I’m with you. In fact I’ll say even retro operating systems were better (no bloat, no spyware, easy to understand/configure/mod/hack around), as well as retro Internet (no Javascript crap, no browser fingerprinting/tracking, simpler HTML, super easy webdev) and retro computing (no soldered-on components, PCs were more modular and easy to repair)… heck, planet earth in general was better back then. We’ve been on a downwards spiral since the 2000s. Everything sucks now.

You could make yours a Geocaching app with fog-of-war. They’ve got an API for third-party apps too, so it should be easy enough to develop, and actually fun to play.

If you’re feeling ambitious, add some RTS elements like from Age of Empires - eg if you add someone as your ally, you can share their line of sight. Finding certain types of caches, or POIs, increases your resources (gold/stone/food/wood - maybe visiting Pizza Hut gives you extra food lol). And with these resources, you could build virtual structures like castles etc. Other players could spend resources to take it down (but they need to be physically at that location), and you could spend resources to defend your building.

Kinda like Ingress basically, but with medieval/RTS elements and geocaching thrown into the mix. How’s that for a challenge? :)

You should check out Pinta then, I find it easier to use than Paint.net, yet reasonably feature-packed (obviously nowhere near GIMP/Photoshop).

I game on my bed too, and use a flat right-angled USB adapter. Basically, something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Duttek-Degree-Adapter-Extender-Support/dp/B0C244K2HC/

I use a similar but magnetic version with my phone and other USB-C devices, and it’s been a game-changer.

That’s incredible. Your son has far, far, more patience than I ever did. I still haven’t managed to clock most of the games I grew up with, such as Dangerous Dave, Prince of Persia 1 & 2, Wolf3D, Doom 1 & 2, Crystal Caves, Aladdin, Lion King, Jazz Jackrabbit, Mario (NES), Pokemon Red (GBA), Crash Bandicoot (PS1)…

Every now and then I try to clock one of those old games, but then I get stuck and/or lose interest, and move on to something else. Even among recent games, I spent over 400 hours playing BotW and only managed to do two of the divine beasts. I also have over 200 hours in TotK and still haven’t gotten to the first major spirit quest. Similarly, got several hundreds of hours in Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, but never actually completed any of those games.

I think the only game that I recall beating would be the Bio Menace trilogy - which I finally managed to complete as an adult, and that too thanks to DOSBox’s save states. Oh, and Diablo II too, it someone had the perfect mix of action + story + game length, to keep me interested till the end.

Honestly I’ve no idea how people manage to stick to one thing for so long and see it thru till the end, without losing interest or getting distracted by something else.

That’s going to change in the future with NPUs (neural processing units). They’re already being bundled with both regular CPUs (such as the Ryzen 8000 series) and mobile SoCs (such as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3). The NPU included with the the SD8Gen3 for instance can run models like Llama 2 - something an average desktop would normally struggle with. Now this is only the 7B model mind you, so it’s a far cry from more powerful models like the 70B, but this will only improve in the future. Over the next few years, NPUs - and applications that take advantage of them - will be a completely normal thing, and it won’t require a household’s worth of energy. I mean, we’re already seeing various applications of it, eg in smartphone cameras, photo editing apps, digital assistants etc. The next would be I guess autocorrect and word prediction, and I for one can’t wait to ditch our current, crappy markov keyboards.

• Summarising articles / extracting information / transforming it according to my needs. Everyone knows LLM-bssed summaries are great, but not many folks utilise them to their full extent. For instance, yesterday, Sony published a blog piece on how a bunch of games were discounted on the PlayStation store. This was like a really long list that I couldn’t be bothered reading, so I asked ChatGPT to display just the genres that I’m interested in, and sort them according to popularity. Another example is parsing changelogs for software releases, sometimes some of them are really long (and not sorted properly - maybe just a dump of commit messages), so I’d ask it to summarise the changes, maybe only show me new feature additions, or any breaking changes etc.

• Translations. I find ChatGPT excellent at translating Asian languages - expecially all the esoteric terms used in badly-translated Chinese webcomics. I feed in the pinyin word and provide context, and ChatGPT tells me what it means in that context, and also provides alternate translations. This is a 100 times better than just using Google Translate or whatever dumb dictionary-based translator, because context is everything in Asian languages.

Bear necessities you say? All that a modern bear needs is a pic-a-nic basket and a trusty sidekick.

Given the current pace of development, how long would you reckon it might take them to get rid of the bugs, at least, the annoying game-breaking ones? I don’t mind incomplete content, but game breaking bugs is something I don’t have the patience to deal with. Like, I made the mistake of pre-ordering Cyberpunk - dropped it on day one cause of the bugs and didn’t touch it until three years later, when it was finally in a playable state (for me). Just wondering if Star Citizen would reach that sort of bug-free stage within the next couple of years.

