I read about this earlier on Ars Technica. I was expecting a paywalled link. Was not expecting to find a mention of “No Longer Human.” Ars didn’t mention that. Or the chat logs. It was a long article but didn’t go into the same depth.

So, I’ve read “No Longer Human.” A more recent translation is called “A Shameful Life” and that’s a bit more apt, I think, but doesn’t have the same ring. It’s about a guy who feels less and less like a person, like what he does and feels doesn’t matter. It’s a wild book, about a double suicide, and the author later killed himself much the same way. There have been several adaptations — none of them very good. None of them quite captured the book. I wonder if it’s just unfilmable. Anyway, it’s a shame that it’s being referenced here, because it’s good literature worth considering, and I hate to see it maligned in much the same way as the Doom game was following the Columbine massacre. Relevant or not (guns in that case, suicide in this case), it’s a shame art gets associated with tragedy simply by association.

Perhaps the same could be said of AI technology, and it has been. But certainly AI needs better safeguards. According to Ars, when the guy started asking about suicide, ChatGPT said it could not help him — unless he specified he was talking about fictional characters. So he did that (Ars constantly refers to it as a “jailbreak”) for a while, and then I guess (and they guess as well) that ChatGPT just assumed that context and stopped requiring him to specify that.

Yeah, so Musk’s argument is that even though OpenAI’s product ChatGPT has more downloads, Apple should consider letting X’s Grok take the top spot because… reasons, I guess? Grok is still listed despite its antisemitic and other disgusting actions. It might be #2 (yeah it’s definitely shit, right?), it might be #5, but it’s still on the list, and it’s still available. Musk is just mad that Apple is not featuring it.

Meanwhile, Fortnite is the top downloaded free iOS game. It sits on top of the charts. Thusly, Apple has buried the chart and they refuse to feature Fortnite, instead choosing to feature Roblox and PUBG instead. It’s petty and silly, but the rankings do show which one has more downloads. That’s it. It’s not even about quality or anything.

I tend to agree with Epic (Fortnite) over Apple, but in regards to X, I’m with Apple. I may be slightly biased in that I don’t like Musk/X, but I’m with Apple strictly on the merits here. I don’t need biases to influence my reasoning here.

Yeah, I think it was meant to. Maybe the origins are same/similar.

Fun trivia: Isekai is a Japanese genre that means “trapped in another world.” Sword Art Online made it popular but it wasn’t the first, even in Japan. The idea of being trapped in a video game goes at least back to Tron in the 1980s. SAO was itself a revamp/remake of an older anime called .hack//SIGN — not officially, but it shared way too many details with that decade-older show. (The books were written around the time it was airing, but the show would have been green-lit almost a decade later, knowing there was a very similar show already out. And the same people worked on it, made the music, made the games, so yeah, similar DNA in both.) But the first isekai may have actually been Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Isekai has western origins, Japan just gave it a simple name. And now it seems like there are dozens of isekai (word is the same singularly and plurally) coming out every year, and most of them suck. But isekai is everywhere. Stephen King has written isekai — The Dark Tower, The Talisman, 11/22/63, Fairy Tale, and probably more.

Yes, her and Eddie both (and Oy). His only companion is Jake.

No, no, Dennis Haysbert was good in it as the father Roland never forgot the face of, though I don’t remember his father being in the books. Seeing President Palmer teach Luther the gunslinger creed was awesome to me.

This is the future of game development. Games cost more to make, so they’re going to pass the costs on to the consumer.

Right now games basically go for $70. There is a push for $80 and some developers are getting it (e.g. Nintendo with Mario Kart World). However, DLC will invariably push the game’s cost closer to $100. To stick with MKW, it’s not hard to see that not all the racers are in the game, who were in the last one. So the thinking there is they will probably be sold down the road for around $20 to get that game up to $100 total.

For a lot of gamers, the extra cost isn’t that big of a deal. Gaming is still a cheap hobby, and all three console makers are seeing good numbers with their more expensive consoles. The PS5 and Xbox Series X weren’t even improved, they just had their prices jacked up 10-20%. The Switch 2 is arguably just a minor uptick from the first model (and partially a downgrade from the OLED model) but it’s something like 30-50% more? And it’s selling like hotcakes, proving that gamers can afford to pay more, and will pay more. Not enough people are willing to put their foot down and declare that enough is enough when it comes to corporate greed. And with the costs of everything going up, it’s not 100% greed driving the price increases. Developers gotta eat too.

