Yes, and that’s what I’m using. Or trying to - people flat out refuse ditching WA because everyone else is using it. That’s why I’m hoping the barrier won’t be lifted just for Europeans.

Further info on the compound. Wikipedia claims it to be as toxic as chlorine. That was also used in WW1, under the name “bertholite”.

Question: will this interoperability only apply to Europeans? As in, will WhatsApp keep some artificial barrier elsewhere?

I’m asking this because I’m in Brazil. And I desperately want to ditch WhatsApp, but here this would be social suicide, given almost everybody here assumes you have WhatsApp.

Can I send anyone the excess vitamin D I’m getting?

Bloody Spring. (Southern Hemisphere.)

Even then, I think “check nearby people for what they use” shouldn’t be underestimated. Of course you wouldn’t tell them to use Neon itself, but if they’re using Kubuntu you’d probably be abler to help them than if they were to use, say, Mint, right?

My point is, that people underestimate the power of offline help, and having acquaintances who know the system well enough to help you out. And that matters a lot when picking your starting distro.

When “the right thing to do” enters in conflict with “what maximises profits”, businesses almost always pick the later.

What makes this decision particularly stark is the response from other tech giants. The same censorship notice was sent to Apple and Google, as the game has been available on their Russian mobile stores since 2020. Both companies reportedly ignored the request, leaving Flick Solitaire available for download.

It’s a matter of relative power.

Do you know anyone in real life that has some experience with Linux, and is willing to help you out with it? If yes, use the same distribution (distro, or “OS”) as they do.

If not, as others said, Mint is a good start.

TL;DW: an extremely convoluted explanation of the optimal strategy for Guess Who.

Let’s call

• “pool” - the number of characters a player did not rule out as not being the right character. For example, if there are 20 chars and you ruled 8 out, then your pool is 12. Your pool is “a”, your opponent’s pool is “b”.
• “bid” - the number of characters in the pool that a question applies to. For example, if your pool is 12, you ask “do they have a beard?”, and there are 4 bearded characters there, then the bid is 4. And if your opponent asks “does he look like a bitch?”, whatever you do, do not include Marsellus Wallace into the bid.

So. If I got this right, your bid should be either a/2 or b-1, whichever is the smallest. That’s it.

I did because my older computer was a potato, so it was kind of obvious the game took a bit too long to install.

From the top of my mind, Europa Universalis 4. Even the base game takes ages to install, and I don’t think it’s just the Linux version.

Incidentally, I checked it in FitGirl’s site, found EU5 instead, and she’s complaining about the exact same thing:

Installation takes 5-12 minutes (depending on your system, mostly on your drive speed – the game has more than 49000 small files, Paradox never learn from their mistakes)

Yup, pretty much.

Bingo. And this means they’re effectively choosing who their games are for. And then complaining the ones they didn’t choose decided to pirate it.

So you’re saying that all games should install like this?

Given other people addressed the same point, but unlike you they aren’t disingenuously assuming words into my mouth, I think it’s pretty safe to block you as dead weight.

I’m aware that compression rates are a trade-off between space and processing time, and that there’s some balance to be had. However, I don’t see this balance from plenty commercial games; what I see instead is disregard.

Here’s a made up example. Suppose you have a choice between compressing a game:

• to 10 GiB, and it takes 2min to unpack it in a certain machine
• to 3 GiB, and it takes 8min to unpack it in a certain machine

FitGirl will consistently pick the later option. And it would be fine if devs picked the former, or a middle ground… but they don’t. Instead, often you get a 10 GiB file that takes 10 min to unpack, the worst of both worlds.

And it isn’t just a matter of the compression algorithm. The developers also have the freedom to choose how they split files; but they often create 9001 files the size of an ant, that is going to hurt decompression times. (Paradox Interactive, I’m looking at you.)

Tagging @[email protected], as it addresses what they said too.

And it’s culture-dependent so it might backfire - it might convey the person is a moron, or that they’re someone you should suspect.

Fair point. I guess it would be more accurate to say “development studios” (you know, the organisation… including the bloody boss) instead of “game devs”.

You’re missing the point. The other user is highlighting why your typical player would go with those repacks. And, well, your typical player doesn’t use Linux (…yet - Microsoft is fixing this real fast.)

(I typically use johncena141, but I don’t recall having problems with FitGirl.)

Note plenty FitGirl repacks are lossless; as in, she isn’t taking less important files out of the game, she’s compressing it better. 90GB→35GB seems accurate; you often see ~1/3 of the original size, like this. And it shows plenty game devs

1. do an extremely bad job at basic tasks like compression.
2. give no flying fucks about players, who might have really slow connections.

And then those same developers get amazed at the fact FitGirl is so popular. “Maybe we’re doing something wrong? …nah.”

There’s something I call “the paradox of mediocrity”: what’s made for everybody is mediocre for everybody, and pleases nobody¹. That’s because quality is, in large part, subjective; and the same things a demographic hate are often the reasons another loves it.

I’ll reuse an example from the text, Pulp Fiction. I love that movie. But I know plenty people who hate it. So let’s say we’ll make a Pulp Fiction 2.0, and address the issues they see with it…

• “It’s too violent!”—now the violence is only implicit.
• “It’s too hard to follow what’s going on!”—no problem, change the narrative structure to a stock one: setup, development, twist, resolution.
• “Why is Jules quoting the Bible? This doesn’t make sense lol”—let’s tone it down, now Jules speaks a bit less cryptically.

Done. Now Pulp Fiction 2.0 should be for everybody, right? Well. For some, the move went from awful to mediocre; and for some…

• It was supposed to be a violent world; violence should be an explicit part of the everyday of those characters—you grab a snack, chat a bit with a friend, and then murder someone. But it’s now implicit, so the movie lost meaning.
• That narrative structure, refreshing and different, was replaced with the same slop you see in almost every Hollywood movie. *Yaaaawn*
• You butchered part of the theme, moral rules in a fucked up world. What’s left is either philosophical masturbations for chair addicts, or no moral discussion at all.

Read the text in the light of the above, and you’ll notice André Franca is talking about the same paradox, through different words. And he’s saying how this happened.

The comparisons the author make show he prefers informationally dense works; plenty people are like this. But for plenty others, informationally dense means hard to follow, and that’s a "problem"². Fixing the “problem” means the work loses appeal for some (like Franca³), but makes it a lot more approachable by other people.

Today’s cinema often feels designed by committee, optimized for streaming algorithms and opening weekend numbers rather than lasting impact. We have better technology, way bigger budgets, more sophisticated effects, but somewhere along the way, we forgot that movies are supposed to move us, not just occupy our time between scrolling sessions.

A/B tests will wreck the soul of the work all the bloody time.

Maybe I’m just nostalgic. Maybe I’m romanticizing the past.

I do think survival bias does play a role (we forget about the older slop, but the newer one is still on our faces), but it isn’t just that. I believe there’s a general view that your work should appease every bloody body—and if it doesn’t, then “why bother”. And it’s outputting content that is lukewarm for everybody.

1. Neither “nobody” nor “everybody” should be interpreted categorically here. There are exceptions, just not enough to be relevant.
2. I want to emphasise that this shit is subjective. That’s the point of this comment dammit—it’s a “problem” for some, but part of the appeal for others.
3. Or me. I’m by no means a cinephile, but the same thing applies to other media.

[Edit: fixed grammar, reworded some things, but the basic meaning is the same.]

English: [ɔ:]. It rhymes with “dinosaur”.
Portuguese: [ä’uɾ]. Basically how it’s spelled.