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gila ,

DaVinci resolve is on a completely different level to shotcut or kdenlive. None of them are totally intuitive, but the required learning on something like Shotcut essentially boils down to understanding that pretty much everything is a video filter, or basic track operation hotkeys (e.g S to split video segment at selected frame, X to delete selected segment).

For your use cases I'd suggest taking another look at either of those and ignoring "advanced" settings wherever possible, it's really not that bad and you're unlikely to find anything on either Linux or windows that is both lightweight & does all that

gila ,

Okay you got me with this one. Excepting one category of Apple products, you would need to go back about half a century to find an example of a major hardware manufacturer that is worse at "allowing" open source operating systems.

gila ,

Here's an AI slop group on Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/en/artist/350313592

They might not have soundalike AI slop covers of music that's been pulled from their platform like Spotify does, but that's kinda putting the cart before the horse.

gila ,

Any OiNK/What.cd users in here? Good luck with that, AA

gila ,

Some of my favourite shows have a very slow pace. But so much of this story was frontloaded in the first 2 episodes, it created a stark difference in pacing compared with the rest of the season. I thought it'd likely return to the fast pace in the finale. I imagined Gilligan's process setting up the premise and having some big twist planned, with the middle episodes mostly serving as a means to get there. But now it seems like he just came up with the premise and once established, now wants to explore it slowly and methodically. That's totally fine for me, but can totally understand it having less widespread appeal than how it initially seemed

gila ,

The first couple episodes alone were a very cool story, but I'm not sure the premise has much lasting potential. Not that I mind a slower pace, the episodes now are still interesting to me. But it is starting to feel like they're drawing it out, likely for some big twist in the final episode

gila ,

AVP just isn't canon. IMO that's part of its appeal

Valve’s Steam Machine looks like a console, but don’t expect it to be priced like one - Ars Technica ( arstechnica.com )

After Valve announced its upcoming Steam Machine living room box earlier this month, some analysts suggested to Ars that Valve could and should aggressively subsidize that hardware with “loss leader” pricing that leads to more revenue from improved Steam software sales. In a new interview with YouTube channel Skill Up, ...

gila ,

Generally, games cannot tell what the performance bottleneck in your configuration is, especially taking into account things like upscaling or playing at scaled res. This is pretty significant for mid-range configurations. That people want plug and play doesn't mean they're happy for games not to take full advantage of their hardware.

gila ,

They already tried that with the original steam machines and it flopped hard. It'll be significantly better value or it'll flop again, simple. They're clearly optimizing for price based on the vram/ram specs. Yeah maybe it'll go up after launch but out of the gate it'll be sub-$500/512gb otherwise the whole exercise is pointless

gila ,

VR, controller, and console/PC that all interact seamlessly

I don't see it as a killer feature. In fact, the main advantage of these individual devices (as in the new ones, not Steam Deck) is that you don't need the others, rather than that they interact seamlessly.

e.g with Steam Frame, you don't need a gaming PC to actually run Half Life Alyx to be able to play it. If you already have a gaming PC, at most it offers minor advantages over any other VR headset.

e.g with Steam Machine, you don't need a gaming PC to engage with the Valve ecosystem and play on your TV. If you already have a gaming PC, you can already stream it to your TV for free.

Also, ecosystem maturity won't fundamentally change that as a prospective steam machine customer, you will still need to configure game settings. You will still accidentally touch the trackpads in a way that causes issues in some games. Granted, the relative maturity and design improvements will make a big difference. But it's more of a difference in customer retention and satisfaction than a difference that will get Valve's foot in the door with someone invested enough in gaming to prefer a more open ecosystem, yet not invested enough to already own an equivalent console or equivalent/better gaming PC.

There are many ways they could leverage a lower cost which Sony/MS can't/won't, e.g. make generic controllers compatible, sell the console without one, recoup margin on steam controllers (one of the highest-margin tech product categories around these days)

gila ,

Microsoft and Sony have no leverage at all over Valve when it comes to PC sales. Reneging on their deals to bring their published games to Steam would only mean fewer sales.

gila ,

Price or multibuy promotions
First words of the article

gila ,

Aus cannabis patient here, so I don't actually know. But I'd have to think you could get it prescribed for sure - covered I doubt it due to the much higher cost.

