ahnesampo

ahnesampo, 6 months ago

I wonder if Ukraine is willing to lease Snake Island for that.

ahnesampo, 8 months ago

Next step: there’s a good argument to be made that the United States is not a nation. tldr: a nation is a group of people sharing ethnicity, language, culture. The United States is a country united by an idea, not an ethnicity.

ahnesampo, 8 months ago

In Finnish, the numbers 11–19 are (the number for 1–9) + “toista”, lit. “of the second (ten)”. So 11 is yksitoista, “one of the second (ten)”. That system is only used for 11–19. Bigger than that is tens + number, e.g. 21 kaksikymmentä yksi (two tens and one).

The Finnish word for “teen” is “teini”, which is a loanword from English. The native word for a person that’s not a child nor an adult is “nuori” lit. “a young”.

ahnesampo, 9 months ago

Here in Finland a lot of new apartment blocks have very small apartments. Three rooms and a kitchen crammed into 60 m^2^ (650 sq ft) are not uncommon. That means bedrooms that can fit a double bed and nothing else, and kitchens built into the side of the living room. Older blocks by contrast have much more spacious apartments. The condo I bought in a building built in the 1970s is three rooms and kitchen in 80 m^2^ (860 sq ft). The condo goes through the building, so windows on two sides. The kitchen is its own separate space. Bathroom and toilet are two separate rooms. (The building is not a proper commie block, though. Or “Soviet cube” as they’re called in Finnish. We were never Soviet, but we took some inspiration from their cheap building styles.)

ahnesampo, 9 months ago

Twitter, Reddit, and Unity have not been profitable. This was fine when money was cheap (near zero interest rates). The market was awash with capital trying to find something that could turn a profit. A business plan that was basically underpants gnomes (1. Gather underpants 2. ??? 3. Profit!) was acceptable. Twitter’s and Reddit’s 1. was “gather users”, Unity’s “gather projects”. Now money isn’t free anymore, and capital is demanding that these businesses fill in 2. with something. Twitter is doing whatever Musk thinks is good, Reddit is trying to monetize its API to make AIs pay and to serve real users ads through its first party app, and Unity is trying to monetize the projects it has gathered. All of them have been offering a product below cost, and users are understandably angry that the cost is going up. (And in many cases, finding that the product isn’t really worth anything.)

Blizzard is different. It operates in a creative field and has been very profitable. Games are art as much as they are products that are sold. As such, they’re fickle: you can’t assembly line manufacture games and make a hit after hit. Artists in music that turn out bangers decade after decade are rare, as are authors, directors, etc. Blizzard’s streak of awesome games was bound to end eventually. AAA games are also extremely expensive to make: if you make an AAA game, it must be a hit or you’ll lose money. Alternatively, you can use dark patterns to monetize it, then it doesn’t have to be as good to make loads of money. Banking on your creatives to keep beating the odds is risky; infesting a good enough game with scummy monetization is a safer bet.

ahnesampo, 9 months ago

Cooking is art, baking is science.

ahnesampo, 11 months ago

Just 60 Hz. Is there a technical limitation that prevents 5K@120 Hz?

ahnesampo, 11 months ago

Shipping? Shipping is about 2 % of global CO2 emissions.

Large ships emit a lot of sulphur oxides (SOx). E.g. cruise ships emit more than all cars of Europe. SOx is not a greenhouse gas, but it’s a nasty pollutant nonetheless.