Apparently, stealing other people’s work to create product for money is now “fair use” as according to OpenAI because they are “innovating” (stealing). Yeah. Move fast and break things, huh?...
Try to train a human comedian to make jokes without ever allowing him to hear another comedian’s jokes, never watching a movie, never reading a book or magazine, never watching a TV show. I expect the jokes would be pretty weak.
What’s stopping AI companies from paying royalties to artists they ripped off?
Also, lol at accounts created within few hours just to reply in this thread.
The moment their works are the one that got stolen by big companies and driven out of business, watch their tune change.
Edit: I remember when Reddit did that shitshow, and all the sudden a lot of sock / bot accounts appeared. I wasn’t expecting it to happen here, but I guess election cycle is near.
We all could see that Unity’s layoff was coming, that pricing backlash not only drove away many developers, also probably was driven by troubling financial within the organization.
Twitch is sort of unexpected, but when I see the number of impromptu rules they rolled out and rolled back last year, whether from restricting multi-streaming, to limiting showing brands logo on stream, to restricting / unrestricting female streamers from showing too much skin, etc. I assume that means that even with all those intrusive ads, Twitch is still losing money.
I guess from now on, when a tech company starts to arbitrarily change their T&C / rules to either protect their revenue / market share, and maybe rolling back from backlashes, then it’s a sign that there’s trouble brewing (if you work at those companies, beware)
I can handle absurd sentences like “The dog is cooking the dinner”, and actually finds them beneficial because it prevents me from guessing the whole sentence.
But this is a sign that not enough human efforts are poured into create permutation of the answers.
I’ve seen quality drops of Duolingo, ever since their … IPO, sadly.
Anyway, here’s some ways you can milk the rest of the Duolingo before completely abandoning it.
Use the web version, and type in all the answers if it’s possible. Selecting words are good for introducing new words (and reminder in case you forgot), but by typing it on your own, it’s faster to commit into memory.
Use classroom mode to get unlimited hearts, create your own classroom and invite yourself in. I assume that Duolnigo will probably eventually stop this loophole
Use search engine to search for the sentences you’re unsure of. No, don’t use machine translation, but search on the internet, and see if the sentence ever being used by the sites (news, academic, or personal homepage) using the target language.
I sadly still don’t know what other comparable free alternatives to Duolingo. Anki is great, but it’s largely flashcard for words, not sentences (unless you want to create your own deck). The others require subscription fee.
Other methods? Search for pdf of language grammar files, there are a lot out there. Some are godawful to read, especially those ‘Comprehensive Grammar Guide’ books. Some are amazing, e.g. Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese.
nope, “The dog is cooking a dinner” is that kind of absurdist sentence that works. So that I just don’t guess a human on the subject position. Or ‘eating’ for the verb
I am searching for a controller to play emulated switch games on my pc. My requirements are motion controls, good build quality and responsiveness, and preferably hall effect sticks to make the controller last longer avoiding drift....
However the thumbstick’s rubber eventually crumbled off after a year or so, so I 3D printed these replacements (it’s for SF30, but fits Pro 2), then I got cheap Switch thumbsticks rubber pad to put on top of them. IIRC, you might be able to request thumbstick replacement from them. The 3D printed treplacement + cheap caps feels kinda better than the original.
I finished (again) God of War 2018. I thought it was going to sour on me, just like how my 2nd playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn did (and subsequently my 1st playthrough of Forbidden West). But no, it’s still a very good game. Combat is simple but still satisfying, side quests aren’t excessive like Forbidden West, story is still good but less intense than TLoU. My only complaint is that the fast travel is just way too slow. I’m looking forward to Ragnarök now.
Here are some games that I really enjoyed playing/replaying last year- FINAL FANTASY XVI - Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon - Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion - Live A Live - PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo - Tactics Ogre: Reborn - The Case of the Golden Idol - Voodoo Detective - Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising - Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge - Shin Megami Tensei: Persona - Sword of the Vagrant - Tail Concerto - The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble - Wild Arms - Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana - Ys: Memories of Celceta - Zero Escape Trilogy - God of War
My top is probably FF16, I have soft spot for this type of siblings story, also loving the Asura’s Wrath section.