Concentrate vapes are cheap but carts are much more expensive than flower. Whereas vapes for dry flower (that would be appropriate for medical use) would be very expensive.

Here literally all medical cannabis is either edibles or flower prescribed specifically for vaping. But there's zero coverage (other than for the prescription itself)

gila ,

I think you're both right. The active boycotting part likely will blow over quickly for most. But it's still an opportunity for a large group of subscribers, many of which are primarily subscribed due to FOMO, to reconsider the value of their subscription. Some segment of boycott participants will end up resubscribing. Some segment will remain unsubscribed and go without. Some other segment will remain unsubscribed and switch to piracy. Over the past 5 years since the service started, this kind of opportunity has only really happened around the annual price increase (e.g in Dec 2022, Oct 2023, Oct 2024).

I think it's totally plausible that we would have seen another price increase next month, but won't. It'd be too many reasons to unsubscribe, too close together. Even if they're comfortable enough to increase in Dec instead of Oct, that's still a hypothetical loss of 100s of millions in monthly revenue. That's a significant win for the boycott.

gila ,

https://store.steampowered.com/app/385380/Planet_Centauri/

They did kinda abuse early access to crowdfund development for a very long time. 100k+ copies sold is not a bad result overall. The bug is pretty unfortunate, but they didn't exactly set themselves up for future financial success. Seems more like an unfortunate factor in the "flop" rather than the ultimate cause of it.

The game does look interesting though and if they can regain enough momentum off a daily deal and/or future discounts to fix some of the issues mentioned in the post-1.0 reviews, I'll definitely consider getting it on sale.

gila , (edited )

I think "oot" emphasises the difference from US accents for parody reasons, and also it's just not that simple to describe that difference by substituting a single letter of the alphabet. The best way I can think of to describe it (based on experience with friends from BC) is like a combination of "oht" and "oat"

gila , (edited )

https://faq.whatsapp.com/414631957536067/

Either the report function doesn't work like they say, or messages are stored decrypted, or they can decrypt messages at will based on a simple request from another user

Edit: fixed

gila ,

You're right, the messages would not be decrypted by the server but by the client making the report. Key rotation also shouldn't be an issue because it uses a ratcheting chain key. But if the non-malicious client is already set up to send decrypted messages to the server, this seems antithetical to the idea that WhatsApp can't read your conversations. There are clear caveats without even introducing the idea of a malicious client potentially exfiltrating decrypted messages elsewhere. Signal on the other hand receives the reported senders phone number and an encrypted message ID, presumably acting on spam reports by relying on multiple reports of the same message from the same sender, rather than by reading the message

gila ,
gila ,

As soon as I realised I was getting hit for 2 masks, what I read from it was "at some point in this game I will have at least 7 masks". I don't want to spoil myself, but I only really agree with you if that isn't the case. If you haven't reached that point either, just imagine how nice it'll feel

gila ,

Only a couple extra permanent ones from actual mask shards though, right?

I think the tools are this one's intended combined damage mitigation, e.g. the magma bell reducing fire attacks to 1 damage. It's not really that every significant enemy does 2 damage and that's that, instead you gotta gear up synergistically.

I get what you're saying though. I think probably they wanted to make other gear more meaningful than in HK where mask shards & silk spools are kinda the only collectables worth a damn.

gila ,

Yeah I don't have many tools in general but I upgraded the blue slot on my crest first anticipating nice synergies between healing & damage reduction

gila , (edited )

Niagara launcher has "pop-ups" on swipe which can act as an app folder, or display app shortcuts or widgets. Not exactly the same behaviour but imo tidier & more elegant approach to basically the same use case.

gila ,
gila , (edited )

The problem with a wrapper as you put it, specifically one running on Linux, is DRM. The only way I know of to achieve the desired Widevine encryption level is running the service in a tab in Chrome. Not any other browser, not even Chromium.

