Wow, usually I have the worst luck but somehow I landed in the reservation queue. 256GB, EU.

The main issue with AI scrapers is that there isn’t just one, there are dozens or hundreds of them, all doing the same thing. Most websites would handle being hammered by one or two bots just fine, but crash under the load of dozens of bots constantly sending requests.

On top of that, many of them are very badly (vibe)coded and get stuck in endless loops, requesting the same pages over and over again. At my job we IP-blocked an aggressive data-harvesting bot from our service, and the thing got stuck requesting the same page over and over again every 8 seconds, despite receiving the same error code every time. This continued for weeks.

I don’t fully get how this change helps with scalpers. Just like nocturne wrote, with the Steam Machine you were still only given the option to buy the one SKU where you landed highest on the list after the lists were randomized.

And it’s not that big of a deal obviously. But doing it like this created an unnecessary dilemma about which list to join. While I actually wanted the 256GB one, I was seriously considering joining the 1TB list because there are probably fewer people going for that one, which could potentially increase your chances. But then you start thinking about how some people probably have the same idea, potentially negating the effect…

The whole thing turned into an unnecessary headache lol, so I just stopped thinking about it and went for the 256GB one.

The lottery is cool but too bad this time they don’t allow you to join the list for both options to increase your chances of getting one in the first batch. I decided to go with the 256GB one. I don’t think I’ll be using it standalone very much, so I don’t really need the extra storage. And while I believe there will be more people signing up for that one, there will also be more units available, making the chances pretty much equal. Obviously, saving 200+ euros is a plus too.

69€ for the pretty much mandatory “Ergonomic Accessories” pack is just dumb, imo. For a 1000+ euros product I would expect that stuff to be included.

I might be guilty of using an argument like that sometimes. What I really mean is that I currently value the convenience more than my privacy. “I’m using service X because that seems the most convenient choice for me and I don’t really care whether someone I won’t ever meet is reading my data. But I could also use service Y if it’s just as good and convenient as service X.”

Point being, I’m always willing to start using a different thing as long as it works for my use case as well as (or preferably better than) the thing I’m currently using.

So, instead of trying to scare me about someone spying on me, try convincing me how the other service works better than the one I’m currently using.

The water meter and the subsequent bill seriously limits my mmmmm warmth time

There will also be a “normal” Direct the next day.

That must be something they have added recently because d.furaffinity.net links used to work well on Lemmy. But interestingly, in the Voyager app this post and its pic work just fine, while in the PWA they don’t.

It sucks, but I get why they have done it. I bet the amount of traffic they were getting via hotlinking is/was huge.

Who could deny such a good boy? *pats head*

It’s more about “could give consent”.

You’re not wrong but that’s still the part I’m not a huge fan of. I think the moment we start arguing whether something is okay based on if a fictional creature would be sapient enough to give consent or not, we’re in a bit dangerous waters because that same train of thought is used by real life animal abusers: “My dog is so intelligent, I can communicate with it and it’s sexually mature. Obviously it would give consent if it could speak.”

That’s why I personally think the better way to look at it is to draw a clear line between reality and fiction and just treat fiction as fiction where none of this matters.

Also, wanna make it clear I’m not trying to invalidate how anyone personally looks at this matter. Just pointing out the flaw in the logic if trying to “justify” furry porn with “tests” like this.

I dunno how much of it is just a joke, but seeing that image is used on the Wikipedia page for Furry pornography, I guess people actually think about this stuff.

Personally I don’t fully agree with the “test”. The whole concept of consent is a bit odd when it comes to fully fictional media. Fictional creatures can never give consent for real (because they’re fictional) and we cannot know if they would if they were real. But unlike in real life, in fiction/fantasy we can just choose to ignore difficult questions like that (or even decide it’s nonconsensual, if that’s something you’re into). Isn’t the whole point of fiction to imagine things that aren’t possible in reality?

That said, there’s gotta be some limit. If it’s likely that some sick child molester will get kicks from some piece of art, then probably that art shouldn’t be made in the first place.

Ah, thank you.

I don’t have any real advice for you but I just wanted to say I have huge respect for firefighters. You are literally risking your life to save others. So, from the outside it looks like you’re doing the exact opposite of wasting your life.

EDIT: Reading the other responses, I thought might as well add my own experience. I used to write. Both fiction and nonfiction, opinion pieces, short stories, fanfic, and sometimes even some spicier NSFW stuff. I’m not good at expressing myself verbally and writing is/was my way of expressing myself.

It was huge for me when I got a couple of my articles published in a printed tech/PC magazine (albeit a very small one) that I had been an avid reader of, and they even paid me a little something for them. Then I had some guy online commission a short story from me. I was so excited about it and the amount I charged for it didn’t even come close to covering the time I spent obsessing over the story to make it perfect, but I still really enjoyed doing it.

Then, during covid I lost my day job and was seriously considering whether I should try freelance writing. But then AI and LLMs came along. At first, I thought it was a positive thing. Publishing online requires English, and English is not my native language, and even the very first public AI models were great for fixing grammar, typos and improving the flow of a text you give to it. But very soon I found that it also destroyed my motivation to write anything at all. Why should I spend time writing something myself when I can just describe the idea to an AI and it will write something almost as good in seconds that I would have spent the whole evening on? I got okay-ish results by taking the AI output and refactoring it to fit my style but I don’t feel comfortable ever publishing anything where a major portion of the work was done by a machine rather than me.

Venting over haha. And really, I enjoy my current job in software development and it pays the bills, so it’s not all bad for me. But I can definitely sympathize with you.

I don’t get it. What is this about?

Apparently the character is from Fortnite? Is Epic trying to turn a new generation of kids into furries xD

Yeah, it’s available on Steam (for free) but I think it still fits this thread nicely.

It’s impressive that they’re still actively developing it after 20 years. For anyone else like me who used to play Wesnoth a lot but hasn’t touched it in a couple of years, I just noticed that they have added a new mainline campaign fairly recently.

Ooh, a walking Jellyfin server! That’s very convenient. And cute! :3

Cool design! What would be displayed on a monitor connected to the HDMI port?

I think the main problem is that far too few people are contributing to these projects and major decisions aren’t made collectively instead of by a single person. Isn’t Rimu effectively the sole dev for PieFed, in much the same way that Nutomic and dessalines have been the main people running the Lemmy project?

I think all of these people are reasonable per se, but there’s an old quote that I feel fits nicely here: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” If there’s no one to challenge your decisions, you’re inevitably going to make some bad ones eventually.

Compare that with any healthy FOSS project where major decisions are a group effort. Things move more slowly but a single extremist view is much less likely to pass. Projects like that also tend to attract more contributors in the long run, because people can trust that their contributions (the time they spend coding, not snowboarding) will be evaluated objectively by a group rather than suddenly being discarded because they don’t fit one person’s worldview.

An update post from the admin: https://sopuli.xyz/post/50113243