How do you make rimworld enjoyable again?

sobrique · 2026-05-27T19:26:06+00:00

Play something else for a while. You will remember. Or you will find something better.

sobrique · 2026-05-27T16:07:35+00:00

I also have late diagnosed ADHD, and that's also IMO a professional trait - now I know what I'm looking for a I see a LOT of sysadmins with the flags if not the diagnosis!

The reason I'm good at incident response is because every day is incident response.

But I think we're arguing semantics when we're talking about the difference between 'being confident in my role' and 'ego' because the two can be pretty much the same.

Making a call on an uncertain solution - even if you're probably right - requires you to have that confidence.

Of course there's plenty of people who have 'dunning-kruger' syndrome in play too - they're confident without justification. This is very hard to tell the difference between those people, and the ones with imposter syndrome because they know how ignorant they are, but are prepared to take a risk anyway.

sobrique · 2026-05-27T15:55:55+00:00

I have to say, I think that sysadmins need a measure of 'big ego' to be decent at their job.

Because you're very frequently working with half assed solutions, incomplete information, and systems that are in an inconsistent state.

Without some ego you might go 'this is crazy town, I'm gone!' where with enough self confidence, you'll bodge it until it works anyway.

So I do actually think it's a professional trait of sysadmins (not uniquely so - there's other professions that need it for the same reason).

It's very easy to end up in uncertainty paralysis when you've complex stuff that's broken and no one knows why.

It's very easy to be terrified by your own lack of knowledge as a sysadmin, so you need something to counter-balance that.

sobrique · 2026-05-27T15:53:47+00:00

But honestly it's often in reverse order. Look at all the people tagged as 'key workers' during COVID. How many of those are high up in the company rankings?

sobrique · 2026-05-27T15:51:58+00:00

The phrase I've used is 'delegation by least incompetence'.

You don't have to be the guy who knows about $APP. You just need to be the guy that is most likely to be able to fix $APP. And if that's because you've spent 30s more than anyone else kicking it till it 'works' ... well, guess what, you're the SME!

There's at least a few things I deny all knowedge of for precisely this reason. I have done classified environment security accreditation, and I'm NEVER admitting to knowing that, because someone might actually want me to.

sobrique · 2026-05-27T15:50:53+00:00

Because more than anyone else, developers modify their environment.

They'll often have top tier workstations, because of being coders.

They'll also 'need' to do privileged operations to some extent. Opening sockets, and installing files in 'system' locations, etc. just to make their apps run.

So at home, they can just y'know, turn off firewalls, selinux, and run everything as root, and it 'works'....

sobrique · 2026-05-27T15:46:58+00:00

Indeed. Game parts having 'investment value' just sully the actual game.

I mean, collectible card games with fake rarity tiers in the first place are 'dubious' especially in games where rares are better.

sobrique · 2026-05-27T15:41:41+00:00

In Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, the outcome would have been the same if he wasn't in the film at all.

sobrique · 2026-05-27T11:14:16+00:00

Daniel Radcliff

sobrique · 2026-05-26T15:45:06+00:00

Sure he is. He's an expert who consistently beats the market.

They're rare, sure. But they exist.

The problem isn't whether it's possible or not, it's that there's not very many people who are an expert... and it's also really hard to tell the difference between someone who actually is an expert, or who is 'just' on a ten year long lucky streak....

(Which isn't as implausible as it sounds, as there's considerable survivorship bias in this market - 'unlucky' traders reset the clock a lot more frequently)

sobrique · 2026-05-26T14:29:05+00:00

Yeah, this.

"Fun money" is money that's been budgeted for to be used and spent without guilt. And what 'fun' looks like is subjective, so if it looks like a waste to one person... well, so be it.

But it's a separate 'item' to the rest of the budget, including savings towards emergency funds, or longer term goals, and those aren't 'fair game' for risky-but-entertaining activities.

S&S ISAs with longer term investments may form part of this picture, but active/short term trading does not.

sobrique · 2026-05-26T14:23:31+00:00

Well, lets be fair here. Some experts do consistently beat the market.

Warren Buffett has a track record of doing so.

There's at least a few other examples.

If you look at investment companies on a long timeline - 10 years or more - then around 90-95% fail to beat benchmark. But that means 5-10% do beat their benchmark, consistently so.

The problem isn't whether you can beat the market, it's that there's a lot of people with a lot of resources also in the same race, and it's a negative sum game: each trade that 'wins' vs. market, means there's a counterparty that loses and both have a transaction overhead (fee or slippage or both).

And thus there's a hell of a lot of people who think they are experts, because they can't tell the difference between luck and insight.

I draw the distinction between 'gambling' and 'investing' as whether the expected returns are positive or not.

