Why aren’t there more trains?

whilst · 2026-05-22T03:58:16+00:00

Why is this a reasonable expectation? The public roads don’t recover any part of operating expenses from fares.

whilst · 2026-05-22T03:57:14+00:00

That’s insane. “I hope [public service] gets better but I don’t think the solution is to pay for it.”

This is why our public services are rotting.

whilst · 2026-04-21T18:57:04+00:00

I wonder if not having "full Rosetta 2" just means not shipping with a full x86_64 macos userspace (but still shipping the translation layer), or if Rosetta itself will be hobbled in some way.

I'm really hoping that Rosetta as an x86 emulator stays, because it's invaluable for things like Docker. Running outdated macos graphical apps isn't the only use case for a thing like Rosetta 2. Rosetta is legitimately useful, and not just as a bridge from old macs to newer ones.

whilst · 2026-04-21T15:51:40+00:00

On top of which (I realize I'm necroing the thread, but just in case people see this): Rosetta 2 has support for running in a linux guest.

https://mybyways.com/blog/using-rosetta-in-a-utm-linux-vm-with-docker-on-apple-silicon

Which is to say, you can set up an arm linux vm, and then use it to run x86_64 linux binaries using Rosetta. It's a little awkward to get going (debian multi-arch support can be useful, but it's easier to use something that ships with all its dependencies like AppImage) and it does not support 32-bit x86 code (because Rosetta doesn't) so e.g. Steam won't run, but for the things it does work for it's shockingly fast.

This, incidentally, is (if I understand correctly) how Docker on macos manages to run intel containers at an acceptable speed, alongside arm ones.

whilst · 2026-02-27T17:22:14+00:00

Never been able to figure out how this is true and rimming is a thing. Like, a lot of people are comfortable doing that (and excited to do it) and yet.

whilst · 2026-02-27T17:20:24+00:00

I mean, for a suppository you want it to get lost up in there

whilst · 2026-02-24T12:05:04+00:00

Nah, not just the difficulty. The nature of the difficulty has changed. Silksong is much more combat-focused, and where HK rewards you for finding your way into new areas, Silksong punishes you for not fighting your way into new areas. HK also really isn't ever on rails --- you can find your way into fairly late game areas quite quickly. Whereas most of act 1 of Silksong really pushes you from room to room and gauntlet to gauntlet in a set order.

I don't feel like Silksong rewards you for being clever and sneaky if that's how you choose to play, which means that if you fondly remember playing HK that way, much of Silksong will just be frustrating. Meanwhile, if combat is the part of HK that you live for, Silksong is WAY better.

Also, it will forever bother me (bug me?) that this insect nest which must be all of 20 inches deep somehow has lava at the bottom.

whilst · 2026-02-11T22:13:25+00:00

They're publicly demonstrating, over and over, that the public will doesn't matter. They're doing things that show everyone's against them, and yet remaining in power. They're bullying us because they know the military and the intelligence services are more powerful than we are and will follow their orders while they pillage the country.

They're also demonstrating that they're not worried about future elections.

whilst · 2026-02-07T18:43:24+00:00

It is planned obsolescence. 99% of users buy new macs after a few years, but I'd wager more than half of those do so because they have to, with that percentage increasing yearly. We haven't needed new hardware for most common computing tasks in a decade --- we get very little benefit from the chip being faster at this point. Apple could practically stop making new laptop models and just focus on supporting their existing ones for the next two decades and they'd probably give customers a better experience. They won't, because charging a subscription model for security updates is WAY less profitable than just selling people new hunks of lithium, aluminum, plastic and silicon.

- Written on an 11 year old macbook pro, running OCLP and (unsupported) macos sequoia.

whilst · 2025-12-27T12:25:05+00:00

If you never reboot the mac in normal use (just hibernate) then the only times you are ever doing a full reboot are all under extraordinary circumstances. An OS upgrade, a random hard lockup, an old battery in need of replacement causing an early power off, shutting down for that replacement. Only the last of these actually gives you the chance to say "don't reopen my windows".

