That the person who reported it used a ML to try and find the setting to attempt to solve it, did not fill me with confidence of their abilities to manage this. They later admitted that they did have it enabled in some form.
They also never became specific about how well Gemini interpreted their tax result file. Did it give the proper number verbatim? That’s pretty damming. Did it just reply “You’re not getting a tax return”? That’s just 50/50 odds.
Last night while reading Claire Messud’s new novel 'This Strange Eventful History', I had an odd sense of déjà vu, a sense that I’d been there before. A moment later I remembered seeing the passage in the review that led me to read the book, and I realized that I had been there before, but this second visit was much richer than the first because I knew how I had gotten there. Such is the pleasure of reading – being engrossed in a book is like living in a different world.
Your document had a lot of great stuff in it I didn’t know!
If no mortality occurred, one pair of rabbits and their offspring could give rise to 5 million rabbits over a 5-year period.
That’s a lot of buns!
They will also, if necessary, eat moth pupae and carrion.
Moth pupae seems oddly specific. I wonder what are the circumstances for them eating bugs or carrion.
Rabbits deposit about 250 to 500 green or brown fecal pellets per day
I had a rabbit once, and it did make a lot of those things. I never thought anyone would have to sit there and chart them, but I suppose that’s important to know for someone. The lab intern must have gotten that responsibility…
I don’t know much about otome games beyond the basics of what they are. All the kbin links just took me to error pages, but they do look to have crossed over to Beehaw. Reading some of these plot points with no context can be very interesting though! 😆
I’ll have to check out those other communities you’ve mentioned. I do end up with other things to talk about and don’t always know where to take those conversations.
I debate if I should post other, non-owl stuff under a different name, as I somewhat feel I don’t want to risk compromising the group if people don’t like other things I talk about, but that gets to be too much like this being a job, and I don’t think I’d like that. That’s also why I don’t just mod my own sub. I didn’t come here to work, I came here to nerd out.
Struggling with manpower shortages, overwhelming odds and uneven international assistance, Ukraine hopes to find a strategic edge against Russia in an abandoned warehouse or a factory basement....
Two sources told NBC News that the Secret Service flagged a building near the rally site as a security concern. Investigators will be scrutinizing how a gunman was allowed to scale it....
A city in northern Germany has become the first to issue an all-out ban on the use of a hand gesture used to encourage silence in the classroom because of its close resemblance to a far-right Turkish gesture....
I’m trying to extract the frames of a video as individual images but it’s really slow, except when I’m using jpeg. The obvious issue with jpegs is the data loss from the compression, I want the images to be lossless. Extracting them as jpegs manages about 50-70 fps but as pngs it’s only 4 fps and it seems to continue...
I agree that you’re not really leveraging any features of PNG like you would using JPEG or RAW here, but saying it’s not meant for this use is an odd way to phrase it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting lossless compression on an image…
It’s odd for someone to make the social stereotypes of strangers somehow be all about themselves, especially when their stance is that they don’t like it being all about them.
It’s like some unusual form of egocentricity self-inflicting harm on itself. Like, there’s no spotlight, but the complaint is that there is one, so the person finds a spotlight to shine on themselves to make the complaint valid.
And the coincidence of what society calls those people…
There are others that could consider their names to be in far worse situations, but obviously don’t—in fact many run with it for laughs. And yet, your comment…for this… Life must be pretty good to have such troubles.
Hierarchy tends to prevent violence by providing an authority to appeal to. So long as there is some process people can take, in hope of redress, they will choose that instead of just stabbing a motherfucker. This applies to interpersonal conflict with your neighbor, or mass conflict between religious groups, indeed everybody seeing a fat old baby commit high crimes on national television. Even if you feel the odds are abysmal, that can be enough to stop you from grabbing your pitchfork with intent to use it.
Human beings think in stories. And a good story has a villain. An underwhelming and poorly managed game with an odd business model is a boring story. An evil scam stealing thousands of dollars from people is a great story. The fact that you can get the ships for free and some people think doing so is fun counteracts the narrative, so it’s dismissed.
