Subscribed - only your subscribed communities, regardless of instance.

Local - only lemmygrad posts, all communities

All - all federated instances together, regardless of which communities you subscribe to

I ask because I realize we have a lot of communities on lemmygrad but the same 2 or 3 tend to pop up. I also noticed posts on lesser-known communities tend to take longer to see some interaction, if at all.

At a time where video game productions are getting more outrageously expansive every year, Dishonored 1 and even the more recent Deathloop (2021, also Arkane) remind us that games are meant to be FUN.

I recently played through deathloop for the second time and am now approaching the end of dishonored 1 for the third time, and at every step I've been thinking, it's just a fun game. It doesn't try to punch above its weight and do stuff it can't manage, it's just a solid gameplay experience that doesn't hate the player, which is a rarity these days.

When talking about fun in video games, I am always reminded of David Sirlin's philosophy to approaching Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Yes, that's what the game was called lol. Instead of trying to put on a grandiose show or wowing audiences with graphics, he focused on making solid gameplay, and he did this through balance. His idea was that if the game was balanced, people would ultimately find their fun (considering it's a 2-player versus game). He made the controls easier so that skill came not from knowing the weird and hard combos like quarter-circles, but from the strategic gameplay, i.e. Yomi. Good players were still good, but newer players reached the intermediate level much faster. Ultimately, this is good for everyone: less frustration to new players, and more opponents to experienced players.

My fellow co-admin was asking about Death Stranding a few days ago which got me to boot the game up again and, let's be honest, it's a movie that pretends to be a game. You may disagree and that's fine haha. Kojima doesn't hide his affection for cinema, but playing DS just got me asking... why not make a movie at that point? The gameplay of DS is often reduced to being a 'walking sim' but I didn't find it boring like the name walking sim implies. Rather, I felt like the gameplay was only a glorified countdown until I could unlock the next cutscene. And sorry but that's just not what I'm looking for in a game, nor what I think games ought to be, because they don't have to compete with movies!

In Dishonored, the story is only a pretext for more gameplay (it's basically the count of monte cristo with extra steps), the characters are one-dimensional and it's not a super long game. Because of that, themes don't have time to develop and the story has no real climactic or impactful moments.

BUT... it works. It's fun, it's a solid experience, and it's one of the few games that can catch my attention for hours at a time.

Its level system, which was getting outdated by 2013 standards already, basically drops you into a self-contained sandbox with an objective: kill your target. How you get to your target and how you take them out is up to you. A nonlethal option is always possible, if you find it. And that's all you get. Once you're in a level, it's basically you and the objective. There's no new cutscenes or exposition or people endlessly yapping in your ear about how to complete your objective. The game leaves you to it and doesn't try to shoehorn you into doing one thing or another.

There's some collectible stuff but nowhere near the level of what you see in modern games, e.g. having to dismount from your horse every 15 meters so you can pick up a brightly glowing plant that you'll use to make some potion in a menu. I think one thing that makes the levels work is that you also can't go in a straight line; they are crafted to make every method to your objective viable. In contrast, in open world games you usually end up walking in a straight line to the next objective marker because you just want to get to the game. Nobody takes the train just for the sake of taking the train: you travel to go place. In Dishonored, the level is the objective so it doesn't feel like you're traveling so much as you're completing an objective.

In other words, it doesn't sidetrack you with bullshit every 10 seconds trying to get you to do something different. I think this is something games are sorely missing nowadays; in an industry that has so much competition, a lot of the overall effort is put into the graphics and into retaining the player's attention. This is a mistake, as Dishonored shows the player will invest their attention in a game naturally; it doesn't need to keep yelling "hey! hey! do this! do that! go get this! upgrade that!" all the time.

The pacing is sometimes very fast, but it's fine because the game keeps moving forward to the next set piece. It's level after level and you keep asking for more.

There's more I could say but this is getting long lol. In closing I would like to say please make games that are fun, not tedious. The purpose of a game - video or not - is to be fun, and fun comes from different places. A story can be told through a variety of mediums, but only a game is interactive.

My alarm clock buzzes with the familiar tone of the 90s. It's very retro, very in right now. I was able to splurge on the sound pack after I made a little bit extra one night and I don't regret any of it.

I open my phone and check the app. "Good morning Bria," it greets me as always. My name is actually Brian but for some reason the app glitches on the welcome screen and the N always gets cut off. "Your clone made you $17.68 while you were asleep."

