Khrux

Blurry photos is fine to make an stylistic choice. The 2019 movie The Lighthouse stylistically looked like a 1920s film, before modern music intentionally used bitcrushing, it used vinyl cracks, boomer shooters made in this decade intentionally look like 1990s Doom clones.

When a medium’s shortcoming is patched by technology, it ultimately becomes an artifact of the era where it was accidental. Once a few years have passed, it becomes more synonymous with the era than the mistake.

It’s not necessarily nostalgia, Gen Alpha and the younger half of Gen Z never grew up without smartphones, so they don’t miss the era of poor film photography. Although every generation does this simulation of forgotten mistakes, it’s particularly poignant now, where the high quality, perfectly lit, professional feeling photos convey something artificial, i.e. smartphone software emulating camera hardware, faces tuned with filters or outright AI generated content. Even if it’s false imperfection, the alternative is false perfection.

Art using deliberate imperfections that were unavoidable in the past is romanticising something perceived as before commercialism, and that’s admirable.

People disagree because it’s still an abstraction of camo. Wearing it in the first place came from people fawning over militarism.

I actually think it can work with a queer look in one of two ways, so you are likely fine: Either it’s effectively teasing the pro authoritarian militarism camo types, or it’s a radical anarchy armed rebel look, which without praxis is really just the former look again. Either way these are fine.

Another reason maybe you’ve been downvoted is that people loathe the deep abstraction of modern, or rather postmoderm society. Camo was made for soldiers > Camo was worn by patriotic civilians simulating the soldier aesthetic > particularly under the Bush administration, it became less a symbol of soldiers, and more a symbol of patriots. Patriotism is nationalism.

Today when most of us camo in the military cosplaying way, we think ‘nationalist’. When we see a person in a little bit of camo, perhaps just some came shorts and a regular t-shirt, we think either ‘nationalist’, ‘okay with nationalism’ or ‘ignorant of nationalism’.

So when most people see someone in a blended queer and camo look, they probably assume one of three things: ‘ignorant of nationalism’, ‘critical of nationalism in a rebellious manner’ or ‘pro nationalist queer’. Of course one of these is fine, but one is very bad.

I’m trying to make my own smart watch as a hobby experiment at the moment, and one of my most important features is NFC payments. It’s a nightmare, although I understand why. Currently my plan is to buy another smart watch or smart ring and take the NFC chip from it, which is maddening, but more or less my only option due to contactless payment security.

To do contactless payments, your bank must effectively permit the specific device, otherwise go through GPay or Apple Pay, who in turn just do the permitting themselves. Anything outside of the standard ecosystem just gets overlooked.

The best workaround while avoiding these companies is to find a smart watch or ring that has compatibility with a proxy card, such as Curve. But beyond halving the price of the accessory, this is pretty much an arbitrary decision.

And sometimes just super plain ones. I remember getting my favourite Skyrim potion texture mod from there specifically.

Also worth addressing that people are using large language models exactly because the ad driven web was enshitified enough that people clambered for this new option.

There will be at least one LLM that’s good for web searching and doesn’t give in to advertising, and in the meantime, we’ll just need to keep jumping ship whenever one becomes awful, as we did with the old web.

I have a surprisingly forgiving opinion on AI. There are many cases that I think it’s purpose is stupid or defeats the point but it has the potential to cause such a large break to employability and capitalism in general that it has it’s upsides.

People are right to take issue with the fact that it is causing people to lose their jobs or be unemployable by no fault of their own, but underlying that issue is the fact that society shouldn’t function on the employment being necessary (which I am aware is an opinion).

Even in its absurd energy and water usage, this is largely an issue with how we currently get our energy and water. Having our technocrats suddenly more invested in new and better forms of energy, even just for powering AI has the potential to be a path to better clean energy options.

AI is fundamentally a neutral tool, but as much as it may be sued for evil, it may accelerate flawed economic and environmental systems to a breaking point where a redesign of those structures will be required, which could be the greatest opportunity to implement better structures that we’ve had since the industrial revolution.

