rodneylives

@rodneylives@kbin.social

I'm JHarris on Metafilter, and rodneylives on mefi.social. I help run the gaming blog Set Side B, I do Q&As for the website Game Developer, I wrote sometimes about roguelikes, and I used to write the column @Play long ago on the (now sadly deceased) website GameSetWatch.

DoorDash makes tipping an afterthought to protest New York City’s wage raise (www.theverge.com)

“For most markets where DoorDash operates, customers are prompted to tip on the checkout screen, with a middle option already selected by default. If they want to, they can adjust the tip later from the status screen while awaiting their food, or even after it’s delivered. That’s changing today; while blaming New York...

rodneylives,

I DoorDash regularly. I frequently get offers so low that it's not worth it in gas+time to deliver them. There's a chance that a lowball offer will tip me after the fact, sure, but it rarely happens, probably only one time in ten.

If the initial offer doesn't tip, and not just tip but enough to make it worth it relative to the travel distance and time, then I don't accept it. No experienced driver would, and no driver should.

rodneylives,

I can do both! Doordash really REALLY should pay more. But also, practically, I can't take offers that are not worth it economically to do so. And I can only decide to do that with the information I'm provided before I take the offer.

I've been asked to drive a total of 24 miles (12 miles there and back) for $3.75 before.

rodneylives,

To people asking why Stewart would make a show for Apple in the first place, in some circles Apple is seen as a basically ethical company. I won't comment on whether it's valid to see them this way, but they make a lot of comforting noises regarding privacy and green tech. Plus, being what amounts to a broadcaster, one might expect them to keep their hands off shows being made for them.

What I find interesting to think about is, if China is able to apply pressure on Apple concerning shows made for them, what kind of pressure could they have over TikTok?

rodneylives,

From what I remember of the original announcement, there were a couple of other topics that Apple also found it annoying that Stewart might cover, and one of them was the things companies are calling AI. NYT source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/business/media/jon-stewart-the-problem-ends.html

rodneylives,

It remains the only good way to track hundreds of websites at once.

rodneylives,

Who even asked them?

rodneylives,

Steven Universe (it's accessible to adults on a different level than kids)

rodneylives,

Much of the old web is still there. A lot of old sites have gone dark, but there are still some that remain, and some have persisted for surprisingly long.

Usenet and IRC still exist! As public and distributed services, like the Fediverse and the World Wide Web itself, one node can go down but others remain. Things that don't remain? AOL IM; Yahoo Messenger; MSN Messenger; Google Talk (in its original form).

When everyone chased after social media, many people declared the old web dead. They were wrong. When mobile platforms hit it big, a lot of people thought the days of the desktop PC were gone. They were wrong too. The demise of Google Reader was an attempt to kill off RSS, but a lot of sites still have feeds. And a lot of blogs still exist, even if it's getting harder to find them due to Google Search's ongoing decay.

Corporations have big PR budgets, and a lot of tech reporters are uncritical about what they hype. Witness the attempts to get cryptocurrency, NFTs, and now LLMs, to take. But we do not have to buy what they're selling.

We don't need a new internet. The old one survives, for now at least. But we have to remember it exists, and make it easier to find.

rodneylives,

The problem with screening by AI is there's going to be false positives, and it's going to be extremely challenging and frustrating to fight them. Last month I got a letter for a speeding infraction that was automated: it was generated by a camera, the plate read in by OCR, the letter I received (from "Seat Pleasant, Maryland," lol) was supposedly signed off by a human police officer, but the image was so blurry that the plate was practically unreadable. Which is what happened: it got one of the letters wrong, and I got a speeding ticket from a town I've never been to, had never even heard of before I got that letter. And the letter was full of helpful ways to pay for and dispense with the ticket, but to challenge it I had to do it it writing, there was no email address anywhere in the letter. I had to go to their website and sift through dozens of pages to find one that had any chance of being able to do something about it, and I made a couple of false steps along the way. THEN, after calling them up and explaining the situation, they apologized and said they'd dismiss the charge--which they failed to do, I got another letter about it just TODAY saying a late fee had now been tacked on.