I liked the Rockband model. You bought the base game for like $60 (or more like $200-250, whatever it was with the drums, guitar, and mic, but those were reasonable hardware costs) and then you bought the songs you wanted for $2 apiece. With the first two, the on-disc songs were mostly great. With the third one, it was more questionable, but since you could export the previous games’ songs, it wasn’t as bad. The fourth one’s soundtrack mostly stunk, but then they gave us the ability to hide songs from certain sources, and by then we had over 150 songs from the previous 3 games (plus whatever DLC). Fun fact: Rockband is partially why console mods exist. Rockband 3 was the pilot program on Xbox 360, and to this day, you can load custom songs in it. It was never the intention to be able to do it for free, but the developers never cared that people were doing it. You could get uncensored songs, and you could get songs from other countries — there’s a whole “J-Rockband” scene of people playing Japanese music on it — that the developers were never going to chart/sell. Not only were the developers all musicians, many of whom made customs for the paid market, but they have been “caught” playing the free customs as well. (The developer, Harmonix, is now part of Epic Games and is responsible for Fortnite Festival, which is free to play, but you can’t use instrument controllers, and it’s a revolving selection of songs.)

That while they judge themselves by their best intentions, they invariably, and subconsciously judge others by their actions.

Once you realise most people are just trying to get through the day and most people aren’t trying to make things worse for others, it’s easier to forgive perceived slights, and that will make your own day better, and make you less likely to subconsciously slight someone else.

Try it and see?

If it’s the soda I’m thinking of, it’s sickeningly sweet, with something like 130% of your recommended sugar intake in a 20 ounce bottle — roughly 600mL to those outside the US.

These days I can’t drink soda (or anything carbonated, like champagne and beer) but I believe I have had Fanta Strawberry before. I know it was one strawberry brand.

But honestly, what olden days? The only strawberry soda I remember from back in “my” day (the 80s and early 90s) was Safeway Select. We didn’t have Fanta back then where I was. I remember Sunkist and maybe one other brand had orange and grape soda, but only Safeway had strawberry soda IIRC. And it wasn’t nearly as sweet!

“Woman”? Probably. “Human female”? Most likely.

Girls figure out from a much earlier age, on average, that most guys are comfortable knowing, that vibrations in that area feel good. So even without thinking about sex or pursuing orgasm, they will seek out things they can straddle that move in a way that feels good. One of those things, if you’re around enough girls or a girl long enough you learn but maybe wish ya didn’t.

How do you mean “where is it going?”

The most recent iteration of “derpy” I’ve heard was in the Kpop Demon Hunters fandom. That’s what fans call the tiger-spirit-thing. I don’t know what its real name is, or if it has one, and I’ve seen the movie three times. At this point I don’t care, its name is Derpy.

If you’re not familiar, it’s a tiger spirit (apparently this is a thing in Korean folklore) and it appears to one of the demon hunter girls, and after initially appearing scary, it knocks over a planter, and proceeds to try to right the planter before proceeding. After several failed attempts, the girl intervenes and sets the planter right… only for the tiger to knock it over again and again attempt to right it. (It’s not a scary scene. Everyone loves the tiger.)

The Dark Tower. Good movie in its own right, especially if you like Idris Elba.

First, they took 8 Stephen King books, some of which were like 2" thick, and decided to turn it into a 90-minute PG-13 film. A single film.

Second, because the racist element was so offensive (a Black woman taken out of the 1970s, who has personally experienced racism toward her, is taken to a foreign world, an alternate reality, where she basically is led by an old white man (modeled after Clint Eastwood) and naturally she feels a certain type of way about that) they decided they were going to change it up. Make her white, and him Black. Hence casting Idris Elba as a guy based on Clint Eastwood. Then they dropped her character entirely. I will argue that Elba made a hell of a Gunslinger, but the reason they cast him was because they wanted to turn the whole racism plot on its head. For no good reason. It was fine in the books (this would be The Drawing of the Three, and The Waste Lands, the second and third books).

But for all that, it was an entertaining action flick with a bunch of Stephen King references. I quite like it. As a reader of the books and a fan of Stephen King, I shouldn’t, but the movie itself was good.

Honestly that the movie exists at all is the worst change, though.

Also worth noting: the people they’re scamming don’t know a Galaxy from an iPhone, let alone a Galaxy from one photoshopped with a gold back and T1 on it.