Back in 2013, I bought an old PS3 + GTA5 for £150 or so just to play the game, then once I had it, picked up two more exclusives, before never touching it again pretty quickly.

Getting a console for GTA6, plus the game, this time may set me back more than my expendable income after rent and bills. It will absolutely sell consoles but I’d wager people are actually able to buy a console much less than in 2013.

I had it from release and honestly, even day 1 it smoked the competition in the city sim genre, releasing with features and scale than Sim City ever had.

The DLC often introduced more systems, but they did feel ‘extra’, the game was perfectly functional before parks or tourism or natural disasters etc.

The reason CS:2 felt so necessary is because the first was bloated and had underlying issues in it’s simulation logic, like unrealistically inefficient driving, or a large expansion to residential areas causing all the new residents to die of old age at the same time, crippling the city. Every part of the GUI and logic just felt clunky compared to modern, polished games.

The flip side to this article is that most of the criticisms, while really valid, talk about the intended play style for life sim games to be to live through the key points of their character’s lives with immersion.

For literally 20 years, I’ve barely seen it used for this purpose, instead people make themselves, their friends, their dream house, they cheat in money and turn off aging etc. Actually stopping to roleplay your character making friends is the activity most people do when their bored of the regular things they do.

Still, InZoi seeming to not simulate the lives of any of the other NPC’s is a big loss. Even if you’re not interacting with that part of the game, knowing it’s there is great. The Sims 4 (or 3, I forget) strove to reach the dream version of this: You buy a cheap property in a fully open world and ‘functioning’ town and you could walk from your front door to the town center, and the neighbour you see may also drive to town and you’ll see them there. Then as you play, you go from working in the gym to owning it, and can now modify it like your property because it runs on the same rules, the same goes for everything else. The Sims didn’t manage this but their later games clearly launched with this as their design’s guiding light.

I’m mostly interested in the game as a character creator and house builder, but that’s because I don’t expect any game to do a good job of what the article writer wishes for, The Sims included.

I agree, it’s unfortunately impossible to boycott AI outright. The game you love that didn’t use it for the writing, art or code probably still had plenty of planning meetings where copilot PowerPoint tools were used. A programmer who doesn’t use AI may use something from someone who did. An artist may get a job over another because they used AI for their job application.

And that’s ignoring everyone that uses it intentionally for projects. I genuinely loathe AI content but it’s not worth boycotting like many other causes.

In the 19th century, the Jacquard loom became widespread, using punchcards to automate weaving. Belgian workers who lost their jobs from this would protest by throwing their wooden shoes, their sabots into the machines. This act is the origin of the word saboteur. This era of industrialisation was shared by the movement of the romantics. Romanticism existed to contrast industrialisation and enlightenment, to celebrate nature and imagination and individuality. Poets like Lord Byron led wonderfully flawed but human lives, while capturing this feeling in their art, poetry and philosophy.

But humans although wonderfully flawed, seek convenience. Evolution loves convenience, dopamine loves convenience, capitalism loves convenience. When it’s allure comes from all directions, we cnt fault ourselves for succumbing to it.

Although their name lives on, the saboteurs couldn’t stop the world seeking convenience. Although Romanticism always existed before it’s heyday, it eventually diminished. From the punchcards of the Jacquard looms, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace (the estranged and father-loathing daughter of Lord Byron) developed the general purpose computer. Technological convenience survived.

There is a growing opinion that we are living through a new romantic era, this time opposing the digital world, the algorithm and artificial intelligence. I agree with this sentiment. Although I consider myself a socialist, pro workers rights and supporter of radical ideals, I don’t see the new saboteurs winning; I don’t see boycotting AI, or poisoning our art and media with AI confusing language and imagery as a path to victory. Eventually convince always wins. Instead I want to be a romantic, who can celebrate everything human that AI cannot be, without believing that I can exist outside of it’s influence. I can both love human made art, media and content, and consume that which has been touched by AI.

God knows why I wrote this all I guess it’s just not a conversation I’d ever get to have in real life. There are probably typos in here, I hate to proof-read.

How do you mean? I know it’s pretty standard to pirate the Sims games because of their dlc costs, but I don’t know any way to get it legally and on steam.