"Nice," I mutter still half-asleep. The app gives me a whole page of line graphs and stats comparing my clone's performance over the past week and month, and even sends me a graph of my clone's performance hour by hour overnight. I pay for the stats package but honestly sometimes I feel like I don't need it, I can tell if his performance was above the usual or not. But I like having access to the stats, yknow? I don't like seeing that button greyed out.

I get up thinking about what I'll be able to afford with those 17 dollars and try not to think about how much will be left after paying the service fees and taxes. If I can get even 10 dollars though I'm happy. Before I forget, I send a thumbs up to my clone over the app. Gotta let him know he did a good job.

I make myself some coffee, paying for it with my phone's NFC function. I love that my machine does that. It's like having fresh barista-brewed coffee every morning; the machine does everything, I just pay for the cup. Of course I still have to fill the machine with coffee beans and water, but so does any coffee store. It just captures the experience so well at half the cost, what's not to like?

"Hey so, how much did your clone make last night?" Sarah asks me during our 10AM break. I look up from my phone. "17 whole dollars, and 68 cents" I'm proudly beaming. "Oh damn!" she can't believe it. I knew it. "Mine only made me 12 bucks... I don't know if I'll be able to afford rent this month at this rate." Well, sucks to sucks. What can I say. Your clone is a reflection of you, it's literally a clone. If it's not performing well then that's kind of your own fault.

But I have to keep up appearances if I want to make it to Executive Associate Manager for Internal Priorities (Temporary, Non-Voting) one day, so I just smile and nod. I'm sure the camera in the break room will pick that up and the AI will record it in my file. "Yeah, that's a bummer" I tell her. "Sorry, I gotta go back to work" I excuse myself from the room. I don't want her bad vibes rubbing off on me or my clone.

At around lunch time the Senior Director of Operational Excellence and Cross-Functional Integrity (permanent, non-voting) knocks on my office door. "Hey, you got a minute?" he asks as he steps into my office anyway. "Heard your clone made 17 dollars last night" he says with a hint of admiration. "That's exactly the kind of forward thinking strategical implementation we value here. Keep it up" he gives me a thumbs up, and I give him one back. I don't know why I just did that.

And with that he leaves my office, but I get a ping soon after on our Firecamp chat that I just got a thumbs up there too. Nice. This will definitely get the higher ups' attention. Sarah instantly messages me, of course. "Oh wow, you got a thumbs up from the Senior Director of Operational Excellence and Cross-Functional Integrity (permanent, non-voting)?? Lucky you!!". "Ikr" I just reply. If she and her clone spent more time working and less time chatting on the Firecamp app maybe she'd get thumbs ups too. I don't need her negative energy in my life.

And with that another productive day at work is done. I hurry on home not because I have anything particular planned but because I can't wait to go to sleep and wake up in the morning seeing how much money my clone made for me overnight.

I love these clones. Some people weren't on board when the tech was announced but what were they gonna do? Just keep complaining online? In the end they got on board with the program like everyone else when the app released. The tech is pretty cool. You send a buccal sample and this company creates a clone of yourself. Then the clone works at night while you sleep. It's made passive income available for everyone. Now you don't need to start a dropshipping scam or sell online courses in bullshittery to people, you just get a clone made and literally sleep on it. And in the morning you make some extra income. What's not to like? I mean, it's literally free money. People stopped complaining pretty quickly once they saw the money in their bank account. Pretty soon everyone got on board and I heard the company is now global and worth trillions.

That evening, I browse the company's subreddit for a while before going to sleep to see if anyone else gets it. I start to see some weird topics though. 'Company accused of not having achieved clone technology', or 'Company takes back "Clones on Mars" statement: "it was premature"'. Bullshit. These are just overpaid journalists jealous that they haven't thought of this first, and they're taking their frustration out on the company now. "My clone made me $19 dollars last night," one user says. "That's all I care about." I let him know I agree with him. Damn. 19 whole dollars. I kinda wish my clone got off its ass and reached those kinds of numbers too.

"How do you think the clones work?" Sarah asks at break time the next morning. "Huh?" I look up from my phone. "I mean," she continues, "They clock in when we clock out, right? But like, what happens after that?" I sigh. She's always like this, and that's why she's not getting the promotions. I pull up the app -- $16.41 overnight by the way -- and tap on the big question mark button. It's there for a reason. "I mean, it says right there they do our job but at night and then deactivate. I leave my clone some instructions in a text file and then he logs in at night and continues my job."

"Yeah I know," she's not letting this go. "But what do they do when we wake up? Do they just... go to sleep? Can they even do that?"