I don’t think they care, either. If they know it’s a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and they’re being charged double for one but it has a Trump case and they think buying it will fund violence against dark skinned/LGBTQ+ people, they’re not really being scammed. They’re putting their money where their mouth is.

There isn’t a phone. They’re just photoshopping other phones into photoshops of gold cases.

There isn’t a phone. All there is, is a grift.

Delivery isn’t worth it a lot of the time. Even eating out costs too much. I can cook, so I’d rather just do it myself. If restaurants start to fold, I will have no sympathy. They priced out the working man, and if the rich man doesn’t support them, well, they gotta lay in the bed they made.

Making a burger was easy before. Air fryers mean anyone can make a burger that beats any fast food place and most sit down restaurants. What separates a burger made by a pro chef from mine is, the pro chef uses better meat, that is freshly sourced and ground that day. They also mix two or more kinds and grind them together. They use American cheese and pickles for chemistry reasons and they’re good enough for most people. I use pepper jack because it’s higher quality and tastes better.

I’m working on my taco game. Tacos are so hard to get right, but when you do, when you get on par with local Mexican places with Mexicans cooking it, it’s so rewarding. (Getting over Taco Bell is child’s play.) I will not say I’ve done better than authentic. I’ve gotten close to their level though. A local taqueria is hard to beat!

Pasta is too easy. There are a couple tips. Learn al dente and stop cooking pasta just before that stage. Drain but leave a little of the starchy water. With pasta sauce, check the ingredients for sugar! If they’ve included it, fine. If not, add some! So tomatoes are super acidic. They will upset your stomach. Sugar counters that. I also add crushed red pepper, cayenne powder, Abe either Texas Pete or Tabasco — basically a red hot sauce. Frank’s is another one. So basically I make something called arrabiata — that’s Italian for angry pasta. Not too hot but a bit of a kick. With meatballs and penne pasta.

Pretty sure we watched The Outsiders in school. Good movie. Great book.

As someone who’s only used Telegram to chat with real people, this headline confuses me. I keep hearing about Telegram channels but all I find are scams.

It’s going to be plagiarism so yes, it is.

I’ve asked Copilot at work for word help. I’ll ask out something like, what’s a good word that sounds more professional than some other word? And it’ll give me a few choices and I’ll pick one. But that’s about it.

They’re useful, but I won’t let them do my work for me, or give them anything they can use (we have a corporate policy against that, and yet IT leaves Copilot installed/doesn’t switch to something like Linux).

Being that I’m the husband who has drunkenly tried the dancing games, I would say my wife is finding the Rockband exhibit. So we don’t really go to arcades. We do sometimes stumble into the game room at conventions. And someone always has a modded Xbox 360 and Rockband 3 set up with all the anime songs on it. And you can generally just step up and play. When a lot of people want to play, there’s a queue and a system for doing it, but most times we go, you kinda just glance toward the person singing or drumming or whatever you want to do, and they pass off to you when they’re done with that song, or ask if it’s cool if they do one more, maybe that’s their pick they waited for or something. Anyway, I suck at arcade games, so I’m grabbing the Rockband mic. No one wants to sing in public, especially if it’s in Japanese and we don’t know it. The lyrics are described in romaji (e.g. “arigatou gozaimasu” for ありがとうございました which is to say “thank you very much” and is pronounced something like “ah-dee-gah-tow go-z-eye-moss”). As someone who can pronounce maybe 10-20% of romaji correctly and can kinda wing the rest… it’s fun. Plus we turn the mics down and the vocal track up, so if you mess up, you don’t ruin the song for the onlookers (you can do the opposite and only hear the vocalist, for example).

As a guy who wears glasses, heightened vision would be awesome.

Super hearing would be great, too. I’d love to be able to hear all the nuances of music and be able to hear it without turning it up.

Good point. I think the Luncheon Plate Meal is the one with the sandwich? That does appear to have cold cuts.

But sushi, roasted fish, and clam chowder are seafood and are considered by some vegans/vegetarians to be okay for whatever reason. I’m not one or the other — I eat meat, and possibly more than most. I’m good with veggies, but I pretty much main protein and avoid carbs and sugar. It’s a struggle. Anyway, what I meant was that they don’t typically have food made from the kinds of animals that would be your villagers. Oddly there are octopus villagers, so seafood becomes somewhat unethical if you have any.

Also, glad to see some fellow AC fans on Lemmy. Just need to find a good community.