Lurker > adjl

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I still remember back in the 80s when everyone was convinced that VR was going to be the future. And then in the 90s people were still saying that. And then in the 2000s. And the 2010s.

Like 3D, it's one of those technologies that everyone always seems to think is going to become ubiquitous right around the corner, but it never really seems to take off in any meaningful way. You get little bursts where it becomes slightly more popular and everyone goes "This is it! It's finally taking off!", and then the fad ends and it just sort of fades back into the shadows until the next time the tech slightly improves and the cycle repeats again.

Since its inception, it's always kind of been hovering on the fringes of the home market as something that's really cool but just not quite viable to integrate into home entertainment yet. The last few years, however, have seen it become viable for home use, and that's given the novelty a chance to wear off that it hasn't really had before now. With the novelty gone and the ultimate experience just not being worth what it costs (and the current trajectory being to improve the experience with new equipment that costs the same or more rather than to make a "good enough" experience more affordable), the hype has fallen off and probably won't pick back up again.

Mostly, I think VR was just cooler when we couldn't have it. A lot of its value relied on that unattainable novelty of always being just out of reach, but now it's in reach and has to stand on its own merits instead of that tantalizing unavailability, and those merits just aren't enough to justify the cost for most people. We'll probably see another attempt to make it work when the current market starts to dry up a bit and the industry pushes for affordability instead to try tapping into the "it's cool, but not $500 cool" audience, but I expect whatever disappointing level that market stabilizes at will be all the success VR will ever have.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd argue that VR in general is dead in the water.

Apart from a few hardcore tech adopters and the few people who jumped on it to see what all the fuss is about, it's not really a growing niche. Most people either seem to be apathetic to it or outright opposed to it.

Indeed. It's a pretty stable niche, in that people who like it are continuing to buy new hardware as new developments come out and there's enough of a market to sustain software development, but it hasn't really taken off in the sense of seeing large-scale success and I don't expect that it ever will.

darkknight109 posted...

This isn't really an accurate comparison.

In-situ repairs of spacecraft are quite viable and we know this because we do it constantly with the International Space Station. Unlike with a car, where you have to deal with gravity, wind, and the fact that you'd presumably want someone driving the car for you, with a spacecraft - even one moving to Mars at considerable speed - you can quite happily go strolling out the airlock onto the exterior of the ship (as long as you're tethered to something), because you're moving at the same speed the ship is and there's no air resistance to slow you down. Fixing the ship mid-flight isn't generally going to be any more difficult than fixing it (or building it) in orbit around Earth, so long as you have supplies on hand.

Indeed. Remember that once you actually get out into space, flight basically consists of "point ship in right direction, fire thrusters to reach desired speed, then coast until you reach your destination." The occasional course correction will be needed because on that scale being off by a millionth of a degree can cause you to miss the planet entirely, and the trip's not entirely without resistance that will slow the ship down, but flying a spaceship is extremely hands-off and for the most part it doesn't matter if you're inside the ship or outside. You can't fix a car in motion because it needs constant input to remain stable and keep moving and because the air resistance would make it extremely difficult to hold on (not to mention popping the hood mid-drive would probably just result in it being ripped off because we don't design cars for that to be an option). None of those issues apply to space flight, which is in no small part why any game that tries to realistically simulate space flight is insufferably boring.

The bigger problem with in situ repairs is that crew members need to know enough about how the ship works and have the mechanical skills to repair it. Real astronauts get that as part of their training and certification, but I'm not sure Mr. "Inheriting an emerald mine doesn't count as a trust fund" would be willing to put in that kind of effort. But then I guess it's not like he has anything else he needs to do with his time, so maybe he could.

https://imgur.com/CFOFwpS

That took me a second.

It would be illegal for me to do so.

Blue_Thunder posted...

More like a medical one but my jaw used to ache on the side I didn't chew on (because having my wisdom teeth removed left a pocket on that side that was a pain to clean food out of). I hypothesized that if I could exercise that side of my jaw it would get better, so I started chewing gum on that side for a few minutes daily. Sure enough, the pain went away.

Less formally, this is in the same vein as "this muscle is stiff, I'll wiggle it around a bit to see if it helps." Often it does, sometimes it doesn't, and it's when it doesn't that we start to wonder if there might be a deeper problem like an injury that needs further attention.

Really, we do this sort of thing all the time without formally identifying it as "science experiments." We're constantly aware of and observing the state of our bodies and subconsciously comparing that to how we expect it to respond to our surroundings and recent experiences. That's pretty much the scientific process: Establish expectations, make observations that test those expectations, evaluate how those results line up with your expectations and draw conclusions accordingly.

https://imgur.com/v9wECbo

chelsea___wtf posted...

You want me to crank it 24 hours a day?

*Schoolboy giggle*

I hope both teams have fun.