Anyway, here’s my story for the haters to dismiss. I spent 35 dollars on the cheapest ship and played around in the game because a streamer I like said it was worth checking out if you’re interested in seeing an unfinished game get made. I thought it was neat. I had wander around and enjoyed the public transit systems on the planets. The terrestrial locations were intersesting. Then I hopped in my ship and did some missions. I tried cargo delivery, which involved flying around and travelling and landing, and it was cool but it got boring quick. I also tried fighting some pirates, and it seemed more lucrative and interesting but I didn’t have a very good ship for combat and I was bored of how long it takes to get to where the pirates are. I did them long enough to figure out how profitable it was, and realised I could get a better ship without that much trouble, but I’d get pretty bored, and at that point the inventory system was very buggy and everyone’s money got reset pretty frequently so it wasn’t something I wanted to prioritise.
So instead I started hanging out with streamers in the game. It was a pretty fun time because when I was around lots of other players, I could explore their ships. Some of the mid-size ships looked really fun. Think flying the Millenium Falcon around with your friends fighting space pirates, that’s the fantasy. I also realised I could buy a hoverbike and go zooming around the planets, and that was cool. I got to explore the Hammerhead and the 890 jump, which were really cool. Those are the ships that cost a thousand dollars. The hammerhead is a military ship and it’s labyrinthine. Full of pipes and Jefferies’ tubes and gun emplacements. It felt like being on board a Star Destroyer crossed with Serenity. I didn’t even get a sense for the layout of the ship in the half hour I spent on it. The 890 jump is a luxury cruise ship. I got to explore that one extensively, and it was really cool. There’s cabins, a bar, a pool, and even laundry rooms and kitchens for the guests. That’s where the money for this game is actually going, it’s going into doing literal architecture on these ships to make them as realistic and interesting as possible. They’re hiring architects instead of programmers. And you know what? That’s okay. Architecture geeks deserve fun games too, it doesn’t have to be all first person shooters and platformers. The terrestrial environments are the same story as the ships, they’re creating immersive and realistic environments where you can actually believe people live. Can you do anything interesting in these environments? No. But the environments themselves are interesting, so the architects are doing their jobs.
That doesn’t mean he wasn’t well off? Just as an example, there’s a media figure here in Brazil that has a whole ass “self made man” myth is surrounding him because at some point he was selling baubles in the street or other odd jobs like that. And it is indeed true that he did that, but his family owned a media network. So.
Oh and I don’t mean “well off” in the more “old money” sense, you are right, I’m not saying that he was billionaire level due to his family. I see why it seemed like that from what you were replying to, my bad. But I’m fairly sure I’ve read about his parent for the first time this year, and they had fairly comfortable money, to the point that him opening valve wasn’t a real financial risk for instance.
I’ll try to look for where I’ve read that, I didn’t pick it up immediately because I don’t have a pc at hand till Monday and searching for stuff on the phone is annoying. It’s not impossible that I’m mixing up with someone else, but in fairly sure that isn’t the case.
It seems to me that Valve despite all the criticism it receives for the high fee on the sales of copies is doing a terrific job on resolving that problem.
The only issue I have with this is that Valve seems to be the only company that gets this critique, yet they seem to provide way more services for said 30% fee.
Apple started charging 30% on everything over two decades ago with iTunes, which continued into their app store in 2008. They only recently started a “small business program” that is application based, reportedly unresponsive to the users, and by default still charges 30% to app developers making under $1m in revenue. So, instead of making it based on how much you earn, they force you to apply and ignore you, effectively still making it a 30% base rate. IMO, sort of predatory since they don’t really advertise the program. I feel like if it mattered to them, they would automatically apply the rate to >$1m revenue, instead of making it per-app (or dev account) application based and letting users sit in limbo wondering if they were accepted or not.
Google takes 30% as well, also having introduced a 15% on the first million of revenue for subscription based payments, so if I understand correctly, it’s not even individual sales getting that lowered rate. Oh, but don’t worry, in case you were worried music streaming services can go as low as 10% rates, so if you have a datacenter that you can stream licensed music to app users over well hey, you’re in luck little guy!
