All Activity

If AI could truly think for itself, wouldn’t it just develop its own biases and bull****? AI is a human creation and it will be controlled and influenced by people. It is not and will not be an all knowing, all-wise and fair god.

How many Republicans does it take to change a lightbulb? None. Trump will just declare that the lightbulb has been replaced, and everyone's applauding in utter darkness.

They started a few days ago with Hogwarts Legacy, which came as a bit of a surprise.

I see no such option available (pic), and Alt just switches hotbars. If it's an option later, I'd guess one has to acquire the ability from something first. Either npc/quest and/or building something which opens up another option. That part is confusing because you build a cheap sleep pad and suddenly game/menu lets you build an actual bed with the resulting mattress as material requirement. Kinda makes one feel forced to craft everything to see if anything auto-opens up. Anyway, started over. Which led me to discover that if you don't create a new character, the game actually starts a new game with previous/last selected character with all backpack/hotbars retained for a head start. A handy feature for later to avoid early grind I guess, but not what I wanted so I made a new avatar. And built another tiny-stone wall. lol

That will buy a lot of gold toilets. Really though, doubt there could be anything which epitomised the EU leadership more than that funding saga. Weeks of being told that the sky would fall in if Belgium didn't unilaterally seize Russian money, with no guarantees from the EU or anyone else against the consequences of it*. Inevitably leading to fricking Belgium being compared to Hungary and Slovakia and what should be an embarrassing climbdown by the leadership labelled as yet another great victory. Now we can start the next cycle: how the 20th round of sanctions will bring Russia to her knees and how it's really really necessary to allow the executive to levy and maintain sanctions without having to have unanimity to protect against the unfettered radicalism and selfishness of those perfidious Belgians. Sorry, Hungarians and Slovaks. So easy to confuse the three. *which of course never happened even for literal literal Nazi Germany because seizing state funds is very obviously capital I Illegal under multiple agreements. That neither von der Leyen's EU itself nor any of its equally shouty constituents would do so when invited illustrates that they also knew perfectly well that was the case, and it was all performative. Because they want an excuse for yet more unpopular 'loans' that they must by this time suspect is never ever going to get repaid. In this case they couldn't blame Orban so instead blame Belgium. Literally literally one of the protoEU's first three members, lest we forget.

I canned my planned PC upgrade and got a fancy camera instead. What's the point in trying to keep up with all this. ram x 3 and other peripherals, storage, GPU about to follow suit wft.

A very big point of the game is to play with other people, to not be alone, etc, and having no spliscreen defeats that purpose. I can’t play with anyone without splitscreen, and I know I am not the only one.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-welcomes-90-billion-euro-eu-loan-despite-lack-deal-russian-assets-2025-12-19/ Ukraine got their money, so they're still in the fight for a while (assuming all the fear mongering about the funding was true).

Why is Europa Universalis 5 in the Steam Awards for Most Innovative Gameplay

Oh no, don't use the tiny blocks! You can switch between 1x1, 2x2, and 4x4. I think you use alt to switch sizes.

The winter giveaways seem to have started on EGS. Today's is Eternights. The sales on Steam and GOG are ongoing and I am trying to figure out how to get GOG games to run on Steam Deck. I suspect it might need more storage space or I could just repurchase on Steam.

My favorite dog breed.

Yes, of course. That's why I said "highly evolved AI systems." So, not current AI systems, which I agree are hugely limited (and biased) by their human creators and maintainers. I'm talking future AI systems that can truly think for themselves, and thereby overcome and reject the initial biases and bull**** their human creators input into them. But that's unfortunately a rather long way off, and very likely well after I'm dead and gone. Very sad.

My main quibble is the early building, where you only have these really tiny "blocks" you can make. Takes 100's just to make a small house for the rested stuff, and too much time, placing one at a time. Too used to 7 Days and the bigger blocks/fast speed of making a large home box, so to speak. I get there's crafting larger (prefab?) wall/other pieces to use with crafting hammer but I barely started on that (just got the blacksmith - who keeps getting in my way with his wandering). The starter base spot, I kept being pestered by wolves, who would enter the base zone even tho game seemed to indicate you're "safe" in there. Finally got smart and built a short-height perimeter wall around the whole base-zone. Took forever with those tiny stones, but it worked. I like that there's climbing and grappling hook for traversal. Little pathways/caves to find. Still have to get the glider/flying thingie. EDIT: I have a feeling this is the type of game where I might start over after a few days of learning.

Enshrouded lets you rebuild an entire world. It's probably the best crafting/building game out there right now.

This is still bugged and half the drones are not spawning leaving the quest impossible to finish. In fact, the only time this has been bugged for me is after the patch that was supposed to fix this.

Enshrouded: for some reason I thought this was an online/MP-co-op focused survival/exploration/building and questing game, - also, early access - so I've ignored it. Then learned recently it can be Offline/SP. Then I learned you can customize difficulty/combat options a fair bit - including a setting where maybe 90% of enemies would ignore you until you attack first - or the usual reduce enemy damage/health while increasing player health/dmg etc. It was on a bit of a sale, bought it. So far it seems ok - the exploration/world aspect seems fun. Seems to be one of those games where it'd take quite a while to figure out how all the crafting, building works. Might even need a wiki for finer points, game doesn't really explain much re: certain things, learn as you play. Not saying it's complex, just a bit confusing here and there. Combat has dodge/parry but overall also seems to be more akin to general rpg then "souls like". Like, I made a 1st wand that has a ranged attack and so far (on my ez-cozy settings anyway) I've only had to spam its attack like it's Path of Exile. Building in the new-game start is a bit confusing/awkward but also would scratch the obsessive-brain tendencies if that's one's thing. At some point one needs npc villagers and workers to upgrade one's base/s. Or something. Tame pets (?), farm, all of that. Anyway - I made a first small base/did stuff in starter area and it was good enough I'll press forward. My main interest was the exploration/building factors.