Depends what you mean. Any instance of saying "I think it hurts when I do *thing*," then doing *thing*, then drawing a conclusion about whether or not it huts to do *thing* is technically a science experiment, though most people wouldn't necessarily think of that when considering this question.

I drink tea considerably more often than coffee, but I still don't drink tea very often. I'm more of a tap water guy.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It'd be way easier without needing to survive the landing.

If there's a ship in the way, he might die in the ship before actually contacting the surface of Mars. His best bet would probably be to just get the appropriate life support to remain conscious, then skydive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfP3gCL4lf4

darkknight109 posted...

That's a good thing.

Politics aren't supposed to be "fun" - they're supposed to be boring. Biden was the boring candidate in 2020, he'll be the boring candidate in 2024, and having seen what the alternative brought, I am 100% all-in on boring.

Indeed. By and large, the president *should* be boring. Most of the exciting things that are actually improvements happen at the state or municipal level, rather than being something the president really controls. When exciting stuff does happen at the federal level, it's usually either the SC responsible for it (and I don't trust the current court to do anything good-exciting), or it's something bad like going to war.

https://imgur.com/gvsCJB3

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I didn't even realize they let you into the building without a membership card.

I can't speak for every building, but the 3-4 I've been in all follow the basic layout of the lobby having two large doorways: one goes into the actual warehouse area and you need your membership to go through (though that's just flashing the card to a person, so an expired or borrowed card would work), the other goes behind the cash registers and mostly functions as an exit, but also leads to the membership desk and returns counter, and you can go through there without a card. In my experience, the food court has always been in that area behind the registers, so you can get there without having somebody check your card.

That said, since Covid hit they've switched to automated ordering kiosks instead of placing your orders with a person, and I would have already guessed that you'd need to scan a membership to start that process like you do with their other check outs (I can't actually remember the last time I bought food there, so I'm not sure if they do). To that end, adding a card requirement at the ordering stage is pretty trivial, if it isn't already there.

My oldest active post is from 2014, in a sticky topic on the RF4 board where I shared the Excel sheet I put together to simplify the crafting system. That was actually my first time using VLOOKUP. Good times...

Muscles posted...

You 2 are forgetting 1 very important thing. A vote for Trump in Illinois is a wasted vote, and a vote for Biden in Texas is a wasted vote, to an even bigger degree than a 3rd party. 3rd parties need to get to 5% of the total vote to be invited to next election's debates and s***, but the 2 big parties need to win the state to meet their goals, or at least get enough electoral votes in states that can split. I live in Illinois, my vote already doesn't matter because it'll go blue regardless of who I vote for, but I can help a 3rd party get to the debate stage next cycle.

I would actually say that Biden is more likely to be elected in Texas than any third party is to get 5% of the total vote. It's certainly safer to vote third-party in states where there's very little chance of your less-desired candidate winning, but it's still equivalent to throwing away your vote and helping along that less-desirable candidate.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Oh, he'll almost certainly win handily in most republican states. That's nothing he can personally take credit for, though. That's just because there'll be an R next to his name.

No strong preference. On the whole, I probably tend toward less realism simply because greater realism tends to mean movement has to feel semi-realistic to avoid jarring with the art style and that often conflicts with making it feel good to move around, but that's hardly absolute and there are times when clunkier movement works well (like horror games).

If you don't have and do need a coffee table, coffee table. I'm guessing you've already considered that, though, and otherwise it sounds like the liquor cabinet will be your best bet.

A Covid test from an actual doctor was likely a PCR test, rather than the rapid tests you can get for free (which also do cost money, but have been subsidized because of how significant a public health concern it is). The strep test would also have involved a lab, so that's more costs.

Lokarin posted...

Ok, there's an ad on reddit that's bugging me...

It's for a lottery and it goes "WIN the $2.6 Million Grand Prize and enjoy luxury living in the beautiful showhome, plus $100,000 cash!"

...

You just won $2.6 million!!!!.... but to sweeten the deal, here's $100k cash

wut

I'm guessing it's a $2.6 million house, plus a $100k cash prize. Though there's a fair chance you'll need to hang on to that $100k to cover your new, significantly higher property taxes.

crazyisgood posted...

A vote for a third party candidate does not work in favor of Trump or Biden. Unless maybe you are in a state that could go either way.

Voting third-party works in favour of whichever candidate has the fewest third-party alternatives to split the vote. Philosophically, that's more likely to favour conservative/regressive candidates over a progressive one, by simple virtue of there being more ways to progress and try new things than to stay the same/revert to a past state. In practice, of course, it really depends how many candidates there are and which main ones they most closely align with, since that affects whose votes they split.