Microsoft actually moved down from 30% entirely to 12%, it looks like. They don’t really offer much, so good on them for that. Know your worth, am I right? But it’s only for PC sales, which seems kind of odd considering the hassle it can be to apply and develop for the Xbox. So, not as good, but still alright. Meanwhile, Sony and Nintendo… (30%). Hm, odd that it never seems to be raised as an issue for the consoles, oh well.
All of these were pushed by Epic who was mad they couldn’t make more money off their mobile game, except Microsoft which I think just followed suit. But from the backend when you look at what each of these services offer for their costs… It’s a bit laughable that Valve is the one getting critiqued for this point when they offer at least double the amount of services to the publisher/developer. In short, these fees cover the cost of a bunch of background junk as well as to generate some revenue for the store selling it, but don’t offer much else in terms of support for the users or the developers. Meanwhile the Steam Overlay can completely change your controller scheme, use community templates, access to per-game notes, all of which can be transparently overlaid on your game if you want, and the Steam Workshop for internal modding/community content, in addition to whatever other peripheral things like cloud saving, in-home/remote streaming and remote play together, the recently added recording feature, and generating as many Steam keys as the dev wants for certain purposes.
I just do a double take everytime I see it not being directed at the companies that actually do seem to be abusing their fees and don’t offer nearly as much feature presence. Like Valve seems to be attempting to innovate, even if they are just taking ideas from things like Moonlight, and Parsec. They didn’t lock it down either, you can jank it up by playing Non-Steam games or emulated games via Remote Play Together with your friends. Ever wanted to relive the days of DoubleDash? Did Slippi not exist in this timeline and you wanted to play Smash Melee with a friend?
Like, there’s things to complain about for Valve. But is the 30% for what they offer really unreasonable, especially when compared to current competitors? I personally don’t think so. If Epic wants to start making their launcher as fully fledged as Steam is then we can talk. Until then, when I see this argument presented I have a hard time reading it as anything but “big Valve bad” with the subtle implication that Epic is the saving grace of the gaming industry. Otherwise, Epic is able to offer 12% because they don’t host nearly as much for the user, and have had to actively rely on Valve for things like community support, VR support, and don’t have basic things like repair game installations, or re-installing a game in its folder (you know, to prevent having to redownload 90+gb every time their launcher breaks the game). It’s also hard to see them as a good guy when they also have had shady practices, such as not paying out devs per claim during the “Free Claim” giveaways, but rather only upon when the user actually downloads the game. In addition to that, they just throw tons of money at you to make it exclusive, then they ghost you and good luck getting any actual support from them if you need something.
Tl;Dr hypocrisy of picking what 30% fees are okay and which are screwing over game developers, I look at it from the perspective of received services for said fee.
P.S. to OP of comment, I am merely responding to you, I know your comment isn’t saying that Valve or any of these companies are at fault for it. Franky, I don’t think 30% is an issue if the fee that’s taken has fair returns for it, and I think this whole fandango is only an “issue” at all because of mad old Tim Sweeny.
I don’t expect people who can vividly imagine to be doing it all the time, kinda interpreted this as a cap. Still 1-2 distinction seems odd to me. Is it cartoon to realistic?
You pay less because you get less. I’m selling a product. The last thing I’m going to cheap out in is sales. I’m not going to see great sales from the EGS because A)Nobody uses it
That’s exactly it, Devs have to accept Steam’s cut because it’s essentially the only place you can sell things. It makes logical sense, but do you not see why this is a disadvantageous position for the Devs to be put in?
It’s like trying to sell your hand made Combs. The gas station on the corner is happy to take only 20% of the profit. They’re all over the place and accessible. But you really want to sell it at the boutique shops because they have more comb-seeking customers.
This would be a fine analogy, if there weren’t a single digit amount of storefronts. Steam and EGS are more equivalent to supermarkets. Sure the odd person is going to go to speciality stores on occasion, but the vast majority of sales are done through supermarkets. Steam is a supermarket competing against speciality stores. The only other real supermarket in town is EGS and as you’ve discussed, it’s such a dumpster fire no one shops there.
