I haven’t used an antivirus software in over 10 years and I haven’t gotten a virus or had any other issues. As for VPN,

a) I wouldn’t trust Malwarbytes because they have an abysmal customer service history

b) I wouldn’t trust NordVPN because I don’t trust companies that advertise on youtube

I guess if you had an generalized AI meant to play video games, you would presumably need to feed it a bunch of games so it could get better.

Although I’d imagine it’d be difficult creating the “win conditions” for it to improve.

For example in a game like Super Mario Bros it’s fairly simple - there’s a point counter on the top right you can just feed into the model. In a racing game, you could just take the time per lap and make that the fitness measurement. This makes it so anybody can just download some machine learning library and an emulator and go to town.

But in a game like Skyrim or GTA- how would you measure fitness?

For that reason, I think you would probably need a very generalized AI like Chatgpt with some sort of interface that allows it to make decisions on the spot with an overarching directive.

It’s an interesting question. I think we’re very close to something like this, although it’s prohibitively expensive right now. At least for an AI to do in real-time. Maybe if you had an emulator you could sort of do something like this if you’re able to freeze the game every time you send a prompt to the AI.

Ie you’re playing Skyrim. You take a screenshot of the screen and then turn that into pixel data. You take your current health. You take your inventory. You take your level, your mana, your quest log etc. Then you send that all to the AI and say “Hey, your goal is to complete the main quest line. What do you do next?” The emulator freezes the game, waits for a response. AI says “I will move towards the next village. Press W to move forward.” then the interface sends the “W” command to the emulator. Plays a frame or two and then freezes again. Sends another prompt to the AI.

and so on and so on. That is technically possible right now, although like I said - very expensive. Every call to an AI like that costs $$$. The more data you send, the more expensive. And sending the screenshot data every frame or two is a lot of data. Not to mention you would presumably need many thousands to get anywhere in the game.

perhaps there are AIs you can run on your PC that won’t be as good as chatGPT but maybe good enough to do this? not sure. I’ve been wanting to look into it but I also don’t want to fry my graphics card

This was me in my early 20s. Drugs and sex and drugs and sex. Overdoses and STDs. Thankfully the passions of youth tend to wear off eventually. These days I’m much more controlled and content. Sober and been in a quiet monogamous relationship for years.

Do you mean the promoted content done by the youtubers themselves? Because there are no YouTube ads when you use Premum.

And Premium recently came out with a feature that makes it really easy to skip the promotional content.

I spent like a full week setting up my nvim config and it’s the only thing I use. Fits like a glove and everything else feels off.

Although VS Code + vim mode isn’t bad.

What kinda stuff do you usually write? These days I’m mostly doing react native. I wonder if Kate plays nicely with vim mode. I use Gnome on my Arch so I try to avoid KDE applications.

i have a terminal emulator app that i use to connect to some of my vps’s whenever there’s some issue i need to resolve and i’m not at home. although it’s quite a painful experience. i’m impressed at anybody who uses a phone to do anything substantial.

i remember there was some kid on probation for hacking who used a kindle fire stick to do some cool stuff. you can do really anything you want if you have the creativity and vision

However there still is some information, where Twitter is a good source.

I agree. There are some great OSINT posters that share all sorts of information you won’t find anywhere else. For example when Israel struck back at Iran after the initial wave of missiles and drones- it was a guy on twitter who geolocated and found the satellite images of what they hit.

And that information directly contradicted the Israeli official narrative. You won’t find it on NY Times. You won’t find it on Washington Post. Hell, you’d have a hard time finding it here or on reddit. That’s just one example, there’s a wealth of live data about Russia v Ukraine as well. One thing I’ve really learned the last 3 years since 2022 is that the mainstream media will completely lie to you. It isn’t just bias, it’s outright lying. So people online who are dedicated to the truth and provide receipts, I find, is a breath of fresh air. It allows humans without privileged information to go online and actually see with their own eyes what is happening on the ground. It’s something that frankly hasn’t been the case for any time in human history. Although I think it’s going to be a short window of time that will be true.

I think Twitter has progressively been becoming more censored. For now, most people are more or less ignored if you aren’t talking about the hot topics- but I think very soon anything against official US narrative will be banned. Same thing with Facebook, Tiktok, etc.

We’re seeing the social media sites align themselves with the US government in preparation for the next global war. The first thing to go in war is the truth. Soon there will be a giant firewall and we won’t be able to see content from overseas. Initially people will be able to use VPNs and other methods and then eventually that will be met with criminal charges.

Look, I’m all for freedom of speech. I’m nearly as close to an absolutist as they come.

This is an example of a protest. Nobody is restricting anybody’s speech. They aren’t banning Musk-supporters. They aren’t censoring Trumpers. They are specifically banning links to a website owned by a billionaire who did a Nazi salute at an event where hundreds of millions if not billions of people would witness him.

I think in a time like that I couldn’t be silent.

Honestly, nobody really knows until they are in such a position. I’d like to think I’d be noble and rebel but honestly I think I’d just try and stay quiet and under the radar. The older I’ve gotten, the more cynical I’ve become about positive change.

