consumer launch was muted, but it was on a billion scanner-oriented devices for years.

RaoulDook ,

“There need to be killer apps” you say, but have you looked at the VR titles on Steam etc?

There are already a lot of fantastic VR games. Touristy cities even have VR gaming arcades where you can pay high prices to play on their VR kits.

The main barrier to wider adoption is the high price for good VR equipment, and the runner up is probably the complexity of setting up and using the systems. So yes that’s similar to PCs in the early days, maybe like the 90s were with PCs and the Internet.

HakFoo ,

While there may be good apps, I tend to define “Killer App” as a specific program that people not already in the ecosystem will explicitly buy into a hardware platform to run. The classic being VisiCalc for the Apple II and Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC. On the gaming side, think about how many millions of Game Boys were sold so people could play Tetris; one suspects a significant number never saw another cartridge in their life. Or, perhaps less hyperbolically, Halo got a lot of people onto the Xbox platform, and FF7 did the same for the Playstation.

Does any VR title have the same degree of wide awareness and demand those programs had at their peak?

I could imagine someone trying to force the hand by moving a beloved franchise into VR-- imagine if the next Dragon Quest was VR-only, for example, and people who buy everything with that cute blue slime on it would also buy cute-blue-slime shape headsets. Meta has the resources to buy such a situation into existence, but it might not be what they’re after because it’s likely to still be only a narrow draw-- they’re used to building a platform for All The People, not just the audience who followed a single beloved franchise over.

AphoticDev ,
@AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Why would they learn from a mistake that wasn’t even a mistake and wasn’t theirs to begin with? Like, what is the point you are trying to make?

vidsid ,

They should have learned a lesson from Second Life. It was so much graphically better, more sophisticated and immersive even in 2d .

Users had a world where they could build, interact, buy land, make, buy, sell items and art, go to concerts, have virtual sex, attend classes, build a castle , explore, etc, etc. It would have been awesome in 3d.

This was like 20 years ago! Meta had such an opportunity there but instead had half avatars and chat rooms. It sucked.

Immersive_Matthew ,

A lot of it comes down to the Quest processors as they are just not very powerful. It had to be backwards comparable with the 835 Snapdragon processor form the Quest 1 and that is a 2016 processor. Makes senses it was so basic as they wanted to have many avatars on screen at once so things had the get cut…like legs. Ahahahaha.

I am not defending Meta, but just stating the facts and one of those facts is Zuck has said this is a long game and that it will be at least a decade before the Metaverse becomes something half compelling. I agree with that assessment. It is just not there today, but it will be.

theKalash , to nostupidquestions in why isn't the use of the bidet more widespread?

Because of “big toilet paper”. They even tried to assassinate a spokesperson for japanes toilets.

XiELEd ,
@XiELEd@lemmy.world avatar

Holy shit? Do you have a source for that because damn. It’s something I would expect though.

theKalash ,

It’s was joke. That’s the plot of a south park episode.

Drewsteau ,

Honestly I wouldn’t even be surprised if Procter and Gamble did that shit lol

CADmonkey ,

Kimberly-Clark about to send their death squads out for people who prefer a bidet over TP

neal33 ,

It’s a joke from South Park

cubedsteaks ,

I wish I could find it again but this was years ago now that I saw a news story about the rise of women getting UTI’s from bidet usage in Japan specifically.

Sasuke , to asklemmy in What's a scam that's so normalized that we don't even realize it's a scam anymore?
@Sasuke@hexbear.net avatar

capitalism

jbloggs777 ,

The scam that has passed the test of time. So scamming good, that even communists turn to it!

AntifaSuperWombat ,
@AntifaSuperWombat@hexbear.net avatar

I would argue that feudalism is a lot more time tested than this garbage system that even in theory is so flawed that it regularly results in global economic crises. Feudalism on the other hand has been considerably more stable throughout the centuries and whether or not you are forced to serve a nobleman or a CEO is not a big difference. So, stop getting scammed and get back to the fields, peasant.

jbloggs777 ,

I’m also looking forward to a viable/stable alternative. I have serious doubts that I’ll see one in my lifetime, unfortunately.

AntifaSuperWombat ,
@AntifaSuperWombat@hexbear.net avatar

There is no stable alternative. There is always going to be class struggle. Materialist conditions and human rights must always be fought for and defended, else you’re gonna lose them.

GarbageShoot ,

You should stop getting your evaluations on alternatives to capitalism from the capitalists and their countries

jbloggs777 ,

There is a reason I reply to lemmygrad and hexbear people, and follow some of the communities. Sometimes I get interesting responses. Not your response, but sometimes.