I’m not disagreeing that Steam deserves its position, it does for sure. But we live in a world where it has no meaningful competition, and one of the ways it exercises its position is by maintaining their 30% cut. A cut which was established by stores that had to manage the logistics for real physical copies of the games.
My point is that there isn’t a reason that Steam has such a high cut, other than it wants more money, and has the market saturation to command more money
Tbf some of the popular music has been shit since music began I’m sure, but there’s also always good stuff. For instance rap music, most of it these days is garbage like lil uzi and lil peep, but there’s still dudes like Aesop Rock (not ASAP Rocky, Aesop Rock), Run The Jewels, Meyhem Lauren, Lil Nas X, making good shit out there. Pop hasn’t been good since the 80s though. Oddly enough I think my favorite stuff from “now” is actually the fact that shoegaze is coming back but called zoomergaze and it’s fantastic! The band Julie is a good example, check out their EP Pushing Daisies. Also there’s been some really good recent country, namely Charley Crockett and Sturgil Simpson, and (ok it’s psychedelic bluegrass but) Billy Strings.
There is good stuff, we just have to dig through piles of shit for it.
Despite billions of dollars in additional weapons and security assistance that NATO announced this week, allied officials said Ukraine would not be ready to launch a dramatic counteroffensive or retake large swaths of territory from Russia until next year....
Its why the Russians are unable to effectively attack into Ukrainian defenses anymore.
That’s not what is being reported. They are still making advances. Even pro-Ukrainian channels are reporting this.
But that’s what F16s are supposed to change
Its an interesting point, but possibly unlikely f16 would be deployed on the eastern side initially (where they are most needed), suspect their initial proving ground would be Crimea. Ukrainians have for some time now, been hitting russian SAM sites and radar installations in the area. It is also close to the “neutral” sea where NATO awacs and other spy drones can fly and monitor the situation (as well as warn Ukraine if russians scramble jets or any other countermeasures) as an advance warning system. We will very likely see their first use in this theatre as a test ground. And if this works out, we might see them being rolled out on the rest of the eastern front, but that is quite some time away practically. It will most likely depend if Ukraine has enough HIMARS ammunition to overwhelm and destroy more SAM sites it those areas.
In any case, I think the M2 Bradley is probably a match for T-55.
For sure, we seen the videos of some fights, it seems Bradley is the vehicle of choice in Ukraine at least in the released videos.
If you move, artillery can’t hit you.
Kinda false, there are a number of videos showing artillery hitting moving targets, maybe those are rare, but they are non-zero. Now I tend to hang around pro-Ukraine telegram channels so tend to see more pro-Ukrainian videos, but to suggest that russians can’t do something similar (even if rarely) is statistical insanity. I keep saying, if they (russians) were entirely incompetent across the board, the front lines would not be moving against Ukraine.
There are a number of videos of Ukrainians doing just that, even more where the target is first immobilised with FPV drone and then hit with artillery very shortly after the crew bails, indicating cooperation between drone and artillery groups but a small delay for artillery to wait for the target to be stationary and hit it pretty accurately.
That’s not how glide-bombs work.
If the glide bombs are easy to intercept, why are Uranians complaining about them all the time? If the front lines report its still a problem for them I am more likely to believe the news coming out of there than high command. The issue is where russians are using glide bombs in anger, is unlikely to be the first place where f16s are deployed, at least not initially. Which still presents an issue for Ukraine.
Finally, USA has given permission to use American equipment anywhere the Russians are attacking from
For the British side, they have quietly pulled the permission for storm shadow use inside Russia, just a couple examples. I am not sure how fake these are, but pro-Uranian telegram channel has reposted similar news. Permission was very publicly granted and than quietly “clarified”. Now if this some kind of confusion psyop or not, I am not sure. But the west seems to still be not entirely aligned. In fact I really hope it i just some kind of psyop thing to be honest.
As for the American systems, it seems odd that if Ukraine already has unlimited permission, why are there still articles about Ukraine asking for it repeatedly? Again maybe more deception from Ukraine, perhaps. I donno what to think. All I wish is for all restrictions to be lifted.
That’s Russia’s plan.
