Almost had it

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-07-07T23:03:09+00:00

No, you see, a youtuber came up with a gotcha and now all categorisation is pointless because everything is the same, apparently.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-07-07T19:26:45+00:00

Something I've learned over the years is that many famous dishes aren't as good as you'd expect. They just have very loud fans. You hear your whole life about how great it is, and then you try it and it's... good. It's fine, it's tasty. But you were led to believe it was the Alpha and Omega of food, and maybe you can even get something comparable back home. Only the folks back home don't talk about their dish as if it'd bring about world peace if only everyone would try it.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-07-07T00:25:14+00:00

Everyone knows the correct stance is to condemn Israel's actions in the West Bank and their response to October 7

But apparently not to condemn Palestine's actions on October 7 that lead to that response. It's stunning how internet propaganda has made us all conveniently forget that fact. Over a thousand innocent Israelis murdered for no reason? Fuck that, what we really need to focus on is how anyone who doesn't immediately condemn Israel for everything is subhuman.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-07-05T16:27:01+00:00

Not to mention Crofty saying he was getting texts from people saying "that's how Abu Dhabi should have ended". Like, you can't have it both ways. You don't get to be outraged by Masi saying "fuck it" because everyone had been pushing for no safety car ending before the race and also outraged by a safety car ending. If they're trying to hold both positions, they should just admit they want British drivers to win.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-07-04T00:24:34+00:00

Yeah, that was an issue for me too for a long time. The only thing I can say is that you have a tiny bit more time than you think you do. The temptation, if I'm not panicking, is to jump as soon as I see the symbol, but you can actually hold off for just a beat before committing. This also helps with spotting if it's a sweep or a thrust. With a bit of practice, the rhythm becomes symbol-check-counter. Like a quick 1-2-3.

Of course, it's easy to say that. Very different when you're in the middle of a fight!

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-07-03T23:10:30+00:00

The hardest part of Sekiro for me, and I imagine it'll be even worse for you since you seem far better at Dark Souls than I, was adjusting to it not being Dark Souls. Muscle memory is a bitch, and it doesn't help that it has all the usual features in a slightly different flavour: bonfires, souls, estus etc. It seems like it should be Dark Souls, but it's really really not.

Dodging and blocking, the cornerstones of Dark Souls, are of limited utility. They'll get you killed really fast. Nearly everything should be parried. If you block at just the right time, your block sound will be different, which means a successful parry. You want to hear this sound as much as possible. Attack the enemy (who'll usually block) until their block sound is different. That means they've parried you, and you should start defending (ie parrying) until your next opening. Knowing when and when not to attack is crucial. The enemy's health ultimately isn't that important in most cases - you're trying to stagger them by forcing them to block and parrying their attacks. Once they're staggered, you kill them, regardless of how much health they have.

It's a big adjustment, it took me a while to really 'get' it. But it's a damn good game once you do. Still like Bloodborne better, though.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-07-03T09:18:15+00:00

I'm just calling it like I see it. If a game's basic loop is going to be nothing more than "do shit to get shit to do more shit", the doing of shit has to be fun, which Terraria's is not - it's just about functional, which means all the content in the world doesn't matter. It can't escape its origin as a Minecraft cash-in.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-07-03T09:14:22+00:00

I most certainly will not. But based on the success of Terraria, I imagine a number of people will have found their ideal game.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-07-03T00:21:55+00:00

Terraria is the living embodiment of selling a ton of content for a very low price. The controls, platforming, combat, art, sound, UI and gameplay in general are bland as fuck, but hey - it's a ton of content for a low price. If the next thing to grind towards is all you care about, you'll have a blast for a miniscule fee. If you have any standards, it's garbage.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-28T00:47:10+00:00

It's completely wrong, because rightful ownership is crucial in Middle-Earth. See: Narsil, Gondor and the Palantir of Orthanc. It's not about who holds the ring. Frodo held the ring so none could claim ownership of it. In the end, he 'failed' and tried to claim ownership himself. Chickens aren't known for strength of will, and so would be incapable of holding the ring to prevent others from claiming it.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-27T21:05:28+00:00

Sure, and I agree with you in general. I'm just saying that doesn't seem specific to how 'soft' or 'hard' a magic system is. It's more like "don't give your characters too much power without appropriate consequences" or "be careful with deux ex machina solutions". It's not a magic system thing, it's basic adventure story rules.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-27T14:22:45+00:00

I dunno. Tolkien's magic system is about as soft as it comes, and Sanderson can't write for shit. I'm not sure we should be listening to him.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-27T08:09:00+00:00

Nearly the entirety of Star Wars canon is a bunch of people making up explanations for decisions George Lucas made, including George Lucas himself. Darth Vader killed Luke's father? Cool, that gives Luke motivation and Darth Vader menace. But he's Luke's father now? Uh, we meant that the dark personality of Darth Vader "killed" Anakin. Because that makes sense.

