Al.

I'd have thought all those sorts would be over at Twitter by now where they seem to be welcome.   I had heard Lemmy mentioned on Mastodon but I had not heard anything about claims of pro anything.   I believe it is somehow part of the Fediverse so I am sure there are multiple instances with separate rules.  Much like there can be any Mastodon instance with their own rules it is the other instances' choice if they want to deal with them or not. 

TBH this is not a great solution as you get these little fiefdoms where you are completely at the whim of the person running it to be not a douche and as mentioned the sort of people technically capable and inclined to run them certainly tend to be douche adjacent.   I actually did a fair bit of research into the person running Mastodon.ie before I started using it and have people who know him who vouched for him, however he could get sick of the whole thing tomorrow, or get hit by a bus or just completely change his opinions and the entire vibe of the instance could change if the thing just didn't disappear.   

It is an interesting problem and it is one I am encountering with Toutless too where I have run it for 15 years. I can't sell it.  No one has really made an alternative that has invalidated our need to exist and I don't even know what a hand over to someone would realistically look like.. especially as I would insist on some sort of mechanism to retrieve it if they suddenly went completely evil.  I've a vague plan to begin documenting systems and do something where I retain the domain but delegate running the site but the fact it hasn't fallen off the face of the earth is pretty much been my dedication to it and it is starting to piss me off.

It is just a reflection of the problem of trying to run anything I guess.  Companies, Countries etc.   They can start off one way but as factors change so do they.  There is no inherent stability in anything and the only real solution is to have some sort of transient hermit style approach to community that can dynamically move as required.  In the real world that isn't practical (and if you try it you are actively vilified).  In the digital world it should be.  Fediverse sort of allows this but it is kinda flawed.  It is why people were trying to migrate content out of Reddit. 

I've mostly avoided talking about the other great hate in my life on here, that being everything "Web 3".  I won't go into Cryptocurrencies, because Oh boy could I go into them, but I know this sort of "how do we put the people in charge of their data?" thing is often touted as a legit use of blockchain technology.   Even if you could have some sort of distributed database agreed upon, and of course no company wants to make your interaction with them be portable (It was particularly hilarious to me when NFT aficionados claimed you could use them to move content from one game to another) it would be so hilariously slow and wasteful to be unusable AND it would still require some sort of person running a server that actually verifies the chain for your client to interact with due to the size of the chain.

Anyway if you can solve the issue of "people are a problem" there might be a Nobel Prize in it for you.  If you appear before the committee and just have a slide that says "Reddit" and sit down expecting applause I've some bad news for you.

Huh? A new Alien game?   https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150440/Aliens_Dark_Descent/

I know little about this but a very quick skim seems to suggest it is good and might be similar to Helldivers except with an Alien skin and I really enjoyed that game (and wished I could have convinced more people to play it more frequently).

I think everyone is open to the idea of revisiting the pricing of the API... except 'NEO MUSK' Huffman who wants to ram this shit through with sheer 'CEO BRILLIANCE'!  Maybe the original numbers from Reddit were "opening numbers" and this was some 'MY BALLS ARE MASSIVE' CEO strategy to get the best deal of having them like 75% more than what was reasonable so 'JESUS FUCK I AM GREAT *snorts cocaine*' Huffman could get them to actually agree to 50%.  However then the Apollo lad turned out to be also an egomaniac who does things by being entirely unreasonable too.  Honestly I haven't heard this angle from anyone other than you but it is perfectly possible as the Venn diagram of solo white male programmers and being shitty douches is a circle.    This would have locked in 'PUNCH ME IN THE FACE I CAN'T FEEL IT' Huffman into just going full scorched Earth because his full ass would be on display if he was the one who compromised after his 'REAGAN FOR PRESIDENT AGAIN' power play.

