baatliwala

joined 2 years ago
[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 18 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Serious and long answer because you won't find people actually providing you one here: in theory (heavy emphasis on theory), an "agentic" world would be fucking awesome.

Agents

You know how you have been programmed that when you search something on Google, you need to be to terse and to the point? The worst you get is "Best Indian restaurants near me" but you don't normally do more than that.

Well in reality most of the times when people just love rambling on or providing lots of additional info, so the natural language processing capabilities of LLMs are tremendously helpful. Like, what you actually want to do is "Best Indian restaurants near me but make sure it's not more than 5km away and my chicken tikka plate doesn't cost more than ₹400 and also I hope it's near a train station so I can catch a train that will take me home by 11pm latest". But you don't put all that on fucking Google do ya?

"Agents" will use a protocol that works in completely in the background called Model Context Protocol (MCP). The idea is that you put all that information into an LLM (ideally speak into it because no one actually wants to type all that) and each service will have it's own MCP server. Google will have one so it will narrow down your filters to one being near a train station and less than 5km away. Your restaurant will have one, your agent can automatically make a reservation for you. Your train operator will have one, so your agent can automatically book the train ticket for you. You don't need to pull up each app individually, it will all happen in the background. And at most you will get a "confirm all the above?". How cool is that?

Uses

So, what companies now want to do is leverage agents for everything, making use of NLP capabilities.

  • Let's say you maintain a spreadsheet or database of how your vehicle is maintained, what repairs you have done. Why do you want to manually type in each time? Just tell your agentic OS "hey add that I spent ₹5000 in replacing this car part at this location in my vehicle maintenance spreadsheet. Oh and also I filled in petrol on the way." and boom your OS does it for you.

  • You are want to add a new user to a Linux server. You just say "create a new user alice, add them to these local groups, and provide them sudo access as well. But also make sure they are forced to change their password every year".

  • You have accounts across 3 banks and you want to create a visualisation of your spendings? Maybe you want to also flag some anamolous spends? You tell your browser to fetch all that information and it will do that for you.

  • You can tell your browser to track an item's price and instantly buy it if it goes below a certain amount.

  • Flying somewhere? Tell your browser to compare airline policies, maybe checkout their history of delays and cancellations

  • And because it's natural language, LLMs can easily ask to clarify something

Obvious downsides

So all this sounds awesome, but let's get to why this will only work in theory unless there is a huge shift:

  • LLMs still suck in terms of accuracy. Yes they are decent but still not at the level where it's needed and still make stupid errors. Also currently they are not making as generational upgrades as before

  • LLMs are not easy to self host. They are one of the genuine use cases of making use of cloud compute.

  • This means they are going to be expensiveeeeee and also energy hogs

  • Commercial companies actually want you to land on their servers. Yes its good that your OS will do it for you and they get a page hit but as of now that is absolutely not what companies want. How are they going to serve you ads and steal all your data from your cookies?

  • People will lose their technical touch if bots are doing all the work for them

  • People do NOT want to trust a bot with a credit card. Amazon already tried that with Alexa/Echo devices and people just don't like saying "buy me a roll of toilet paper" because most people want to see what the fuck is actually being bought. And even if they are okay, because LLMs are still imperfect, they are going to make mistakes now and then.

  • There are going to be clashes of what the OS will do agentically vs what a browser will do. Agentic browser makers like Perplexity want you in their ecosystem but if Windows ships with that functionality out of the box then how much reason is there really to get Perplexity? I expect to see anti-competitive lawsuits around this in the future.

  • This also means there is going to be a huge lock-in to Big Tech companies.

My personal view is that you will see some of these features 5-10 years down the line but it's not going to materialise in the way some of these AI companies are dreaming it will.

[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

From what I recall that wasn't the case before, it was one time. Just Cause 3 is 10 years old so maybe the Denuvo subscription didn't apply.

[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

You're laughing. Anish Kapoor is trying his best to patent this fish and you're laughing.

[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

TLDR summary: major changes including new areas, lumina, weapons, photo mode, lumina loadouts, FSR4, Steam Deck verified, Breaking Death being not as... game-breaking anymore

 

New Content

  • Verso's Drafts, a new playable environment, taking the characters of Expedition 33 to a brand-new location with new enemy encounters and surprises to discover :) Located on the World Map, next to Lumière - Accessible from Act III

    Esquie’s Underwater ability is required!

  • New text and UI game localizations into Czech, Ukrainian, Latin American Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, and Indonesian, bringing the total number of supported languages to 19, with more to come!

  • New costumes for each member of the Expedition, giving even more customization options for players throughout their adventure

  • New boss battles for late-game players to overcome in the Endless Tower - They are variations of iconic bosses from the main game, designed to be even more challenging

  • Added new Luminas and Weapons

  • Added the "Old Key" quest item to the final area of the game - Previously obtainable only during the Prologue, this addition gives players a second chance to collect all journals within a single playthrough

New Features

  • Added Photo Mode with plenty of settings and options for players to get creative with while capturing your favourite moments from the game, accessible at any time from the pause menu!

  • Added Lumina Sets feature, allowing players to save up to 50 different lumina loadouts for adapting to plenty of different fighting tactics at any moment

  • Added Abandon Battle option in the pause menu which can now be opened in battle

  • Added HUD Scale setting, allowing players to adjust the size of in-game HUD elements from 80% to 120%

  • Added FSR 4 support, including AMD temporal upscaling for sharper visuals and Frame Generation for smoother gameplay on compatible GPUs

  • Added new filters for Pictos and Luminas and improved the UI

  • Added input remapping for controller

Handheld PC improvements

  • The game is now certified on Steam Deck and ROG Xbox Ally!