I’m more worried with making sure me and my family are in a good position. And if I start posting dissent online and end up in a gulag or just get dissapeared for it… it’s not quite conducive to that goal.

they can’t ban everything, the Internet is too big. people will find a way

they don’t really have to ban everything. for example, the persistent chinese internet-goer has the ability to view things he’s not supposed to see even though China bans large swathes of the internet.

but by making it as difficult as possible for most people and creating strict punishments for breaking the rules, you can effectively ban most things you want for majority of people

if posting on lemmy makes you an enemy of the state and the state is becoming increasingly harsh with its punishments… would you still be going on and posting regularly? i would certainly think twice.

I have a feeling this place and other decentralized social medias will be banned in the near future. Look at what’s happening to TIktok. You either bend the knee or you get axed. It’s why the other social media giants bent the knee. They understand the writing on the wall. There’s more going on behind the scenes that they don’t share with us. I think we’re sort of watching a quiet coup.

I disagree with this. I think we are in a game renaissance right now with many great games being released all the time.

What I agree does suck are Triple A games. Why do they suck? Well, they cost a lot of money to make. You need a team of dozens of people working over a long period of time along with lots of marketing. Millions and tens of millions of dollars can easily go into a modern AAA game.

So when you have millions of dollars of investor money behind you- you’re not going to take many risks. You’re going to be as conservative and formulaic as possible so that you can better predict what you will bring in through revenue. This is why there’s a new Call of Duty, FIFA, and Assassin’s Creed every single year. And they’re all virtually the same game with slight changes.

In my opinion if you want to see actual innovation and creativity, you (generally) have to look outside of these types of games. Not even necessarily niche indie games, but smaller scale developers. They don’t have nearly as much overhead and they tend to have passionate individuals with a vision. This gives them more flexibility.

So as a general rule of thumb, you’ll find more ambitious games coming from smaller developers. And with ambition comes both great successes and failures. But the cream rises to the top.

I beg to differ. The situation was MUCH better in this regard in Western Europe 15-20 years ago when being openly far-right would get you socially ostracized for the most part, and media didn’t routinely bring far-right mouthpieces on national TV.

the question we need to ask is why was being right-wing socially unacceptable back then?

why is it OK for a politician like Trump to say “immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country” today whereas just 20 years ago that would immediately end a political career?

it’s not because we had more censorship.

the why is what we need to address. without economic security and legitimate institutions, we are lost.

censorship is not the solution and in fact it’s actively harmful. any mechanisms we create for a government to start censoring will inevitably be taken over by fascists when they come to power. and I think we only got a few years left at best

True, the far right has lost of lot of ground since musk took over twitter

we aren’t talking about some social media platform. we’re talking about a nation state censoring speech. these are two radically different things.

having said that, even on social media platforms with modern machine learning algorithms you can’t effectively censor. Look at how the far-right uses memes and secret symbols to communicate even through algorithms. for example the pepe the frog memes, the 88, the hand symbols, etc.

you can’t say “rape” on youtube or tiktok so people just use “grape” instead. the Chinese do similar things on their internet. censorship is always going to be a losing battle.

Hanging Nazis was really a mistake post war

executing people who committed war crimes and genocide versus a country censoring speech. again… two radically different things.

Giving them parlement [sic] seats is the best way to take power from them.

explain the connection between “giving” seats to Nazis (last I checked we had elections) in the current discussion about a country censoring speech.

(Yes, this is how stupid you sound)

you are free to spend your time on the internet saying anything you like. if making these weak appeal to ridicule comments makes you feel stronger, I support you

Censoring the far-right doesn’t make it go away. It just pushes it underground where it becomes even more radical outside of the moderating influence of the mainstream.

The solution is not censorship, but to understand what is causing the rise in right wing radicalism and address the root cause.

That root cause is the total loss of faith institutions coupled with economic insecurity felt by the working class. When people are scared and angry, they will turn to those who give them simple solutions and an easy scapegoat. It’s a tale as old as time.

You can try and censor all you want, it won’t ultimately make a difference.

Yeah let’s follow China’s lead and become just like them! I support restricting political freedoms and a giant firewall and a social credit system too.

They are obviously the superior system and therefore we need to emulate them.

All the potential DVD/bluray sales - gone. All the merchandising - gone. The potential for spin-off shows - gone

I’m sure they’re still making money hand over first from DVD sales & streaming. Not to mention they actually did launch a spin off show

But is that not the same way with “how”?

How do objects fall to the ground? → the Earth exerts a gravitational force on them

How does Earth exert a gravitational force? → All objects with mass create a gravitational field that attracts other masses

How do objects create a gravitation field? → Mass warps spacetime and this curvature directs objects to follow paths towards the source of the mass

and so on, etc

The difference between “how” and “why” doesn’t seem very meaningful to me. For example- why does water boil? It boils because molecules gain enough energy through heat to transition states.

In that same sense, OP’s question

why there is something instead of nothing.?

There’s a non zero chance that we eventually understand the mechanisms behind the big bang and can explain how nothing turned into something. Therefore we will be able to explain the why, no?

Not fucked. Of course I have some cringy stuff on MySpace from when I was in my early teens. But generally speaking, over the last two decades or so I don’t post anything I wouldn’t be OK with everyone finding out about