I’ve hated him since before Trump’s first election, correctly realizing he is a fradulent try hard con man megalomaniac, and have had to endure a decade of people mocking me ‘oh yeah like you are smarter than the richest man on earth yeah right fuck off’.

Yep. I am smarter than him. So were half the people hurling those insults at me, actually.

Elon is actually quite stupid at everything other than conning people.

Much like Trump.

Hehe sounds about right.

Yeah… a whole lot of gamers… seem to… think they know how game design works, think they know how to solve technical problems…

And well now in the last decade we see the buckets of slop games on steam made by such idiots, confirming that indeed, 95% of them have no clue about anything.

I was an early beta tester for Project Reality, which has now become its own studio, Squad is literally Project Reality just rebuilt in UE 4 to higher quality, because EA wouldn’t liscense out Frostbite to them.

But thats all a tangent to hopefully lend some creedence to when I say: solving network lag and having good netcode is actually extremely complicated and difficult, even still today.

We still see AAA studios fucking up the basics of a lot of netcode stuff in mmo/rpg typr games, where they just make way, way too much shit clientside authoritative, and then have to spend a year or two redesigning the entire game.

This, in turn, is why third party kernel anti cheats have taken off so much, because game devs just fucking give up at making a reasonably secure networked game.

Meanwhile Valve figured this shit out literal decades ago, with highly efficient netcode, and a mostly server side AC solution.

It isn’t possible to stop 100% of cheaters.

It is possible to stop 99.9% of them by designing your game and netcode well.

But that is apparently too hard, so basically the entite industry has outsourced it and/or solved it with massively inefficient and privacy/security compromising AC.

Someone playing Quake, a game that only came out a few years later, with that kind of machine you’re talking about would dominate. Not because of skill, but simply that his comp has the speed that can allow him to act and react much faster than his opponents.

Exactly.

In that sense, ‘pay to win’ has always been a thing lol.

You sound probably a bit older than me, but I can’t tell you how many times in the 90s and early 00s that I legitimately lost games due to having a garbage tier ping to basically everywhere, and a shitty eMachine, and everyone else just acted like none of that mattered and I was just whining.

Then, surprise, me and the online boys all jump into a server where they all have pings of 80, I have a ping of 200, and then they’re all mad that I cant hit anybody because enemies are rubber banding around like fucking DBZ characters for me.

… Then I do a LAN party with local friends and utterly dominate, routinely.

-.-

I mean, that is a pretty reasonable way to do a mirror, or a very glossy reflective floor (just throw a transparency/alpha layer over it and render it on top of the floor texture) back before… shaders as we know them today really got invented, and model poly count/texture res is not very high… and you specifically only do this kind of mirroring in enclosed, indoor areas that don’t have huge vistas.

Like, I don’t think Deus Ex is on ‘the build engine’, but it certainly ultimately derives from it, and it does this.

Then you get to HL2, and while, to my knowledge, HL2 doesn’t literally have ‘mirrors’ in it, you can basically do that by making a render target camera, the kind that displays in the game as a TV screen of some kind… well you could just point that camera right out of where the mirror is, and have the render quality/resolution be lower than the quality/resolution of the rest of the world.

(ofc this wouldn’t work in hl2 just per se, because gordon isn’t actually rendered as a player model, but you could futz around in gmod not long after hl2 and do this, i know this because i did it)

I am reasonably confident most modern games with mirrors … basically do that, just with an actual game settings slider to determine fidelity instead of all those settings that used to be baked into the map as it was with custom hl2/gmod/sourcemod maps.

Water, window and world space reflections can/could also be set to just… render the whole world again in a lower quality… but prior to that, it was more common to bake a static ‘reflect map’ into your compiled map, as realtime duplicating the whole world can often be waaay too demanding.

And of course now we have shifted over to the Real Time Ray Tracing paradigm, that is absurdly high fidelity but absurdly highly demanding, and that has neccessitated the development of frame upcaling and frame gen tech to balance out the performance losses from this absurdly inefficient lighting paradigm.

In the last minutes of the stream, Musk made a hardcore difficulty character he named Kekius Maximus, a 4chan-esque meme name he’s used as his display name on X. But Kekius Maximus was not long for the world. Musk died to one of the game’s tutorial bosses due to a bad connection, which subsequently concluded the stream, ending another sad, weird data point in the Elon Musk fake gamer saga.

The guy who claimed he was a top tier Quake player… who in actuality, was only scoring well in online matches, because he played on the T1 high speed, stupid expensive business line at his Zip2 business in the 90s… and performed terribly at LANs…

Well here he is 30 years later, now dying to a tutorial boss, partially due to the shitty connection of his own ISP.

Amazing.

The initial comment it was replying to was exaggerating for comic effect.

The initial comment it was replying to was written by me.

I was not exagerating.

Gerudo just popped in and basically said that they thought I was being intentionally harsh as well.

Both of you have now ascribed a motive, a goal to my description of Seattle… that I do not have.

I was simply flatly stating my lived experience in Seattle.

People in Seattle are actually terrible at forming genuine relationships, that is my completely honest, not exaggerated assessment.