"I dunno. But hey, I'd rather have the money than not have it, y'know?"

Mark cuts in. He's a real downer -- I feel like everyone here is. They just can't accept a good thing when they're given it. "I kinda wish we'd make more money on our clones. 13 dollars a night is... not a whole lot" he takes a sip of coffee as Sarah agrees with him.

"Yeah but the tech is still young. We're the early adopters," I tell them. They just don't get it. "In a few years it'll be much better, we may even have like, an army of clones instead of just one each. The company has already announced some of these plans coming soon, and they're actually letting you purchase bonds in their company now which are directly tied to your clone's productivity in value so if your clone is more productive your stock proportionally increases in value. You can get in for as low as $500 so that's like, 1 month of your clone working and you doing nothing."

"I guess," Mark says. "I still wish they'd increase the payout" he grumbles and quickly leaves the break room with his coffee in hand before I can finish my sentence. Typical.

"I don't think they're gonna put clones on Mars," Megan chimes in. Whatever. I gotta go back to work. I leave Sarah and Megan to debate the ethics of clone labor instead of doing their work. This is not gonna reflect well on their quarterly evaluations.

That night I open the subreddit again. I feel like they're the only people that get me. "Can we get the negative posts under control?" one user asks the mods. "This is my safe space and I don't like all the negativity here. It feels like some people here just want to propagandize and demonize the company that's done so much good for the world. It's annoying." I upvote him.

I refresh the page and see a topic with 0 upvotes and 679 comments. It's titled "clone company exposed as exploiting slave labor". More jealousy. I open the thread to have a laugh at the trolls. They're saying stuff like the company is using workers in India and Bangladesh and only saying they're clones. Whatever, it's just petty rumors. It doesn't make any sense if you think about it. One thread says "I opened my computer at work this morning and it says the files were edited by Ramesh. My name is Liam." People in the comments are debating whether the post is true or just rage bait. I close the post after a while. I can't wait to wake up and see how much money I made overnight while these trolls are still raging and doing nothing productive.

"Did you see the video?" Sarah asks at lunch break. "Which one?" I ask. "Some guy filmed a video of himself logging into a client computer, and he explains his job is to pretend he's this guy and do his job at night." "That doesn't sound right," I cut back. "It's probably someone trying to make a quick buck on the controversy."

"I guess..." Sarah says after a moment of staring at her phone. "But it seems pretty real, look." she shoves the phone in my face with the video playing. And yeah, it's a guy in some building in India showing how he logs into this guy's computer in America when it's night here and does his job for him. He says he has a master's degree in mathematics and the guy he works for just sends emails most of the time.

"What does that prove?" I ask. "I mean, we've never actually seen the clones, have we?" Sarah retorts. "How do we know they're even real?" I sigh and open the FAQ page on the app again. "Says right here their technology is based on decades-proven academic papers and a new cutting-edge in-house process to-" "Yeah but that doesn't mean anything," Sarah cuts me off. "I think they're probably just hiring people in India to do our jobs at night and saying they're clones."

"I mean. Does it matter? At the end of the day I make money while I sleep, y'know?"

Over the next few days more accusations come out and the company is forced to reply to them. I see them coming on TV to explain their process. This kind of witch hunt is exhausting. Some people really have nothing better to do. Even at work I can't escape it, this is all my coworkers talk about.

I stop following along eventually. It's kind of a mess. More videos come out of people in India complaining about the conditions. They say they get paid 2 dollars an hour while the company pockets 35. Okay, I have to admit this caught my attention. 35 dollars while I only make 15 a night on average? That's a lot of money if they're only providing the service. It got so big that apparently an investigation was opened into the company's practices, for false advertising.

"Says here the company is going to review their payment scheme," Sarah reads from a headline. "They're going to change the payout model which should increase revenue by 10% for most users. Some people are saying they're only doing this to deflect criticism though."

"10 percent? Damn, that's the biggest increase yet!" I can barely contain my excitement. That's huge! "Yeah, I know!" Sarah happily expresses. "Imagine all the things I'll be able to afford with this!" We both agree. That night on reddit, I se we're not the only ones excited for the new payout model. People are already talking about what they'll do with the money.

The company isn't lying. It takes a couple days but after that, my charts start showing a clear 9.7% increase in my payouts. Love it.

You might have seen this article circulating. This is from 972 mag, a zionist rag (that pretends to be on the left). The byline specifies "Chinese-made drones" are being used by the IOF to kill people in Palestine.

