He looks like a movie villan announcing the next Hunger Games.

I was round a friend’s house, early afternoon, plenty of natural sunlight, and he walks in and switches on the ceiling light. It was like looking at a permanent nuclear blast.

Had to get him to turn it off immediately. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t want it on.

I asked: “What are you trying to simulate, a hospital corridor, a police interrogation room?”

I’ve seen other people use 100 watt bare bulbs as their main light (and no curtains/blinds). For Christ-sake, at least get an up-lighting shade.

A big bright exposed light source and they watch tv. With the bulb reflected in the middle of the screen.

How do people live like this? Do they all have cataracts?

Was it necessary to make AI Ghostbusters?

• Left: Harold (something is) rAmiss
• Middle: Bill MurrAIy
• Right: Dan Faykroyd

Also, the model was absolutely NOT trained on copyrighted material.

Ideal time to add: “Until we meat again”

There was an interesting post that I was linked to on Reddit, supposedly from Assassins Creed dev.

I’ll quote it here:

"I been watching the fallout of the DLSS 5 video, and wanted to check in with with some game devs to check if I have been taking crazy pills, or if I have understood game dev incorrectly.

Games are not visuals, they are game mechanics and game loops skinned in visual interface. When we make games, we make all the things that work with our mechanism and loops, visually distinct and more importantly repeatable.

In assassins creed, all ledges that I can climb, look visually distinct from all other ledges. In most games, outlines and color is much more important, than what they look up close. They are used to identify what we are looking at, more than how realistic they look. These things are icons in the world, more than they are objects.

Light and Shadow are not just for visual pleasure, they are used to draw the eye towards objectives and where you should go.

In short, there is information in the visual representation of the game mechanics that are telling players what they should do and where they should go.

When I see video games processed through DLSS 5, I see stripped away game information, making games less playable, and more confusing. I could understand having this in a photo mode, but why on earth should we have this in any of our games, if we don’t know what it will change it to? Or if it even will remain consistent next time you look at it?

Will it remove the yellow paint on my assassins creed ledges, or perhaps only up-rez the rest of the assets, and make the yellow ledges stand out like a sore eye? Will it remove scars that are story relevant from an RPG Character? Will it smooth out a wall that is supposed to look like it can be destroyed? There are so many visual important things in games, that I know this thing won’t adhere to.

Did no one involved in making this video understand Game Design or Art Design?"

Just looking at his filmography, Dude has a serious list of films he’s produced:

Xanadu (1980) (co-producer)

48 Hrs. (1982)

Streets of Fire (1984)

Brewster’s Millions (1985)

Weird Science (1985)

Commando (1985)

Jumpin’ Jack Flash (1986)

Lethal Weapon (1987)

Predator (1987)

Action Jackson (1988)

Die Hard (1988)

Road House (1989)

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

Die Hard 2 (1990)

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990)

Predator 2 (1990)

Hudson Hawk (1991)

Ricochet (1991)

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

Lethal Weapon 3 (1992)

Demolition Man (1993)

Richie Rich (1994)

Assassins (1995)

Fair Game (1995)

The First 100 Years: A Celebration of American Movies (1995) (TV documentary film)

Executive Decision (1996)

Fathers’ Day (1997)

Conspiracy Theory (1997)

Double Tap (1997)

Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)

The Matrix (1999)

Made Men (1999)

House on Haunted Hill (1999)

Romeo Must Die (2000)

Exit Wounds (2001)

Swordfish (2001)

Thirteen Ghosts (2001)

Ghost Ship (2002)

Cradle 2 the Grave (2003)

The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

The Matrix Revolutions (2003) Gothika (2003)

House of Wax (2005)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

V for Vendetta (2006)

The Reaping (2007)

The Invasion (2007)

The Brave One (2007)

Fred Claus (2007)

Speed Racer (2008)

RocknRolla (2008)

Orphan (2009)

Whiteout (2009)

Ninja Assassin (2009)

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

The Book of Eli (2010)

The Losers (2010)

Unknown (2011)

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

Dragon Eyes (2012)

Stash House (2012)

The Apparition (2012)

The Factory (2012)

Getaway (2013)

Non-Stop (2014)

The Nice Guys (2016)

Collide (2016)

Superfly (2018)

Road House (2024)

Road House 2 (TBA)

Edit/note: I probably didn’t make my comment very clear. I’m aware it’s 1600 being laid off. More that I didn’t realise that Atlassian had 16k people in total. 16,000 people making their products progressively worse.

