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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • What they didn’t mention is that Baldur’s Gate is a Dungeons and Dragons franchise. DnD is magnitudes more popular than it was when BG2 released, to the point of being at worst nearly mainstream. What has sold people on BG3 is being able to play their tabletop game in video game form.

    I do think Larian’s pedigree and the Baldur’s Gate name were contributors to its success, but if there was one driving factor it’s the brand recognition of DnD with the marketing of an AA to AAA game.









  • Saying you were 13/14 when horse armor came out doesn’t help your case arguing against their comment. It just means you were prime gaming age when dlc, map packs, and smaller content were replacing larger expansions. The acceptance of those (which based on your demographic you probably did accept) made it easier to transition to more and more egregious micro transactions.

    There used to be (maybe still are) complete games released on mobile. They usually cost $6.99 and didn’t need more. If they want Elden Ring on mobile without tarnishing its reputation, they could sell a complete experience for $10 or $15 since it’s been a decade since those $6.99 prices. That’s what Elden Ring was and it was widely praised. That’s what the rest of their games have done and that has turned out well for them.

    There may be servers for the multiplayer, but based on the fact none of the other From Soft games charged for it the cost must be minimal.



  • There’s a few main aspects to these things I see: the enjoyment of drinking them, the nutrition value, and convenience. For context I’ve ordered a box of Soylent a few times a year for a few years, and my roommate has been using it (or products like Soylent such as Huel) since 2015~2016.

    Flavor/enjoyment: Plain Soylent tastes like liquid cheerios. Any flavors you find taste like liquid cheerios with flavor syrup added. To many that sounds gross, but if that sounds bearable to you then it’s worth a try. I like the flavored ones, mainly the creamy chocolate and mint chocolate, which tastes like melted ice cream.

    Nutrition: you probably know but each bottle has a decent amount of calories enriched with 20% of your daily value of vitamins and nutrients, which is neat. I’m not a health professional, but I’m guessing it’s probably healthier than taking vitamins but not as good as getting them from a source that naturally has the nutrients. For me who has maybe one bottle in a day it’s a way to keep a baseline of nutrients that I may not get from my normal diet and that aren’t covered by my vitamin supplements.

    Convenience: Having bottles is really nice if you commute. I like that when I’m headed out the door I can grab one to drink for work. I won’t be hungry or spend money on fast food. I will often be hungry by the time I’m home but as a person that tends to overeat I consider that a good thing.
    My roommate who does the shake blending himself works remote so he can often find the few minutes to put a bottle together. He’s built up a reserve of ~20 blender bottles but usually needs about a third of them for his daily drinking if we keep up on dishes. He’ll use 2-4 a day for breakfast and lunch before a solid food dinner. We also keep space for 2-3 gallons of milk for how much he makes.

    That’s all anecdotal, but I hope it gives you an idea of what daily life with the stuff may look like.





  • It’s silly to gripe about someone watching a movie for so long, but not because the person watching needs something to fill their life. If that was the only justification needed you could justify owning a yacht because it’s the only place you could get away.

    The real argument is that running a television is not very energy intensive, and being on the grid means the energy it does use is produced at a scale where the environmental impact is drastically reduced.

    I’ve had to reread your second to last paragraph multiple times because it just feels bonkers to go from saying that people enjoy television to saying people might kill themselves without it. What basis does that have in reality? I tried looking into it a little and the only search results regarding suicide and lack of tv discussed suicide coverage on tv and whether it increased suicides. Searching for whether people are happier without tv had a lot of anecdotal “yes” articles and articles relating to a study about teens being happier with less screen time. That seems fairly inconclusive and may just mean there’s a gap in the research that could be filled, but I think you’re really underestimating the average person’s ability to live without television.



  • If the author no longer has passion for his OSS project, and isn’t being paid for it, why is he still working on it? Why should he feel responsible for companies building their processes on a free piece of software without guaranteed support? Why the heck is he sacrificing sleep for something he claims not to care about anymore? It sounds to me like he’s not living his values.

    If compensation for volunteer work is mandated, it becomes less volunteer work and more of a part(or in some cases full)-time job. My understanding is that a core pillar of open source software is that anyone can contribute to it, which should make it easier for contributors to come and go. Based on the graph shown it would take more than a full-time job worth of money to meet his demand, which seems unlikely in any case, and it’s time for him to go. Either someone else will volunteer to pick up the slack, the companies using it will pay someone to pick up the slack like the author mentioned, or the software will languish, degrade, and stop being used.

    I don’t see how any of those outcomes suggest that people need to be paid for the time they voluntarily give. I could get behind finding better ways to monetarily support those who do want to get paid, but “how could it be easier to pay OSS contributors after their passion is gone?” is a lot less provocative of a headline.


  • Imagine you have a big board on your front lawn where people can come to write stuff and respond to others on the board. This board is an instance.

    Your neighbor has their own board, which they have “federated” with yours. Messages from your board can show up on their board, and people there can write on those messages same as ones native to that board.

    You can federate with them so their stuff shows on your board, or defederate if you don’t like the people there.

    Anyone with the ability to make a board can have one federated with other boards to make a really big web of boards, but to a person looking at your lawn’s board it feels like one big one.