Of course you could just bypass all that nonsense by pirating your media, and have a nice easy interface consolidating titles from all streamers - even retaining a network badge so they can see where a given popular show is airing - like what I've set up in Kodi for myself as well as boomer relatives.

Other than that I'd recommend Flirc for input via remote (or LIRC if you have a supported remote already and don't mind some extra configuration)

gila ,

The Kodi add-on I'm using uses torrentio in the backend, but has way more customisation than the stremio app + trakt integration, autoplay using preset quality filters etc

Stremio app is more seamless experience when there's no hits for the title already in debrid cache but that's pretty rare these days even on torbox

gila ,

A custom skin with widgets on the home screen pulling from Trakt, TMDB, IMDB etc lists - here I have the "New" category set to "Trending Recent Shows" from Trakt to highlight actually new stuff, whereas "Trending" category is set to "Trending This Week" from TMDB to cover returning shows. This approach inevitably leads to duplicates but at least covers everything important without the perpetual The Office, Breaking Bad etc results. When a title is highlighted, network badge is shown where available. The categories that point to individual episodes autoplay upon selection, the ones that point to series go to the 'folder' type browser

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/4cbacc3f-07b5-4635-8f60-b77d7ca8be89.webp

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/ddc134bb-0ca6-4dd5-8b60-1333cac5771f.webp

Search page overriding default kodi search, categorised by movie / tv show, also includes trakt lists.

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/b6bb0659-4f96-43e8-80c8-3196195042a2.webp

Heaps of navigation and backend customisation, too much to show or mention but some notable things being the play next dialog including display prompt being based on end of subtitles track (with time-based backup), customised context menu including option to play trailer (displayed via long press on remote, requires youtube API key for HD trailer playback), codec prioritisation/blacklist, overriding local watched/unwatched status with trakt, partial playback resume including auto resume option

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/edb545b0-7cf3-4e69-aae5-04063f928102.webphttps://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/fce755ce-6e97-4168-9958-cc489cd416e8.webphttps://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/68a217a7-edb5-4462-983b-121186dee54b.webphttps://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/ef207e91-70e3-454e-9b31-204f98b11670.webp

FWIW these examples are on a minimally configured proof of concept instance, when I set this up for family I need to test and tune it a bunch to ensure codec compatibility with the device/display, auto resume if that's the behaviour they want etc. Base Kodi also allows to prefer non-hearing impaired subtitle tracks, audio tracks in a specific language or original language etc. The end result being they get what they want spoonfed to their home screen the vast majority of the time, and otherwise can find it easily with the search without hassling me lol. In the worst case scenario I need to show them how to rescrape/source select from the context menu, but that's only happened once where an older title's only cached release had russian-only audio. The rest of their time they can just choose an episode/movie without having to understand any specifics about whether the top result is the best stream or not. It's enough that I'm still finding more UX improvements to add, years later.

I'd love to have this set up for usenet but don't have any issues using torrent cache on torbox essential so just can't really justify the cost difference

gila ,

Oh they figured it out alright, that's how the current players were handed the keys to the industry and why they take the more insidious DRM approach to controlling the content they own. They understand it's less likely to cause customer to revolt than the fundamental problems with the movie/tv show distribution business model that came before. And tbh they're right - yeah I pirate, but mostly because that's what I've done for 30+ years at this point. People have been saying the most recent anti-consumer decision by Netflix will finally be their downfall for like a decade - their stock is now at all time highs.

You aren't wrong that people will prioritise convenience/features highest but make no mistake, these companies are fully aware of the impact of their shitty practices. It's all calculated.

gila ,

Last Epoch, an indie ARPG similar to Diablo or Path of Exile. I have about 450 hours in it (since the early access phase) but hadn't played it for over a year. Now that I'm boycotting Microsoft/Xbox I recently jumped back in and have been enjoying the impressive amount of stuff that's been added post-launch.