Even if their company only had 1600 ppl, I’d still say they were wasteful.

About 16k workers? How!?

What a waste of human effort, time and resources. All to make a few bad products, worse.

Indeed, that’s why I mentioned a PC monitor first

Well what about a PC monitor? You can get u to like 43" and beyond. Obviously they are great for gaming as well.

The other very impractical mention - after TVs starting adding ads, cameras and microphones, I switched to a 2nd hand projector. Most have no smart features.

All you need is a white or off- white wall to protect on to. And the ability to block some light coming into the room.

Downsides:

• They can be bulky and noisy. Particularly the 4k ones
• might need separate speakers
• Not as low latency as a tv but models do come with VRR
• bulbs do get darker from prolonged use (and aren’t always cheap to replace)
• you might need separate speakers
• and there are the trailing cables
• And you’ll never get the inky blacks of oleds. But for picture size and immersion for the cost, they are basically unbeatable.

Some can project from a coffee table.

For tv series and YouTube like content, I use a laptop. Then for big movies, I use the projector and 5.1 sound system (mostly 2nd hand as well.)

I’ve got mild sleep apnea and most likely PLMS. My wife has restless leg syndrome. She also has a weighted blanket and uses melatonin. She listens to boring/calming youtube vids via an ear phone. She takes cold showers to numb her legs. She has to take naps during the day to function.

Both of us have ADHD. We also tried the things you did.

All I can offer are a few things I’ve started doing differently:

Using a sleep mask and wearing an ear plug (Loops is the brand) at night. Just one, as I sleep on my side. People with ADHD do suffer from sensory issues, so might not like sleeping with things on their face and in ears.

I found cutting off excess light and particularly random sounds (birds, traffic noise, voices etc) made getting to sleep a lot easier. Yes I periodically lose/drop my ear buds, but that’s a different issue.

I bought extra pillows to support my body.

Another thing I noticed only last week, after almost decades of lying in bed stretching my legs half asleep, trying to get rid of aches. I found that the uncomfortable feeling was coming from muscles in my thighs. Massaging, stretching has made a difference. Tension in shoulders, neck and jaw can go unnoticed for a long time.

It’s also very easy to lay in bed with loads of things on your mind. I created a set of stories/fantasies that I play out in my head. It helps me to down out unintrusive thoughts.

On a side note, I heard that an Ex-Top Gear presenter (also Adhd) imagine he’s driving down his favourite roads.

The fact is, a lot of people’s body clocks are different. If it wasn’t for societal working hours and adult responsibilities, I know both me and my wife would sleep till late morning, work into the night. Maybe even nap during the day.

Same thing with me remembering names.

If I meet someone new, and they tell me their name, 95% chance I’ve forgotten it within seconds. It gets awkward after a while, so often I ask them what their surname is, then go look them up on say LinkedIn (or in the past - Facebook.)

Great with faces. But I even forget the names of super famous actors and musicians. Then I forget the name of a film they’ve been in, so I have to ask my wife.

My brain then has to go through this process of where I describe a film that the actor was in, and or the name of the character.

Or forget the film name, but know the character’s name.

E.g. Me - “Err Severus Snape”.

Wife - “you mean Alan Rickman”

Me - “Yeah, but he’s a terrorist, who’s taken over a skyscraper.”

Wife - “Die Hard”

Me - “But not Alan Rickman’s character. The main guy”

Wife - “Bruce Willis?”

Me - “OMG yes, Bruce Willis, how did I forget his name!”

It’s also the names of places I’ve visited as well. Might have been there 100 times, but it’ll just drop out of my memory at random.

“What’s the name of the place where we met all those dogs. Has a Waterfall. Might have been during summer?”

I hate it. Could describe every detail of someone or a place. Names - almost never remember.

From what I’ve learnt, it’s grapes (raisins, sultanas etc) that you should be worried about feeding to your dogs.

