u/__cybersyn__

Wouldn't Marx say that we should socialize AI rather than make it a culture war identity? The gap between how westerners view AI versus most of Chinese society is enormous. Here, it's social suicide to talk about the emancipatory potential it might have in a different political economy because we could have it do all the shitty jobs. The only socially acceptable position one can have is to argue for its abolishment.

To clarify: I am hoping the open source models from China undermine OpenAI, Grok et al until the AI bubble bursts but that's not the same as saying I want to fire all this tech into the sun like I did with NFTs. I want the AI bubble to burst because it's about capitalists consolidating wealth and political power with closed AI that was built using dead labour (training data) in order to suppress wages and discipline the working class but it's not hard to see an alternative trajectory where we organize and successfully demand a shorter work week and universal basic services.

I think having a competing view where we advocate for socializing AI as it increasingly comprises the MoP might do the left a lot of good among segments of the working class that are worried about their jobs but aren't happy with the status quo.

Why does every western leftist act like the popular misconception a Luddite where AI is evil and using it is a moral failing, therefore it needs to be banned so cashiers can exist for a thousand years? Why do so many leftists and even Marxists sound like anprims when it comes to this? It seems like a materialist analysis is absent from the discourse in leftist spaces.

Why isn't FALC put forward as a left-wing alternative rather than "ban all AI"? Technologies that are harmful under capitalism could be emancipatory under different political economies.

Since the dev team has been whittled down to only two and we have infinite business analysts, PMs, etc and we are on the frontline in that we make the software that users experience (with other software owned by our team being downstream), it seems like it's reasonable for us to want clear requirements, tickets, etc.

Instead, everything is vague, business analysts connect us with business or end users directly to hash things out while they take a backseat, etc.

Instead of relevant requirements, we get requirements for downstream systems that have much bigger teams than us and we're supposed to infer our requirements from theirs even though this is sometimes impossible to do. Did I mention we're also understaffed and overworked? (We asked to hire more people but they told us to lean on AI instead).

For problem tickets, they were putting us on calls with end users directly for a while and having us assign Jira tickets based on these sessions **to ourselves** since half the business analysts "aren't technical" and don't know how to use Jira or Service Now etc. Once they tried to have me create incident tickets in Service Now on behalf of an end user then assign it to myself in Jira (which is itself an incident) so I put my foot down and made them to through proper channels, which they thought was me overreacting.

Anyway, now I'm really putting my foot down and not doing something unless there are requirements, a ticket, etc. No verbal requests, no DMs, no vibes or reading the room, no emails to only me or forwards from business of a complaint being the sole requirement, everything needs to be made explicit, tracked and traced or I'm not doing it.

Is this fair or am I being excessive? I feel like if I don't put my foot down, I'll just be in business meetings eventually where I have to infer the ask from vibes. I honestly have a hard time even communicating with business which is why business analysts exist, they're supposed to translate business requirements into technical ones yet functionally they're just an extension of business themselves.

/rant

I've never had an issue with it and tickets are going fast but it looks like my account is not syncing with my Cineclub membership so I can't use it to buy tickets. Help?

My brother-in-law bought the kids cheap Android tablets and uses them as a parenting substitute so I (the uncle) interjected myself and gave them a old hand-me-down gaming laptop with Linux Mint, Steam etc. I also put educational software on it and locked it down so that they couldn't use it to watch slop on YouTube.

The problem is that I live in a different part of the country and everyone in their household is (extremely) computer illiterate, so the amount of support I can give is minimal since most of it is over the phone.

Anyway, after about a year of moderate use, the old laptop's battery and charging port failed and they'd rather get the kids a replacement than get it fixed. They're looking at laptops but I think the kids are too rough with the laptop and they only use it indoors anyway, so I was thinking a MiniPC with peripherals was the way to go as they don't have the space for a desktop. I assume it'd be more durable and last much longer than a laptop. I'd also set it up the same way as above (Linux Mint/Steam/locked down etc).

Some questions:

Any recommendations for a sub-$500 (CAD) MiniPC that can play 5+ year old games reasonably well? Most of the ones I see have integrated GPUs which is a no-go for this. My nephew plays some Steam games via Proton that are pretty demanding by 2018 standards.

Should I stick with Beelink? I've had numerous people recommend this brand.

Which is good for thermals? I might set it up initially but I won't have control over whatever graphics settings my nephew uses in the future.

Linux Mint is fine, I'm assuming?

Any good bundles for MiniPCs with peripherals? I assume Amazon is the best place to look?

Or maybe a refurb gaming laptop is better? I can actually get one pretty easily that runs under this price point, the problem is that I don't want something that's just going to break in a year after it gets tossed around too much.

Thanks for any and all advice.

I'm in an enthusiast VR community and people seem pretty cynical about the Steam Frame for quite a few reasons, some to such a degree that they hope the device fails. Others just think it likely will fail.

There are quite a few reasons listed, like no OLED, shitty controller haptics, it's Linux-based (many enthusiasts really hate Linux), SteamVR (people hate it), lots of Quest 3 adjacent specs etc but the main reason they think it will flop is because it automatically isn't compelling for flat gaming since it doesn't have colour passthrough.

Can someone explain this to me? Do you think the average user will care that much? If you're running games natively, then even B&W passthrough might hurt performance anyway so you'd want to disable it entirely. For PC streaming, I think colour matching would be good enough for immersion and you'd still be able to see things around you.

I've heard that is they wanted colour passthrough without tanking the performance as a result then they'd have to have gone with an XR SoC designed for multiple cameras, like the XR2 in the Quest. The monochrome cameras are for tracking. This would mean that they'd be trading standalone performance just to have fancy passthrough. Seems like a worthy tradeoff for me.

It also isn't an MR device or trying to be.

Is there anything I'm missing here?

Reward the people who actually grind, not the casuals.

TTK for high level armor is way too low, just saying. Not talking about headshots but body shots that hit armor.

I think they need to nerf FMJ but keep AP as-is.

I'm new to this game but not to Arma as I've been playing it since the first game, including OpFlash before it. I prefer PvP and have played a lot of Project Reality, Squad etc and I used to play with some organized Arma 3 groups.

When I got into Reforger last week, after trying most of the vanilla and modded gamemodes, I settled on AAS/Spearhead (modded) over the vanilla Conflict and Conflict HQ modes because these modded modes actually have the combined arms action that I want in Arma while still retaining some semblance of progression, logistics, base building etc.

Conflict, including HQ, has extremely sparse combat because players are spread out over too much territory and there's no gameplay mechanics that act as glue to keep squads or infantry (generally) together. Everyone just does their own thing. Even the above AAS mode struggles with this a bit due to the lack of HABs/Rallies but vehicles make up for it (partially). Then there's the comms shenanigans, with every player having access to Platoon instead of just squad leaders. I sometimes have to disable Platoon because it's nothing but people talking smack or having conversations.

On the WCS servers, the mods were broken all day yesterday so we were playing the vanilla game with a linear AAS layer and even that was significantly more enjoyable than Conflict HQ. I think of Conflict HQ was streamlined even further to the point of being linear, it'd be much more enjoyable.

It seems to me that Conflict is way more fun for people who like playing support roles, like doing logi runs, than it is for people who want combat.