I am also an introvert.

I was just describing that yes, Seattle is full of introverts, who suck at socializing.

There is no joke. There was only an attempt at being contrarian in an equally exagerated manner back toward a percieved exageration that did not exist.

In fact, quite hilariously now imo, this entire course of discussion is itself an example of how an anti-social behvaior, assuming unstated intentions behind statememts, reading in context that isn’t actually there… produces confusion and interpersonal friction.

I appreciate your willingness to explain, but I am still confused.

… I am the person who described Seattle as introverted and anti social.

You are ascribing motive, intention, to my original description, that motive being ‘to talk down about something’, ie, to insult or degrade.

I am not doing that. I am describing my lived experience in Seattle as objectively as I can.

Yes, it is my personal, anecdotal experiencd, so it may or may not be truly representative…

But I am not exagerating in my assesment.

You have assumed I am doing that, and just said something with a contrarian intention than the intention you incorrectly assumed I had.

That still isn’t a joke.

It is just being contrarian.

I am not trying to be an ass, I am autistic and I do not understand what the joke is supposed to be.

This reads to me as a contradictory paradox.

If you say the joke is that Gerudo was facetious, ie unserious, sarcastic, didn’t actually mean they liked Seattle when they said they ‘liked Seattle for a reason’… and then they do indeed confirm they do actually like Seattle’s social introversion because they are an introvert…

Then… they were being serious in the first statement… ie, not facetious.

So… that cannot be the joke.

If I exaggeratedly said 'Man I LOVE~~~ hamburgers!" … and someone said ‘wait are you serious?’ and my response was ‘Yes I do really love hamburgers.’

Then again, the only thing I can see as the part that is supposed to be funny in any way is the exaggerated tone.

That to me just reads as … dramatic, quirky, enthusiastic? Not inherently funny though?

… Is the ‘joke’ that they didn’t realize why they liked Seattle untill I described the social norms?

The… joke would then be… it is funny that they couldn’t describe or put words to why they liked something and had to have their own thoughts described by another person before they could articulate them?

That… seems more like an insult than a joke? I guess that could be funny if I were predisposed to enjoy cruelty/mockery against Gerudo… but I’m not, so that just seems rude.

I am at least self aware enough of an autist to know that many people find my confusion in this scenario funny, when I would describe that as cruel, but I am genuienly baffled by how what Gerudo said was ‘a joke’.

Ok so… FOSS Dev submits a software (music creation tool) to Steam, to be ‘sold’ for $0, ie, available freely.

On the splash welcome screen to the software, there is a link to his patreon for donations.

Steam’s automated vetting/verification process identifies the keyword ‘patreon’, but misreads a u as a v, or that reversed, in the url, and sends out an automated response saying ‘direct links to request donations are not allowed, please remove’.

FOSS Dev somehow thinks this is a real person talking to him, writes up a response (with valid objections, that Godot and Krita and others feature donation links)…

… He does not recieve a response, but changes the link in his software to point to another webpage with a different url, where that webpage then points to his patreon, and uploads this new build to the automated first pass vetting system…

… and is surprised when this immediately passes vetting and is accepted.

Ok. Mhm. Yep.

…

Does FOSS Dev… did it occur to him that a platform like Steam that recieves, what, thousands of these kinds of applications a month, tens of thousands?, and is extremely well known for having a shockingly small employee headcount… might be using automated systems?

Might have a detailed flow chart for producing what are basically detailed error messages?

Has this person never heard of how call centers for large firms just give their phone support staff a script generated by such systems?

Has this person never used an automated support chat bot that only actually kicks you over to a real person if you specifically request it and/or exhaust its pre built in help options?

I am sorry but this dude is having an emotional breakdown from an automated bot response he doesn’t realize is an automated bot response.

He at no point ever shows the response from Steam to his pointing out that other FOSS software has donation links. There apparently… wasn’t one? … Because actual lengthy responses get assigned to a ticket cue for an actual human to read and reply to at some point, later?

I am absolutely baffled as to how anyone with any familiarity with ‘Steam Support’ could possibly think they are talking to an actual human being in this scenario.

This is like feeling personally betrayed by a nonexistant YouTube video reviewer support person when you upload a video with copyrighted music and are told it won’t be elligible publishing.

…

Now as to the actual Steam policies, the actual issues here… yes, in general, Steam is not geared toward FOSS releases with optional donations, yes it is bullshit that there are older software/games that got grandfathered in, no argument with any of that.

But he already solved the problem, on his end.

He already changed the url to not include a direct donation link by bouncing it to patreon via some other link.

The entire tech support adventure he had with trying to get donation DLCs was completely unneccessary… he already had an accepted build with a donation method accepted.

The entire tax adventure he had is also… he just says he has a very weird and uncommon legal setup with his sole proprietorship, and is frustrated that that makes the process complicated as well.

