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renard_roux

@renard_roux@beehaw.org

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renard_roux ,

I think we need to look a bit back in time for the answer:

“If they pay a penie or two pence more for the reddinesse of them..let them looke to that, a foole and his money is soone parted.”

— From Dr. John Bridges' Defence of the Government of the Church of England, 1587.

renard_roux ,

A winning strategy 👌

renard_roux ,

Zorg ZF-1s fired!

renard_roux ,

Paging Dr. Allcome!

renard_roux ,

Was introduced to Merlin a few weeks ago on a scout nature course, and I love it so much!

I'm using it a sort of real-life pokémon game, trying to grow my list of found birds (Life List). So far I'm up to 36! 😍

Google fires 28 workers for protesting $1.2 billion Israel contract (www.nbcnews.com)

"Google issued a stern warning to its employees, with the company’s vice president of global security, Chris Rackow, saying, “If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again,” according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC."

renard_roux ,

Yay, space opera! 🥰

Highly recommend almost everything by Peter F. Hamilton if you haven't read them, arguably top 3 space opera authors ❤️

Edit ...: and Boo! Google!

Looking for self hosted digital asset management

I'm looking to be able to store assets that I've created and purchased (both 3d models and images, potentially audio in the future) on my nas and would love to be able to use something to browse them and filter or sort them based on what kind of usage license I have for them. So if I'm doing a commission I can filter out the...

renard_roux ,

I realize this is a FOSS channel, but I'm going to play devil's advocate and suggest Eagle.

I have some 40K assets, mostly JPGs and PNGs, and apart from Obsidian, Eagle is the best piece of software I've found in the last 5 years, maybe longer, and I absolutely adore it.

It's not free, but it's pay-once, fairly cheap, and the upcoming version has an API and huge focus on community developed plugins.

The current version supports a huge amount of file types, including 3D. I'm not completely sure about audio, but I'd be kinda surprised if Eagle didn't support audio.

renard_roux ,

Ooh, that's good! 🤯

renard_roux ,

Always make a backup! Hopefully, they remembered the 1-2-3 rule 🤔

renard_roux ,

Are you sure you responded to the correct comment? 🤔

U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly (www.nytimes.com)

The department joined 16 states and the District of Columbia to file a significant challenge to the reach and influence of Apple, arguing in an 88-page lawsuit that the company had violated antitrust laws with practices that were intended to keep customers reliant on their iPhones and less likely to switch to a competing device....

renard_roux ,

Ah yes, the John Waters strategy! ❤️

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/08fb5db6-1339-455e-9167-2ac390a17734.webp

renard_roux ,

Iirc the pirate bay guys made something like that, but only in the browser, and only for very few websites. It gives the content a like button. Periodically it then distributes money over all your likes from a preset pool of cash.

So, micro payments? 🤔

renard_roux ,

(wink wink)

renard_roux , (edited )

Maybe Sublinks could be(come) that new platform you guys have been searching for, re: Beehaw thinking about leaving Lemmy? 🤔

I just hope it will be compatible with the available Lemmy apps (Voyager in particular) 😓

Edit: Or PieFed I guess 😊

renard_roux , (edited )

I second @ben, it's a really nice game! Extremely well-polished, the UI and color theme are gorgeous, and the sounds work perfectly.

Initial thoughts on the game difficulty:

Having to add up the number values adds an incredible amount of complexity (for my brain at least) — even finding a word to start with takes a lot of time, especially since you don't know how many letters you're aiming for.

I don't want to spoil the current daily, but my first word gave me three greens. I thought I remembered the tutorial saying that green means "correct letter", without saying anything about the position.

Personally, I think this is a bit of a shame; after the initial relief of finding a word that fits the Dot Requirement (DR), I'm now stuck with knowing three letters, but I still don't know the word length, and I don't know if the letters are in the right place.

I have to go hunting for words that contain my three green letters (and none of my grey ones), but even when I manage to think of something, I then have to fulfill the DR, which means a lot of the words I come up with don't even work.

For a second just now, I thought I had come up with a workable strategy: since there is no apparent word length limit (other than dictated by PR), I could just take my green letters, and try to find a single letter to add. Slow going, but at least I'd be working towards a solution. Then I start typing my new, 4-letter word, and I realize that I've forgotten about the DR. Which promptly negates the word I wanted to try.

Obviously, everyone’s brains work differently, and I might just be particularly bad at this specific task, but I simply find it too hard.

I understand that optional settings that affect difficulty are a bit iffy because they could affect any scoreboards that might be added (not seeing any as of yet), but I think those could be taken into account.