No, there’s a mac version of retroarch. OpenEmu is a bit better in term of user interface.
And RetroArch has a history of harassing emulator devs, e.g. Stenzek who made Duckstation, were harassed by them until Stenzek went hiatus. IIRC, they might have harassed Near (developer of Snes9x), Near eventually killed themself.
I finished the first Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney from the remake trilogy
The game is really frustrating, because at times it feels more like you’re supposed to guess what’s the developer want you to do, instead of presenting things based on logic / evidence to the witness’ statement
The writing can be very awful, some characters are just straight up annoying in order to pad the game. People veer off conversations all the time, trying to be funny, but they are not. And the melodrama that’s supposed to convey the character’s feeling, can be repeated on every new scene that it’s very tiring to play thru it.
I’ve also finished Curse of the Monkey Island
It’s still a such a hilarious delightful game. Many people stopped by my stream to tell me that they love this game. I was expecting to the game to be not clicking with me since Ron Gilbert departed after Monkey Island 2, but apparently it’s still a very good game.
My main complaint is the clicking mechanic, where you need to click and hold to bring up the talk / observe / use option.
I’m currently replaying God of War (2008)
Apparently I forgot to upload my save to the cloud, so I can’t do NG+
It’s still a very good game. I’m at the Alfheim region now, and unlike Horizon Zero Dawn, I have yet to feel fatigue replaying this game. Maybe it’d happen later in game
I played thru Octopath Traveler, and the story doesn’t tie everyone together until that secret last boss. Nothing much interesting in the writing until that part, I guess.
I read that Octopath Traveler 2 rectified that, and it’s one of the best JRPG of this year. I bought that on sale, but haven’t touched it yet.
I dropped Tunic halfway thru, the combat just doesn’t gel with me.
Games wise, very likely. There are way too many 2023 games that I bought (that’s on sale) that I haven’t even touched yet, and still more heavy hitters that I’m waiting for a bigger discount (e.g. Alan Wake 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Yakuza Gaiden, Spider-Man 2, etc). It’s not only newer IPs, there are many games based on older IPs that are well received, e.g. Dead Space, FF16, RE4, Armored Core 6, etc.
Game devs wise, it’s probably one of the worse. There’a already more than 9000 layoffs, with many studios shuttered. Half of them probably came from Embracer Group. We are probably gonna be seeing a rapidly shrinking number of mid-size games within the next 5 years.
I was initially expecting to see Wolverine released end of next year / early 2025, was not expecting it to be around end of 2026. I assume it’s easier to create Venom’s game based on the existing Spidey’s engine.
I wonder what exclusive game would Sony announce for next year’s holiday? Maybe Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima 2?
I’ve finished Eiyuden Chronicles: Rising, as a preparation for Eiyuden Hundred Heroes.
It’s not a good game, but it’s not terrible either. I played it while watching TV.
The combat is interesting, you have 3 attack buttons, and each of them switches your main character. However it’s really unpolished, you can’t do uppercut or downward attack before upgrading your weapons.
The story… is not interesting at all. It’s largely fetch quests for the residents to build / expand stuff.
I’m halfway thru Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
This is a bad game. The gunplay is okay, but the level design, the enemies become increasingly dull and boring in later chapters. Halfway thru the game, I just find most chapters are way too long, empty, and repetitive.
The story / writing is not good at all. All those Deepground characters are boring, cliched, and annoying.
Also, I’m back with my BS, where I play Resident Evil Zero with a guide and skipping all the cutscenes, so that I can get the infinite rocket launcher, before replaying the entire game for the story.
Musk is a clown that says vile and stupid thing. An useful idiot for others Silicon Valley VCs.
Andreessen and Thiel (and too some small extent Luckey) are in the background trying to push for far right libertarian dystopia.