Either way I find it hilarious and I have zero stakes. I do hope you can continue to organise whatever you get up to on your sub after the dust settles but really all that needs is somewhere to do it and I am unsure what value it being Reddit brings.  If only you had... 20 years experience running a forum, constantly being honed to a sharp edge by ex housemates shit posting.   I just checked and you could have wellingtown.com registered and just throw it into a forum here and you'd be off to the races.

You keep saying both sides are awful but you only give out about the Apollo app developer.  It isn't a single app developer on the other side of this. Just that lad is the most vocal.  All of them got shafted.  They all assisted Reddit becoming what it was by plugging the gap of not having a mobile app.  I used to have a similar third party app for Twitter and getting rid of it dropped my use massively. It has not been a one side street where Reddit graciously allowed these guys to exist out of the kindness of their hearts.

As much as I publicly hate Reddit I'm more interested in seeing this scorched earth CEO nonsense Musk pioneered die in a fire.  Huffman needs to be dropped a major peg for his handling of this or it'll encourage others to do it. 

I somehow missed this last time https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65949412

Beyond the Pale worked out pretty well.  40 min drive from the house.  Almost first in the queue to get in.  Had a pre-setup tent with beds and sleeping bags waiting for us.   Was a bit wet on the Friday and Saturday morning but cleared up to the point I got seriously burned on the Sunday.    Really just settling into my old man festivaling now. Sitting in the chairs miles from the action and I still slept through a headliner or two (but did catch Grace Jones who was pretty great).  I miss the days of bouncing around up the front but I don't see them coming back if I don't lose many kilos or start doing drugs and neither appeals to me.  Actually getting out to these things seems to put is in the minority in our age group so I guess I'll have to take that.

This honestly keeps getting funnier.  The CEO of Reddit keeps doing interviews and coming across as the terrible person he is absolutely refusing to compromise on the API changes.  He claims to be inspired by Elon Musk's approach to Twitter (because that went so well).   People are actively filling past posts with gibberish.  Also now hackers are trying to blackmail the entire site if they don't revert the API.

Even if Reddit weren't awful people I would still believe the Dev in this case because the noisy use of API line above is just nonsense from a technical point of view. Anyone in software, and I mean I copped this in 2nd year college when developing for my cert which I got a 2.0 for, will limit their remote calls.

The idea you'll be just doing API calls to be lazy and or evil is nonsense. Your app performance will tank.  I can only imagine their figures on providing the API is based on lost revenue to not being able to shill their NFTs or similar. The infrastructure to provide the API is LESS than if you have all those users hitting a webserver because the DB will still need to serve the equivalent users AND you need a webserver.  

Reddit could make their own app not suck or have bought any of the good ones out in that ten years of a 'free meal" probably for a lot less than what they'd cost now.  Third party apps smoothed over the cracks for a lot of people and Reddit was happy to let them while enjoying a growing user base, a user base which they're hoping to sell now. I think it's a bit disingenuous to frame them as parasites. More like those fish that clean Shark teeth.

Anyway I heard the real issue with the API is people trawling Reddit as LLM training data. Guess why now with the AI hype Reddit is looking to cash out?

The Internet felt cleaner yesterday. Fresh and crisp with a light sprinkle of dew. Can't imagine why...oh wait...

https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/technology/arid-41160208.html

Apparently Reddit is trying to make money and has tried to shutdown third party apps people use to make the site bearable by charging stupid amounts for API access. As a result 100s of subreddits have "gone dark".

I've a documented lack of love for the place but people are realising this means huge swaths of information has now fallen off the internet as it was all stored in this one corporate owned bucket.  Perhaps not the smartest of ideas in retrospect?