This is definitely a selfish opinion but people who block adverts or torrent being a small percentage of users can be a good thing.

If they lose even 5% of their userbase to Firefox over this decision, they’ll find a way to make grand modifications to Google search and YouTube in a manner that stops you blocking ads from alternative browsers, and while I’m happy swapping to an alternative search engine, it’ll definitely becometedious to sidestep Google’s gaze.

But if it’s 0.1% of people who swap due to this, and Google already don’t care about the small percentage they lose to Firefox then I would rather sit under the radar and not be cracked down on.

Long before ZA/UM closed, I was certain that we’d never see a new game of that quality again from the same studio.

I’m not confident any of these new teams will pull it off, but I’d rather have four attempts than one.

Microsoft will definitely have the power to bulldoze all other things named copilot, like Facebook did to meta. I’m still not over AI being a lame word now. I miss the time when it felt sci-fi and not like a corporate buzzword.

The most common cheat is probably gaining money or experience, but there have always been pretty extensive mod menus for GTA Online with tools from invincibility to making your vehicles rainbow, to randomly causing other players to explode or setting hundreds of muggers on them.

In 2015ish, I used to cheat, other than getting rich, all I was interested in doing was making an indestructible chrome bus with smoke trails that I’d drive around picking up players in, to teleport us all to North Yankton and back like a tour guide.

I’ve not seen gmaps taking these kinds of routes. I’m UK based if it makes any difference at all, but I’m always grateful for my route seeming to prefer a smooth choice to the absolute fastest.

Indie also covers an enormous financial area. People generally group games into AAA, Some nebulous middle ground games that are generally produced by the major studios but aren’t AAA and Indie.

There is a difference between indie games that sell millions of copies vs dozens and this lack of discrepancy makes this complex. I once pirated a game called infernium after seeing a friend play it on switch, then learnt that it’s an absolutely tiny game by a solo developer. I happened to adore the level design and lore of that game so much that I bought it on steam and then bought all of his other games too just to support him.

On the flipside, we refer to a game like Hades as indie. I love supergiant games and have purchased all their titles but I would have felt zero remorse at pirating Hades.

Maybe the only thing that I feel is sad in all of this is that the massive AAA games takes years to be cracked nowadays, which means only indie games are pirateable. I don’t like the unfair dichotomy this creates. There are probably a reasonable amount of people who pirate indie games and buy AAA games for this reason, and that’s bad for industry.

I have a PC I built that was absolutely top of the line 9½ years ago, that still plays most games in high to max settings. It’s a little powerhouse for its age, I often use it for rendering video and it still smokes everybody I know 's devices.

Windows 11 is too powerful for my PC according to Microsoft and I’ve been so pleased about that. If it wasn’t for the fact that I have no issues with my current windows 10 setup, I’d put in some time to jump to Linux. I’m just too lazy to give it the weekend it would take to learn, set up and move my content over properly.

I occasionally get pulled into the YouTube shorts and hate howuch time I lose to them. Worse was that although I barely use Instagram beyond keeping in contact with friends who only use it, I happened to watch the reels for a little yesterday and they were really entertaining.

A lot of amateur video creators don’t have the experience to keep their work engaging for long periods of time, half the internet feels like SNL sketches that make their best punchline in the first 20 seconds and then milk the same joke for the next 3 minutes. The way short form content cuts through the crap is actually quite nice. It obviously has a whole bunch of its own issues but that’s mostly due to chasing the algorithms favour, not the short form nature of the content.

One of the issues here is that there is likely considerable overlap between people who are competent enough to circumvent the block with a VPN or the like, and people who’d be seeking out AI deepfake porn, just because the latter likely appeals to socially outcast (and unfortunately therefore often more tech savvy) people.

I’m in the UK and glad this has been blocked but I also absolutely don’t trust the weird internet puritanism of the UK government, for at least the time I’ve been following politics as a you g teenager, there have been many attempts to block various aspects of porn on the internet, normally from a point of protecting children but the whole thing has always reeked of the government testing public outcry on blocking parts of the internet to later re-attempt to censor on their interests.