Jeffool

Y’know GPS didn’t even enter my mind. Hell, depending on GPS 3 accuracy (isn’t it supposed to be in the centimeters?) my talk of signals is completely moot. That measured against a map of roads on a server somewhere would probably let you download an entire map of nodes toward your destination. Along the way the car just measures against its current location and does the math for obstacles. Great point. This is why I ponder shit out loud. Thanks.

Anyone knowledgeable about city planning? Why did we never put some type of signal in our roads? (I don’t know. Passive RFID every few feet?) It would only cost what, ten, twenty thousand on top of each million spent paving every mile?

Seems it would be better baseline navigation than self driving cars and occasionally map apps. The cars would still have to do obstacle avoidance, of course.

I’m not particularly knowledgeable about self driving tech or city planning. But if interstates are replaced every 10 years, and highways every 20, and Musk first made these claims in 2013? Then we’d have the base tech for every auto manufacturer to do moderately reliable self driving on interstates and a lot of our highways already.

Or maybe that large view pathfinding is the relatively easy part? That’s why I’m asking. I’m sure there’s something more obvious from an informed viewpoint that I don’t know.

It’s okay Jeff. It’s okay. And yourself?

My name is Jeff.

I was much more critical of the games I played when I was 30 compared to when I was 20. So perhaps that’s a bit of the explanation?

I’m sure you’re right that age, the circles we ran in, and platforms all played a significant role in our experiences around the game. That’s why I wanted to underscore that it was reviewed phenomenally. But so was Oblivion. Oblivion ranked much closer to Skyrim than Morrowind did, and I’m pretty sure it sold better than Morrowind too.

But like you suggested, a lot of the magic games have is found within us, especially when we’re younger, and more open to it. Though yeah, Skyrim was still pretty fucking good. But what do I know? I liked the persuasion mini game in Oblivion that everyone else seemed to hate.

Yeah, I was there. I’m 44. I loved all three games and played them on release (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim.) I don’t want to oversell it. It was game of the year almost everywhere. Famitsu even gave it a 40/40. Maybe their first Western game reviewed as such? I remember that being a big deal. It was very well loved and very popular. A co-worker I knew who mostly only played Madden was sheepishly admitting he not only was paying it, but really loving going around picking plants for recipes.

But the skill system caught a lot of guff, which I recall being an issue some people had. I definitely remember the skill system being a thing that made a lot of people angry.

A lot of the other things were complaints you’ll find in other TES games, but people think a new game should’ve changed these things. For instance, there was the normal physics issues we get in a 3D TES game, which being the third game in a row, was adding up for some people. Then cities (and some buildings in cities) require loading was hated by some people who considered it old fashioned. Especially once a mod came out that got rid of that for cities. Also, the popularity of mods was instant. Not just people trying to add content, but initially a lot of that was people replacing models, and really talking shit on their modeling and textures.

Yeah, it got a lot of shit. But those people were playing it too. These are fellow gamers we’re talking about. People absolutely complain.

It was definitely a thing some people felt. There are several reasons some people like one TES game over another, and while visual styles and the world in general are large parts of it, the streamlined feel is a component for many that’s divisive. Not just changed made to systems, but how arcane a previous version felt is absolutely a positive to some people. They felt the games hit a sweet spot and later game(s) went too far.

I haven’t seen any toxicity on the server I’m on (https://mastodon.gamedev.place ) either. But I’ve seen people I follow complain about it in the past, and I trust them. Especially considering they left for Bluesky.

I think Mastodon users are more technical and blunt, drawing from the same stereotypes that people have (often fairly) thrown at nerdier people. We just need to keep that in mind. And maybe a good ad/explainer, given how many people bounce off the concept of federation and different servers.

A total aside, but I was always annoyed early smart phones had am/fm receivers in them (free on the chip) and relatively few phones ever let them be accessed. I think most of those also could do TV signal, if I’m not mistaken? But that may have been a subset.

Sure, that probably played hell on the battery, but it would’ve been neat to have the option to DVR TV over the air on my phone back then and cast it, in the early days of Chromecast.

When Trump was running the first time for the 2016 election he got a lot of attention for using that word. I remember an NPR host saying how he’d used it before in a similar context that Trump did (a political loss), but at the same time he was regretful about it. I don’t remember the details but actually let me search…

Neal Conan. I’m fairly certain I remember him talking about it on the radio, was why this rang a bell for me. But apparently he even wrote an op Ed about it: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1223-conan-schlonged-20151223-story.html

Conan used it literally once in a political context and regretted it as you can read above. And he seems to have vaguely meant it in a way you might say “wow, they got fucked” as you might say about someone being cheated, or “fucked up” for beaten up. Like ruined in some way, not with a literal sexual meaning, just a vague association because of the word itself.

Not that this makes it any more couth or anything; feel how you want to feel about it. Clearly saying “they got fucked” still has that same vulgar sound, so we avoid it in polite conversation, so I imagined a word that sounds so vulgar would probably be avoided by a high profile politician, as given people feel weird about it. And it happened twice.

I just think it’s interesting that it’s come up again. Language is weird.

Sure it sucks, but it can’t be a surprise anymore.

The username @X was also taken from a user. Same with @Music, who if I recall correctly, was a fan of Musk and was even subscribing to Twitter at the time. They even continued to do what @Music was doing with music recommendations, so it was barely a rebrand. It was basically just hijacking the work someone else put into establishing their social media presence.

Also worth noting is that it’s only available to your primary YouTube account. For me that somehow became a different one created when they foisted Google Circle on everyone. So my actual YT account, that I use every day and matches my email address, can’t access my saved YT music. I have to change YouTube profiles to listen to it, which I do on occasion.

I know this is the politics community so forgive me for saying “this comment aside,” but we really need to figure out a cheaper and cleaner way to desalinate seawater.

I wonder if Mozilla would’ve benefitted if something like Hello was still around when the pandemic hit. Hello was a Firefox feature that made video chatting easy. You just needed to click the link.

Great point. I already find this to be a problem with the recommendations that pop up when paused, and the end-video elements they throw over everything despite having that turned off everywhere I can find it. It’s all so dumb. Just so damn dumb.

I was at Full Sail in 2003-2004. Say what you want, but the point here is that people there LOVED games. We’d set up 2 TVs in the living room, and 2 in the bedroom, and go crazy for hours. A single game of single flag assault on Blood Gulch could last hours. Then we’d play FFA to pick leaders, then go again. After 2-3 games the hype would dwindle, some would leave, and we’d go to Munchkin. Then occasionally poker. Then Denny’s for breakfast because it was early in the morning and class was in a couple of hours on Monday.

Talk about a feeling of belonging. Definitely chasing that feeling still, and not ashamed of it.

This was going to be my recommendation, so I’m happy to see it.

Around the same time I also watched The Besieged Fortress. It’s about an ant colony attacking a termite mound. It’s staged, but handled as it might happen in real life, and narrated as if it’s some massive siege in medieval times. It’s fantastic.

Good luck getting to some place you’re happy being.

Funny, with a harsh ring of truth. I actually would be interested if they could dual boot with the game on a partition. That would make the transition to Linux easy too. But ultimately as it is, it’s “use Windows, or say to hell with playing games with your family”. I’m lucky that I still enjoy playing games with them, and them with me, so I gotta stick with that.

I love the idea of using Linux. But then I end up playing Warzone every weekend with my family. Can’t give that up. The best part is that they want kernel access, and still have cheating problems, apparently. (Must be higher than my level!) But it still inherently affects me, as they won’t port to Linux.