Excrubulent

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

That's actually kind of genius. It's even made of lead!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Anarchism isn't non-violent. To assume anti-oppression and pacifism are one and the same is to make the same mistake Engels makes in On Authority.

Authority is violent, but violence is not authority.

Edit: on this topic I'd recommend Anark's video on Power, where he explains that anarchism seeks to create a horizontal power structure. It is not the absence of power structures, it displaces oppressive power structures with egalitarian ones.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

A lot of people in this thread knee-jerk hating on the nails don't realise that it's just culturally-entrenched misogyny. More people need a "Don't be an asshat because not everybody is like you" guard rail.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

There are people that do it tastefully and people that are creative and interesting. If they can't be interesting and descriptive to some extent then they're probably not people I want to engage with.

And honestly, the titles were so bland they were almost snarky, and I never felt they were justified for the creators I watch. They were so laconic they were often barely informative anyway, because the flavour was gone. I think that's because the people who have a good sense for editorialising aren't going around writing aggressively literal titles all the time. The dearrow ecosystem is subject to algorithmic selection too, and it selects for boring.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Sure, and I'd say that's piracy too. I wouldn't mind if it wasn't also being siloed into private hands to enrich the wealthy and screw the rest of us.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I'd say if the copyright holder says you're not allowed to then you're not. It's piracy.

People will tell you that you've already downloaded the data so saving it is fundamentally, technically no different, but that doesn't matter to the law, it's still piracy.

Like yeah, it's absurd and pointless and anti-consumer and anti-knowledge and unenforceable and unsustainable, but that's copyright. It's always been that way.

Copyright destroys culture and piracy is our ethical duty in the face of that. The only reason to care about it is so you don't get caught.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Right click -> inspect element (Q) works.

You can also press F12.

And if right click is blocked, on Firefox holding SHIFT will unblock right click. There is also a plugin that does this for you.

Often websites will put an invisible element in front of the content to intercept this trick, but you can navigate through the elements to find the one they were trying to obfuscate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Oh cool, I might give it another look.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Yeah, it's possible that wasn't an option back when I used it. I remember thinking that some sort of default off would be better. At the time I think it was either on by default and toggleable - I always toggled it - or it was just disabled and unwieldy to enable.

Edit: actually even better would be to have a short community written summary that could be more descriptive. Just like a popup or something. I don't need the title to disappear, just know if the video is worth my time.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (8 children)

The problem I have with dearrow is that it's editorialising and arbitrary. It's not like removing ads which can be clearly identified and the user can make personal decisions, like no sponsors but self-promo is fine, or whatever.

No, there is one alternative title and one alternative thumbnail, and that's it, and often I have serious disagreements with the choices the community makes. There's a bias towards intervention, so if a title is fine according to me but someone else doesn't like it, then it gets changed. I found most of my votes were to restore the original title and thumb. Eventually I got tired of it and just uninstalled, and presumably so did other people with the same feeling, so the community continues to skew towards changing every video they encounter.

Also, the thumbnails and titles that creators choose tells me a lot about them, and I get rid of clickbait by not engaging with creators that do clickbait. Also, sometimes it's not clickbait, just people being creative. It seems like the whole thing is just an exercise in being the fun police by people that don't understand the creative process.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Genuine answer is that you need to get a feel for when the clutch begins to bite. The rest of it - when to use the brake, handbrake etc, is going to depend on what you're doing. Learning to feel the clutch is the critical skill.

The way to learn how to use the clutch is to start on a flat piece of ground with no traffic around, like an empty car park. With the engine running and the brakes off, press the clutch pedal and put the car into 1st gear. Then, slowly release the clutch pedal without using the throttle. Practice this until you can get the car moving without stalling the engine, and you'll have a feel for it.

When starting normally you'll gently press the throttle as you do this. Cars usually idle around 1K RPM, use the throttle to maintain about 2K RPM for a normal take-off.

Then all the other skills will fall into place. The key objective is that you should have the brake engaged until the moment the clutch engages and is ready to take control, then the brakes should be smoothly & quickly released.

You can do this with either the handbrake or the foot brake, but if you're using the foot brake you need to be manipulating the clutch, brake and throttle at the same time.

That requires pressing both throttle and brake with the right foot, which is a more advanced technique, but very useful for smooth driving in a lot of situations. It's often called "heel-toe", but that's misleading. You don't use heel & toe, you use the two sides of your foot.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Where? Is this paradise oasis of helpfulness on the internet? Or is it offline somewhere?

 

I can't explain it, something about the freedom of acquisition takes the pressure off and lets me just launch it and try it out.

Maybe it's easier to pay some money and hit "install", than it is to find a torrent, download it and go through the install process, so there's a selection bias there.

Maybe it's the fact I downloaded it exactly when I decided to and not when a sale happened or it was in a bundle.

But even then, when I decide I want something right now and I pay full-price, something about that just puts a psychological barrier in between me and enjoying the game. Like now I have to validate the purchase, and if I want a refund it has to happen within 2 weeks, and within 2 hours of play (for steam). It's just an unpleasant feeling.

Even worse is the subscription model. I absolutely hate the pressure of having to try all the games I put on my list before the end of the month so I don't have to renew to keep trying them, that just feels like wasted money. But then about a week into the month I'll lose my energy for trying new games and I'll let the sub lapse and never try a bunch of the games I wanted to. It's the worst way to pay for games, even if on paper it's the cheapest for trying a bunch of them legally.

Very occasionally a game will come along that I know I want and will happily pay for immediately, and usually that means I'll give it a decent try.

The best experience for me is pirating a game and loving it so much I then buy it, that guarantees I'm going to play it a lot. The latest game that happened to me with was A Dance of Fire and Ice. I bought it like 5 times, once each for me and my two kids, and twice on phone, and I was completely happy to. I even built a custom rhythm controller for it.

Funny story though - the pirated version of ADOFAI puts savegames in user folders, but the steam version puts them in the game folder, so it merges the progress between users. So for that reason, the pirated version is better. I can't explain the discrepancy.

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