They are very toxic and tend to do permanent damage even in small amounts, particularly to the kidneys.

This is just one product/service that PwC has provided to the UK Government, there have been countless more. It’s a drop in the ocean of wasted money.

But the Government isn’t being hoodwinked. It’s by design. Ministers need big departments and big budgets to boost their profile. PwC massively overcharge, so ministers can have their big budgets.

It’s win win. Only people that lose, are the tax payers.

PwC almost always subcontract, who then subcontract again. The people who actually did this work probably got 45k.

Subcontractors like companies like PwC, because they have access to Governments and multinationals and win contracts that boost the subcontracters’ profile.

How do I know? I worked at a subcontracting consultancy.

It’s not just PwC. It’s all the big Accounting Firms. It’s Capita etc.

Agree with It Takes Two.

The platforming can be frustrating in parts, but as she’s played Mario and donkey kong, then it should be fine.

I mean the other obvious option are the various Lego games.

Lego Harry Potter etc.

Or as others have said: Overcooked

I’m sure everyone knows, but just incase. The Delta Flyers podcast with Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeil is great.

Some talk of pants. Garrett has a big long moan about the shoes he was given for the role.

They are meant to taking about every Voyager episode, but Wang keeps going off on long fun tangents.

Later on they move to talk about every DS9 episode with Terry Farrell and Armin Shimerman.

I’m using Waterfox (based on Firefox but without the bloat), both desktop and mobile versions. Have nothing but good things to say about it.

Cat, I’m a kitty cat.

Gi Joe parody

The talking boat

I totally agree. I still have a large mp3 and flac collection.

When Spotify came a long I used both for a while. But my Spotify playlists became so full of completely random tracks, it was never financially viable to even buy 10%, and its become more difficult to do so legally.

For the bands/artists I really like, I’ve bought CDs or if that’s not possible, bought digital versions.

I am attempting to transition away from streaming completely, but I have playlists which are 100+ hours long; which I’ve curated myself. I have a dozen others which are 8-20.

You could accuse me of having too much music. That i can’t possibly listen to most of it. Perhaps there is some truth in that. When you’ve had access to an unlimited buffet, it’s difficult to go back to a set menu.

Yes, ultimately I want to own all my most listened to music, but for now it would be nice to do both and have a player with physical buttons.

I miss physical buttons for when I’m listening to music.

Having to unlock my phone to skip a track or advance a podcast is really annoying.

I used to be able to click a button in my pocket. I could even slide a bit to skip forward and back 30 seconds.

I also like to listen to music in bed in the dark. The bright screen, the messing around with the unlock, really breaks the flow.

Yes I have earphones that are touch sensitive, but poking it messes with any good fit isolated fit I’ve achieved, the touch doesn’t always register and after a while, one ear starts to hurt. Especially when you need to tap three times to restart a track.

I’ve now got this stupid setup with a BT dongle in a usb a-c converter; which plugs inti ny phone and controls a tiny physical keyboard.

There are lots of mp3 players, but they don’t support streaming platforms. The ones that do, also went mainly touch screen only and cost a fortune. There is one physical Spotify player with buttons but it’s just a dumb cube with very basic functionality.

Yeah they are sneaky. You are forced to download everything.

Do a “manual search” on the Nvidia driver page.

Once the “Game Ready” drivers are downloaded. Uninstall the nvidia app (if it’s installed already.)

Now to install.

Basically for any windows software, always choose “Custom (Advanced)” installation, instead of “Express (Recommended)”.

For nvidia, the next page will show you 3-4 options. Untick everything accept “Graphics driver”.

Definitely ignore “HD audio”. It tends to mess up your sound (at least that’s my experience.)

and “PhysX System Software” unless this out of date or missing. Then you can tick this.

Then just your graphics drivers will be installed.

Obviously you will miss out on the various additional features the nvidia app provides, like auto tweaking game settings. But it’s always a tradeoff.

As I said above. Always do “Custom” installs on ANY software. 75% of the time you end up automatically opting into to various forms of telemetry, and at worst find your browers have new plugins, your search engine changed, and antivirus installed. It can be time-consuming to uninstall.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have more questions. I tried to add screenshots but the Lemmy app wasn’t having it.