Some ideas and suggestions that I think could make the game more accessible to players who find it a bit too hard:

  • Letter Placement Clues (LPC) — Consider differentiating between whether a correct (currently green) letter is in the right place or not; grey still means "wrong letter", yellow (or maybe that delightful peach color from the Enter button) indicates "correct letter, wrong placement", and green indicates "correct letter, correct placement". LPC could be an optional toggle in Settings. This genre of game can usually be condensed down to "Mastermind with Letters", and even Mastermind indicates correct placement (although omitting which letter is correctly placed).

  • Word Length Clues (WLC) — Consider letting the player know how long the target word is. WLC could be an optional toggle in Settings.

  • Tackling scoreboards vs. clue use — If the above (or other) clue settings were implemented, and if a scoreboard gets implemented, the scoreboard could have a tab for each combination of clues:

    • No Clues Used — main scoreboard, doesn’t need to explicitly say anything about clues.

    • LPC used — scores from plays with only LPC enabled.

    • WLC used — scores from plays with only WLC enabled.

    • LPC + WLC used — scores from plays with both clues enabled.

    • Maybe a simple icon could be created for each clue type, and a small icon key shown at the bottom of the scoreboards to indicate which tab has which scores, without having to actually write “LPC” and "WLC”, or some other silly acronym.

  • Point of friction: “Not a Valid Word” — When typing words, a Friendly Chime (FC) sounds when the DR is Satisfied (DRS), supported by the X/Y Counter (XYC) numbers turning green. However, when the word is submitted (Enter button), and only then, the "XXX is Not a Valid Word" notification (NVW) appears (only if it's not a valid word, obviously). The NVW is not accompanied by a sound, nor any other visual indication, and it's a bit anonymous. I just had this happen, and I kept pressing the Enter button a few times before noticing the NVW.

    Is it really necessary to have to Enter to get the NVW? If PRS, I'm clearly not going to add any more letters; I already spent the pip dot quota. I think DRS should trigger the NVW evaluation, without the player needing to press Enter, as it seems an unnecessary step. I'll call this DRS→NVW.

    • Suggestion: Better / more NVW indicators upon NVW-eval causing DRS→NVW (in addition to current notification):
      • Entered letters could turn grey.
      • Enter button could be greyed out.
      • Entered letters could do a Little Shudder (LS) / shake from side to side.
      • A different sound from the FC could play, maybe a Low Note from a Marimba (LNM) or something similar?

  • Consistency: "There must be Exactly X Dots" notification (EXD) — Similarly to the points made for NVW notification above, EXD-eval could trigger on each entered letter, and show EXD notification if total dots entered > DR, instead of only happening after player presses Enter. Some of the extra NVW indicators from above could also carry over to EXD for the sake of consistency:

    • Better / more EXD indicators when player presses Enter without DRS (in addition to current notification):
      • Entered letters do a LS.
      • LNM plays.
      • X in XYC turns red.

  • A thoughts on learning braille — I know available space is a bit sparse, but I think adding the dots to the letters of already entered words would make it more likely that I started associating the dots with the letters. Seeing the dots in the context of a word I spelled would just hammer the point home a bit more; currently, I can see the dots on the keyboard, on the letters I’m currently adding, but not on the words I already entered.

  • Bug? "There must be Exactly X Dots" (EXD) — I actually can't reproduce this now, but I just had a situation where EXD was displayed at the same time as DRS. Not sure how I did it, though. If DRS, then EXD shouldn't be shown, because DRS = exact number of dots is satisfied = no need to explain how many dots are needed.

That’s what I have, off the top of my head. Would love to hear your thoughts, and will come back and update if any other ideas pop up 😊

If you made it this far through my acronym bonanza, thanks! I don’t know if any of the above is useful, but I thought it was worth spending some time on this, as I think the game has great potential, and would be something I would like to play more, were it not for the current difficulty.

renard_roux ,

Wow, that looks great! I was beginning to think you'd missed my comment, or, worse, that it was too annoying 😅

Happy you managed to translate the acronyms and found some of it helpful; I spent way too much time on it 😅

Think the changes are really good! Being allowed to enter words that don't live up to the dot requirement really takes a lot of friction out of it and makes it so much more enjoyable!

Looking forward to seeing future updates, keep up the good work!

