Latest Comments by pleasereadthemanual
PlaytronOS Alpha 2 brings expanded NVIDIA support, more handheld PC support and much more
27 November 2024 at 12:17 am UTC Likes: 1

There are only three ways to beat the Anti-Cheat problem:

1. Force the game developers to weaken their anti-cheat for your system (not going to happen with the current number of players)
2. Start cryptographically verifying kernels and bribe a bunch of game companies into supporting those particular kernels. This also does not seem likely to work long-term.
3. Cloud gaming...

Free-to-play pixel art survival game Ruins To Fortress arrives December 13
24 November 2024 at 3:29 am UTC

Quoting: Hoppertron
Quoting: PhlebiacLooks like their last game was also free (and positively reviewed, although not very noticed):
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1492610/Moonshot__The_Great_Espionage/

Am I missing a hidden business model here? The new game looks rather polished for a hobby project...

I think it's a nice, decent way to generate revenue. It reminds me of the old shareware days. Hopefully it pays off for them (assuming the game is good).
But how are they making money?

Wine 9.22 released noting the 'Wayland driver enabled in default configuration'
24 November 2024 at 2:37 am UTC

Enabled in the default build, I suppose. From memory, you needed to build Wine yourself with Wayland driver support. So this is a good first step.

itch.io store now requires AI generated content disclosures for assets
23 November 2024 at 5:46 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Purple Library GuySo rather than a brand new nascent technology, I think it's actually quite a mature technology, and it's already taken a key ingredient, model size, about as far as it can be taken. I think it may have already plateaued.
Based on the past two years, this seems likely to be true. I haven't seen many large enhancements in ChatGPT in the past two years, but I have seen a lot of expansion into other fields. I haven't seen any noticeable change in machine translation since the rise of ChatGPT, likely because LLMs were already being used for machine translation for a long time.

But you can get some really good results with ChatGPT if you prompt it properly. I've seen good writing come out of ChatGPT, but I certainly can't get it to do that. So while this technology branch may not get much better, people will get better at using it. And maybe that will make a big difference. But I have heard people say, "ChatGPT is getting dumber." I don't know whether that's because the shine has worn off, or the ourobouros is already close to eating itself.

I was very impressed when Photoshop was able to remove text from an image and paint over it with a consistent-looking background using its AI generation tool because I did not have the original files. The Google Pixel Magic Eraser tool is similarly impressive if it works as advertised.

So, it seems to be quite good at editing images. As for fabricating art entirely...I have yet to be impressed.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI'm sure stuff that produces better output is possible, and indeed I'm pretty sure true AI is possible (although it won't be all-powerful like some of the rich weirdos imagine). But that will be a different technology, not just iterations on current large language model concepts.
I completely agree.

itch.io store now requires AI generated content disclosures for assets
21 November 2024 at 11:56 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: kokoko3kI still doubt this hype of "anti AI" is tied to those deep roots.
Artists feel threatened by AI-generated art, so they loudly and publicly disapprove of it.

A lot of people sympathize with artists who express those opinions.

If you want a good incident that shows where Anti-AI sentiments are coming from, look no further than the Adobe incident this year. Adobe's policy change to scrape and use their users' data for training their AI if you use their apps was taken very poorly by every creative, to the point Adobe needed to issue a non-apology.

It's really the same thing as the Luddites. They felt threatened by new technology that could replace them to do the work more cheaply, and the end result was lower quality, but a lot of customers didn't care that much, so the more cheaply-produced and higher margin product won. Employees (usually children) that used the new machines were also in a lot more danger too, but that doesn't really relate.

The ultimate insult is that these AI generators use real artist's work as training data so they can eventually be used to replace the artists that "inspired" it.

I think AI generated art will continue to get better, and it will be easier to get better, more consistent art assets with less hallucinations over the years. And fewer artists will be hired—especially the lower-skilled ones—because an AI can do it more cheaply and never needs a day off. The highest-skilled artists will probably remain around for a long time, even just for the sake of the craft, but good luck to anyone new trying to get into the field.

It's just sad, thinking about it. Will we all end up too fat and happy to care in the future like in WALL-E? If there's no point learning how to express yourself through writing and art because AI can do it faster and better, what does that leave us to do? Oil the machines and watch AI-generated TV shows all day?

I think AI has its place, but I don't want to see so much of it in my games and stories. I read stories and play games to connect with a writer and artist who're trying to tell me something. It just feels cheaper and inauthentic. In the future, when I'm no longer able to tell the difference, the idea will feel cheap and inauthentic. I feel that connection when I'm playing SuperGiant games. I just don't feel it with an asset flip or AI-generated art in games. I think the worst experience I ever had was reading some fanfiction and realizing part way through that it must have been AI-generated, because no person would write like this, for as long as this. In fanfiction.

Valve dev details more on the work behind making Steam for Linux more stable
12 November 2024 at 12:03 pm UTC Likes: 6

Quoting: BlackBloodRumThey may be better off embracing the flatpak more closely, as it'll make it easier to port between different distributions.
I don't know what the Steam client's codebase looks like, but all I can see with the Steam Flatpak manifest is black magic: https://github.com/flathub/com.valvesoftware.Steam

What an insane amount of work for a Flatpak package.

Fedora KDE gets approval to be upgraded to sit alongside Fedora Workstation
12 November 2024 at 1:36 am UTC

Quoting: Jarmer
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualCOSMIC is a great desktop. I ran it as my main desktop for a few weeks. I'd love to try it again when it's stable and has more features like support for graphics tablets and integrated input methods :)

I'm very much looking forward to the unofficial spin the actual cosmic devs will put out soon. Last I heard it was planned for spring '25.
Is this the spin for Fedora or openSUSE?

Rogue Point is a new tactical shooter from Half-Life remake Black Mesa developer Crowbar Collective
12 November 2024 at 1:32 am UTC Likes: 2

It really is the end of an era when most people aren't thinking, "I really hope they do a Linux version!" but instead, "I really hope they don't actively block Linux users who play the game through Wine, Android emulation or VFIO GPU passthrough!"

Fedora KDE gets approval to be upgraded to sit alongside Fedora Workstation
11 November 2024 at 3:14 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMy needs are fairly simple, so I ended up using Mate.
I'm not a fan of XFCE (too confusing to me :P), but I've never tried MATE. It seems like a good choice! Not something I'd choose myself, but I likely wouldn't be overly unhappy with it.

I've tried Cinnamon and while it's fine and something I'd recommend to users coming from Windows (I can't recommend KDE because of its complexity and GNOME is too different), I don't like it. I'm not a fan of the design. It works well enough, I think, though I've only tried it in a VM.

I'm happy to accept the defaults of most desktop environments. I usually only end up changing the keybindings and a few other small things. As long as it has 10 workspaces, I can deal.

For that reason, I also like tiling window managers. I've tried Sway and like it, but I ultimately decided it was too much work and it lacked features I needed. COSMIC is not nearly as much work but still lacks features at the moment. I'm pretty happy on GNOME (for the exact reasons you dislike it :P), but I may end up on COSMIC eventually.

Or back to KDE. Who knows? Right now, only GNOME and KDE have all the features I want.

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