Ant Man 3 is pretty much as Scott said. I legitimately fell asleep 2 separate times trying to watch it.  The third time I wish I had stayed asleep.  It is so bizarrely devoid of good story/structure etc.   They introduce some new wacky characters who might be fun in the way the rock creature in Thor might be but but we basically immediately lose them and they just show up as a tacked on aside later.  The world has achieved the soullessness of the Star Wars prequels in its pretty skybox approach to world building where everyone is blatantly just in front of a green screen going through the motions.  Some completely forgettable actor plays Ant man.  The rest of the good guy crew seem to be struggling for things to do.  The bad guy was well acted but his actual abilities are not clearly stated.   He's basically invincible until he isn't.  They also redid the ending according to IMDB and it shows.  Just a bizarre rejigging of the stakes to mean nothing at the very end.   Real nose dive stuff here.   2/5

I'm heading back to Beyond the Pale https://www.itsbeyondthepale.ie again next week.  The last one was a hilarious write off as the stress of trying to buy a house and not get Covid overtook me.  I'm hoping to be back on form this time around and not fall asleep before the headliners come on.  It'll be the first domestic festival since we got a house so I am imaging the prep to be a lot less hassle.  

I regularly rewatch Pacific Rim.   It is one of the few modern (films released in the last 20 years) that I actually do this with.   

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/05/lost-tv-show-culture

Big behind the scenes talk about Lost.  I didn't read it all but the highlights are that Damon Lindelof is awful.  (BTW if you are avoiding Succession spoilers if you've not caught up there are plenty in suggested article headlines on this page).

I spent an evening trying to get the in built mixed reality thingy to work to try and record a video of me "interacting" with Beat Saber.  It is incredibly painful and buggy to do this and in the end it did not work.  I am going to try again with some different software but in case anyone was tempted to try the native one... don't.

I've heard tail of various execution videos and animal torture videos making the rounds on Twitter which lacks any sort of functioning moderation at this point.   Musk himself is constantly digging deeper into full mask off racist with his latest thing blabbing on about George Soros like some Reddit The_Donald poster.   I still use my heavily curated form of it to keep track of gigs and the odd bit of Irish Gossip but the thought that I'll get the 2023 equivalent of Goatsed if I look at the wrong reply or something is really helping me to reduce my usage.

Just think how much better you could make it with a good 3 page thread about you melting down trying to get the black levels right or getting Dolby Atmos working correctly!

8 hours ago, Chimp with a Limp said:

Watched this recently at home on a decent set-up and it was awesome. Very entertaining.

Post your setup!

That's the one. One of those clickbaity nerd sites ran an article on it which seemed to imply it was a tiny blink and you'd miss it cameo to justify blabbing about it when it was anything but. 

If you do I'd probably have a few things I'd want zapped.  As it is can you zap the jury thread? That's a bit too real life consequences if it went public by accident and not necessarily just for me.

I follow this lad for VR content but he did a "come find and kill me" challenge streaming on Twitch (and recorded it for youtube).   I do like the method he used to add some of that old school dread back into a fairly underpopulated dead server.   

I love how Zombies STILL clip through doors to this day.

He's doing another one in a few days if you wanted to blow the dust off Dayz.

Barbarian (2023)

In an absolute drought of good movies I discovered this on Disney+ of all places as it had a respectful IMDB score.  Possibly a horror movie or a very timely documentary on not renting AirBnBs.  Does a good job setting up a scary atmosphere and feeling like a real horror movie from before the CGI stupid fests.  There's an RLM episode to watch after seeing it too.

Dungeons and Dragons (2023)

Relatively enjoyable action adventure romp which doesn't outstay its welcome.  I recognised a couple of the references (including one that was spoiled in advance which was hit over the head obvious when it occurred which would have been nice to see myself).

Renfield (2023)

Gory Sean of the Dead style horror, action, comedy with the lad from About a Boy as Dracula's familiar and Nick Cage as Dracula in a modern world.  Relatively OK.

Pinball: The Man Who saved the game (2023)

Enjoyable retelling of a moment in the history of legalising Pinball. 

Tetris (2023)

Enjoyable retelling of a moment in the history of people buying Tetris from the Russians..

3/5 for the lot of them.  Lets be honest movies have become what you do when you don't want to binge shows and these all work as watch once and never think of again movies (I had to look them all up to remind me I watched them) which work fine for a lazy weekend watch.