And this was mere OCR, which has been in use for multiple decades and is fairly stable now. This pleasant process is coming to anything involving AI as a judging mechanism.

rodneylives,

Until a couple of weeks ago, in Brunswick GA, sad down and pitiful up through AT&T, along with easy-to-exceed bandwidth caps (for wired internet!) that twice hit us with large overage fees. That was about 80 or 90 before extra fees, although phone service was included too. Now we're going with a regional fiber optic outfit that offers about 500 down and up, for about $50/mo.

rodneylives,

This may go against the general tenor here, but parents are people too and make mistakes, sometimes big ones. Your life is finite, and so is theirs. When they are gone, you'll never have the chance to see them again. I would let them back in, maybe at least hear what they have to say. Could be just me though.

rodneylives,

Yeah, I know. And I knew this would be the reaction here. And for many people what you suggest is the right answer. I am only saying, it might not be for everyone. There is a lot of nuance that tends to be left out of these descriptions, and a world of information we're not getting.

rodneylives,

Finish that last thought. "I don't know what else you need... to never talk to your parents again, ever." People can change, and the grave is cold and final. (Although I just realized, I only read the TL;DR version. There might be stuff here I'm not getting. Did the initial post change after I wrote my first comment? Anyway, I may be wrong here depending on the full story.)

rodneylives,

We ❤ Katamari, MiniMotorways, Goblin Bet

rodneylives,

An interesting idea!

jake4480, to Games
@jake4480@c.im avatar

A while back I started sorting and adding games I'd find on itch.io into collections. My 'roguelike' collection there just broke 50 games. Check these out if you're into roguelikes. If you know of any roguelikes on itch.io, let me know so I can add them!

https://itch.io/c/2296577/roguelikes

#roguelikes #roguelike #itch #ItchGames #games #gaming #IndieGames #DungeonCrawling

rodneylives,

@jake4480 For six years, 7DRL (Seven Day Roguelike) gamejam has been based from itch.io. That's hundreds of roguelikes right there! https://7drl.com/

femmissgeek, to DnD
@femmissgeek@toot.community avatar

Sometimes an idea comes to you fully formed.

rodneylives,

@femmissgeek Archie Apache, the Tabby Tabaxi

jake4480, (edited ) to Games
@jake4480@c.im avatar

I'm kinda obsessed with Rogue and roguelike games in general (and weird monsters). I was reading this great article from 2016 about their history that I boosted yesterday (thanks to @WoodooProd for alerting me to it).

As I read and poked around the web to check out these early roguelikes, I loved these two screens from a SUPER early roguelike (Pedit5, from 1975).

Monsters loading! 🤣

rodneylives,

@jake4480 I've played a significant amount of pedit5! It has a different feel to roguelikes, but has definite similarities in theme.

rodneylives,

@jake4480 The place I played it is Cyber1, which is an internet-facing PLATO system you can apply for an account on. Try cyber1.org (when I checked it just now the site was down, but I suspect it's temporary).

@WoodooProd

rodneylives,

@jake4480 Me? I mean I did write a column on them for several years, but does anyone really remember it?

@WoodooProd

rodneylives,

@mihaelbrenko You might try a virtualization platform like VirtualBox and run Windows on that?

@WoodooProd @jake4480

Narrrz, to nostupidquestions

If i wanted to create a game from scratch, what language should i learn?

rodneylives,

@Narrrz There are many possibilities, enough that option paralysis can easily strike. Godot has a lot of buzz around it and is open source.

rodneylives,

Spam has long been the corrosion eating away at internet services. It killed Usenet, and nearly did email.

rodneylives,

Pull up a chair and let me tell you about a little game called Nethack.

Does anyone feel like the Internet is alive again?

Before I joined the Fediverse, it felt like the Internet was composed of only 4-5 social media sites and a bunch of corporate news articles, with only a couple of old remnant sites that looked out of place like a historic church in a business district. All of a sudden, though, it feels like people are creating lots of new sites....

rodneylives,

I am sure that part of it is how discoverability has diminished over time. It seems there are fewer ways to find interesting independent things on the web. But, I'm also sure that some of it is there's fewer cool things to find.

With that said, please enjoy endless.horse, which is one of those cool things the likes of which I wish finding were easier.

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