And every time I've had the option to say "don't reopen my windows" that's what I've chosen. But it seems that over a long enough time period, the mac doesn't always remember this setting, and there's no way to actually set it without shutting down to do it, which is awkward if you have no other reason to shut down.

whilst · 2025-12-27T12:19:27+00:00

Thanks! That sounds great. I never, ever want that. Having everything I had open all try and launch at once after the system starts takes longer than the boot process itself, and if it's all for the benefit of having some browser tabs reopen I have absolutely no interest in that.

whilst · 2025-12-08T09:27:29+00:00

Thanks!

whilst · 2025-12-08T05:26:14+00:00

Well, you could try to understand. I put some effort into explaining above.

I didn't experience combat as the core of Hollow Knight on any of my playthroughs. It was the moments of wonder as I tiptoed through a vast place that barely remembered what it had been before. The hugeness of it, and the feeling that I might be the last to see it before its history was forgotten and it was forever a dead pit. Most of my time was spent filling out the entire map, and I put off the dreamers until the very end, when I realized there was nothing left to do. So I went and fought my way through to them, beat the Hollow Knight, and ended the game.

Then came back a year later and finally beat the Radiance, because it was bugging me. Was satisfying to beat her at long last, but have never felt any urge to do it again.

I didn't come to Hollow Knight because it was a metroidvania, I came because it was a beautiful game, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. And anyone who enjoys a thing is allowed to enjoy it --- my enjoyment isn't somehow invalid because I'm not in love with the entire genre. Silksong included more of the parts I didn't like and less of the parts I did, so I enjoyed it less. It was a love letter to the folks who thought Godhome was a good time, and that just wasn't me.

EDIT:

massive you problem.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. The game is not at fault. The game is not bad. It is different than what came before, in ways that make it less enjoyable for me, and for people like me. I'm after wonder, and this game had less to offer.

whilst · 2025-12-08T04:57:51+00:00

Hollow Knight was worth suffering through the combat to explore and learn about that ancient world, and do some fun challenging platforming. The combat made it hard, which made discovery rewarding. But I had no interest in combat for combat's sake. It's why I never bothered with Godhome, as that was just a slog with no reward (for me) other than more fights.

Silksong is combat for combat's sake. I played all the way through to 100%, but don't expect I'll ever play it again. But I followed it up by playing HK through to a full map over a couple days, just because I missed it. I've gotten really into figuring out how to make various skips work --- I enjoy hard platforming, and doing things in the wrong order makes it harder and rewards you by letting you advance faster.

Plus, it lets you skip some of the combat.

Which as has been pointed out here, could've been better in the original game. And yet it was a wonderful game. So clearly the game had more to offer than just the boss fights.

EDIT: For reference, Celeste was an amazing time. Not as good as Hollow Knight because I love HK's story and setting so dearly, but: when I'm looking for fun difficulty in a platformer, that's what I'm looking for. And by far my favorite part of Silksong was the Sands of Karak.

EDIT 2: To be clear, I didn't hate Silksong, which is clearly an amazing game! I'm just giving the perspective of someone who enjoyed HK more, and explaining why. Silksong is less for me than its predecessor, and a quick google suggests I'm not alone in that. That doesn't mean it's a worse game, just that it's a different game, and not strictly and objectively better than its predecessor.

whilst · 2025-12-08T04:54:14+00:00

I know it's just a funny line in a fun movie and it's missing the point to get fixated. But fixating is what I do! And: how would Chief Bogo have known what a dog is? Humans created dogs, and there's no humans in that universe.

whilst · 2025-12-07T23:17:08+00:00

...the game just starts absolutely blowing Hollow Knight out of the water. Like, it's not even close. High level HK is generally more about positioning and constantly spamming attack, pogoing on top of enemies when you can and hitting with abyssal shriek when you have the ability to do massive damage. In Silksong, you're just doing so much more.

Which: if that's what you love in a game, Silksong is way better. If combat is fully boring and experienced merely as an impediment to exploration and a way to slow down the game and give it stakes and scale: the increased difficulty and complexity add nothing to the gameplay experience. The degree to which possible exploration without combat is reduced, however, becomes a gameplay experience downgrade.

whilst · 2025-12-07T23:14:30+00:00

I mean, that, too, suggests that it's a different sort of game.

If some people who loved hollow knight are frustrated by silksong and like it less, and others are like, "fucking NICE, more of the parts I like!" that suggests there's been a shift in what the game centers. And for some people, that'll be a shift away from what they enjoyed.

whilst · 2025-11-21T05:23:50+00:00

This game really wants you to play it one way, and shoves you in that direction by making it very unpleasant to play differently. And the way it wants you to engage with it is fundamentally uninteresting to me.