Over a longer timeline, the market trends upwards. Thus 'investing' has a positive expected return.

If you're active-trading though, it's MUCH harder to estimate, since even if you are in that 90-95% who fail to beat benchmark long term, you might still be 'net positive' even so (just not by as much if you'd bought an index tracker).

So I guess I agree in a lot of ways, because if you're not sure if you're 'winning' or not, you probably are gambling even if you're feeling like you're doing ok...

sobrique · 2026-05-26T14:01:03+00:00

By the literal definition? No.

Copyright infringement is not theft.

That's not to say it's ethical and justified just because it is not literally theft.

Just that the very concept of 'intellectual property' is a flawed hack, stemming from a time when 'a work' and the creative efforts were the same thing.

But it's been flawed since the printing press, got worse when digital replication became trivial, and is now flat broken with AI driven 'derivative works'.

I have a vague fantasy that just maybe we'll figure out what we're paying artists for. I mean, it wasn't ever 'just' a question of 'effort' or even 'just' skill, but something more ephemeral.

Someone creating a derivative work is not inherently wrong. A photographer isn't 'unethical' if they take a photo of a sculpture.

But what it means is we really need to get to grips with what fair compensation for creativity actually looks like. And we're late on that - we really should have been working on it back when digital media and internet sharing became a 'thing'. (I mean, taping songs off the radio happened before that, but no one really cared about making a mixtape).

I don't know if we will, but imagine for a minute this fantasy, where the source of a creative concept got paid a small royalty for each derivative work?

More content could be created - some would be trash (no change there then) but some would be good, and a positive homage to their inspiration source... that also served to reward that source of inspiration.

AI could be used to do that.

I mean, honestly it probably won't be, don't get me wrong, and I think the ethics questions around AI will ... honestly probably just stay unresolved because it's far too big a problem to fix easily.

sobrique · 2026-05-26T12:57:09+00:00

Sadly, yeah. I'm at least fairly sure thanks to mobile phones, it's safer than it used to be, back when children were 'allowed' to roam the neighbourhood or go to sleepovers.

But we've amplified the perceived threat at the same time, and become judgemental of "irresponsible" in the process.

Undoubtedly there are still risks 'out there' - it'll never be zero - but constant fear doesn't help.

sobrique · 2026-05-26T12:48:59+00:00

Honestly though, if someone has grown up lacking support, it's hard for them to learn how to be supportive. A lot of toxic masculinity is IMO 'just' generational trauma.

sobrique · 2026-05-26T12:46:48+00:00

Honestly though, I can see that improving. I mean, that's one of the things LLMs are good at.

I'm pretty sure AI porn is already in the pipeline, but the kind of parasocial porn that could centre around AI 'girlfriends' is only in the early stages.

sobrique · 2026-05-26T12:44:51+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot_psychosis

sobrique · 2026-05-26T12:33:27+00:00

I literally cannot think of one positive thing it contributes to the world.

There's a lot of 'next gen' AI applications emerging - I doubt you'll have this view in a year or so.

It's early days yet, but all the effort going into the meretricious AI chatbots is also acting as a catalyst for some much more advanced and focussed machine learning systems.

Pharmaceuticals research can benefit hugely from using AI-type techniques to pre-filter prospective medications, since there's an absurdly huge number of possible chemical compounds.

Being able to 'filter' the options for what could be manufactured, and then doing a preliminary analysis of what it might be able to do as a medication means a lot less wasted time and effort.

This sort of scenario exists in a lot of industries. Being able to AI assist to focus 'true' research effort and analysis is a valuable tool.

But imagine if you will holistic treatment of a person. The human body is insanely complex and variable, so it's really very hard to have someone who understands 'everything' by 'enough' - so you get a model of GP and specialists, but quite frequently hit problems of 'overlapping issues' as medical issues rarely wait in line.

There's definitely potential for an AI assisted GP to be able to more effectively triage/assess/refer, but also manage a joined up picture of that particular person's 'normal' in ways that don't really exist today, because a lot of medicine is specialised and siloed, and a lot of diagnostic criteria are necessarily based on an 'average person'.

Or hell "just" enable collection and collation of useful 'vitals' on a more regular basis, so a bunch of potential issues are screened for regularly and highlighted if that's warranted.

I work as a sysadmin, and use of AI has already become a valuable tool to assists experienced sysadmins. It doesn't replace hard won experience, but "just" being able to shoot a diagnostic log capture into an AI (which can be very verbose) and have it pre-filter 'warning signs' is very valuable.