Andreessen is the guy who kept pushing for web 3.0, trying to dominate it before it becomes big, so that he can monopolize / become a new digital libertarian govt, but of course it got hijacked by scammers, and states like Russia or North Korea, but he doesn’t give a flying fuck.
Thiel of course is far right financier. There’s a reason why they try to hide in the background.
I played a lot of great games this year, but also many that didn’t click with me.
There’s a huge spikes of games that I played this year, because I decided to start tackling my backlog by streaming them, these include games I’ve bought on sale, and those that are on PS+ Extre.
Can't finish because of difficulty spikes- Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown: - Dropped it after that mission where you need to protect a car, while manouvering between buildings in a city, as expected I kept crashing into buildings - Shantae: Risky’s Revenge- It was fun at first, but then there’s some precisioin platforming part, which I just wasn’t in the mood for - Super Mario 64- There’s a level where you’re first introduced to flying mechanic
Dropped it because of technical issues- Assassin’s Creed Origins- The game crashed within the tutorial area - Call of the Sea- I got motion sickness - Kena: Bridge of Spirits- Again, I got motion sickness, supposed to be an okay game. - Tardy- Weirdly because the game has lots of reading, but the fonts are way too small for me - The Ascent- Too much clutter on scene when you reached the first city / settlement. The first section feels okay, but again, some items / objects are just way too small for my failing eyes
Dropped it because it's not clicking- Gnosia- It was supposed to be fun at first, but then the rolls I got was not advancing the storyline - Grime- This feels like the moment I dislike souls-like metroidvania. It might be when I realized that I’ve picked the wrong upgrade path, and there’s limited resources for upgrading your character - Gungrave G.O.R.E- This is not a good game - Horizon Forbidden West- The combat feels worse than the first one. There’s so many more things to do that has way too many writings that I barely care enough. I’d rather have smaller number of sidequests with good writing, than a large number of them where everyone has so many stories to tell. This feels like it’s becoming a ‘forever game’, which might be good, but the combat is just not satisfying at all. - Mafia: Definitive Edition- Dropped after the racing section, was not feeling it. - Mass Effect: Andromeda- Dropped while in the first area. Something about the movement not clicking. - MediEvil (Remake)- Dropped after the 3rd or 4th area. - Moon: Remix RPG Adventure- This is supposed to be great, but I just got tired of the slow pace - NEO: The World Ends with You- I talked about this before, the game keeps on interrupting you. Walk to a new area, fluff dialogues, walk to another area, more inconsequential fluff dialogues. This seems to be a (bad) trend among JRPGs or anime style game. - Oxenfree- Character dialogues just don’t gel with me. Also there’s a time limit when choosing replies. - Root Double: Before Crime * After Days - Xtend Edition- The slice of life part is atrociously slow, most of them are inconsequential ‘look at me, i’m a cute anime girl’ - Sea of Stars- The combat is way too slow, and requires you to do timed button presses. Also for the part I was in, the story feels generic. - Shadow of the Beast- JUst not good - Star Ocean: The Divine Force- Arrived at port town, overtly anime character came in, dropped the game. THe combat was fun, but the character / story are not clicking - Tchia- This is supposed to be good, but I burned myself out for trying to collect everything available before advancing the story - The Adventure of Little Ralph- Feels kinda repetitive - The Wonderful 101: Remastered- I don’t think this game works well without touch screen - TUNIC- Sadly another indie trend that I dislike, difficult combat encounters that don’t feel satisfying. It’s supposed to be a very good game. - Unpacking- Played it on PS5, I dropped it after rotating object for quite a number of times. I think this game is probably better suited for mouse and keyboard - Vernal Edge- I wanted to like it, but the combat is not fun. You have a dedicated ‘Pulse’ button to heal, which throws your sword at the enemy, and you need to press attack + direction to launch an attack that could heal you, which is already a roundabout way of healing (the mechanic is not fun). Then you have enemies that need to be stunned by X number of charge attacks, and the game throws you into small combat area with 4 - 5 enemies that doesn’t get knocked back without 3-4 charge attacks.
