JaggedMallard

@Robotbeat @Exogynous I suspect any society capable of outputting that much power would be capable of the required Geo engineering. But it runs into the problem that with that much spare energy you'd just move things to space.

@Exogynous Nope. Thermodynamics. The only way to beat this is large scale geoengineering (some sort of albedo management, perhaps).

Worth pointing out that much above 10TW average electrical power, it doesn’t matter your energy source because if you do it terrestrially, the waste heat alone will cause major local and global environmental issues. Nuclear, fusion, whathaveyou.

@alkalinesec I used to be on the same team as a french guy and you could spot his code by how many misspellings there were

nothing pisses me off more than when an IDE has a normal dictionary spellchecker like yeah man i know that "nwidth" isn't in the dictionary i want to find the person who did this and arrange their intestines in a red squiggly line under their dead body

@ProudBavaria I thought it was a pyramid until I saw this tweet!

I also thought the Vicky 3 land reformer trait was some weird pyramid depicting big landowners or something. Was that just me? It's a house on a field.

@slopdotwtf You don't even need that, they always have the same shape. Like the literal shape of the paragraphs.

The trick to quickly detecting LLM writing like this is just to scan the first sentence of every paragraph. Anything written by Claude goes like this: > [Broad frame of the situation] > [Strong claim]. [A comma, a comma, a comma]. [But here's a little wrinkle in that strong claim]. > ["The biggest thing", "The most important idea", "Whats broken here is", etc, this is the longest paragraph]. > [Say something about a third party opinion, perception, how people feel about the situation to make it human. The panopticon moment.] > [Surprising fact: "what's wild is", "one thing nobody told me about ", "this part is really the tell", "what's fascinating is", etc] > [Go for the punchline or describe the win. Remind the reader what the core payoff was, or what it reveals about the people involved in the situation]. > Optional: [Conclude with conversational follow up question]. -- The vast majority of people posting LLM copy don't spend any time trying to edit out of this tautological framing. These days it feels like all you have to do is go all lowercase and write "lowkey" to trick someone into believing a human wrote it.

@GaryOfGisbourne @Authw8 The M8 was what I was thinking of! I spent so much time in ME3s multiplayer despite how bolted on it was. Oddly good co-op for a single player studio.

@jaggedmallards @Authw8 Yes Mass Effect 3 had the Prothean Particle Rifle which was Javik's weapon, and featured the cooldown mechanic. The Citadel DLC also included the M7 Lancer, the in-universe predecessor to the M8 Avenger, which also used this as a reference to the first game!

mass effect 1: in the future guns can make their own ammo so the limiting factor is they overheat sometimes and need to cool down mass effect 2: we have developed a new technology to store heat in "clips" that you can "reload" by pressing R

@TifeRx @Jxs_b Summer in Britain is nice though. Can get better for cheaper in shoulder season southern Europe or winter sun further afield.

@Jxs_b You have to put one in the summer

Realised having a holiday in April, November, Jan is the cheat code to life, if you’re living in London.

@GaryOfGisbourne @Authw8 I think ME3s multiplayer had a similar weapon.

@Authw8 Andromeda featuring a 'Vintage Heat Sink' rare weapon modification that brought back the overheating mechanic was the absolute cherry on the combat system for me. It's not a perfect game, but the combat and weapon upgrade systems were really well put together 👌🏻

@pupOnSecurity @mycoliza It's quite comfy if you're first or business. Planes with first normally have a separate entrance for first and business too.

@mycoliza IMO: the earlier boarding groups should be at the back A: first and business tend to be at the front so paying more means you spend less time in the uncomfy tube B: back to front just makes more sense

one thing i don’t really understand about air travel is why it’s considered worth paring money to be in an earlier boarding group. like yes i will pay extra to spend *more* time inside the airplane (cramped, hot, uncomfortable, noisy) rather than at the gate (comfy)

@ProudBavaria I feel that it gets around this with things like laws passing. Abolishing serfdom might be a long low immediacy process but the culmination is clicking a button and getting a big popup after a year or two of circles filling.

Econ/Society/Diplomacy may never be as connected to Right-Click-Warfare as V3's ideal system would be. If you remove HOHI actions without adding alternative outlets, players will feel dissatisifed. The best system is BAD if it doesn't make players have fun! Games must be fun!

From a purely descriptive game design POV: V3 faces severe challenges due to the removal/avoidance of high-ownership-high-immediacy (HOHI) actions! Even a hypothetical perfect V3 logistics-focused war system will face this challenge! It means that developers must account for it!

