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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I’ve attempted to submit PRs to open source projects for most of my career and it’s such a fuckin nightmare. 99% of the time I’m just trying to patch a bug. I get:

    • Ignored for months and eventually rejected without reason
    • Repeated pushback on whether the fix is necessary
    • Snarky feedback
    • I have had multiple occasions where one of the regular maintainers copied my code to a new branch and PR, then merged my changes under only their name, instead of sending me review comments or collaborating on edits

    Open source is often not open contribution. The reason why open source projects die isn’t because nobody is contributing. It’s because project owners usually kinda suck. It’s like contributing to StackExchange. IDK if it’s just that programmers tend to be contentious assholes or what.

    Edit: Don’t get me started on abandonware. I don’t know if anyone uses FoundryVTT but module creators tend to abandon their software and never update it again, forcing people to fork it just to maintain the project through new versions




  • I don’t know how seriously to take this kind of discussion sometimes. I can rationalize that a person can do awful things to people in a fictional setting and it’s not a commentary of who they are as a person. On the other hand I cannot escape the feeling that I am replying to a genuine sadistic monster, based on everything you just said in this post. Forget all of that. Unnecessary commentary when there’s a point I want to make.

    There’s a crucial difference in video games vs more free-form varieties like TTRPGs: You’re on The Rails. Video game RPGs are almost always on the rails. There’s no real sandbox game anywhere. Like there are good attempts, but at the end of the day, any game has programmed expectations for your inputs and what it can output. Video games can’t possibly fathom how deeply evil you could actually get. It would be a developmental and technological nightmare to try programming in all of your awful choices and how they could spiral the narrative. They have to do their best within the limitations of how much could possibly fit in a game. And I’m assuming the game companies also have to take into account the ratings system, and PR. Even if you could play the game any way you want, good AND bad choices, you’re going to get odd looks from people if they know the game allows you to sexually abuse NPCs, or enslave people through extortion. You know what I’m getting at? The real limitation isn’t the technology, even though that’s already a big one. Even in virtual, completely fictional settings, being allowed to play that shit out is wholly monstrous. And I can’t imagine the toll it would take on designers who would be tasked to write it.

    So if you really want all of that and accept the risks, make your own CRPG where you can go all out on Evil. Being critical of developers and designers for not being willing to go as far as your twisted mind can go in a video game is a wild take. Go play in an evil TTRPG campaign if you want to get those kicks. It’s way easier.



  • BellyPurpledGerbil@sh.itjust.workstoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldWhat's the deal with Docker?
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    8 months ago

    It’s virtual machines but faster, more configurable with a considerably larger set of automation, and it consumes less computer resources than a traditional VM. Additionally, in software development it helps solve a problem summarized as “works on my machine.” A lot of traditional server creation and management relied on systems that need to be set up perfectly identical every deployment to prevent dumb defects based on whose machine was used to write it on. With Docker, it’s stupid easy to copy the automated configuration from “my machine” to “your machine.” Now everyone, including the production systems, are running from “my machine.” That’s kind of a big deal, even if it could be done in other ways naturally on Linux operating systems. They don’t have the ease of use or the same shareability.

    What you’re doing is perfectly expected. That’s a great way of getting around using Docker. You aren’t forced into using it. It’s just easier for most people


  • The term AI being used by corporations isn’t some protected and explicit categorization. Any software company alive today, selling what they call AI, isn’t being honest about it. It’s a marketing gimmick. The same shit we fall for all the time. “Grass fed” meat products aren’t actually 100% grass fed at all. “Healthy: Fat Free!” foods just replace the fat with sugar and/or corn syrup. Women’s dress sizes are universally inconsistent across all clothing brands in existence.

    If you trust a corporation to tell you that their product is exactly what they market it as, you’re only gullible. It’s forgivable. But calling something AI when it’s clearly not, as if the term is so broad it can apply to any old if-else chain of logic, is proof that their marketing worked exactly as intended.




  • Disco Elysium is so fucking wild. It’s the most empathetic game I’ve ever played. I am someone who has an easy time putting myself in other people’s shoes. The character is an alcoholic mess, on the brink of a depression so deep he has totally fractured his own memory and sense of self. He’s a genius. He’s also an idiot. And he’s a cop/detective in a world that really despises cops. It’s what I would call the idealistic cop: the one that would put themself between a group of armed men and a group of innocent people with nothing but a dinky pistol and say stand down.

    Anyway, I love how it makes me feel about everything in its place. The ideologies that drive us. The youth we waste on fooling around. The insanity and, somehow, the humor of racism. The mistakes that make us who we are. The idealistic pursuits that are so high they can never be achieved. How heartbreak never goes away.

    Most importantly, I played a game with an internal monologue built-in as the RPG system, and it nearly exactly matches how I think and feel. My mind is also fractured as identifiable pieces of myself. I gave some parts of them names because it made it easier to separate the thoughts from how I truly felt. I have nearly all the same psyches just with different names from Volition, Half-light, etc. And it floored me. I have never played a game that was as introspective as I was. Right down to the simultaneously protective and self destructive thoughts clashing within and one winning out. It gave me a third person perspective of my own self destructive and unhealthy thought processes. And it helped me love myself a little bit more. I feel like I’ll never be able to play anything like it again for the rest of my life.


  • Dialogue and movement in films and shows is so damn well rehearsed that I can never truly get immersed. Real conversations are awkward. We stutter. We fumble words. We forget people’s names, or what we were just talking about. Never for dramatic reasons. Just because we’re human. Script writers are hyper focused on fitting as much wit and humor as they can jam in there. I think some authors of books fall into the same trap. A 16 year old character somehow has the wit and wisdom of someone twice their age. I want more scenes made with genuine stumbling embarrassing awkwardness.

    You know those moments where later people learn that the actor improvised the line? Or the movements? Best one I ever saw was Heath Ledger’s Joker failing to blow up the hospital.

    [ He turns around. Well shit. Looks back at the device and mashes the button a few more times. Hospital finally blows up and he gets startled. ]

    THAT’S THE SHIT. Give me more of that. Let me see the characters fuck up. Get uncomfortable. Make genuinely minor mistakes. Give me flaws. Give me something that isn’t witty. I’m tired of getting bashed over the head with polished scripts.

    Animated movies tend to do this better to be fair. Lots to appreciate from the recent animated Spiderman movies for example.