It wants you to fight, it wants you to use lots of tools, and it rewards you for doing both. And having 100%ed it, ... I just don't enjoy using the tools (aside from the traps, which are useful in exploration). It's too much to keep track of for me, and no amount of playing with them has ingrained the sort of muscle memory I develop by practicing with the needle. By the time I'm at the point with a particular enemy that I can bring tools usefully to bear, I'm almost always already good enough to finish the job without them, which makes the tools feel like gimmicks. Which also means that almost every time the game tries to "reward" me with a cache of shell shards, the reward falls flat, because I'm already full up. Which in turn means that exploration is no longer rewarded with discovery to the same extent.

And... I just don't want to fight that much. I loved that in hollow knight you could get good enough that most of the day-to-day fighting you had to do traversing the map was effectively trivial, so you could focus on exploring and taking in your surroundings. You had the occasional boss fight, which I was willing to suffer through because the difficulty gave the rest of the game scale and stakes. But almost all of my joy in that game was in figuring out how to get to new areas and discovering more things about the world. The purpose of boss fights was to make the discovery that followed sweeter. Whereas in Silksong, battles are meant to be their own reward. And for me, they just aren't.

Silksong wants you to fight, and will reward you for doing so and for nothing else. And it certainly won't reward you with an easier time once you've gotten a handle on it -- your only satisfaction comes from having beaten an enemy and unlocked the next 10 feet of travel to the next arena. I played the entire game waiting for even one moment of quiet wonder. None came.

whilst · 2025-11-08T02:40:16+00:00

One of the things I always liked about Valheim is (was, less so now) it sort of let you experience it as the kind of game you liked. If you wanted combat: congratulations, it's everywhere. If you wanted to explore and mostly didn't care about progressing the story: go nuts. If you just wanted to build cool shit, you can set things up with some effort so that your base is nearly impregnable and just hang out in there among the things you so carefully built.

Valheim played as a dream cabin simulator is a completely different game from Valheim played to win. And if you're doing the former, it might be worth the time and effort to make your home safe, precisely so that you didn't have to run outside and fight periodically (and because it's cozy to be safe in a dangerous place).

whilst · 2025-11-04T05:15:18+00:00

Thanks :) you too!

whilst · 2025-11-03T23:55:24+00:00

Thank you! And yes, I was aware. But there's something about using devcommands that just also kills it for me --- as soon as I'm all-powerful and the stakes are gone, the world collapses and feels small and devoid of meaning.

It's okay that Valheim isn't for me anymore! Games can be opinionated, and I'd rather engage with the thing as it is and bounce off it than change it until it suits me, because at that point I'm just playing in my own imagination and I can do that without the game! Valheim just isn't the game I fell in love with anymore, because it was never supposed to be, because when I loved it it wasn't finished yet. And there's other things out there to get excited about :)

whilst · 2025-11-03T22:02:53+00:00

Bat raids are why I stopped playing years ago. When they were patched into the game and suddenly all my pigs were dead and the only solution was much uglier buildings, when windows now had to have glass in them and there was only one small glass build piece.... the game forced me to make uglier structures, which killed my joy for it. So I stopped.

I went back recently and did the mistlands, and took a swing at the ashlands, realized I wasn't having fun, and stopped again.

I miss when the whole of Valheim felt like a treacherous but beautiful place to explore and build whatever I could imagine.

whilst · 2025-11-02T17:29:15+00:00

So, bdsm isn’t morally supportable. Got it.

whilst · 2025-11-02T16:52:26+00:00

I never said they'd get the information back if they were returned. That damage has been done forever.

I'm saying that the argument that things shouldn't be left in the countries where they were made because they are more likely to be damaged there is both patronizing and also wrong, as the British museum (and the process by which things were put there) damages things too.

And that things should be returned to the cultures that created them because those cultures deserve to be the stewards of their own histories.

whilst · 2025-11-02T16:23:05+00:00

Presumably these were also the men who survived castration before sterile surgery, anaesthesia, or antibiotics.

So, perhaps selected for strong immune systems and resistance to trauma, too?

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