@nuAngelics The circuit breaker whispers to you. You knew what must be done.

Dont ask what happened in the pinwheel

@StoneHead153796 @TW0HEADEDBEAST Its mainly targeted at the games, if you uncritically enjoy them then its supposed to make you think about that but its not supposed to make you self-reflect for picking up a game that was advertised as a criticism of military shooters.

@TW0HEADEDBEAST Doesn't defeat the purpose of self-reflection if the player isn't meant insert themselves in place of the protagonist?

one is far less impressed with spec ops the line when one plays actual well written video games and that actually say something about the meta narrative of violence rather than handing you a detonator, telling you to hit the detonator and going "DOESN'T THAT MAKE U FEEL BAD"

@ValdishOO @TW0HEADEDBEAST @sketchiedetails Its a metanarrative about the military shooters of its era. Its not a metanarrative about the player themselves which people read it as and get angry. As we get further from that era more and more people get angry as they don't have the full context.

@TW0HEADEDBEAST @sketchiedetails Have you considered that spec ops the line is not an attempt at a meta narrative, and the 4th wall breaks are only there as an effort to make the player feel uneasy, and relate to the main characters mental deterioration?

@dashalosesit @TigoODonnell @TW0HEADEDBEAST MW2 doesn't follow through on it though, it gives you the horrible shock scene and then its just standard gung ho heroic adventurism for the rest of the game. CoD4 is the one that commits to its commentary on adventurism (but doesn't seek to comment on game violence).

@TigoODonnell @TW0HEADEDBEAST "No Russian" was already a thing by the time the line came out, even Call of Duty was making commentary about the evils of war and wanton videogame violence

@TigoODonnell @TW0HEADEDBEAST A lot of the scenes are done that way. WP, the Water Heist and others are identical to setpieces and plotpoints of the time but with jarring music and making you look at the reality of what you've done after.

@TW0HEADEDBEAST To add that’s why the white phosphorus scene is framed similarly to an AC-130 kill streak in MW. It’s asking the player to think of how games are reflective of the times they’re created in like all art, especially games about the Middle East.

@TempDothacker @TigoODonnell @TW0HEADEDBEAST There are far more hints than just the opening. From the very start before Walker has his break there are things like billboards with Konrads face, people speaking the wrong language and callbacks/forwards. Once you know what you're looking for its hinted everywhere!

@TigoODonnell @TW0HEADEDBEAST I'd also add that there's a very strong reasoning that this isn't even a "game" game in the sense that you have "input." The opening strongly hints that the main character is dead, as you go in, the chopper crashes, then you drop into Dubai, abd drop into that same scene again-

Ed Balls

@kmj2190 @confusedorlean @mattyglesias Other than one or two they're the same level or worse than the holiday airlines. Run down aircraft with Ryanair price refreshments. IAG in particular is awful, might as well fly Ryanair since I get the same service.

@jaggedmallards @confusedorlean @mattyglesias I usually have good experience on the flag carriers. Not really sure what you’re on about

I think the low-cost airlines are struggling because given America's population geography and the invention of Basic Economy, the legacy carriers have a genuinely better product. Different situation in Europe.

@Lib_Development They barely even care. My experience in mainland China metros in several cities is putting your bag through an x-ray with no one watching a screen and having a bored looking security guard ignore you setting the metal detector off or give a perfunctory wave with the wand.

Third worldists be like “hey look, our subway is good because you have to WAIT IN A FUCKING SECURITY LINE” Unironically I’ll stick to the crazy people and weed smell

@confusedorlean @mattyglesias European flag carriers are generally privatised with minimal (if any) state interference which you can tell by how bad the experience is on most of them. European ULCCs are just absurdly cheap and optimised. You can still get the £20 Ryanair return flight from regional airports.

@mattyglesias Kinda suspect European traditional carriers are subject to a lot more state meddling and more sclerotic management as well. Maybe moral is that government meddling in airlines is usually bad?

@mweis200 @locust9 I remember building a PC specifically for this and Planetside 2. Most expensive games I've ever bought but the PC lasted for a long time.

@locust9 I always love when they go "Now you need to spend a ton of money to barely get the game to run“, as if that wasn’t the case when BF3 released

the funny thing about this mission is how much shit we took about not making it free fly and people look back on it this way now. This is a large part of WHY it looks as good as it does, fwiw.