I play this kind of game "casually", by which I mean I don't look up build guides. To me the most fun part of the game is developing a good enough understanding of the mechanics to be able to find success building whatever type of character it is that I want to play. For someone with this type of approach I think LE is great and very flexible! It's the only game I've reviewed on Steam and years later I still recommend it!

gila ,

I wouldn't have minded it other than that it led into the lower decks tie-in, which led into the season finale. Kind of derailed the season's momentum for me

gila ,

Bro is correcting posts that say "flex" to "brag", even where "brag" clearly would not substitute into the sentence. "Based" into "acided" when the origin for that use of "based" has nothing to do with acid, and also "acided" isn't a word.

They don't care about English and don't understand these terms they're correcting. They're just advertising how zoomer slang triggers them.

Yesterday, I saw some of the strongest firsthand experience that smartphones are spying on us I have ever seen.

I was sitting at a cafe with some friends, and we got onto the subject of weird anime we have watched. None of us are heavy anime consumers, so it's not really a topic that comes up often. I recalled a time I was at my brother's house a couple months ago and we got WAY too high and started digging through his Crunchyroll to find ...

gila ,

I don't think it's either. I think it's reasonable to assume google knows that

  • OP watched this movie
  • OP and their friend both generally like anime
  • OP and their friend are in the same location together

From there it can just infer a bunch of stuff (products) they might talk about.

gila ,

I have my psychiatrists direct office extension, yeah. Same for my sister with her paediatrician. The rhyme wasn't from a time when we had mobile devices.

OK, not to be runde or anything, but why is your banner AI generated

In my opinion, AI just feels like the logical next step for capitalist exploitation and destruction of culture. Generative AI is (in most cases) just a fancy way for cooperations to steal art on a scale, that hasn't been possible before. And then they use AI to fill the internet with slop and misinformation and actual artists ...

gila ,

actual artists are getting fired from their jobs, because the company replaces them with an AI, that was trained on their original art.

Are you sure that's happening? Under the previous mode of capitalism, what kind of companies were hiring artists?

As I understand it, that isn't the actual gripe from the general perspective of the artist. Instead it's about copyright, a concept I fundamentally disagree with. I don't think it's necessary, and that the artist's capacity for prosperity being tied to copyright is a symptom of a bigger problem than being usurped by software.

I think there is good art and bad art. I think there is good AI art (tbh I can't think of any examples, I just think in principle AI art has the capacity to be good) and bad AI art. I think the relative ease of access skews people's exposure towards slop. I use the term slop as a descriptor for AI art that is sloppy or wholly derivative; not to prejudge it.

I think perspectives like yours haven't compelled me to think they are meaningfully different from that of the Luddites, or those opposed to implementing computers in the workplace, etc. I genuinely sympathise with those groups, but ultimately wouldn't have us go back.

gila ,

I don't think my earlier reply came through. I'll try rewriting it.

AI can add, remove, change or refine input, either text or image-based, either wholly or partially, which may or may not itself be AI-generated. That feature set certainly allows room for genuine, inspired artistic expression. The way you describe AI art is as though it is all created by asking ChatGPT to draw you something. This isn't the case, and neglects to consider the litany of AI model types that are fundamentally different to LLM's. Models which are operated by humans directly interacting with them in a range of ways.

Let's say you're a concept artist for a movie. After replacing you with AI, how does the company instruct the model in the concept to be represented? If they're just asking ChatGPT to come up with something itself, then sure - your description applies. And the output will be shitty concept art, and the movie will shittier than it otherwise would be. People might consume it, but it would be a slippery slope towards failure either because a) people don't like it, or don't like it enough for it to reach the critical mass required to spread, or b) someone else does the same uninspired and easy job more cheaply or effectively. If you're an AI-slop consumer, why watch AI slop movies when you can just watch AI slop Tiktoks?

Good art resonates with people not because humans are easily entertained by pretty flashing lights or whatever an AI can churn out, but because of their relationship to a piece of art which is derived from their human experience. Companies have tried to broaden appeal and lower costs by appealing to the lowest common denominator for centuries, but beyond a certain point it is a failing business model. In my opinion, if some companies want to try, let them find out why there are 1000s of AI-generated movie trailers but no movies.

