[–] 1 point 6 days ago

David Pocock does great work. Every time I hear anything about him, it's him pushing back against some kind of obvious injustice; the kind of injustice that all our leaders should be fighting against, but somehow are not.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago

    Does anyone here use Posteo? They sound pretty good to me, and so I'm curious to hear people's experiences with using it.

    I've heard quite a lot about Tuta; but about not many other alternatives. (I think it's healthy to check out a few options.)

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  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago

    What are you trying to say here? That we shouldn't bother changing to a better service because Proton's marketing is so good? That some people won't hear the message, and so the message doesn't matter? That Proton will survive - and therefore no one should bother discussing its failings or alternatives?

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  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago

    Yeah, I've heard before that Tuta is a problem in Finnish. (I wouldn't know.) So that sucks.

    I don't think the keemail thing would be such a problem though. Maybe it's different for you, but I'm never asked to speak my email address. It is always written (usually typed). So mishearing it is a complete non-issue. Also, it's keemail.me, not keemail.com. Not sure if that's better or worse... but from my point of view, it doesn't make much difference. It's just an address; like a street name or something. And for me, no one else is ever typing in my email address. So there won't be any confusion about that.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago

    Can't save anything by cutting climate funding. It is by far the most important issue facing the world. Even if 'cost of living' is consider the biggest problem, climate change raising insurance costs is very expensive to everyone, and that's just one of the many indirect problems we're facing.

    And thing is, a lot of spending for climate related stuff has direct benefits even aside from the climate problems - such as improving energy security, improving air quality and health; and in some cases even creating direct financial profits even aside from all the physical benefits.

    So yeah, cutting climate funding is a losing strategy. No one should vote for a party that wants to do that.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    There has been focused emphasis on STEM teaching and research (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) for years now. And its easy to see why: STEM is what makes modern tech possible. New inventions, new ways of building and using old inventions, better understanding of the physical laws of the universe; and so on. At face value, it sounds like pretty good stuff. Imagine what amazing tech will come next...

    But I think we've missed something. In particular, we've sidelined the philosophical / human study of what is the goal? There has been this implicit assumption that more is better. More tech. More stuff. Faster stuff. Bigger stuff. Stronger / lighter / more connected stuff... So we focus on creating all that stuff. But perhaps that never should have been the goal in the first place. The good life does not necessarily need all that, and in fact, I think soon we're going to have to come to terms with the idea that a lot of it might actually be detrimental. We could end up less happy, less sustainable, less engaged in our community, less wise, less motivated to do anything at all. Apathetic, and pathetic.

    I think we overshot with STEM. I've worked professionally as a scientist, and a programmer, and a mathematician. But I now reckon we need art and philosophy more than we need technology. We need to work out what is actually good; and I don't believe the answer is "more".

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  • [–] 5 points 2 weeks ago

    This is so true. And just to further the point, productivity has gone up. Many jobs are faster & easier & take less time and fewer people to do. So more stuff is getting done per work hour. And yet, as you say, its somehow harder to afford cost of living on the pay of those work hours. So where is all that extra productivity going?

    A lot of it goes to waste, possibly 'undervalued' by market distortions. (For example, tech like phones and laptops and TVs, take huge amounts of work to create - but are somehow relatively cheap. A low-cost wireless mouse costs about as much as buying lunch. That's pretty weird considering what's involved. The churn of using and replacing that stuff is sucking up a lot of productivity behind the scenes.) But yeah, the bigger effect is growing inequality. Ultra wealthy people and company sucking up all the profits from our productivity; and spending it on... well, a lot of stuff. One example that comes to mind is the enormous amount of resources going into building and running data centres at the moment. Land, water, raw materials, basic labour, skilled labour... and some promise that it is all going to be worth it, but right now its essentially just our collective wealth getting poured into machines that are currently doing more harm than good. It's a level of resource tradeoff that no normal person would make. But at the ultra-wealthy top, the cost doesn't matter so much to them, and the benefits including locking people into a cycle of dependency - so that the owners can say at the top unchallenged. It's not hard to see how that's a good deal for them, but not for anyone else.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago

    I totally agree. Actually I think pretty much everyone agrees. It's just a bit tricky, because it is not what most people are use to in their daily lives.