Finished it, but it's kinda not good- Root Film- Root Letter was okay (but arguably ruined with the updated version with multiple endings), Root Film is just plain boring, especially the ending. The story was enticing at first, but nope, it became bad by the end of the game. - Shenmue II- Shenmue. - The 3rd Birthday- I like the combat, considering that it was on PSP.
I just finished replaying DMC V. After replaying DMC 1 - 4 + DmC in the past 6 months, made me realize that I don’t like playing as Nemo. He feels underpowered at times, and his skillset are kinda boring compared to Dante.
In DMC V, I enjoyed my time playing as Dante and V.
V is a change of pace, being slower and ranged, while Dante has really satisfying moves and weapons. I like Nemo’s robotic arm, but the idea that it’s a consumable and sometimes you might ended up picking up an arm that you are not familiar with, does disrupt the flow. Even his basic swordplay feels kinda lacking.
I could see people who became deaf-mute using it. Apple has Personal Voice for iOS that allows people who are losing their voice to use it to connect to their loved ones.
I followed a guide, and finally got my infinite rocket launcher around 2 hour 41 mins!
Skipped all the cutscenes, got the bad ending, I have no idea what’s happening in the game, and somewhat learned some speed running moves (e.g. stair skating and kiting).
I’m excited to finally playing the game properly (with rocket launcher) in the future, both Chris and Jill scenarios.
There’s quite a lot of work involved, I used the IGN video walkthrough, spliced the video into like 13 parts for 13 saves, then just redo those parts until I feel like I’ve finished the section without losing too much time
Final Fantasy 7
I’m replaying it again, the last time I finished this game must be at least a decade ago.
It’s still my favorite mainline FF, I still love the Materia system and how you can chain them together. The combat is still very speedy, especially compared to FF9, the characters and story still hold up. You can definitely see Shinra Corp existing in our society right now.
I’m also surprised at the parts I’ve missed. After the temple morphed into the black materia, did Cloud shove Aeris to the ground and punch her repeatedly? I was shocked at that scene, didn’t realize what was happening when I was younger.
With knowledge about what’s happening with Crisis Core and FF7 Remake in hand, now I could definitely understand some of those scenes, the voices Cloud is hearing, etc.
I’m playing the PS4 remaster / re-release. Liking the QoL features (fast forward, battle assist), but there’s still an unfixed bug where the music would just stop playing.
I remember when Joe Rogan was getting giant paycheck from Spotify promoting antivax stuff, and people talked about moving to Apple Music, but it feels like many just stuck with Spotify.
I came across a post on instagram that says that Al Yankovic’s 80 million stream on playlist only netted him enough money to buy a sandwich.
Also, Spotify underpaying artists, making fake playlists with cover artists to undermine artists, are not new. It feels like the mainstream crowd just doesn’t care, which pushes me further into depression.
I’m at the final chapter of the game, and here’s my thoughts:
The game has adopted many bad trends from other games that it becomes annoying halfway thru the game, here are some of my complaints:
The dialogue, a lot of useless fluff dialogues that takes extra 2 seconds for the characters to animate. If there’s 10 people in the scene, then those 10 feel the need to chime in to say something frivolous.
Just can’t get emotionally invested in the character, maybe it’s the writing, maybe they just follow cookie cutter anime tropes most of the time (thrown in some ‘twist’ later on). I weirdly care more about the side characters from Lacrimosa than this one.
The constant interruption of the flow. You gained control of your character, moved to main/side quest point, cutscene, walked forward 10 steps, another cutscene. And the problem is, most cutscenes are just insubstantial.
Side quests that are not side quests anymore, since you need them to remove those artificial barriers. You can farm nox, but it’s way slower. Side quests also suffer from ‘everything needs lengthy writing’ RPG syndrome nowadays. Better writing, not more writing. I had the same issue with Horizon Forbidden West, where most side quests contain way too much dialogue that’s been used to pad the game to 100+ hours, where it could be a 30 hour game.
The raids / grimwald sections are bit too much. I like how they are mostly optional in Lacrimosa. In this game, you even need to do them to remove the barriers to optional area.