I actually stumbled upon a small issue: in Chrome on my Android phone, I've enabled a flag to force dark mode, and it doesn't play nicely with the game. An edge-case for sure, but might be worth looking into. See screenshots below 😊

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renard_roux ,

I'm not even sure I understand it if it's not a joke, and I read the entire thing 😳

Tumblr and Wordpress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools (www.404media.co)

this could not be timed worse for Tumblr which is in huge hot water with its userbase already for its CEO breaking his sabbatical to ban a prominent trans user for allegedly threatening him (in a cartoonish manner), and then spending a week personally justifying it increasingly wildly across several platforms. the rumors had...

renard_roux ,

At least it's not going to get sold here, or on Mastodon I guess, but it's not like the data couldn't get scraped by an unethical actor, right? 🤔

renard_roux ,

That's something I guess 😅👍

renard_roux ,

"Threads had 3 app downloads yesterday, easily beating X's 1" — you're right, doesn't sound as sexy 🤔

renard_roux ,

The white supremacists are running a campaign to help their elderly (quite a large user base) get digitally literate. You get a free noodling glove and a Substack keychain if you install X and take a 15 minute creative writing course.

renard_roux ,

As long as Meta doesn't manage to EEE the Fediverse first 🤢

renard_roux ,
  • They don't like the phone.
  • Battery life sucks.
  • Camera sucks.
  • Stopped watching at that point.

Hope that helps 😊

renard_roux ,

Maybe they need to be told about the alternatives, along with a cost/benefit analysis ™

renard_roux ,

Wow, this takes me back to the days of Eee PCs and dreams of having a tiny, ultra portable laptop 😍

I went down the rabbit hole 😬 This 10.5" CHUWI MiniBook X looks pretty darned tempting!

I could run a minimalistic Fedora distro on it, have it in my jacket pocket. I'd use it mainly as an Obsidian interface. Shame it doesn't have a SIM slot 😓

Maybe something to consider when my ASUS C302 Chromebook Fedorabook (fuck you very much for the EOL, Google!) eventually bites the dust 🤔

renard_roux ,

That sounds like a pretty cool setup! It's nice when there's still good use cases for old hardware 😊

renard_roux ,

I think I liked the thought of having one more than I would have enjoyed actually having one 😅

renard_roux ,

Very cool! 😳

I think it might be a bit beyond both my skill-set and available tools 😅

renard_roux ,

That's not a half bad idea! 😮

How do you prop up the phone? 🤔

renard_roux ,

That sounds like a great solution 😃 Good luck with the writing!

renard_roux ,

I feel the same way. 15 years of daily use.

Hell hath no fury like a fan scorned.

Come on, Pookie, let's burn this motherf*cker down!

Faster backup solution?

I use Beyond Compare to sync files from my laptop to my NAS which is a QNAP (my laptop is Linux Mint). It is incredibly slow, to the point that it is driving me crazy. Admittedly, I have lots of large files on my laptop that I move around frequently, so that may just be how it is. I do have my laptop setup to sync to my phone...

renard_roux ,

Just spent 3 hours today with my stepmom trying to tame the "backup" situation on her work computer (a Mac). I'm just going to dump the (somewhat angry) rant I wrote my wife on the way home on the train:

... and then helping [stepmom] with computer backup for ~3 hours. Made a lot of progress but will need to go back for round 2, need her to get another external drive first.

Apparently her "IT guy" is some old colleague from previous job. Most braindead setup I've ever seen 🤢

Use Carbon Copy Cloner to "backup" (copy) her Desktop and Documents folder to a local OneDrive folder, hope that gets clouded from there. Last time I was there, OneDrive wasn't even running, so nothing was happening. Even if it had been, it was set to "leave local files where they are", so her HDD was almost out of space. This time, it couldn't even be opened because her OS is too old to run it 🙄

Another CCC backup set to copy "full computer" to an external drive (to external root folder, relevant later); CCC full backups are 1:1 clones, so can be restored onto new hardware ... unless the external drive isn't formatted with same filesystem as computer. Of course, it wasn't (FAT32 for a 5TB drive🙄). Oh, and only set to backup on "drive reconnected", so no backups if she leaves it plugged in. Which of course she did.

On top of that, her main working folder is, of course, her Downloads, all 400 GB of it (and none of it added to any cloud backup in any way) 🙄 So once in a while she would manually move (not copy) files to both of her external drives, one reliable LaCie Rugged, one sketchy no-name drive, to clear up space. Except that "full system" CCC backup that runs on "reconnect" is pointing at the reliable drive's ROOT folder, so every time that runs it would delete ALL the files she had manually moved there 🙄

Luckily she has that secondary (sketchy) external drive; all the files on the rugged one are gone forever.

