[-] Squiddles@kbin.social 94 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

"USDA Organic" gets misrepresented a lot. It doesn't mean there are no pesticides. Hell, if a pest problem is bad enough the program has provisions for using the big-gun pesticides that conventional agriculture uses. You just have to go through a process of gradual ramp-up and have an approved plan to minimize crop contact.

As for it being a "marketing term": Yes, but that doesn't mean it's the same product with a different package. It's a marketing term in the same way as "Certified Humane" eggs are, or "Fair Trade" coffee, or "locally-grown". The actual product you receive has no guaranteed difference in flavor or nutrition--which is what the OP quote is about--the difference is in how it was produced. I'm not advocating one way or the other, and I understand that there are other issues where Organic can be worse (e.g. lower production density, some organic pesticides potentially being more harmful to the ecosystem in some circumstances, etc). I'm just saying that it's a term that actually means something and isn't just an expensive advertising label.

There are rules for how pesticides may be applied, sources of fertilizer, fertilizer application methods and frequency, a requirement that mechanical pest control be attempted before chemical methods, land management requirements, additional random inspections for compliance with Organic and general agriculture regulations, and many many more things. Here is a link to the actual regulations governing it. I highly recommend at least skimming it. I used to roll my eyes when I heard the term "Organic", but it does actually tell you something meaningful about how the crops were produced, if that's important to you.

[-] Squiddles@kbin.social 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

There's something called "Brook's Law" that basically observes that a software project which onboards more developers in order to catch up will fall further behind. I hope they're careful about how they allocate new developers or they'll end up doing a year of onboarding, rewriting core code, and have no meaningful updates for 6-12 months. I know they have the resources to spare, and that scenario worked out okay for Valheim, but I hope the game doesn't lose momentum because they overhire or don't allocate enough senior devs to continue feature development while they catch the new devs up to speed.

Edit to add: I don't think it actually matters in this instance if they don't have a large player base by the time the game is feature complete. They don't have continuous revenue streams like a live service game, so hiring more devs is ultimately just about making sure they have enough talent to make good on their early access promises. The company could probably dissolve tomorrow and all the staff could live the rest of their lives in luxury never working again. It'd be a dick move, but they already sold an insane number of copies.

[-] Squiddles@kbin.social 141 points 10 months ago

I heard Japan described as being "stuck in the year 2000 since the 1980's". I think South Korea fits the original question better than Japan nowadays.

[-] Squiddles@kbin.social 21 points 10 months ago

Loved this game! The Stanley Parable meets a cosmic horror visual novel with fun voice acting. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did, and I'm glad to hear that the devs have this perspective.

[-] Squiddles@kbin.social 11 points 10 months ago

Definitely second Dyson Sphere Program! I'm not at all interested in the combat (it's optional), but now that they have that completed they'll be updating other features too. I'm hundreds of hours in and still come back to it.

[-] Squiddles@kbin.social 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I just ran a quick check and private games (whether installed or not) are still shared. Seems like a weird oversight.

[-] Squiddles@kbin.social 33 points 10 months ago

Lots of possible uses for private games, beyond the obvious. Off the top of my head: when working on mods I'll relaunch a game dozens of times and Steam will spam the in-game notification to my friends unless I sign out of chat. Now I can stay in chat and just make the game private until I'm done modding. Some games get left open a lot (like idle games) and I don't want them cluttering my profile's recent games. Sometimes I just want a dumb-fun game without advertising it to friends because I'm self-conscious about it. Some people have coworkers as friends on Steam so they can play socially, but some games may give away political/personal information that they would rather keep private (eg, LGBTQ+ focused games). I have young family members who are friends on Steam and I'd rather they don't see certain games in my library.

I wish it was implemented like an access control list instead of just private or not-private, but being able to keep the games I want to play with others public and keep other games private is absolutely brilliant. Now I can take private mode off, which makes figuring out which game to play with friends much easier since they can see my library and the "what games do we both have" library filter will work.

[-] Squiddles@kbin.social 11 points 11 months ago

I don't even think you need one for eggs necessarily. I switched from PTFE nonstick to all metal (stainless/carbon steel and cast iron) a few years back. Eggs were no problem once I figured out heat control. I cook scrambled eggs and omelettes every week with no sticking.

I did eventually get a ceramic nonstick for making soft tofu in a sticky sauce. Definitely don't try that in a stainless steel pan. It worked okay in the carbon steel wok, but was obnoxious to clean.

[-] Squiddles@kbin.social 13 points 11 months ago

People in this thread have noted that some systems seem to be Linux-cursed, and I've definitely experienced that. Usually it's a specific piece of hardware that isn't well supported, or a package or default configuration that has an issue. I've had systems that were spinning their heads and spraying pea soup everywhere on OpenSUSE and Debian turn around and behave perfectly on Gentoo (that was 17 years ago, but it doesn't seem to be a unique experience).

Regarding the controller, if you're connecting a PS4 controller via bluetooth I think I had the same problem earlier today, and there's an issue open on the bluez github about it. I found a post on the Arch bbs with a workaround. TLDR, bluez has had a few issues in the latest builds and reverting all your bluez libraries to 5.68-1 seems to solve it for most people, including me. Unfortunately, this kind of thing crops up occasionally. Everywhere really, but especially on Linux because of how much it relies on community contributions to projects.

Anyway, I've rambled too long. Sounds like you got bit by either a driver issue or a config/package issue. Sorry it happened to you, and sorry it soured you on Linux. If you're looking for something that "just works" and aren't getting it with Linux, no reason to beat your head against a wall.

[-] Squiddles@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

It's a reference to the way that a certain youtuber ends their videos. "Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't". Highly recommend checking out that channel--dude just loves botany and running his mouth.

[-] Squiddles@kbin.social 27 points 1 year ago

Yes, NIST now recommends against requiring periodic password changes in their official guidance document.

[-] Squiddles@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago

Broadly, I agree with what you're saying. Totally just devil's advocate-ing and speculating to provoke thought, so feel free to ignore. I wonder if the enormous number of games available plays into this. I can almost always dig around and find at least one 10/10 game from the last couple of years that I haven't played which is already on sale for cheap. Comparing that to a 7/10 game that just came out at full price... I'd almost certainly enjoy the 7/10 game, but I'd spend less money and likely have more fun with the 10/10. The newness factor may not be enough to bump the 7/10 game to the top of the queue.

With so many great games available an 8/10 might actually feel like a logical minimum for a lot of people, which may influence the scale that reviewers use. If people tend to ignore games with 7- scores and a reviewer feels that a game is good enough that it deserves attention, they may be tempted to bump it up to 8/10 just to get it on radars.

Meanwhile, back in the day there wasn't such a glut of games to choose from. And with better QoL standards, common UX principles, code samples, and tools/engines, games may legitimately just be better on average than they used to be, making it fiddly to try to retrofit review scores onto the same bell curve as older games. To reverse it, I can see how an 8/10 game released in 1995 might be scored significantly worse by modern reviewers for lack of QoL/UX features, controls, presentation style, etc, or even just be scored lower because in modern times it would lack the novelty it had at the time it was released.

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Squiddles

joined 1 year ago