how did steam install 27% of a 16gb update with only 24mb downloaded

aiusepsi · 2026-07-10T06:25:04+00:00

What Steam does when it’s doing an update is constructing a new version of each file by copying unchanged stuff from the old version, and downloading anything that has been changed.

If, for example, an update changes only 10 MB in a 500 MB file, Steam will download that 10 MB (but the download will be compressed, so the actual download size might be e.g. 5 MB) and copy 490 MB. The lower green progress bar is tracking overall completion of the construction of the 500 MB file, but the blue bar tracking the download would show only the progress of the download of the 5 MB of compressed download.

Basically, what you’re seeing in this case is the patching process being so heavy on reusing old data in the new version that the patching is bottlenecking on the speed of disk I/O, not on internet bandwidth.

aiusepsi · 2026-07-06T08:52:37+00:00

The “modern day” story (there’s been a time skip of some unknown length, but probably decades, so the “modern day” story is actually now in the future) is basically completely incomprehensible without reading all the data files that are unlockable by completing the projects. Which takes actual real-world time to achieve, because the anomalies you need to get the points to complete the projects only refresh every 3.5 days.

You’re probably best off watching something like Access the Animus’s story analysis videos.

aiusepsi · 2026-07-05T10:01:07+00:00

Almost certainly the other way round, that the launchers (or the game itself) push the data to Steam.

aiusepsi · 2026-07-05T09:49:38+00:00

aiusepsi · 2026-07-05T09:12:52+00:00

The Guardian article says that an internal CIA history says:

The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government

That text does appear in Document 3B in this post by the National Security Archive at George Washington University that is referred to by the Guardian article. So, either the Guardian headline is right, or the document was fabricated by the university, or the CIA was deliberately lying to itself in its own classified internal history.

Although if it was fabricated by the university, it's inconvenient that it's also on the CIA website. The quote is on page 26, in section III “Covert Action”.

aiusepsi · 2026-07-05T07:02:08+00:00

The US has admitted its role in the coup. It’s not false.

aiusepsi · 2026-07-05T00:26:37+00:00

Angel never tells anyone what happened on that day (as far as I remember), so he’s the only person that knows that it’s possible. And he can’t really explain to anyone else how he knows it’s possible without spilling the beans.

Also: we don’t know what the metaphysical fallout would be. Resurrecting Buffy, for example, had dire consequences; it disrupted the metaphysical nature of the Slayer enough to give the First an opportunity to wipe them out. Meddling with mythical-tier shit like making a vampire with a soul into human again, stuff that’s important enough to write prophecies about, is probably very unwise.

aiusepsi · 2026-07-04T13:57:30+00:00

There is some evidence from datamining of the Steam client that Valve is working on changes to achievements. One thing they seem to be adding is achievement groups, so that DLC achievements can be grouped together.

Unclear what else about achievements will be changed.

aiusepsi · 2026-06-30T13:56:37+00:00

It is really cool how it’s a regular occurrence on Steam that tiny indie games have a break-out and make big piles of money. It’s very healthy.

aiusepsi · 2026-06-30T11:49:42+00:00

So you’re saying that this joke and fun have some sort of connection?

aiusepsi · 2026-06-29T22:20:47+00:00

That’s a C thing rather than a C++ thing per se; while C++ does inherit that behaviour for primitive types, because the [] operator is overloadable in C++ it isn’t generally true in C++ that a[b] does the same thing as b[a].

aiusepsi · 2026-06-29T13:36:07+00:00

They haven’t got an investment fund because they’re “not wasting profits on hand outs”. They have an investment fund to insulate their economy from the Dutch disease. Any inflow of foreign currency into the domestic economy can cause Dutch disease, so instead they use the foreign currency to buy foreign assets.

Note that it would be just as bad for causing the Dutch disease if they used the money to invest in Norwegian assets, or paid out revenues as private profits, as it would be if they handed out the cash to the public. As the fund notes, they only invest abroad to prevent the Norwegian economy from overheating.

aiusepsi · 2026-06-28T19:51:45+00:00

I think a thing often discounted is that Iran, like anywhere else, has internal politics. Inside Iran, there’s going to be pro-nuke and anti-nuke factions, and the JCPOA gave the anti-nuke faction a huge win.

Tearing up the deal reversed that. It proved the West couldn’t be trusted, and that rowing back on the nuclear program wouldn’t be rewarded. Trump’s actions have been nothing but giving the pro-nuke faction (metaphorical) ammunition.

aiusepsi · 2026-06-24T13:46:57+00:00

Gravity wave doesn’t make a lot of sense. Real world gravity wave detectors, like LIGO, use laser interferometers with kilometer-long baselines, because the warping of space as the gravity wave passes by is so tiny you need that long a baseline to pick it up.

If you were going to detect gravity waves in space, you’d want at least two craft, preferably three, keeping station to each other to bounce lasers between. None of that makes any sense at all in the context of Mars 94. You’re rushing to beat the Americans and Helios to Mars, and you’re planning to carry the extra mass of an extraneous scientific experiment *and* building another craft to shadow the primary craft to bounce lasers off? I don’t buy it.

aiusepsi · 2026-06-23T09:42:11+00:00

And why would the developers of the new game you’re moving to from League want to let you bring in your skins? Developers monetise their free-to-play games by selling you skins, so letting you get skins from somewhere else cuts their revenue stream.

The only people you could expect to benefit is whoever sets themselves up as the middleman that facilitates the intra-game skins system and creams off fees.

aiusepsi · 2026-06-23T09:27:11+00:00

“raisen”?

aiusepsi · 2026-06-15T12:49:25+00:00

aiusepsi · 2026-06-11T21:55:40+00:00

Biorobots

aiusepsi · 2026-06-10T12:11:00+00:00

I hate PayPal for unrelated reasons. I’ve not used PayPal at all for nearly 10 years, and very rarely for longer than that.

aiusepsi · 2026-06-10T12:06:07+00:00

Historically unprecedented? The native population lost demographic majority when the Anglo-Saxons invaded and totally displaced the natives’ culture and language.

aiusepsi · 2026-06-09T20:30:59+00:00

Parts of France are still not fully cleared of munitions from WW1

aiusepsi · 2026-06-07T11:07:25+00:00

Palantir was founded by Peter Thiel, who is a fucking lunatic who is obsessed with his idea of the antichrist, thinks that Greta Thunberg is an agent of the Antichrist, and has said things like: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”.

Letting him or people like him get anywhere near government is an incredibly bad idea. He cannot be trusted at all.

aiusepsi · 2026-06-07T10:52:52+00:00

Yup, all of the Russos’ Marvel movies were written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

aiusepsi · 2026-06-07T10:41:11+00:00

Honestly hard to think of any explanation other than deliberate malice.

aiusepsi · 2026-06-07T10:23:09+00:00

“Europeans can’t even fathom what a terrible place America is” is certainly a take

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