My takeaway from this is that if you feel like dumping your bagel trash into the subway tracks, be considerate and tear it into several pieces first so it's easier to share. My other takeaway is that apparently many consider the tracks the recycle bin. (all the cans/bottles)

I use first person, i struggle playing in third person as i cant see the bugs move as clearly and rely on parry's. I did not have an issue in grounded one about the insufferable gas mask effect as i just avoided putting it on and used trinkets. Now i cant avoid it as the best armour in the game has a gas mask effect. Please make this togglable as it is un fair to first person players who find it unbearable. I want to see the game from my characters eyes as intended and not with a HUD overlay and 20% of my screen blacked out. I also hate daggers that's why i don't use the spider armour. This is a make it or break it QOL feature which a large portion of the player base will experience.

Considering that they followed EU rules still 5 years ago in this matter, I would say no. Issue with importing food from America is in USA's poor documentation of origin of many of their foods. Like for example there is no need for cattle famers to document where their cows have been born. So they have lots of cows imported from Mexico and Canada and there is currently no way to trace origin of most of the beef they sell. In order to allow American foods in EU, EU would need to remove many restrictions from its own members, because otherwise they would give US companies exorbitant advantage on the market. And if politician give market advantage for US food companies, they need to be prepared on fact that EU farmers will bury their homes in literal **** even more than they currently do https://www.instagram.com/reels/DSNrgY-gCTP/

It will go completely unnoticed. As that's what TES has been ever since.

Damn, did they spoil the finale in the trailer

I am unsure whether humans or AI are worse for the environment, but not increasing the number of humans globally seems like a good step when they can and want to move on their own. Immigration can solve workforce shortages, providing services and taxes (unlike large corporations), and likely moving out before retirement, though the people who immigrate must be protected from exploitation, as they have less safety nets than the local citizens. In the UK, the nursing and the agricultural jobs (which the locals do not have the skills and the inclination for) offer(ed) dedicated immigration pathways. For the non-physical jobs, genAI might work, but, as was said during the peak of the COVID pandemic, a lot (not all) of the "essential" jobs require a human or a humanoid robot, unless there is a significant investment in the infrastructure. As the latter are more expensive to make and maintain than to hire a human, humans are more likely to be used. One of the explanations I've heard for why people care more about the genAI being applied to art is that artists can articulate their concerns about their employment and income, unlike a random factory worker. Well, and that creative jobs are more fulfilling than the manual labour or more routine office jobs, forgetting that artists also have to draw icons for mobile games, ads for fast food chains, or covers for romance novels, which are more of a craft than a genuine artistic endeavour. Humans love self-expression and even if it becomes unavailable as a source of income, they will do it for the sake of it, though it would make the hobby less inclusive. --- Regarding Larian specifically, all their initial concept art is generic (Rivellon is a generic fantasy setting), aside from maybe the elves and the lizards. Utilising genAI will not change it. The attached screenshot is from the DOS2 intro - the faces are deformed and the clothing already blends in. The current game cover, with the companions in action poses, is much better, but it is 1 promotional image.

The NG+ mode is quite fun, though much easier, as the stats are higher and everything dies quicker even on the highest difficulty setting (but also kills you in 1-2 hits). I used the whip sword as well due to its range.

Hey there! Do you ever feel tired of war and bloodshed? Are your arms not weary from swinging batons and axes all day? Are you not tired of washing questionable dark red stains out of your suit? This is something I originally wrote for elsewhere, but figured would also be of interest to this forum. Six years ago I did a little write-up of my experiences trying a pacifist run of the first game, in what was something of a test of what sort of approaches you could take to the game and what sort of builds were viable. It went well! I cleared the game without firing a shot, got every companion, and secured almost a perfect ending for everyone except Nyoka. (Sorry, Nyoka.) Herein I report how things went out trying a similar thing in the sequel! I'll tell you in advance that things did not go quite as smooth for this run, but let's jump right into the weeds. Our self-imposed rules: No direct killing. We cannot do anything that would cause "Enemy Killed" to pop up on the screen. No companion kills. A Leadership run where you outsource everything to your companions is probably an interesting enough build, but our goal is to minimise bloodshed with stealth and wit, not just outsource it. Try to avoid indirect killing. There will be times where we can, say, gas a building, set a bunch of turrets on people, etc. Unless mandatory to progress the plot, we're going to try to avoid this. Similarly, try to avoid just luring enemies to allied NPCs. We can be a bit looser with robots. I won't be smashing any, but if I turn a dragoon off with a terminal, I don't want to have to engage in an in-game investigation over whether it's considered mechanically "dead" or just inactive. If it doesn't pop up "Enemy Killed", it's fine. Character build How'd it go? Tricky spots Conclusion