    I mean, in most cases people seek out the highest quality products at the lowest prices. Lower cost is basically always what people aim for, as long as the quality is high enough. But with FOSS and other free services, you get the product for free... so that's a win right? Zero cost. What are you paying for? It needs a totally different mindset. We need to think of ourselves as part of a community working together and sharing resources - not a bunch of independent people only making trades for our own self-interest. For that, I think transparency about what funding is needed and where it is going is very helpful.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago

    Yeah. Shlee is a bit of an expert on fundraising for community projects. He has taken on the funding and maintenance of a few smaller mastodon servers after their original admins were no longer able; and he is the chief fundraising guy for pixelfed, the fediverse alternative to instagram. I'm on aus.social, and I've donated to the Posters Union a couple of times. (Although I think it might be renaming to Posters Guild, due to some minor legal pushback when registering it as an official charity or something.) And as you (Gorgritch) point out, he is a real-life person who also does various charity fundraising in the physical world amongst real people outside of the internet.

    So yeah, probably it would be worth contacting him for ideas and suggestions.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    I'm not sure makes much sense to talk about who you're prefer to lead a political party that you don't support.

    If you dislike the party, then you may 'prefer' the weakest leader possible so that the party struggles. Or you may prefer a savvy leader, just in case that party wants to do something good with its power. Or you may prefer a leader that you are personally amiable with (which is what Hanson seems to be saying). In any case, there is definitely some conflict of interest across what is best for you personally vs what is best for the political party that you support vs what is best for the country as a whole.

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  •  

    I very much enjoyed Darkest Dungeon 1. I've done several playthroughs, and bought all the expansion packs.

    Yesterday I bought Darkest Dungeon 2. I'd always kind of intended to buy it, but it hadn't reviewed great - so I wasn't in a hurry. But since it was on special, and I'd heard that updates had improved things etc, I figured that it was time.

    Anyway, I bought it, and I'm a bit disappointed. I think the developers took a wrong turn in their stagecoach. I haven't played heaps, but I've played enough to put in a few dot points:

    • Firstly, DD1 had a native linux port. DD2 does not. So that sucks. It's not really a big deal, but its an immediate disappointment.
    • For the first hour or so of the game, there is a near constant stream of notifications and popups explaining how things work. And while it is nice to have fairly tougher documentations, it doesn't feel great when I'm just trying to play the game. Perhaps more gradual flow of new game mechanics with a show rather than tell introduction would be better.
    • The user interface has heaps of little design problems, for example sometimes opening a menu seems to do nothing, because it opens behind something else that needs to be closed first.
    • Most things can be done with the mouse, but apparently starting the stage coach cannot? That feels a bit weird.
    • Many symbols and icons in the game have a less-than-obvious meaning. You can of need the mouse-over text to learn what they do. But often the symbols appear inside the mouse-over text of something else - and so you cannot mouse-over the symbols that are inside the mouse-over text to see what they do...
    • From a style point of view, I think the game is ... too grand too fast. I feel like I'm not finding the right words for this. But I just think it's weird that there is a constant stream of full-screen declarations for new areas and enemies, and big grand battle zoom-ins and commentary etc. right from the start. There seems to be no way to ramp up the tension for the boss battles or anything because it is already at maximum right from the first ghoul or whatever. It ends up making things feel a bit flat.
    • Regarding the game strategy and tactics... I probably shouldn't comment on this, because I haven't played enough to be sure - but sometimes I feel like there's just a bunch of random junk happening, with enemies pushing me around and setting me on fire or whatever - and that's all fine but it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference to what I do. So it feels like it's just a lot of light and noise and luck. -- That said, I'm very aware that often when reviewers say a game relies too much on luck, it's really just that the review is not good at the game and so they over-rely on luck to make up for their skill deficit (which they cannot see). I suspect that a lot of the possible counter-play and strategy gets 'unlocked' as you unlock more characters and abilities; but I'm not sure that's great design, since that would mean the early experience is a bit crap.
    • I feel like the game is designed so that I cannot succeed at first, but it will get easier on each attempt because I unlock bonuses etc. And although this is similar to DD1, the feel of it is very different - and worse. Because in DD1 there was this sense that the town and the characters visiting the town formed a consistent and continuing world. We journey into the dungeon and bring back supplies which may be useful for the town. Whereas in DD2 it isn't really clear what it is that we're upgrading or how we're upgrading it. The characters seem to just die and respawn for no apparent reason, and we get awarded candles which make everyone stronger? I just don't think the feel of it is right at all.

