blind3rdeye

joined 9 months ago
sorted by: new top controversial old
Cash was meant to be dying. But new RBA data tells a different story in c/australia@aussie.zone
[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 0 points 3 days ago (2 children)

It used to be that credit card companies would give 'rewards' to users for the privilege of being about to track their spending. Now it seems to be the opposite. I reckon that means banks have too much power.

I use cash quite a bit, and it isn't all about the transaction fees.

Google promotes ‘teacher approved’ apps for kids. Here’s what parents should know in c/worldnews@aussie.zone
[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 0 points 1 week ago

I think your advice is very good. But unfortunately it is very hard to follow that advice, because many schools use Google Classroom and gmail. So when the school insists that you log onto google classroom to do your work... deleting all things google is not going to work well.

And then of course Google has a free hand to cajole the kids into doing whatever the hell Google wants them to do to entrench dependency.

I wonder how bad US relations have to get before we can insist that schools don't rely on US services... ... Probably that is well out of reach, but one can dream.

‘Crazy not to’: soaring fuel prices send more Australians into U-turn towards electric cars in c/australia@aussie.zone
[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 0 points 1 week ago

If you reckon you can make no-car work, then I say go for it. My household doesn't have a car and it works very well for us. The viability of being car free depends a lot on where you live and work, but some things that might seem like barriers actually can be got around with minor lifestyle changes. So if you're considering it - then I encourage it.

‘Crazy not to’: soaring fuel prices send more Australians into U-turn towards electric cars in c/australia@aussie.zone
[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 0 points 1 week ago

I wonder if the Lib/Nat parties are still worried this will "destroy the weekend". There was such fierce opposition to even the suggestion that Australia should consider moving towards electric vehicles. And now a few years later, people are asking why we didn't start sooner.

From river stain to your cup of tea: the secret world of tannins in c/environment@aussie.zone
[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 0 points 1 week ago

I assume they did it to be attention grabbing, as possibly as a subtle form of protest.

Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith arrested, expected to be charged with war crime of murder in c/news@aussie.zone
[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 0 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I'm a bit surprised it has taken this long.

Climate misinformation inquiry stops short on reform in c/australianpolitics@aussie.zone
[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 0 points 2 weeks ago

It's amazing to me that we can have a serious senate inquiry like this, involving hard evidence of coordinated misinformation campaigns to weaken Australia; and yet apparently no government action is taken.

The government recently acted quickly with their fuel excise and heavy road usage changes. This show they are willing to make direct interventions when they think something is important. The interventions they made in that case may be rushed and of questionable value - but the point is that the government is willing to act when they think it is important...

So then, is direct coordinated mass manipulation of Australian views not important enough to act on? We aren't talking about mere differences of opinion being argued about online. We're talking about deliberate sowing of confusion and misunderstanding; coordinated lies from large groups of fake people designed to pass as popular opinion.

And yet basic ideas such as political advertising should be required to be factual is apparently too big of a step to take. wtf?

Australia’s teen social media ban is a flop. But there’s no joy in ‘I told you so’ in c/technology@lemmy.world
[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 16 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I've talked to heaps of parents and heaps of kids about this. What I think is interesting is that people face-to-face seems to be generally supportive of the law. They say that social media is problematic, and that the law helps by discouraging its use. A few different kids have said that they it helps them break an addition. Other kids say they don't care, because it hasn't blocked them. So mostly positive or neutral responses when face-to-face.

But every time I see this mentioned on the internet, it's very negative. There are always heaps of comments saying that it is a failure, and could never work, and that the government is stupid; and there are often other comments saying it is a part of a secret plan for the government to track us or whatever. In any case, mostly negative views - with just a sprinkling of fairly neutral views such as "it hasn't been active for very long. Lets wait and see."

I just think that's interesting. I guess my real-world social circles don't totally match my internet social circles.

Why are games expensive AF in Australia? in c/australia@aussie.zone
[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I reckon the most expensive game I've bought in the last 10 years was about $20. There are just so many high quality low price games out there, often with deep discounts. I wouldn't waste my time on something like CoD 13, let alone waste my money.

So, a high quality game costs less than a sandwich and coffee for lunch. I don't think it's expensive at all.

Darkest Dungeon 2, a bit disappointing in c/games@sh.itjust.works
[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 2 points 3 weeks ago

I figure I'd post a follow up after having the game for a couple of weeks:

I still stand by all the criticisms I made. (Poor early-game experience; lots of UI oddities and annoyances; weaker world-building and thematic buildup compared to DD1.)

However, I will say that the strategy and tactics side of the game do improve after unlocking a bunch of stuff. When first playing the game, there often weren't any good responses to many challenges - so it was basically down to luck. But after unlocking stuff the balance is a lot better. I reckon the game would have a better early experience is more items were unlocked from the start. Unlocking stuff does give a nice sense of progress - but the player needs to have meaningful viable options to actually play.

So anyway, I do think the core gameplay is pretty good, and has quite a bit of variety in viable tactical styles - once you have the stuff unlocked to actually make it work! I think its kind of a shame that the game wasn't polished a bit more before launching. Fixing the UI issues wouldn't be a huge amount of work. And some early-game tweaks could improve that first-time experience quite a bit. ... The thematic stuff might be unfixable though, because the nature of how the zones work. (Having randomised zones with bosses and such means that it can't really give a sense that you're gradually going deeper into the darkness).

When will ban take effect? What to know about Australia's card surcharge changes in c/australia@aussie.zone
[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 0 points 3 weeks ago

The surcharges are annoying, but in a way that annoyance is good - because it is a regular reminder that the bank is taking a slice of your money each time. Without that surcharge notification, the bank is still taking a slice of your money, but you don't get told about it.

Part of the changes being made are to reduce what the banks can charge - and that surely is a good thing, since without intervention, banks would have the power to charge basically anything. Curtailing the power of banks is a good thing.

But the part of the change that prevents stores from having a 'user pays' system for their transaction fees is less clear cut. It's good from a simplicity point of view, but it does actually further entrench card use - and thus reliance on card-processing companies. Again, these companies could go on to charge unreasonable fees at any time unless carefully watched by the government. It would be much better if we weren't embedding complete reliance on particular private companies into our society.

Meta, Tiktok and Google under investigation for allegedly disobeying Australia’s social media ban in c/australia@aussie.zone
[–] blind3rdeye@aussie.zone 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The law does go into more detail than that.

45
Darkest Dungeon 2, a bit disappointing (aussie.zone)
 

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.

21
Bottles: how can I repair / debug a bottle? (aussie.zone)
 

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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