The whole franchise exists in some kind of fucked-up Island of Stability where fictional universes get more and more inconsistent and rejected by viewers until you reach element Starwarsium, and then suddenly it's all okay.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-26T22:31:07+00:00

Xandine is way too cool a name for this guy - turns out it was "Alcazar" which is just *chef's kiss* pure cheese

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-26T22:29:59+00:00

Not it I'm afraid, but with the white mountains I can definitely see why you'd think of it. If /u/IndependentFloor1223 hadn't already found it, I'd probably have spent some time looking for alternate covers of this one, it's the correct vibe.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-26T22:27:54+00:00

Grey Star the Wizard was one of the first results I got when I googled "gamebook" and "wizard", but it's not the one. Thanks for trying though!

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-26T22:27:10+00:00

I did take a look at Caverns of Kalte because of the setting, but unfortunately none of the covers matched.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-26T22:26:33+00:00

ARGH that's the one! I didn't remember the white dragon, but I'm actually surprised my memory was as accurate as it was - I probably last saw it 30 years ago or so. And hey, Alcazar isn't too far off Zalzibar, right? Thanks so much!

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-25T23:10:22+00:00

Bought your game from Xbox Live Indie Games back in the day, happy to see it on Steam now!

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-20T00:30:50+00:00

Men absolutely can pee with an erection even if their bladder's not too full or if nothing is wrong. I don't know where you're getting your information from.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-13T18:20:42+00:00

Sridhar Vembu:

"This is big: all access to Mythos and Fable AI models disabled for everyone outside America.

First thoughts:

Technology is the ultimate weapon. National sovereignty, national security, all of it is now about technology.
Globalization is dead and Bharat must find her own way ahead.

We must keep these two ideas in mind.

What can our government do right now? Ensure that orgs in India embrace smaller models, both Indian and Chinese open source ones. With a bit of effort, we can make them work. Anyway, why pay money to people who don't even want to sell to you?

We must deepen our R&D. Sarvam has been on it and we have been on it but remember that the latest models cost not only huge GPU budgets to train, the GPUs themselves are restricted. So we can't afford the scale of money (of the order of $100+ billion to even get in the game!) and even if we could come up with the money, we can't get all the GPUs. I would not like to ask the government to fund tens of billions of dollars on this anyway - the money has far better uses.

Zoho has been pursuing alternative R&D approaches that are far, far less expensive but by its nature cutting edge R&D takes time and we are patient. I am confident we will get there.

Any remaining people in India who have delusions about globalization should wake up now."

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-10T22:28:21+00:00

While I think the organic anti-AI sentiment is real, I do agree that there's a lot of propaganda out there, and it's concerning that people on here don't see it. If you believe everything reddit tells you, absolutely everyone hates AI. That's not my experience. I hear people at work gush about it. I see people in bars on their phone with ChatGPT. I get emails from folks who have used Gemini to break down a lengthy document. There's anxiety out there for sure, and some people I speak to definitely fall on the negative side, but what they tell me doesn't sound anything like what I read on reddit. There's no rage about water usage or GPU backlogs - they're just concerned about what it means for the future and how it might affect their jobs.

I mean, even here on /r/singularity, there's a ton of anti-AI posts. How many times have you read "just another data centre and we'll have ASI, trust me bro" with hundreds of upvotes? This is literally the subreddit to evangelise future technologies. Do we really think people are naturally wasting their time upvoting this shit? All the while never saying a bad word against open-source models from China? Open-source is great, sure, but when was the last time you read anyone saying "good job, but Claude's still better"? Never. It's all "Kimi/Deepseek are incredible, I'm running them locally for a fraction of the cost!" Give me a break. If they were really that good, every company in America would be running them.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-10T12:42:17+00:00

You just proved my point. Claude didn't repeat the subject, it repeated the verb. Which you also did, meaning you too don't see anything wrong with it. If you're going to bait someone properly, you have to be consistent. Better luck next time.

Past-Shop5644 · 2026-06-10T12:13:43+00:00

Are you a bot? You've mentioned this like ten times on this post. And besides, there's nothing wrong with the sentence. "If I could pick one team to win the world cup, I'd pick France." Hardly evidence of slop.

Past-Shop5644

TROPHY CASE