In the US, the observed trend is that lower voter turnout favours the GOP, especially when looking at more politically educated demographics. Voting third-party is functionally comparable to not voting at all, and given that those voting third-party tend to be more politically educated (instead of just voting for whoever their parents/peers do like so many voters), it can be expected that a higher third-party turnout will favour the GOP.

BlackScythe0 posted...

I saw a video on youtube about it, but it doesn't even come up on steam so I don't know what the deal is.

PC's the only current platform it isn't on, which is unusual, but whatever.

SomeUsername529 posted...

I feel bad for all the people that hyped it up soooo hard and then like a month from release Netflix tripped over their own dick every time they said more about the series and then it finally came out and it seems like nobody gives a shit and its just barely passable. It really does feel like nobody is talking about this series outside of exactly the context of this thread.

Honestly, the ultimate reaction seems to be about what I expected, which is roughly what the better live action Disney movie remakes got: "It's okay, but there isn't much reason to watch this over the original." That's kind of inevitable with remakes like this: Either you do a frame-for-frame remake and end up with something totally redundant (if not strictly worse, as happened with the Lion King), or you try to make changes to take advantage of the different medium and end up losing some of the nostalgic appeal you were banking on to gamble on something new that may or may not actually improve anything.

If it's something where a big part of the appeal is the spectacle, then live-action remakes can add something meaningful with a different aesthetic without taking anything away from the rest of it (my impression is that the live action One Piece did pretty well, and shounen often puts a lot of emphasis on the spectacle of fight scenes, so that makes sense), but for something like Avatar that's mostly a character story, live-action doesn't inherently change much. The world-building does, however, lend itself to quite a bit of hype from preview material in that it's interesting to see the live-action takes on the setting, which I think is where a lot of the hype came from.

NeoSioType posted...

And believe it or not they're still playing with covid over in china. The last I heard about it, it attacks the brain in mice.

They're still playing with Covid in most places. It remains a considerable public health concern and it's still relatively poorly understood, especially as far as long Covid goes, so of course efforts are being made to research it.

Devil_May_Cry posted...

i love how its not racist to say Japanese games are better than western games but its cool to critique the diverse western games as woke

I take it you're unaware that most of us also consider those complaining about "wokeness" in games (or any other media) to be bigoted morons.

Krow_Incarnate posted...

My favorite is when the Google-sponsored links download malware on your machine.

There really needs to be legislation holding sites responsible for damages caused by ads they run. That companies will insist that it's not their fault that their advertisers distributed malware then turn around and whine about users blocking ads is really just pathetic.

darkknight109 posted...

Sure, Trump's got his base and they're as fanatical as ever... but he barely scraped out a win in 2016, he lost in 2020, and he's done nothing to expand his reach since that time. Like... what is he running on that would attract people not already in his cult? Immigrants "poisoning the blood of the nation"? That "Day 1 Dictator" nonsense? Pulling out of NATO? How are any of these supposed to be attractive to centrist voters on whom his election hinges?

The only thing that might tip things back in Trump's favour is nothing Trump's done to become more popular, but what Biden's done to become less popular. Biden's response to Israel has turned off a ton of would-be Democratic voters, and while there's zero reason to believe Trump wouldn't keep helping with the genocide (remembering that he moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in an overt display of taking sides in the conflict) and ample reason to believe he'd make things worse for Arabic/Muslim Americans (he didn't follow through with it, but I've never forgotten when he was campaigning in 14-15 and suggested registering all Muslims as a counter-terrorist measure), choosing not to vote at all because people don't want to vote for Biden is half as effective for electing Trump as voting for Trump over Biden.

The 2020 election was intense. Both Biden and Trump got significantly more votes than any other presidential candidate in history, entirely because people were so fired up about whether or not they wanted Trump in office. Trump has lost a lot of steam among moderates, and certainly his newest rhetoric isn't helping that, but that makes the stakes seem lower and Biden hasn't exactly excited anyone, so he's also lost a lot of steam. So... I'm not sure what to expect. It's going to come pretty much entirely down to voter turnout: If too many people stay home on election day because they don't care, Trump will win. If enough people get out and vote for who they think sucks the least despite being less than enthusiastic about the whole thing, Biden will.

BADoglick posted...

I remember coming out of school asking my dad why people were making a big deal of it and his response was 'screw the royalty we fought a war to get away from them'

In Canada, the anti-royal sentiment isn't quite as pronounced as it is for some Americans, but I similarly didn't really understand who she was or why it was a big deal. I also could have sworn I was in kindergarten at the time, but I would have been 8, so I guess I misremembered that.

https://imgur.com/yQzbC1w

Is this the same kid who knocked up his girlfriend and resulted in Boebert Sr. being proud that her kid would get to be a teen parent just like she was?

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to, but I'm pronouncing that "ass-loo-may" and nobody can stop me.

KingDavid posted...

I think most of them just don't care.