That was a fun read, cheers for sharing!

I just wish more places offered beans as an alternative protein option. I ordered a burger yesterday from this new restaurant, and their only veggie option was a “plant-based patty”. And as it turns out, it was a fake meat patty, which tasted gross. I don’t understand why they don’t just offer a bean patty instead - it’d be cheaper, healthier and tastier.

Yep, like me. I normally like my food spicy, and can usually tell whether a dish needs pepper or not.

Also, at the nicer restaurants, the waiter offering it to you is part of the tradition and experience. It can be seen as the restaurant being attentive to the diner. It’s not just pepper, they may offer to grate cheese as well, and I guess customers have come to expect such service as those restaurants.

The exciting part here is the shell, not the insides. Indeed the Intel boards aren’t that great for gaming, but once Framework start shipping the AMD boards next month, this thing would become a real contender to the Steam Deck, ROG Ally etc. Load up something like ChimeraOS on it and you’d get a near-Steam Deck like experience.

The thing is though, with traditional forums you get a LOT of controls for filtering out the kind of users who post such content. For instance, most forums won’t even let you post until you complete an interactive tutorial first (reading the rules and replying to a bot indicating you’ve understood them etc).

And then, you can have various levels of restrictions, eg, someone with less than 100 posts, or an account less than a month old may not be able to post any links or images etc. Also, you can have a trust system on some forums, where a mod can mark your account as trusted or verified, granting you further rights. You can even make it so that a manual moderator approval is required, before image posting rights are granted. In this instance, a mod would review your posting history and ensure that your posts genuinely contributed to the community and you’re unlikely to be a troll/karma farmer account etc.

So, short of accounts getting compromised/hacked, it’s very difficult to have this sort of stuff happen on a traditional forum.

I used to be a mod on a couple of popular forums back in the day, and I even ran my own community for a few years (using Invision Power Board), and never once have I had to deal with such content.

The fact is Lemmy is woefully inadequate in it’s current state to deal with such content, and there are definitely better options out there. My heart goes out to @Chris and the staff for having to deal with this stuff, and I really hope that this drives the Beehaw team to move away from Lemmy ASAP.

In the meantime, I reckon some drastic actions would need to be taken, such as disabling new user registrations and stopping all federation completely, until the new community is ready.

Finished Mass Effect 2 and loved it

Did you play it on PC or console? If it’s the latter then how were the controls? I’m planning on getting it on console, but I suck at playing FPSes with a controller.

Those look yummy! Also, thanks for the reminder, it’s spring here, perfect time to grow some chillies I reckon.

My favorite part of that site was discovering this site: https://simone.computer/#/webdesktops

I already knew about Windows 93 and 96, but didn’t know there were so many of them out there!

So what’s cool or moe about this? The Github page doesn’t list any details on how this is different from Telegram X, no screenshots either.

It’s not FOSS, but have you tried Join? It was basically created as a response to Pushbullet pulling their paywall stunt, so most disgruntled PB users switched to Join. It’s made by the same guy who maintains Tasker btw, joaomgcd.

I assume you’ve already looked at specific tips for those plants, so skipping the obvious stuff. From my own experience as an apartment grower:

• Go for a pot that’s at least 10-12 inches deep. Personally, I’d recommend going for a felt/fiber based cloth pots, as these naturally drain very well, encourage the roots to spread out more evenly, and also helps keep the soil areated and prevent root rot. Regular pots can cause the roots to bundle up, inhibiting their growth and can also lead to root rot.

• Don’t use actual soil, as it may compact and hinder root growth. Use a high-quality potting mix instead. A mix designed specially for vegetables or one that’s well-draining would be ideal.

• Make sure your plants get plenty of sunlight (6-8 hrs) . A south-facing window is ideal. If natural light is limited, consider using grow lights. If you’re using grow lights, 12-14 hours might be required.

• Regularly check for pests like aphids. If detected, spray with a mix of water and a few drops of mild soap, or use an organic natural pesticide, like a neem-oil based spray (and don’t go overboard).

• The key to avoiding pests and fungal diseases is to ensure a good airflow between plants, try and maintain a distance of 1ft between the pots, if possible

I have an account on world, and I’ve not come across any fascist stuff. Then again, I’ve blocked several communities like politics, where such people may tend to congregate.

Personally, I treat Beehaw as a standalone community. I do not really see the point of Beehaw federating with others, when the rules, and feel of the community, is so different.

I prefer using a Beehaw account for Beehaw, even gave it a yellow colored theme so it’s clear that I’m browsing Beehaw, and know that it’s “safe” browsing Local/New.