Except reading the article they clearly, black-on-white state that:

1. The first batch of drones were bought by Statesians and donated to the IOF (lol, as if 3 billion $$$ a year isn't enough for them)
2. Later, the US started producing these drones -- the Autel EVO -- in the US and donating them to the IOF.

The drones are also modified by the IOF to have a grenade mechanism attached, like in Ukraine. These are photography drones, they're being used for war because they're good quality otherwise.

In August 2024, China passed restrictions on the sale of civilian drones for military purposes and Autel themselves (this you can find in a reference linked in the 972 article) is opposed to this misuse of their tech but they can't really do anything about it if the US keeps producing them.

The real story here is the US can't compete with chinese drones so they steal the tech and produce knock-offs. How the times have changed.

972's byline is doubly weird because it's wrong. "Weaponizing Chinese tech" would be more accurate, I'd have problems with that but not as much. "Chinese-made drones" implies they are made in China or by China, which is not true.

This is a bit of a rant but I need comrades to stop falling for anti-AES propaganda everytime it happens. People instantly jumped on the "China is selling weapons to enemies of communism!" point. No. China does not sell weapons to the IOF, their tech is being misused. They don't sell weapons to the Philippines or provide them, they don't provide weapons to the US, they don't provide weapons to Ukraine, they don't provide weapons to anyone you've heard them provide weapons too.

I'll tell you who provides weapons though. The UK. The US. France. They find new ways to kill people in atrocious ways, and then send this experimental tech to the IOF to be tested on Palestinians. They have missiles that fire sharp steel blades upon impact cutting through everything it crosses in a 10 meter radius. They have bombs that deliver compound shrapnel that leaves almost no entry sign, but will shatter your spine completely.

Oooh but no, you can modify a photography drone by 3d printing a component, this means China must stop producing commercial quadcopters and leave the tech solely in the hands of the US!!! I am being very dialectical 🤓

Don't lose sight of what's actually important here. Stop looking towards what China does (which it doesn't do anyway) and look to your own countries instead. They're the ones enabling genocides.

In the Warring States period, the state of Wu had invaded the state of Yue, and carried off its duke Guo Jian as a prisoner with them.

Guo Jian was held for three years by the state of Wu until he was released back to his home. When he returned, he started planning his revenge.

For seven years he ruled with benevolence and generosity, making a reputation as a wise and virtuous ruler. Accordingly, he assembled his loyal forces on the eight year and attacked Wu, swiftly beating them.

The king of Wu had to flee, but hurt as he was, fleeing on foot and alone, it was only a matter of time before the forces of Yue would catch up to him. Fearing the worst after running all night, he quickly sent ambassadors to Guo Jian when the morning came, begging for mercy.

The ambassadors reminded the duke of how he had been treated as a prisoner of Wu. That even though he was under their grasp, the king of Wu eventually allowed him to return home unscathed. Our king now asks to be granted the same favor, the ambassadors said.

At these words Guo Jian's prime advisor, Fan Li, intervened. He said: "My lord, when heaven gave the duke of Wu the grand opportunity for gaining power he did not take advantage of it and so he is a fugitive today. Should you fail to accept what fortune has now given you, you may be driven from your state, and then all the years of hardships you have bourn will have been endured in vain."

Hearing this, Guo Jian agreed with Fan Li and sent back a message saying that he would not grant any mercy. When the king of Wu received the news from his ambassadors, it is said that he gave up all hope and committed suicide.

(adapted from a story told in the 36 Stratagems)

I have finally gone around to implementing the much-awaited reading mode. This is a distraction-free reading mode that basically removes everything but the text.

Combined with the settings (the gear icon which not enough people use tbh), you can now tailor your reading experience to pretty much the level you need. Font-size, font type (serif, sans), theme (light-dark-sepia), and even page width.

For now it's kind of an easter egg because you have to know to press the 0 key, but it allows us to test the new mode and start deploying it.

Press 0 again to cancel it, or just refresh the page - it doesn't save on purpose. Reading mode only works on desktop because it kind of already exists on mobile.

It also adds a line cursor that highlights the line you're pointing over, to help you keep track of where you are on the page, or if you need it for accessibility reasons.

The goal for the reading mode is "a reading experience so comfortable you will start reading one word and suddenly hours have passed". I don't know if we'll achieve that but we'll get as close to it as possible.

It still needs some fiddling with the colors (and so does the sepia theme) so you don't have to tell me about that lol, but if you have ideas or stuff you've always wanted to have in a reading mode or similar, lmk.

en.prolewiki.org find it