Sorry, it’s been years and I don’t really remember any details. I just picked somewhere that looked interesting found out some info. Then in subsequent runs I opted to head in different directions and they kept revealing information that pointed me back to where I had been the first time.

I totally agree with the exception of the music. I know what you mean because there is minimal music in the “open world” parts of the game, but the actual songs made for the actually interesting places are bangers.

I agree, but I would go beyond just “a game I don’t like” to a much more controversial “this game is actually terribly designed”.

Because of the way it’s designed it’s possible to randomly end up with a completely awful experience that ruins its “one time” playability for forever. I know this because it’s what happened to me. In my very first time out I ended up at like a 70% progression point to the final answer. Not because I’m “smart” or “good” mind you, I just got “lucky”. But it’s not actually lucky, because it now means 70% of the game is useless to me. It won’t help me get closer to the answer and it will (very frustratingly) take me back to where I’ve already been.

I think most people would counter saying the world itself is interesting/worth exploring on its own. But in one run I didn’t at all become engaged with the world itself (which is very reasonable). Certainly not enough to give a fuck about trying to go out and learn about it for its own sake. If it had taken me more runs to actually make progress then maybe I would’ve become engaged tangentially while working towards my goals. But alas. And FWIW, I did more than one run. I think overall I played the game for 3ish hours before getting fed up with going in circles.

If random chance can render most of your game not worth exploring, that’s bad design. Flat out.

I saw a path lined with gravestones and an ominous moon thing.

Nope, youre right, playbook is the right term. Got it mixed up with chef.

Since no one has mentioned it yet -

If you haven’t tried setting Synapse up with the ansible playbook you should. It’s almost push-button and has 1:1 voice calls by default. Setting up group voice from there is a bit challenging, but the playbook has a section for it as well if you’re willing to try.

Edit: cookbook - > playbook

Just to emphasize, this is the correct answer

For those interested in the etymology of the party names at the top:

The democrat side uses the characters “the people”, “lord”, and “party”. My interpretation is “the people are in charge party”, which makes sense because democracy is “the rule of the people”.

The republican side uses the characters “share”, “peace”, and “party”. To me, this one doesn’t have an interpretation that obviously links to republicanism.

Is there a piefed specific client that isn’t the webapp? How do people commonly access the content?

Is there a client? Or does everyone just use the webapp?

What’s the game they’re on a losing streak in?

Yeah, I did realize that the break even ones I think largely are using OpenAI as part or all of their capacity, so they probably aren’t really break even for that reason - OpenAI is subsidizing them.

I have a little perspective to offer on this:

One of the core points of the author’s argument is, “Generative AI providers are operating at a loss, and I don’t see how they could become profitable”, specifically calling out ‘where are the new customers’?

I work at a company that is a direct customer of OpenAI and we get real, useful output from it. If they were to double or even triple the price, I’m almost certain that we’d just pay it (as it’s I very cheap at the moment). I’ll admit I’m not actually running numbers, iirc several of the companies mentioned were near break even, so doubling revenue would make them very profitable.

So my argument here is that I don’t think they need new customers, they just need to raise prices. Launching with unprofitable prices and jacking them up later once people get a taste is part of the standard tech industry playbook and wouldn’t be the least bit surprising in this situation. The company I work for has only small integrations so far, but I can imagine that at some companies almost their entire service is based on using LLMs, in which case the providers would literally have the ability to charge whatever they want.

Also fwiw, I’m a gen ai hater, and wish it would collapse and go away, but I’m not entirely convinced by this guy’s argument, but maybe if I looked harder at the numbers it might become obvious that the price increases I’m suggesting still won’t cover investment expenditures.

What’s wild is that near the end of the sketch they say, “I can’t think of anything worse than a skull.” I’d say a noose is probably worse…

I discovered the artist recently when I was looking for a big centerpiece painting for a room I’m decorating. His work was exactly what I was looking for - something amazing but unsettling. I never came across this exact piece (I wish I had) but sadly it’s virtually impossible to find (especially legitimate) prints of their work due to the “untitled” tendency.

Aw man, at first I thought this was an Android desktop OS. Android being in Google’s pocket is trash, but you gotta admit the Android permissions system would be an enormous privacy/security upgrade over nearly all other Linux distros, especially factoring in ease of use/understandability (speaking as someone with a functional Qubes setup).

I’ve always been of the mind that the walk is for my dog - not for me. If he wants to stop and sniff something for a long time I let him because that’s what makes the walk enjoyable for him. I will concede though that it’s easy for me to adjust the total length of the walk based on how much stopping he does but that might not be the case for everyone.

Voxelated?

Hell yeah Royval! Was already a fan, now I’m a bigger fan.

I think they’re trying really hard to not translate the name of the practice to make it seem cooler or esoteric or something. But it literally translates to “stomach 8 10 percents” 😂