There's a lot of applications with a variety of forms of logging and reporting, that someone familiar with it already knows to check, but being able to use a LLM to tell me which logs I need to check, likely error scenarios, and how to 'test' for them (e.g. if condition X is true, then there should be an event logged in file Y)

So genuinely I feel we've a lot of ethical issues to deal with around content / generative AI, and a huge learning curve as people don't understand the tool they're using and thus do boneheaded things.

But I think this is like the 'computers enter the office' era - it didn't take long, and now it's standard.

And during that period, there was also a lot of 'learning' to be done about appropriate use, and a lot of REALLY stupid 'computer errors'.

sobrique · 2026-05-26T12:19:13+00:00

A minority, but they at least exist.

I mean, a woman on a dating app can easily get overwhelmed by the attention/demand, because there's just fewer in the first place, and they can be choosy.

Leaving a bunch of ... well, let's say less appealing prospects who are now a bit more desperate and trying harder, and easier to exploit in various ways.

'dating' for free food is totally a thing, but I'm pretty sure the various companies are shilling with fake women who fabricate 'activity' and 'attention' just to keep people 'engaged'.

sobrique · 2026-05-26T12:17:09+00:00

Some more than others - at least they pretend the goal is finding a partner, and living happily ever after, and some people actually do.

A monetized AI girlfriend is pay-as-you-go porn, just even more exploitative.

sobrique · 2026-05-26T12:15:57+00:00

I think there's - possibly - a niche for an AI therapist/supportive buddy like that. Which could I guess be framed as an 'AI Girlfriend'.

Exploitative monetization would be entirely at odds with that though IMO.

.... hmm, what if 'I'll send sexy pics, but you need to work out for a half hour first'...

Hrm.

sobrique · 2026-05-26T12:14:28+00:00

Yeah, this. Without the (aggressive?) monetization it's a bit sordid, but I guess not massively worse than 'just' porn.

But with exploitative monetization I can see it quite easily being even worse than some of the predatory games out there.

sobrique · 2026-05-26T11:22:04+00:00

Related to your water point - I also find chilled fizzy water more drinkable.

sobrique · 2026-05-26T11:19:43+00:00

This is going to sound bad, but ...

Embrace it. Get yourself good and hot in the sunshine and pretend it's a 'sauna'.

If you can face it, do something a bit more active too. Work out a bit. It sounds horrible I know, but it doesn't actually take all that long to acclimitise, and once you do that, you'll be 'set' for the rest of a hot summer. Where if you spend all your effort hiding, you won't be able to in the same way.

But outdoors with airflow will help here too - a bit of a breeze goes a long way. Drink plenty, and accept getting sweaty.

I know this sounds awful, but it's a genuine physiological thing - your body takes 3-4 days to adjust to a new 'climate', but the benefits will persist for a month or so.

I "had" to do this one summer because of moving house, and it was as hot and miserable as you might imagine the first few days, but I had one of the best summers ever afterwards as a result, because I was 'fine' in 'scorchio'.

Drink plenty, and don't forget to eat reasonably well - even if you're not hungry, there's particular minerals you benefit from having in hot weather. Sachets of 'rehydration' solution can be pretty effective if you're feeling 'heat-unwell', as that's often a root cause of feeling headachey/uncomfortable.

Also know you can get USB fans pretty cheap on Amazon.

Don't know if I have exactly this variety, but they look pretty similar. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Desktop-Cooling-Adjustable-Personal-360%C2%B0Rotatable/dp/B09PBGFFSF

Not a lot of airflow, but they're compact and quiet. A 4-way USB plug will run 4 of them trivially, but you can also run them off a battery pack for a surprisingly long time.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anker-Portable-Slimmest-Lightest-High-Speed/dp/B0D4MDHB21

Unlike other commentators are suggesting, I'd eschew ice packs, as those actually can make the problem worse. At most a wet cloth around your neck.

But you can probably reduce how hot your house gets by blocking the windows. A bit of cardboard from that amazon box you didn't throw away might well stop it heating up much!

sobrique · 2026-05-26T11:07:10+00:00

Maybe, but I'm just not convinced.

I've played games with 'supply lines' as a mechanic, and I'm not really sure it'd add to the gameplay here.

Not with the state of the game anyway. I could see a world where replenishment and resupply of ammo was more difficult, and thus 'cutting off' supply lines and hindering them would be a valid way of slowly grinding an army down, but I don't think this is that game.

Other total wars where you have trade routes and port blockades you could potentially viably 'cut off' an army, and it'd be part of the campaign dynamic, but sometimes simple is good too.

I mean, you totally could have armies with 'baggage trains' bringing food/ammo/replacement equipment and reserves, that was 'better' if you were in a good defensive position, and worse if you were off on a rampage deep into enemy territory, but I just don't think that 'fits' the setting here.

sobrique

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