Why have sex when you can just play a video game and get instant dopamine or just jack off for 5 minutes and be done with it.

That's more voluntary celibacy than involuntary. Incels are also a specific subset of those who want to get laid but can't, characterized by particularly pronounced bitterness over getting less sex than they want and attacking society, women, the concept of sexual consent, and whatever else they see fit to blame for that deficiency instead of being willing to consider that they might themselves be doing something wrong.

Diana's death comes immediately to mind, though I might be able to think of something earlier if I tried harder.

Mostly because that requires somebody else to agree to have sex with them.

eli_loves_ddr posted...

Would be a tragedy to not get seasons 2 and 3.

Regardless of what the series in question is or how much you're enjoying it, it's generally very risky to let yourself feel this way about anything Netflix produces.

Lokarin posted...

hey, wait... ya!

I like the round up cuz it's easy, but why should I donate to charity via someone else when I can do it myself?

Eeyup. All of those "Would you like to donate $X to this charity?" prompts are just a way for corporations to make donations for tax breaks with your money instead of their own. If you want to be charitable, just do it yourself directly and let the billionaires pay for their own tax breaks (or even just pay their taxes).

It's even more egregious when it's something like Tim's running their own charities: They get all the tax breaks, but can keep a chunk of the donation for themselves as "administrative costs."

If you're in a relationship with somebody whose happiness doesn't make you happy, don't marry them.

Yeah, that's the other thing: To call this "collateral damage" assumes it's an accident, which is pretty hopelessly gullible when so many Israeli officials have gone on record to say they'd like to see all Palestinians eradicated. Hunting down Hamas militants is just an excuse they're hiding behind. Killing civilians is what they actually want, and they're doing as much of that as they can get away with before they lose the support of the rest of the world (which is precisely why people in the rest of the world who don't like genocide want to withdraw that support).

Devil_May_Cry posted...

if your family was in danger of being blown up by rockets and you had the opportunity to kill the ones targeting your family but there are innocent people around them would you take them out still?

Depends how many innocent people. One or two, and a fair chance that they wouldn't be hurt? I'd probably go for it. A dozen, and a high chance that I'd injure/kill at least 4-5? I might still go for it, but I'd expect to be held accountable for that recklessness by people who were able to view the situation more impartially. A crowd of thousands, with the only way to maybe get the handful bad guys being to indiscriminately open fire on the crowd and crush them with tanks? Absolutely not, and anyone that would is a mass-murdering psychopath who should be shot dead immediately before they have a chance to act further on their murderous impulses.

Collateral damage is not a binary concept. In every instance, the scope of the damage must be measured against whatever gain is being used to justify it. It's not something you can make blanket statements about (with the exception of "you can't make blanket statements about it," which is technically itself a blanket statement).

Of course, that's also irrelevant to this particular incident. This wasn't collateral damage. This was just plain old mass murder.

MeatiestMeatus posted...

just as you can condemn the actions of Hamas and Iran-backed proxies without condemning all Palestinians or Arabic people.

I think that's part of the issue: a great many people defending Israel's genocidal crusade don't make a distinction between Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian/Arabic people, and therefore presume the same generalization of those criticizing Israel. And when they blame all Arabic people for Hamas' actions, that makes them a lot more comfortable with Israel's genocidal crusade.

Of course, this makes them idiotic, racist pieces of shit, but this shouldn't surprise anyone.

https://imgur.com/e3zBxEf

BoomerKuwanger posted...

Imagine being able to draw the parallel between Israel now and America after 9/11 and still missing the point entirely lmao

Like does he not think there was anything wrong with America's post-9/11 response?

shadowsword87 posted...

For the record, if your check engine light is blinking, find somewhere to get it looked at immediately.
That's the "oh no" level.

Indeed. Everything else is just "there's something wrong we don't have a dedicated light for," which is generally worth getting checked out, but probably won't hurt to leave for a little while. Blinking, however, means you should pull over and get a tow unless the garage you're going to is like 20 feet away.

It won't necessarily replace going to a garage, but you can buy diagnostic code readers for cars pretty cheaply that will give you at least a partial answer for why the light is on. You'll still need a garage to actually fix the problem, but getting that answer and being able to research its implications may be more comforting for you than this vague idea that something is wrong and you don't know what. It might be worth looking into that, if you're the sort of person who feels less anxious with more information.

EclairReturns posted...

there was no way of telling how much there is going to be in two days when it would have come time for me to retrieve my car.

You could always have left it there for a day or two until it was safe to get there. Not going out in bad snow is pretty normal (and thoroughly sensible, if you can avoid it), but there's also no harm in not picking your car up immediately, especially if it's weather in which you aren't going to be driving anyway. But delaying this appointment by two weeks isn't a big deal either, and odds are the garage would have told you if they suspected it was.