GarbageShoot ,

There is no need to be passive-aggressive

jbloggs777 ,

No, but you didn’t need to engage in circle-jerking with your friends either. You are capable of more, and I look forward to reading your future contributions.

GarbageShoot ,

If I did something worth reading about, you’d condemn it just like you do all the other socialist projects, so don’t get your hopes up.

jbloggs777 , (edited )

Me? I’m pretty open minded, while trying to apply critical thinking. Make a good argument, and I’ll digest it. You seem to be jumping to conclusions, which may hurt your cause (edit: your ability to convince others, to the detriment of your cause)

GarbageShoot ,

Could you give me a slightly more specific prompt?

jbloggs777 ,

What on earth do you mean by that? Was it intended to disrupt the conversation with nonsense, or is there some meaning that you can explain?

GarbageShoot ,

You asked me to give you an argument. What sort of argument are you asking for? What conclusion am I supposed to be asserting?

jbloggs777 , (edited )

If you don’t have something useful or interesting to add, there is another option…

ZodiacSF1969 ,

Good luck overthrowing capitalism and bring that fragile lol

crime ,

I have serious doubts that I’ll see one in my lifetime, unfortunately.

Not with that attitude you won’t

CriticalResist8 ,
@CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Which communists? The USSR was infiltrated and the US then spent millions getting the bumbling mass of ethanol known as Yeltsin to win an election. They (the new capitalist government) even sieged the parliament building and sent tanks in Moscow to disperse the huge waves of protestors. It then lead to one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the modern age almost overnight.

And in China they are assuredly not capitalist, this becomes very clear once you read Deng Xiaoping. It’s Schroedinger’s China: when they do something bad they’re communists, and when they do something good (like lifting people out of poverty) they’re capitalists.

Cuba is still socialist, DPRK is still socialist, Vietnam is also reforming and opening up kinda like China did but a bit differently so still socialist

Chapo0114 ,
@Chapo0114@hexbear.net avatar

Are we really denying that the “Chinese Characteristics” of the PRC’s “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” is Capitalism? Btw, I think the good parts of China are the socialism bits.

CriticalResist8 ,
@CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml avatar

capitalism is not bits and pieces here and there, it’s an entire mode of production with its own base and superstructure. In that sense China can’t be called capitalist. At best we could say it has “capitalist elements” but even then that’s a stretch when getting down into the details of what these elements actually are.

Chapo0114 ,
@Chapo0114@hexbear.net avatar

I mean, some (most? Idk) of the means of production are owned by the state (ostensibly a proxy for the people, I’d rather it was more direct but the government has consistently high approval so I’ll give it a pass) and those are clearly socialistic.

But there are certainly factories and what not owned by capitalists, and as that accounts for much of the production that goes on in China, and as these products are not destined to serve the public weal but rather to be sent abroad as bits and bobs to be sold and promptly thrown away as serves global capital, I really don’t get the desire to not call this capitalism.

China, to me, has a very clear mixed economy with elements of both socialism and capitalism.

CriticalResist8 , (edited )
@CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml avatar

But as I’ve argued, having elements of capitalism like commodity production (and the subsequent export of these commodities) does not make China capitalist by themselves, which is also the original point I was making, that China has not “turned” to capitalism* like OP might have implied.

Markets are not inherently capitalist, and these capitalist elements in China allow them to build their productive forces which are required to achieve socialism, they’re also the same commodities they build for the Belt and Road initiative, for example 😁

Capitalism can be summed up in many ways, and one of them is production for the sake of finding a market and making money. There is capital in China (in the marxist definition) and people can make money, but while these capitalist want to simply make more money, for the Chinese government the goal is to build up production and achieve socialism, hence why the superstructure of China vs. any country in the imperial core is different. In the first case (capitalism) we’ll just keep producing and creating markets infinitely, the “anarchy of production and socialisation of labour”, and in the second case they’re using some methods (with the consequences that come with it -> if you make a factory to produce stuff, you will have to find a market to buy that stuff so you can produce more stuff) as a stepping stone until they don’t need to any more.

Of course the superstructure is predicated on the base, and in China for example land is leased to businesses, but never sold, and the government can take back their property at any time, including whatever is on it. It’s fundamentally different to capitalism in the west.

JamesConeZone ,
@JamesConeZone@hexbear.net avatar

This was super helpful comrade, thanks for this post

Annakah69 ,

The CPC controls all capital in the country. They are coordinating and intervening in the economy with the goal of building a socialist society. This is very different from the US and it’s client states. Capital is controlled by the bourgeois, with no obligations other than a gluttonous desire to accumulate.

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