Third Eye / detective mode is a mechanic that devs should move away from. Just outline the points of interest, don’t make it so it’s hard to see everything else.
The lock-on in combat is a wild mess for me. I don’t know whether it’s my settings, or the game.
On the other hand, what I like about this game:
The vertical mobility, that’s to shake up the exploration. The problem is it’s kinda janky, I’d often fall down after grappling to a ledge, because the ledge is too small. Wall run often ends up being blocked, etc. I hope that they will polish the mechanic more in the future. In combat though, I barely use them to fight enemies thanks to the messy lock-on
I enjoy doing the collectibles (petals, treasures, graffitis) in this game.
Besides that I’ve been slowly progerssing Resident Evil HD Remake, trying to get infinite rocket launcher.
I don’t like remasters, especially those which are usually just re-release with hi-res textures. They are charging like $30 and above for hi-res texture, and some of them has unstable framerates. At certain point of time, using emulator yields better graphics & performance than some of those remasters, especially for PS1/PS2 games.
On the other hand, I actually like remakes way more.
First of all FF7Rshouldn’t be considered as remake, it should be considered as its own spinoff / sequel
Remake not only exploits that nostalgia, but also tend to make game plays better with added QoL functions, sometimes with new gameplay mechanics. Some of the remakes that I really like:
Yakuza 1+2 Kiwami
Crisis Core
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
Resident Evil 1+2 (have not played 3+4 remakes yet)
Live a Live
Mass Effect Trilogy (thankfully it’s not just a hi-res port)
Remake is great when there’s a significant technology and time gaps between the games, which is why TLOU remakes drew some ires.
I finished DmC (again) last week, in my quest to play all DMC games before PS+ pulls that DMC5 Special Edition. To me, it’s better than DMC4 in terms of platforming, and to some extent the combat. The character design is not good, and the writing is good in some parts, but terrible in others. The button configuration sometimes gives me finger cramps.
Then I’m continuing my quest to get infinite rocket launcher for Resident Evil HD Remake. I’m using the IGN guide, which I split into smaller parts for each save, annotating it with items in my inventory. I’m better at kiting zombies now. I think it’s doable as long as I can remember what to do next. The annoying thing right now is that I’d accidentally open up the map, when I’m trying to open up the inventory.
I will probably start Ys Monstrum Nox this week, it’s part of my “play all these games before PS+ pulls it from the offerings” theme. It’s gonna be exciting, since I enjoyed Celceta and Lacrimosa a lot.
Normally I’d say it’s a greedy cash grab, but it’s $10 upgrade path for existing owner, instead of reselling it for $50 - $70? Also there’s a new rouge-like / souls-like mode? Maybe branding this release as ‘remaster’ is not doing them any favor, it’d probably better for them to market it as free PS5 upgrade and a survival mode expansion for $10.
Ian Stokes (@IanVanCheese) from Twitter posted that “If I was Sony, I would maybe let my S-tier studio that excels at making new IPs and interesting games actually make new games, instead of forcing them to photocopy their previous A+ report card for eternity”
to which Jordan Middler from VGC (@JordanMiddler) replied “From what I was told from one person, this was more of a project for new hires to get them in the game. Druckmann’s team is full steam ahead on original. One doesn’t takeaway from the other afaik”
I really hope that Naughty Dog would move on to do something more cheerful than TLOU, the mood is just too oppressive and taxing, especially in TLOU2 where the game is very long.
“Right now, there are two big IPs other than Sonic,” Utsumi said. “One is Persona. We are introducing two Personas this year. And also, our Yakuza title. I mean, Yakuza is really unique, but that big one is also coming next year too, so be ready [for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth]. “But also, as I say, we are trying to...
I’m around the last stretch of Live a Live. I bought this game earlier this year during a sale, and it’s a really good game. Every character’s chapter is like an episode of TV show, with varying theme.