Things are fairly dead in here.  I reckon at this point just keep the place up long enough to outlive Twitter to say you did (so maybe three to four more weeks).

I am absolutely crawling through Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space... not because it is a bad book but because I have become a bad reader.  I managed to finish Adrian Tchaikovsky - Shards of Earth which I enjoyed but didn't get far into the sequel Eyes of the Void.  He's some other interesting sounding stuff (as does Alastair Reynolds)  I read an embarrassingly large amount of Craig Alanson's Expeditionary Force which I mentioned in another thread but I finally gave up on that around book 13 or something.   I suspect I can blame that pure high fructose corn syrup of a book for damaging my ability to remember bizarre character names and TBH Revelation Space is chock full of them.   I am pretty sure I tried to start reading Three Body Problem in the middle of the night and forgot I started it the next so I need to go back to it.  I read half of the first book of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy which I always wanted to read when I was a teenager.  It was a bit too "science is awesome when science hasn't stupid dumb dumbs getting in the way" if I recall but perhaps it doesn't stay like that.  I want to try start it again and finish the Trilogy and also try Aurora by him as well.  I also need to restart and finish the Expanse books. 

Basically I have plenty of content just not the sort of routine or discipline to read things. 

FWIW I have the same issues with multiple other forms of media.  Infinite books is no different to infinite games.. the initial novelty rush to see whats inside the wrapper is a bigger draw than actually eating the whole bar of chocolate (I am unsure what this metaphor is meant to mean. I have already lost interest in this sentence).

I read the first chapter of Fern Brady's Autobiography and that was good (once again no reason not to have continued other than I just lost momentum).

Oh I read Station Eleven after watching the show and that was pretty good.  It is short so I think it took two nights.. more of this please.

Black Adam & Shazam 2: Shitzam

Apparently both of these got middling reviews and poor box office and while they both end with sequel hooks assume this is it for both.  They both exist around the same corner of the DCU with Black Adam being about The Rock getting the Shazam powers in the past, getting locked up and then getting freed in the future and being a bit evil and acting like a bratty God but saving the day in the end (spoiler I guess).  Apparently in the comics he is one of the reoccurring Shazam bad guys. 

Shazam 2 has the annoying group of kids from the first wander around being bad at being superheroes until it turns out a throwaway event from the first movie you'll have forgotten actually released vengeful God's (Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu) on the world, ie exactly what happens in Black Adam.  They can basically one shot win against the Shazam crew but don't.  

Both of these show the continued DC fascination with stupid God level characters and the problem with writing anything with them.  You end up with the characters doing dumb stuff or taken out with nonsensical macguffin rules.  There's very little excitement or interest in how anything will be resolved in either film and they're both a series of mostly forgettable fights which are very good for testing out new sound systems but not much else.

Out of the two Black Adam was the most interesting for at least concentrating on the "sort of bad guy".  Shazam 2 has some fairly painful moments but really goes to a whole new level of parody bad at the end with a Deus Ex Cameo that invalidates everything that previously happened as it openly invites the viewer to ask the "why doesn't Superman fix every problem?" question.

Both reintroduce the Man of Steel problem of superheroes being smashed or smashing into buildings and it being hand waved with well that entire office just happened to be empty today. They could have lamp shaded it with a "it's a good thing everyone works from home these days" quip but none of these films are that intelligent and completely lack the sort of anchoring to the real world that might have led to that sort of creativity occurring.

Meh out of five.

It was really enjoyable but a fairly sparse crowd for a Saturday in Whelans (Easter Saturday probably didn't help).  I suspect he hasn't picked up a huge amount of new fans in the last ten years.

We're seeing Owen Pallett on Saturday.. probably in the first time since I saw him above in 2014 (which I've virtually no memory of).   TBH listening back I find the stuff a bit twee and emo for my 40 something ears but I am hoping to enjoy it.