    So over all, while I appreciate that the developers wanted to make a new game rather than just rehash the original, I feel like their "new game" was basically to mash the original together with ideas lifted straight from Slay the Spire and/or Hades - and it just quite fit properly.

    So I'm a bit disappointed.

    Children of Men - overrated? Discussion (aussie.zone)
     

    I just finished watching Children of Men, which I've heard nothing but good things about. ... it did not live up to my expectations.

    I found the characters to be wafer thin, the main idea poorly explored and unexplained, the plot contrived and trite. The whole movie felt like a chain of cliches. In my view, it is not a good movie. ... So then I'm a bit puzzled as to why it is so highly rated. I mean, different people have different tastes - but I'm now doubting that someone would really call the movie a 'masterpiece' or anything like that. I find the contrast between what I heard about it and what I experienced to be quite bizarre.

    So I'm curious about what other people think of it here - outside of reviews on popular websites. I'd like to know if people do still say that it is a great movie. If you do like it, you don't have to justify why or say what was good about it if you don't want to. I'm content to accept that different people have different tastes. I'm really just curious whether or not there is a mismatch between online reviews and opinions on Lemmy. There's certainly a mismatch with my own opinion!

     

    I recently bought Control - Ultimate Edition, from GOG, but I was struggling to get it to launch.

    My usual strategy for non-steam games is to use Bottles. And so far that has worked well for every game I've tried. But for Control, the game installed fine but when I try to launch it, nothing happens.

    I have read on ProtonDB that the game generally works with no problems. This includes a couple of mentions of success with the GOG version. I saw no hint of any problem to be solved.

    I'm not sure where to look for error logs. So it's difficult for me to trouble-shoot. I did find that if I open with a terminal, it complained that Wine Mono was not installed. The obvious fix for that is that I should install wine mono in the bottle, which I did, and that error goes away but the game still does not run. The terminal does still give a heap of messages, but to my untrained eye it looks fine.

    Anyway, after stuffing around with different settings with no success, I tried creating a fresh bottle - and that worked. The game in the new bottle launches fine.

    That's great, but I don't like the idea of stuff just not working for reasons I don't understand. So I'm still trying to find and fix the problem in the original bottle. All of my other games are installed in the original bottle, and I'd like to keep it that way - for neatness and ease of keeping track of were files are etc.

    But I don't know what else to try. I've compared all the settings I can find for the two bottles and made them identical. And I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game (which takes ages, because its a big game) - no success.

    So I'm wondering if there is some way I can 'repair' or 'refresh' the bottle, because obviously something is wrong. And although all my other games work fine, I don't like the idea that they are living in a broken bottle! (I'm also considering moving everything to the new bottle, but I think that would mean I have to reinstall them all one by one and manually copy settings and saves - so that's not very appealing.)

    --

    I've compared to terminal messages of the version that works and the version that doesn't - and they are almost identical. But the broken version has this:

    10751.554:0124:0138:info:vkd3d-proton:vkd3d_pipeline_library_disk_cache_initial_setup: Failed to map read-only cache: Z:\home\username\.var\app\com.usebottles.bottles\data\bottles\bottles\Game-bottle\cache\vkd3d_shader\vkd3d-proton.cache. (whereas the other one succeeds). So... that's a hint I guess, but I'm not sure where to go from there.

    So... if an experienced person out there has any ideas, I'd be appreciate the help!

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