I think that AI can be used for the concept art in a way that maintains artistic integrity and capacity for artistic expression by having someone skilled in representing visual concepts operate the AI tool. That someone would be for all intents and purposes an artist. In essence the artist position would not be redundant; the way their job is done would have changed.

gila ,

Thanks for your input. I agree with you that it is a labour and capitalism issue. This seems to be where your perspective differs from the OP.

I guess my fundamental disagreement is that we should deny ourselves technological advancement because we live under capitalism. Yes, that is the system we will live under for the foreseeable future. I don't like it and don't like how capital takes advantage of technology. The way capital takes advantage of AI isn't unique. Generally, significant advancement will bring change and the biggest impact of that change will be felt by the proletariat. That sucks and we shouldn't have to put up with it.

Circling back to the topic of the post, OP uses this negative impact as justification to disagree with the apparent use of AI in the community banner art. This is non-sequitur. No one is making a living off of designing Lemmy community banners. The people that run the community simply decided not to arbitrarily deny themselves what they felt to be the best tool for the task. What I'm defending isn't necessarily the current AI landscape as such, just the technology part I'm interested in.

gila ,

Gas station buildings are completely separate from the gas tanks, and it's established that buildings in the area have been searched many times. Yet mysteriously the gas station has been left undisturbed for benzene gas to build up in. Although it typically evaporates quickly and is also denser than air, and given that changing your vertical position by a few feet in a room where a gas explosion occurs makes the difference between instant immolation and going completely unscathed, getting down is the direction you'd want to move in. Luckily Erik is mysteriously an expert in this.

Erik could have shot and killed the Alpha in the tunnel, but running away for no reason other than to set himself up as a support for the main characters is clearly the better option.

Terminal cancer diagnosis based on a field test done by a random hermit you just met means you're content to just give up on life immediately and have him kill you. Everyone agrees this is normal.

Although Jimmy is the only one that escaped in the opening scene, the group of kids with him naturally overpowered the group of zombies that just murdered their parents. Or the zombies just took pity and left them alone.

Yeah, just slight suspension of disbelief.

gila ,

Sure, I don't think it's necessarily reasonable for the average viewer to know much about benzene. Which makes it all the more odd that the movie contrives a situation entirely dependent on a character knowing a lot about benzene for no reason.

Erik's friend tried to shoot the Alpha and his gun jammed. Erik's gun was perfectly fine. Basically the stars aligned to make sure none of the Alphas in the movie ever had to deal with the automatic weapons introduced by the movie.

No, that's an entirely unbelievable way for Isla to behave. She has a husband and life outside the romp she's been tricked by her son to go on, much of which she seemed to enjoy. That's why they felt they had to contrive a line where the doctor mysteriously knows she has very little time left.

Mark my words, when the sequel to this movie comes out next year it'll turn out that those are the same kids and they're infected but, because of special mutations, or because of something mysterious done by Jimmy, they're "good" infected. I'm sorry, it's just that dumb.

gila ,

I'm elaborating on critiques of the movie you asked for elaboration on, though the real issue seems to be that you're just unwilling not to consistently give the movie the benefit of the doubt. Overall I thought it was fine, though the parts of it that weren't good specifically compare poorly to the earlier entries in the series.

The gas station scene is heavily contrived to provide an older-brother or father figure, offering viewers comfort regarding the main character's situation given Spike's dad wasn't around. The guy is killed shortly afterwards as Ralph Fiennes' character takes over that role instead. This is not only a big tonal departure from the previous movies, but also within the movie itself. What is this, an action, adventure, horror, buddy, sci fi, drama, comedy movie? It is all of them at different parts and mostly only the action is done well (though even then, the bullet time shots - wtf?). Erik's introduction to the audience and main characters are the clearest examples of this and that's why those scenes specifically are relevant to my criticism.

Isla's death does a big disservice to the concept of voluntary assisted dying and significantly cheapens her character arc IMO. For a large part of the movie, her illness just isn't relevant to what she's doing.

Are you saying it isn't heavily implied those are the same kids? What other purpose does the group of kids at the start serve? Why do they all have long blonde hair? Why is their zombie massacre scored by a metal version of the Teletubbies?