  • Global improvement of text legibility

  • Fixed multiple fog and lighting issues:
    Overly intense effects during the Flying Manor boss fight (which also impacted some cinematics) Overexposed areas in the Visages Overly dark areas in the Endless Tower

  • Fixed FPS being capped at 30 on Steam Deck

  • VSync can now be properly disabled in the settings when playing on Steam Deck

  • Graphic settings are now adjusted for Steam Deck users

  • Improved first-time setup flow:
    Controller input is now supported in installation wizards (no longer touchscreen-only)

  • External controllers now switch seamlessly with the Steam Deck controls

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue where using Battle Retry after a cinematic or automatic trigger could spawn the player out of the world if the last save was created in a different location

  • The playtime displayed on save files now accurately reflects total playtime, including time spent on Game Overs (Note: this fix does not retroactively update existing save files.)

  • Fixed inventory behaviour so that sort order now persists after closing the game menu

  • Fixed issue preventing Intel XeSS Frame Generation setting from being accessible on PC Game Pass

  • Fixed an issue where the usage of particular diacritic marks (e.g. ^, ~, ´, `) in Windows is blocked after launching the title

  • Fixed Breaking Death always breaking all enemies when the character dies, it should only break the enemy that killed the character - As a result, it shouldn’t work when the character kills themself anymore

  • Characters' turn order during a First Strike, triggered by attacking an enemy on the map, now correctly respects characters' Speed

  • Fixed Boucharo giving +150% Critical chance instead of +50% Critical chance

  • Fixed some Luminas giving unintended hidden +10% damage:
    Sweet Kill Teamwork Dead Energy II First Strike and others

[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

This man is beautiful and I want to look into his eyes every day

[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That's not a tree, that's the Whomping Willow

[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 38 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

Ffs I keep delaying a rebuild of my PC because of crap like this every year thinking the bubble will burst, but something new comes up. I don't use it for gaming nowadays, just regular browsing since I have a console but even Sony is bringing their stuff to PC so I was looking to upgrade. Now it's been pushed even more.

Hang in there my 8 GB ram PC with GTX 960...

[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

Perry the Catypus on his way to throw some paws

[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

This looks... Great? Nice work

 

“I can’t tell you what the price will be, because I literally don’t know,” he said on the November 15 episode of the WAN show.

“When I said I’m disappointed it isn’t going to follow a console pricing model, where its subsided by the fact that manufacturer is going to be taking 30% of every game sold on it over the lifespan of this thing, because I feel that would be a more meaningful product, they asked what I meant by console price and I said $500. Nobody said anything, but the energy in the room wasn’t great.”

 

Small video which came across my feed that definitely has a point IMO. 2000s were the peak crossroads of old and modern life and its fun to look back

 

Beer is more than just a drink, it can bring people together, claims Dolf van den Brink, CEO of Heineken. Speaking to the Financial Times, he said that in an era where isolation and mental health challenges are the new normal, beer’s qualities as a “social lubricant” could be a key part of discussions about alcohol.

Heineken boss on ‘social role’ of beer

On Thursday, the Dutch brewing giant announced a five-year plan aimed at boosting beer sales. Like many alcohol producers, the company has struggled with weaker consumer demand in recent years. Shares have dropped by a fifth compared to their 2023 peak. “In this time of loneliness and a mental health epidemic, beer’s role in bringing people together is important to make part of the public debate,” van den Brink told FT a day after.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) beer and other alcoholic beverages are not considered safe for health. In a 2023 statement, the WHO claimed that even small or “moderate” amounts of alcohol can be harmful. Alcohol is classified as a “carcinogen,” meaning it can cause cancer, and no safe limit exists.

At a time when health authorities around the world are warning about alcohol risks, Heineken claims that moderate drinking also has a social purpose. According to Brink, the relationship between alcohol and health is complex and deserves a balanced conversation. “We do believe that it’s not always reported in a balanced way,” he said, adding, “because the relationship between alcohol and health is complex.”

The company’s CEO gave historical examples of people drinking beer together in Mesopotamia and Egypt, showing that beer has long been a part of social life. “Beer is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, consumer goods category,” he said. Heineken now also offers non-alcoholic beers, giving people a way to enjoy social moments without consuming alcohol. Keeping urban loneliness in mind, especially in crowded cities, the company has launched “Rooftop Revival,” events that turn unused rooftops into lively social spaces. “There is a legitimate debate in society now about the effect of moderate consumption of alcohol, including beer, on health. And again, we believe that needs to be a balanced and nuanced discussion,” he told FT.

What the WHO says about beer and alcohol

According to the World Heath Organisation, risks associated with alcohol include: Certain types of cancer (such as breast, liver, and colon cancer), Heart disease and stroke, Liver cirrhosis, Mental health disorders, etc.

“Alcohol is a toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance and has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago, this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco,” WHO said in a statement.

 

To celebrate this milestone, we’re working on a game update for all platforms that will include several additions and updates as a THANK YOU!!

  • A new, playable environment, taking the characters of Expedition 33 to a brand-new location with new enemy encounters and surprises to discover.

  • Challenging, new boss battles for late-game players to overcome.

  • New costumes for each member of the Expedition, giving even more customization options for players throughout their adventure.

  • New text and UI game localizations into Czech, Ukrainian, Latin American Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, and Indonesian, bringing the total number of supported languages to 19.

  • And more to come…

 

Full title: He was devastated when his favorite Facebook game shut down, but at 10 years old, what could he do? 8 years later, he's got the rights, the original code, and is about to relaunch Dungeon Rampage on Steam

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