[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 3 points 18 hours ago

I feel for the teacher if they don't have a continuing contract, yet. You're completely dependent on staying in the good graces of your principal to have a job for the next year, and you will only be recommended for a continuing contract with the support of a principal.

But if the teacher had a continuing contract, then they probably should have told the principal to censor the student's work themselves if they wanted it done. Or that you want the instructions to do so in writing.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 5 points 4 days ago

Downloading content is almost definitely legal in Canada, and non-commercial digital distribution has never gone to court, so its legality hasn't been established.

I can't find the source, but I recall reading speculation that sharing backup copies between owners of the media is likely legal in Canada but, again, it hasn't been tried by courts, so its legality hasn't been firmly established.

Anyway, with non-commercial digital distribution not having any legal teeth in Canada, it's effectively legal and its literal legality is unknown.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 10 points 4 days ago

Depends on your jurisdiction.

As far as I know, that's never been tried in court in Canada, and there's reason to suspect that may not be the case here. (Although I'm not a lawyer, so I may be mistaken.)

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 3 points 4 days ago

This could be huge, but we'll need to wait and see. The economic and ecological footprint of LLMs is problematic.

That said, will this actually help, or will they just use 3T parameter models to outcompete competitors 1T parameter models using GPUs? Really, this is more about small-scale models competing with midsize models. Like, this could bring a model as big as GPT 3.5 down to be something you could run on affordable hardware, right?

That would be really compelling for my sector (education) where there's a lot of concern about student data privacy. I could definitely pitch building a local $5K-cost LLM server that could handle a dozen or so simultaneous users. That would be enough for a small school district.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 6 points 4 days ago

You can if you own the Mario game...

... but I just downloaded a 1TB Batocera Switch image to run from MicroSD.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 16 points 4 days ago

This statistic is misleading. They have no way of knowing what people paid for those games. The "value" isn't just the Steam price.

As many people have mentioned here, most games in big Steam libraries come from bundles. It's pretty typical to get games for, like, $1-2 each in those. I regularly get 8 games for $10, of which I only really want 1. I play the one I cared about and get my $10 worth. There's no "lost value" so long as I got my money's worth from the title I played.

I take an even bigger view: if I buy 10 bundles for $10 each, and get 1 absolute banger (for my preferences) and a few others that are fun for a bit, then I'm happy. I often add 20 new games to my library in a month, and only immediately play 1. That doesn't mean I have "$400 value of games I've never played."

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 1 points 4 days ago

We need more hydroelectric water storage. Pump water uphill all day. Doesn't need any fancy materials, just a bunch of space on a hill connected to the grid.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Sort of... But the form factor itself completely changes the experience.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 6 points 6 days ago

Indeed. As a silly example, I had a Pacman clone game that ran based on CPU cycle speed. I needed to turn the in-game speed setting way down and toggle turbo off to make it slow enough to be playable.

9
submitted 7 months ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

Fanatical is running a Steam Deck games bundle right now. Are any of these games worth the time?

I feel like I've heard good things about Arise, but I'm out of the loop. I don't recognize many of the others by name.

Prices are reasonable, so it's less a question about if it's worth the money, more if its worth the time. (3 for CA$6.79, 5 for CA$9.59, or 8 for CA$13.69)

Terror of Hemasaurus
Jack Move
Garden Story
Castle on the Coast
The Tarnishing of Juxtia
Arise: A Simple Story
Zombie Army Trilogy
Beyond the Long Night
ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree
The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf
Röki
Home Sweet Home EP2
Hero's Hour
Moonlighter
Pathologic 2

31
submitted 7 months ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

I'm just curious if anyone else tried to get one of the Limited Edition Steam Decks before they sold out. I tried for it (on 3 devices) but kept getting error messages until it sold out. I just ordered the 1 TB edition instead.

This will be my first portable gaming device since the DSi, so I'm really excited for it. Getting the clear LE one would have been cool, but I'm probably better off not spending the extra $40 CAD, lol.

So, what's your Steam Deck situation? Did you try for/get the LE? Do you already have one? Getting one? Don't want one?

41
submitted 8 months ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

All over Twitch, about half the streamers I usually watch playing turn-based strategy games are all suddenly playing the same new game. I watched a few streams, and it looked interesting. Normally, I never buy games when they just come out because I have such a backlog and can wait for a sale, but I figured if everyone (figuratively) is playing it, it must be amazing.

Turns out, they're giving the full game away for free during their "early access" phase as a "demo". But it's the full game, just with only 2 class choices.

I had a blast! And now I'm probably going to buy it on release.

The last time I remember doing this was for Minecraft. I see lots of games doing free weekends on Steam, which is very similar; doesn't work well for me since I only have a few hours for gaming each week, but I imagine that must be successful for a lot of games, too.

What do you think of that business model? And/or, what do you think of Backpack Battles, if you've played it?

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 97 points 9 months ago

This is really exciting to see. Enshittification is generating increasing backlash against incumbent monopolies, and encouraging more movement toward sustainable open source software.

See Blender, too.

1
submitted 9 months ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/parenting@beehaw.org

There's a big protest being organized across Canada to protest SOGI being taught in schools, and I'm fed up with it. There are so many vulnerable students who need to know that what they're experiencing is normal, and right-wing extremists are politicizing human rights and spreading manufactured controversy about children being shown pornography in schools.

The linked article is just one of many anti-SOGI protests happening across Canada on Wednesday.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up here is that some of these right-wing anti-SOGI [redacted; unkind] are parents of kids in our kids' classes, and a couple of them are close friends with my kids.

How do you handle that? Kids shouldn't be held accountable for their parents' beliefs. But what about playdates and birthday parties and such? Should we discuss the friendship? It feels wrong to ostracize the child. They deserve to feel safe and have friends.

Also, I'm thinking of taking time off work to counter protest, and making a sign like this one:

Not really related to parenting, but I think it's important kids feel supported and bigots are told their archaic world views are unwelcome. It'll be super awkward if a parent I know is standing on the other side of the protest.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 103 points 10 months ago

Copyright has completely jumped the shark. There's absolutely no balance between the public benefit of the public domain.

30 years ought to be enough time for anyone to extract any reasonable value from an IP. If you haven't made your profit in 30 years, then let the public benefit from it.

Or at least let preservationists (data hoarders, let's be honest) keep our cultural history alive and accessible for future generations.

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blindsight

joined 1 year ago