When movie magic stops being magic and starts being transparently a plot device, or omission in service of serialisation, it's bad. This has nothing to do with whether I'm willing to suspend disbelief - example: Ralph Fiennes surviving on the mainland for decades because he paints himself with iodine - fine. Isla wandering into the distance to be killed by a morphine blowdart which seconds earlier had only served to make Spike a little woozy - dumb.

gila ,

I think Erik's purpose as world-building would be redundant. It was already achieved by Spike's dad pointing out the quarantine patrol. He could have served a world-building purpose if he helped explain why Britain alone is the quarantine zone and not France where 28 Weeks Later clearly depicts the virus spreading, but he doesn't.

I'm not opposed to tonal departures from previous films in a series, but when it plainly contrives justification to jump between genres mid-movie, to me this screams artistic compromise for the aim of broadening audience appeal. Especially combined with the technical choices like the 30-iPhone camera rigs, it feels less like they were trying to reframe the series and more like they were taking the piss, blinded by hubris, motivated by a payday, etc.

she is no longer in control of herself

I'm referring to the large parts of the movie where she clearly is. She alone has the presence of mind and body to endure danger to save baby Isla, to save Spike while he's sleeping. The way the movie depicts her, when they wake up and she has apparently forgotten what she'd done it's almost as though she's hiding the truth to mentally shield Spike. Following her diagnosis she even explains her previously unspoken awareness of her own confusion. She isn't continually regressing; she's intermittently regressing. She is more helpless at the start of the movie than at the point of her death.

I hadn't considered they were a depiction of Jimmy Saville, I think you're right. It would add to the backstory of the kids, given they are depicted as related yet socially distant from eachother. I'd imagine they were in a cult, probably half-siblings with Jimmy with the same crazy Catholic-molester-cult leader father, his bloodline carrying the mutation that makes them subservient to Jimmy, and his character which Jimmy emulates. The shot of the TV you're talking about is likely a red herring, not because of this theory of mine but because there's simply no reason for the group of kids to exist as they are depicted. It's almost certain that whole scene's purpose was to set up the next movie.

He can't have different strength darts?

Certainly he can. Again, I agree with you that suspension of disbelief is fine and normal in movies. The point at which it becomes bad is when a significant part of the narrative arc of a movie heavily depends on that suspension of disbelief. It is fine to assume that Ralph Fiennes' character has devised some way of surviving on the mainland because he is already built up as an expert survivalist, so the specific methods he used don't require extensive explanation. His medical expertise means it's even fine that he's somehow found a way to either synthesize morphine himself, or scavenge it. No critical part of the narrative arc of the movie relies on these facts. However Spike and his mother's acceptance of her death and the method of her death all hinges on that Ralph's morphine darts, the purpose of which is to temporarily sedate Alphas, are actually pre-prepared for mild sedation of a child, euthanisation of a human, and presumably a range of other purposes. Can you see how that would need some sort of surface-level explanation to be believable, or do you really think it's ok that we are just to presume that he's a master of adjusting bootleg morphine blowdart dosages on the fly? Perhaps if that were the only case where such a leap of faith is required by the audience to make sense of the plot, it wouldn't bother me.

gila ,

If it's anything like the situation with gas, it's because export contracts are drawn up many years in advance of supply, so supplying for export becomes more important than supplying locally

gila ,

Rewatched Legion. Originally I watched up to the end of S2 when it came out, but it started going a bit too off the rails and by the time S3 came out, I was completely lost.

I'm glad I rewatched it though because S3 takes a new and interesting direction with better pacing, and without sacrificing creativity. Great series.

gila ,

Season 1 probably has the most coherent narrative of the 3 lmao. The other seasons are still good but a lot of the episodes are fully self-contained headfucks

gila ,

Kodi lol

gila ,

Weird, try same with na dot instead of eu dot

gila ,

Oops, I meant us dot not na dot

gila ,

US = bad, EU = good seems like a very tokenistic approach to the movement. As though its founding principle is nationalism lol