Absolutely agreed, it would be a terrible place to be in if all USA aid stopped, Europe already proved, it is not enough by itself to supply Ukraine adequately. And with US presidential election looming, it is really worrying me. Thankfully LePen didn’t win, as she threatened to revoke permission from using French weapons in russia.
To be honest, we both want Ukraine to win, and all was saying is that in a modern war where both sides have access to a lot of resources, there are no wonder weapons that will shift the game sufficiently to push for a quick win and that we should not underestimate the enemy. Things help and we in the West, should be doing more to help.
I’ve actually skipped work just to help a homeless guy get his beard trimmed. Bought him pizza too. Kinda hard to get anywhere in life when you look like shit....
I am skeptical on letting my friends in my house. I am not going let a random person with high odds of having some sort of physical/mental issue in my house no thank you.
Will I help? Absolutely. Just in anywhere that isn’t my house.
I was going through my old comments. I like hearing if my advice works so I can give better advice in the future, although I’m certain you didn’t only take it from me.
Also, aside from friendships certainly not counting as a loss, a lot of men really underestimate the value of networking. Even if you’re not her type, odds are you might be one of her friends’ types and you want women to think you’re chill enough to be willing to introduce you to their friends who might be into you.
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The Hidden Ties Between Google and Amazon’s Project Nimbus and Israel's Military (www.wired.com)
Gemini AI platform caught scanning Google Drive files without user permission (www.techradar.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/18014226
Weekly active communities promotion thread
Hello,...
From basement to battlefield: Ukrainian startups create low-cost robots to fight Russia (apnews.com)
Struggling with manpower shortages, overwhelming odds and uneven international assistance, Ukraine hopes to find a strategic edge against Russia in an abandoned warehouse or a factory basement....
Rooftop where gunman shot at Trump was identified as a security vulnerability before rally: sources (www.nbcnews.com)
Two sources told NBC News that the Secret Service flagged a building near the rally site as a security concern. Investigators will be scrutinizing how a gunman was allowed to scale it....
German city bans ‘silent fox’ gesture in schools over similarity to far-right sign (www.theguardian.com)
A city in northern Germany has become the first to issue an all-out ban on the use of a hand gesture used to encourage silence in the classroom because of its close resemblance to a far-right Turkish gesture....
Extracting frames from a video with ffmpeg very slow if not using jpeg
I’m trying to extract the frames of a video as individual images but it’s really slow, except when I’m using jpeg. The obvious issue with jpegs is the data loss from the compression, I want the images to be lossless. Extracting them as jpegs manages about 50-70 fps but as pngs it’s only 4 fps and it seems to continue...
Do any of you shave your eyebrows when your cats die?
Apparently the Egyptians used to do this....
My Mother's real name is Karen. She is kind, loving, and sacrifices much for others. (lemmy.world)
Do or do not, there is no try (sh.itjust.works)
Star Citizen is free this week, if you'd like to try it (www.pcgamer.com)
Court documents show that not only is Valve a fraction the size [only 336 employees in 2021] of companies like EA or Ubisoft, it's smaller than a lot of triple-A developers (www.pcgamer.com)
Anon makes up a word (sh.itjust.works)
People who are 1s and 2s on this scale, do you watch adult video?
Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs (www.theverge.com)
18-year-old charged with violating mask law: ‘I didn’t even know it was a law. Nobody knew it was a law’. (www.wdbj7.com)
People younger than 30, what advice would you give to people over 30?
Rate my setup
Fucking autocorrect had it as ‘rage’
NATO’s Pledges to Ukraine Fall Short for a Counteroffensive This Year (www.nytimes.com)
Despite billions of dollars in additional weapons and security assistance that NATO announced this week, allied officials said Ukraine would not be ready to launch a dramatic counteroffensive or retake large swaths of territory from Russia until next year....
What would you do if a scraggly homeless person knocked on your door, and all he asked was for a sandwich, a bottle of water, a bath, and perhaps a beard trim?
I’ve actually skipped work just to help a homeless guy get his beard trimmed. Bought him pizza too. Kinda hard to get anywhere in life when you look like shit....
Is she into me? I really just can't tell.
I am sorry, but this is a long one....