The final stretch, especially the trials can be annoying though, from difficulty spikes to long ass dungeon without a map. The other thing that I dislike is that some animation can be bit slow
The game is pretty good so far, and it does look very pretty at times. It makes me excited to play Octopath 2 and Star Ocean 2 Remake
OpenAI says it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material (arstechnica.com)
Apparently, stealing other people’s work to create product for money is now “fair use” as according to OpenAI because they are “innovating” (stealing). Yeah. Move fast and break things, huh?...
10 Days Into 2024 And 2300+ Video Game Layoffs Have Been Announced (kotaku.com)
Mostly from Unity: 1800 through the end of March.
Duolingo Fires Translators in Favor of AI (futurism.com)
Duolingo is very much on the Enshittification path, seems like they fired a number of translators and have the rest just proofreading AI....
Tekken 8 - “Story So Far” with Brian Cox (www.youtube.com)
I am loving the absurdity of Manhunter’s Brian Cox explaining who’s throwing who into volcano....
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of January 7th
Happy new year!...
Ukraine’s SBU said that Russia’s intelligence hacked surveillance cameras to direct a missile strike on Kyiv (securityaffairs.com)
Who is this guy? Why is he the face of MEV scam, with ads placed all over YouTube? (i.postimg.cc)
I normally use yt-dlp to download youtube videos, but sometimes I’d go and visit homepage to see if there’s anything interesting....
Seems like the rest of the free games from Epic Store have been leaked (i.postimg.cc)
It’s a tweet from user PC_Focus_ that states:...
Need help finding a controller for less than 50€
I am searching for a controller to play emulated switch games on my pc. My requirements are motion controls, good build quality and responsiveness, and preferably hall effect sticks to make the controller last longer avoiding drift....
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of December 31st
Last post of 2023! What have you all been playing?...
OpenEmu 2.4.1 has been released (github.com)
It was buggy and not updated for quite sometime after Apple switched to Mac silicon....
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of December 24th
Merry Christmas!! 🎄 What have you all been playing!!
FFVII Rebirth Director Naoki Hamaguchi says that Cait Sith's name is pronounced "Cat Shee."
image...
Was 2023 the Greatest Gaming Year of All Time? (www.theringer.com)
All of Insomniac's upcoming titles have leaked (www.resetera.com)
I believe Insomniac were hacked / ransomwared last week or something. Apparently here’s the leak of all their upcoming titles....
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of December 17th
What have you all been playing!...
Worst person in tech 2023 - semi final (mastodon.online)
Kojima Productions and A24 to adapt live-action Death Stranding movie (www.gamesindustry.biz)
How many stinkers did you play this year?
How many and which bad games did you play this year?
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of December 10th
What have you all been playing!...
deleted_by_author
The Game Awards 2023 Discussion Thread
Hey y’all. Figured I’d make a thread for this. Discuss anything about the game awards and it’s announcements here!...
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of December 3rd
What have you all been playing! I’ve been playing… Not much! I’m moving states and haven’t had a lot of time to game 😢
Spotify made £56m profit, but has decided not to pay smaller artists like me. We need you to make some noise | Damon Krukowski (www.theguardian.com)
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of November 26th
What have you all been playing? I’ve been playing more dicey dungeons and cross code! Want to really commit to finishing cross code this time
Are there too many video game remakes and remasters? (www.eurogamer.net)
Sam Altman to return as CEO of OpenAI (www.theverge.com)
See also twitter:...
After robotaxi dragged pedestrian 20 feet, Cruise founder and CEO resigns (arstechnica.com)
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of November 19th
What have you all been playing?...
OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO (www.theverge.com)
Are they drunk over there?
The Last of Us 2 PS5 Remaster Announced, Has a Brand New Survival Mode, $10 Upgrade Path (www.pushsquare.com)
Following Sonic movie success, Sega teases Persona and Yakuza adaptations | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com)
“Right now, there are two big IPs other than Sonic,” Utsumi said. “One is Persona. We are introducing two Personas this year. And also, our Yakuza title. I mean, Yakuza is really unique, but that big one is also coming next year too, so be ready [for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth]. “But also, as I say, we are trying to...
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of November 12th
I definitely didn’t forget to do a new thread yesterday 👀...