I get that this is frustrating, but again… if Steam said no to a donation only DLC… and he already has a build, accepted, with a working donation link that entirely circumvents the process, meaning he would not even be getting any payouts from Steam at all, and Steam will not be generating any revenue, whatsoever, because that software is listed as available in Steam for free, so there is no Steam cut…

Then this person is complaining about having to deal will some bs paperwork to be able to have his free software published on Steam, for no cost to him, at a cost to Valve, and he benefits massively by increasing the number of potential eyeballs on his software.

This is analagous to complaining that you have to fill out paperwork to recieve like free food benefits or reduced cost housing or a low cost bus fare.

…

In conclusion, yes, Steam is not the best option for FOSS releases.

Yep. Its a commercial storefront, primarily.

Alternatives exist, that are specifically supportive of FOSS projects with flexible donation/payment models.

I don’t know why you’d go to the hardware store and be angry that they don’t sell fresh fruit.

Should there maybe be some kind of push to try to convince Valve to offer some kind of option like that?

Well… maybe?

If Steam actually did basically what itch.io does, then uh, itch.io stops existing in … what, 2 years?

Looks like Miami also does not have any specific vernacular for ‘friend’ on these maps, so… maybe if you just overlay all these maps and find all the deadzones, you’ve found the areas of antisociality?

I do not understand how your joke works.

If you genuienly enjoy antisociality as a norm, because you tend to be introverted, then you just like Seattle because of that.

You would then not be joking, in the sense of sarcastically saying you enjoy something you don’t actually enjoy.

‘I knew I liked Seattle for a reason’ is then just the same as saying ‘Yup, I’m also anti social and I love it here’.

The ‘joke’ isn’t that you actually don’t like Seattle’s social norms and were being sarcastic, because you just said you’re introverted.

I honestly do not understand how this is a joke.

Is… just using the pithy/vague phrasing… in and of itself… the joke?

I’m gonna need a Carlos to Cubit to Banana diagram.

With a slinky for scale.

… either you enjoy having no friends…

… or you enjoy superficial performative ‘relationships’ that are all actually adversarial social status jockeying?

I am from Seattle.

Anecdotally:

This is correct.

People are absurdly transactional, performative and superficial about relationships and also very anti social compared to basically anywhere else I’ve ever been in the US.

He, entirely unironically, has a cult following.

Like… an actual cult.

Its not the loss of blood circulating in your system that lowers your blood pressure. An average human has 4.5 to 5.5 L of blood, an average blood draw is like… 10 ml, 0.2% of all your blood.

The vasovagal response is somewhat common during blood draws, basically, its a stress/fear/anxiety response, your nervous system iniates it and then your heart rate slows and your blood vessels dilate, widen, and this makes your blood pressute drop… its not the actual blood loss itself causing your blood pressure to tank, its all the other parts of your circulatory system changing how they regulate your blood pressure.

Its pretty common to experience this effect mildly, and temporarily.

But… if you regularly feint from routine blood draws… that is actually potentially concerning, as it may indicate you are anemic, significantly malnourished or dehydrated, have circulatory system blockages, or just generally have significant hypotension, or have some other underlying problematic, very often treatable condition.

Again, routine, regular, every time you get a blood draw, you feint, completely black out?

Thats different than you get a bit woozy and then in 5 minutes you’re fine.

Ironically, you’ll need blood tests to check for a lot of the most common indicators of the most common things that cause routine feinting from a blood draw… you gotta get that bloodwork to start pinpointing root causes.

But it could also be that you just generally have very high stress levels, or some other mental condition.

Or it could be side effects from drugs you are on, including common SSRIs and other mental health drugs, actually contributing to your vasovagal response being so severe that you regularly feint during blood draws.

…

Using myself as an example:

I fucking hate blood draws.

I literally bought the wallet I have so I can bite down on it during draws.

… But my circulatory response is heightened heart rate, all my muscles clench, I am hyper aware, and thanks to a lot of therapy, I am pretty good at doing controlled deep breathing at the right intensity and rate to keep myself calm.

But I have never gotten lightheaded or feinted, my underlying, baseline blood pressure is about 140/80, a bit high on the systolic… but yeah, my problem is too high blood pressure in a stress response… not the too low blood pressure you get with a significant vasovagal response.

If you are regularly feinting in a blood draw, your baseline might be toward hypotension, too low blood pressure.

Time Crystal Gender = Gallifrean

… Did you also miss the text at the bottom of my comment?

I mean you’re not wrong, but you’re probably also not right.

It probably would be quite unpleasant, hence the anesthesiologist.

A laproscopy is when an incision is made, usually near the navel, in the abdomen, and then a … basically mechanical camera snake… is inserted into the abdomen, to get a look at usually the organs in/near your pelvis.

Segmentecomy means they are also removing some kind of… growth on, or portion of, some organ.

I think lateral means the actual cut is being made on one or the other side of the patient, their right or left kidney, but it may also refer to the general orientation of the cut itself.

Not a surgeon, not sure.

So yeah, its a snake camera getting inserted into a cut in your abdomen so a surgeon can better see their hands, with a scalpel, taking a tumor or cyst off of your liver or something like that.

Not exactly what I’d call a pleasant insertion.

… Also you should try anal.

Ok so… what exactly would the gender triple point be?

… A person at their first rave, first time doing molly or E?