Wandering Adventure Party

Sanda is a weird anime. Santa as a government-hunted transforming shounen protagonist? Some weird commentary on youth and tradition? I don't get it.

People often think that a protocol is just the order of bits and fields and headers. But that shit is just the schema. You can have a bunch of well ordered bits and still manage to communicate absolutely nothing.

Protocols tell you how to do something in various situations in order to achieve orderly outcomes. Thus, a well-written communication protocol also tells you how to communicate, and what that communication is meant to achieve. Since two clients have adopted the same protocol, it can be assumed they want to achieve the same goals.

A protocol is thus also a contract.

I mean that all seems super obvious and straight forward, but then you look at a lot of modern protocols and they focus a lot on schema and leave very little to figuring out goals and means. They want to be everything-protocols, which is just counter productive. A contract without known goals has no enforcement mechanism, and no way if anything but extremely broad terms have been met. Has my message had the desired affect? Do I need to send more, wait for more? Hard to know. It's fine if you just want to send bytes back and forth, but its shit when you're trying to create an ocean for applications since they don't know what is going to be achieved broadly, they have to negotiate individually (...which they could have done anyways without a protocol).

And that's why you see app A fighting with App B fighting with ... to figure out what each has done and how to read each other's specific interpretations and ideas. Frankly, It's a fuckin' mess. I understand that'd It'd probably create a lot of friction and slowdown to do it right, but its also kinda silly that applications often have to identify and negotiate with each other despite sharing the same protocol/version.

In a meetup groups discord. Someone said they wanted to GM a tabletop game.

Huge number of people were interested. Details discussed. Then it got down to scheduling. Suddenly 2/3rds of the people interested start backing off as they remember all the commitments and things they have. One of the drivers is like “Oh, I’m going to be in Italy for a quarter, so I can’t commit”

Like lol what the fuck are these people doing? Why is it always like this?
#TTRPG

@fujiwara@sakurajima.moe Some of the controversies left a bad taste in my mouth. But there generally just seems to be this horizon you have to cross as a big youtuber to get to a certain size, where you stop really thinking about what it is you did and what made you genuine and start thing more about "Content", daily engagement, marketing, merchandising, and so forth. Linus crossed that horizon a long time ago.

Listening to my friend go through her dating app experience makes me feel better about myself as a person.

@s@sakurajima.moe I think the same pretty often. At least one other person is haunting the servers.

Using LLMs as your therapist or friend is the mental health equivalent of a clothes hanger abortion. It even stems from the same problem of cost / a shortage of quality care.

@ielenia@ck.catwithaclari.net I know logically you’re technically not, but I know it’s where you want to be so I just put the information there in my head as a silly positive affirmation thing.

Dear tech people: the DRAM situation, where like the only 3 companies that make a product exploit temporary supply shocks to collude and permanently drag prices up to ruinously high levels?

That’s what’s been happening across the entire economy for years now.

Please join the rest of us in getting mad at the economic world order and stop dick riding capitalism so hard.

@whitequark@mastodon.social @xgranade@wandering.shop there was a recent article breaking down why data centers (especially the AI variety) in space are a bad idea. Perhaps useful to the discussion.

https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-idea/

Why does everyone who has Spotify ends up assuming everyone else does too? ​​

I’m not listening to your Spotify link, friend. I am not creating an account just for it.

@morqendi@dice.camp perfect. Ship it.

I need game designers to stop screwing so hard with initiative. I’ve tried a lot of systems and everyone has got special opinions on it.

I just want initiative done, and out of the way as soon as combat starts.

I don’t want cards or fancy dice. I want players to know when it’s their turn so they know what they’re doing ahead of time. Speed and Immersion is so much more important than tactical optionality, and immersion comes when you stop thinking about the mechanics and go to muscle memory. Speed keeps people engaged and excited.

Every time you stop the game to go back to mechanics to figure out order or some crap, you’ve fucked it up. Players are reminded that ‘this is a game’.

If you MUST have a special system; keep it simple, keep it out of the way, don’t make me bookkeep or have to moderate discussion every round. Keep combat fast, and make sure players know WHAT they are doing.
#TTRPG

@pup_hime@toot.cat …that may be relevant to someone I know. Thank you for sharing. ​​

@pup_hime@toot.cat the advantage of having billions of us is that very rarely is any path untrodden before. I hope everything is alright and I am glad you found some resource.

@gnat@tech.lgbt @Taweret@timeloop.cafe Boy that'll piss me off. I was young at the time, but pretty sensitive to emotion and everyone was lowkey terrified all the time. Everyone assumed that another attack was just right around the corner and were crazed and miserable, especially since the economy took a dump.

It's how I knew early that COVID was going to suck; It started feeling the same way. Same with the October 7th attacks. If someone says post 9/11 were good times I will find the strength to slap the taste out of their mouth even when I am 90 and made of meal worms and sawdust.

@pup_hime@toot.cat The reality. It burns.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was a better game than TNO or TOB. Whoever wrote the game though definitely struggles to really rationalize or setup the scenes they have in their head, so in all 3 games stuff just kinda happens.

This game is also more overtly political than the other games. I kinda wish they went harder, but it is just a shooter. The humor is a little off brand but whatever.

The whole Nazi body thing is kinda weird. Too much spoiler to go into it but it’s just treated strangely.

The Youngblood is kinda derided so I am not going to play that one. That and I am burned out on silly wolfenstein writing.

I kinda think a lot of people have the childhood mentality that pets are just things you have to feed and clean since mom and dad took care of all the pay and pain parts.

I want to tell someone that they probably shouldn’t be taking on a pet when they struggle to pay rent, but it’s their life. ​​ I just know they’re going to go into massive credit card debt or have put it down the first time it gets legitimately sick, and that doesn’t seem right.