Also - OneDrive for "backup" - what would happen if that folder was deleted locally? It's fucking SYNC! OneDrive would simply remove the files from cloud (if the program had even been (capable of!) running)!

What an idiot 🙄 Wonder how many other people he's "helping" 😬 I should just follow in his wake and make a living fixing his stupidity.

Also on the To-do for next meeting:

  1. set up a password manager, as her current system of manually copying her passwords (all of them the exact same 5-letter word, followed by the exact same 4-digit year, followed by one of 5 symbols, rotated for "security") from last year's paper calendar to this year's paper calendar (with little or no notes about what they're actually for) is ... less than ideal.

  2. install software (Eagle) to manage her ~600 GB collection of work image files, half of which are in folders in her Downloads folder, the other half living dangerously on that sketchy external drive, all of them in semi-randomly named folders with nothing even remotely resembling any sort of system.

  3. copy the files on the current Rugged external drive to the new Rugged external drive so I can format the current one to a FS that can handle TimeMachine.

  4. upgrade her OS so OneDrive can actually run, although I won't be using it for "backup", because:

  5. setting up a proper cloud solution (B2) with proper backup software (Arq or Kopia) to make daily cloud backups of the primary external.

  6. setting up her external drives (at that point two Rugged drives) so one does daily backups (CCC + TimeMachine), and the other does a weekly backup of the first one before getting locked in the safe, with primary also hosting all her images.

Wish me luck 🙄

renard_roux , (edited )

Thank you 😊

I'm happy to help, and she wrote a very sweet message to say thanks, she was very happy 😁

And I'll be very pleased once we get it all sorted. I left her computer copying the files from that sketchy drive to the other one, so at least, until I go back, there should be a bit of redundancy 👌

renard_roux ,

Agreed, which is funny because he's an intelligent guy, and I wouldn't normally take him for someone who's fall for this type of confirmation bias, but tech is a blind spot.

Also, I think he sees me as someone who is overly cautious (for one thing, there are some differences in opinion about how my wife and I raise our kids), which probably means that because the warning about his IT setup is coming from me, it's already somewhat tainted by that.

* adult son is over reacting; take with grain of salt; roll eyes *

renard_roux ,

Should have used rust-free steel instead, classic Dusk mistake 🙄

renard_roux ,

It is a joke, it's just unintended 😁

renard_roux ,

That's fantastic! 😮

Do you have a similar list for macOS? 😅

renard_roux ,

Thank you! I'll save this, just in case! 😁🤘

renard_roux ,

Do you happen to know how to open the link in Read Mode in Voyager (pwa)? 🤔

renard_roux ,

This looks really cool! Any downsides/dangers to this? 🤔

renard_roux ,

Seems to be very similar to his The Enshittification of TikTok post, linked here on his own platform (no ads).

I didn't do a full comparison, though.

renard_roux ,

Strange, I'm not seeing that at all on my Android phone, neither in the PWA or the native app. Are you on iOS? Maybe it's a Safari thing 🤔

renard_roux ,

First, thank you for the comment.

Under different circumstances, however, I'd be more likely to take it to heart.

Certainly, I'm fully aware it's the same author, which should also be pretty evident from my comment, as I clearly stated that it was similar to his other article.

Kindly let me know if you have suggestions about how I could have worded my comment differently.

You may not have had the correct context, but I was merely pointing out that the sticker was similar to the one he wrote about TikTok, because others had mentioned how cancerous the ads were on the linked platform, and there was a small chance it was the same story, repackaged.

Of course, there was also the chance that someone might have missed it, which would be a shame, because it's a good read.

Until now, I'd been under the impression that my comment was simple enough for most, but I see now that a lot of my intentions with it were implied only, and maybe I should have brought bigger crayons.

renard_roux ,

Thank you for the insights! 👍

renard_roux ,

A highly curated RSS feed pushed to your eInk device, perhaps?

But yeah, agree 😓

Microsoft stole my Chrome tabs, and it wants yours, too (www.theverge.com)

Last week, I turned on my PC, installed a Windows update, and rebooted to find Microsoft Edge automatically open with the Chrome tabs I was working on before the update. I don’t use Microsoft Edge regularly, and I have Google Chrome set as my default browser. Bleary-eyed at 9AM, it took me a moment to realize that Microsoft...

renard_roux ,

*chuckles in Google*

renard_roux ,

Same, used Opera religiously back in the day, so much more functional than the rest. Switched to Chrome (yes yes, I know) when it started going downhill.

Chrome still doesn't have the ability to set a shortcut for "switch to previous tab", have to use a plugin for that 🙄

renard_roux ,

Don't be evil.

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