@Durandal@kbin.social
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Durandal

@[email protected]

Hate is always foolish... and love is always wise.
Always try to be nice... but never fail to be kind.

Never be cruel.
Never be cowardly.
Never give up.
Never give in.

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‘Grok’: From 1960s Sci-Fi to Elon Musk’s New AI (www.msn.com)

Last weekend, Elon Musk announced that his artificial-intelligence startup, xAI, was launching a chatbot with “a bit of wit” and “a rebellious streak,” known as Grok. As Musk explained, Grok is modeled on the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a snarky manual for interstellar travelers that the humorist Douglas Adams...

Durandal,
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Wow... there's nothing about this that isn't offensive and horrifying... O.o

Durandal,
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But Flashback already had a sequel. It sucked but it exists. So this should be flashback 3 or give it another title since flashback doesn’t really make sense after completing the original games story.

Durandal,
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You know what would be cool, vg247, if you spelled the actors name correctly.

Durandal,
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Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't really have an encumbrance system. It has a "send to camp" button that basically negates 99% of that. Camp supplies? Send to camp. Bunch of valueable loot items you only intend on selling "pick up and add to wares" the "send to camp". When you're ready to sell things between adventuring shove it all in a backpack, give it to someone stronk, and teleport to a merchant.

Durandal,
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Yes... I too have heard of the Wii-U

Durandal,
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Every character can toggle visibility on helmets and toggle aesthetics as "camp" or "armor". Camp can be nude if you like. When toggled to camp it doesn't seem to effect stats in any way, just what they look like.

Durandal,
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I've only had a couple of characters, one's I would expect to flirt with me, try to flirt with me on their own. Everyone else you have to seek it out in my experience. This really smacks of the "it's because of your search history dude" trope. Stop choosing flirty dialogue and getting fauxfended when they flirt back. I agree it seems a little easy to pursue some of the romance trees, but it really isn't in your face as much as these stupid articles would make it seem.

Mastodon's Mastodon'ts (www.jwz.org)

There are a few fundamentally broken things about how Mastodon posts work that are terrible vectors for abuse, as well as being bad for basic usability. Maybe they are fixable, I don't know. To be clear: I am a fan of Mastodon. I have been enjoying my time there much more than I ever enjoyed Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. And...

Durandal,
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Green on black is only for true 1337 h@x0r5… git gud! /s

Durandal,
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Yeah... this headline sounds like taco bell coming out and saying "we realize raising the price of the bean burrito from .99 to 1.29 in this economy has impact, so we're going to start our budget line of Dollar Taco!".

Like... NOTHING seems to be putting out reasonable products... but that is a strange move while they're just starting to get brand recognition.

Durandal,
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Dune is one of my favorite series, but I can totally see why it would be jarring. Unfortunately there are a couple of major tonal shifts throughout the series. Heck.... there's a couple just in the first book. It is definitely a very dense read. Lots going on and a lot of moving parts to track. There's even a glossary in the back to keep track of it with maps heh.

It's a really interesting universe. Herbert was really into philosophy and lead a really interesting life (his biography written by his son is an interesting read as well). It doesn't get any less dense and layered unfortunately, if that is what is keeping you out of it.

The Sci-fi mini-series was good and hit most of the major points pretty well, if you just can't deal with the books themselves. It might bring you back with some renewed interest. The new movies are interesting as a fan, but don't really tell the story fully, IMHO.

Durandal,
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I really enjoy the philosophical and psychological study of humanity through sci-fi, so I enjoyed that thread through the whole series. I've read far too much of it lol. But I totally get it when people have to tap out... it's a dense series of books.

I have the same reaction to Lord of the Rings. I love the story, but I can't slog through reading the books. The peter jackson films were a god send for me.

Durandal,
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All great picks. Forbidden Planet trips me out because young Leslie Nielsen, as a dashing leading man, in a non-comedy role is just wild to see heh. The plot is fun and the effects actually hold up really well for the age.

Durandal,
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Would make a good double feature with Inception.

Durandal,
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Depends on how many onions you needed cut...

Durandal,
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If you're gonna do ghost in the shell, I'd also recommend Appleseed.
Akira was one of the first "adult" anime that I watched back in the day. Good stuff, ending is unfortunate. I would have loved if they just made all the books into a series of movies. The animation and soundtrack are amazing though. For Katsuhiro Otomo I'd also recommend Memories.

Durandal,
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Some great picks. I always introduce people to Buckaroo Banzai if they haven't seen it. Love that end theme. :)

I just rewatched several Dune movies. IDK if you've seen the latest release with Clement. It's a decent watch, enough so that I'll watch part 2 when it comes out. I love the sci-fi mini-series though.. "Frank Herbert's Dune" and "Children of Dune" they did.

Durandal,
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Some of my favorites on here. Plan 9 is great to watch back to back with Ed Wood.
1953 War of the Worlds was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Those ships were super cool. FX hold up really well.
Barbarella is over the top, but still fun to watch... and credited with the band Duran Duran getting it's name. :)
1960 Time Machine was another one of my absolute favs as a kid... best Time Machine adaptation IMHO.

Durandal,
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Honestly, going back and rewatching them, all the Alien movies are pretty decent. 1 and 2 are the top tier though. The only thing I don't forgive is the intro premise to 3 which I won't list for spoiler reasons.

It's a shame they never made any more Terminator movies after T2. T2 was so excellent. .and it was the last. Definitely. Take my word for it.

Durandal,
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Is there any mention of this from them directly? The domain isn't verified on the mastodon profile, which is unfortunate.

Durandal,
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Check out https://nextdns.io/ it’s a privacy focused dns resolver but it also lets you include blocklists at the dns level which are the same lists used by stuff like ublock origin. That’ll block adds and trackers at the dns level before they even hit your device. I’ve had it on my android and iOS devices for years. It will even block most stuff in apps as well.

Durandal, (edited )
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The GunStar from The Last Starfighter blew me away as a kid. Pretty good CG for the era as well, but the design felt sleek and believable.

I've always loved the Vipers from BattleStar Galactica as well as the Veritech from Macross (well... robotech since that's what it was called here when I was a kid lol) but I feel like those are both pretty mainstream now?

Always liked the Thunderfighter from Buck Rogers and his frienemy, Hawk's, fighter.

The morphing ship from Flight of the Navigator was pretty cool. In that same era, the bubble ship from Explorers was pretty awesome concept.

Do personal vehicles count? I always wanted to have a Light Cycle from tron. I loved that they just turned it on and their disk became the steering and it just formed around them. Plus it was cool af. The Cylcone from Macross / Robotech was pretty cool in that same vein.

Durandal,
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Mmm... Dark City... don't sleep on this one. Great flick. Watch the directors cut, not the american release though... that intro spoiler was terrible.

Durandal,
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There was definitely some terrible weird looking CG from back in the day... but some of the examples were really well done and still hold up ok. There are some moments in Last Starfighter where you're like "ouch... flat shaded cg" but some other moments where it looks great. I think a chunk of the ship was also practical, but there were some detailed CG in it.

When movies used it for something that wasn't meant to look realistic, back before it was feasible, it still holds up ok. For a sci-fi spaceship or things like the vehicles in TRON, you don't get that weird uncanny valley feel as much IMO.

Durandal,
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I keep thinking of things I want to add to the list LOL.

Durandal,
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We care about privacy! -- signal

You need a phone number to sign up... and you can't even hide it from anyone you talk to... -- also signal

I'm sure the encryption and stuff is great... but there's more to privacy and security than not seeing what is inside the messages.

Durandal,
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