cfabbro's recent activity
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Comment on Taskmaster Series 17, Episode 1 - 'Grappling with my life' | Full episode in ~tv
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Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard and Soft (Full album, 2024)
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Edinburgh's Beltane Fire Festival, rooted in ancient Gaelic traditions, heralds the beginning of summer and celebrates the cycles of nature. The vibrant event now draws over 8,000 attendees each year.
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Comment on Inside the surreal world of $20,000 pet portraits (gifted link) in ~life.pets
cfabbro Link ParentYeah, Firefly is disappointing, but only because it was so damn good and got totally screwed over by Fox, who gave it a terrible timeslot and aired the episodes out of order! If you can tolerate...Yeah, Firefly is disappointing, but only because it was so damn good and got totally screwed over by Fox, who gave it a terrible timeslot and aired the episodes out of order! If you can tolerate the disappointment in that sense, it's still well worth watching though since it was a genuinely great show, IMO. And the movie, Serenity, is a decent enough conclusion to it even though it doesn't answer all the show's open questions.
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Comment on The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power | Season 2 official teaser trailer in ~tv
cfabbro Link ParentNo worries. It's nice to know my words actually had a lasting impact on someone. :)No worries. It's nice to know my words actually had a lasting impact on someone. :)
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Comment on Inside the surreal world of $20,000 pet portraits (gifted link) in ~life.pets
cfabbro (edited )Link ParentFair enough. I am definitely quite familiar with him and assumed most people would be, since he was in the rather popular scifi show, Firefly (where he played a comedic relief character). And also...Fair enough. I am definitely quite familiar with him and assumed most people would be, since he was in the rather popular scifi show, Firefly (where he played a comedic relief character). And also in Tucker & Dale vs Evil, which is hilarious and worth watching if you haven't seen it yet, BTW. So, sorry if I came accross and condescending or overly aggressive, as that was not my intent. And I apologize for being a bit dismissive and harsh.
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Comment on Inside the surreal world of $20,000 pet portraits (gifted link) in ~life.pets
cfabbro (edited )Link ParentThe first two paragraphs of the article explains his background, and also makes it pretty clear his intent was to get a tad absurd with the portrait idea, IMO:The first two paragraphs of the article explains his background, and also makes it pretty clear his intent was to get a tad absurd with the portrait idea, IMO:
Alan Tudyk was looking for something special. The prolific actor, star of “Resident Alien” as well as the voice of manic chicken Heihei in “Moana,” wanted to commission a painting to honor three beloved rescue dogs, but his visions tended to the fantastical. One idea, a portrait of his 14-year-old “terrier/poodle/chihuahua/goddess” mix Raisin holding a box of matches in front of a burning school, was rejected by a British pet portraitist: “We were told by his assistant he doesn’t do paintings like that,” Tudyk said. So he reached out to Jennifer Gennari, a painter who has been doing animal portraits in oil for nearly a decade, and she “embraced it,” Tudyk said.
For Gennari, Tudyk cooked up an even more ambitious concept: all three dogs in a scene of epic Boschian carnage. Against an eerie background of the dogs’ favorite Vancouver, B.C., woods, Gennari posed Lola, a Maltese who had recently died at 16, atop a pile of moose carcasses (plus one dismembered human hand), blood smearing her dainty white jowls. Aunt Clara, the 12-year-old cockapoo, holds a limp boa constrictor in her jaws, and Raisin is locked down on a dead squirrel. Several coyotes are vanishing into the trees behind them, presumably fleeing in terror. “We just wanted something that showed [the dogs] victorious over our idea of their enemies,” Tudyk explained.
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Comment on Inside the surreal world of $20,000 pet portraits (gifted link) in ~life.pets
cfabbro (edited )Link ParentUh... no duh? That's quite literally the joke!!! Alan Tudyk is a comedic actor, and the portrait he had made pretty obviously reflects that.I will also say that someone spending a lot of money on a painting that shows their very much not hunting dogs at the end of a successful hunt for much larger game is out of touch with reality.
Uh... no duh? That's quite literally the joke!!! Alan Tudyk is a comedic actor, and the portrait he had made pretty obviously reflects that.
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Comment on Ubisoft shut down The Crew. Here is what we can do about it. in ~games
cfabbro (edited )Link ParentUh... no it's not? It has a single player story you can play through, but AFAIK it's always been primarily a multiplayer, free-roaming, online-only game set in a persistent open-world that has...The Crew is a single player game
Uh... no it's not? It has a single player story you can play through, but AFAIK it's always been primarily a multiplayer, free-roaming, online-only game set in a persistent open-world that has tons of coop, PvE, and PvP events around the map. It's basically the Ubisoft version of Forza Horizon.
To be frank with you, I honestly don’t understand why you would want to side with them
I'm not "siding" with them. I'm merely explaining what's likely going on, the issues at play, and why it's not as simple as them just releasing server software that players can run themselves. At the very least, in order to do that they would probably have to strip the game of all assets that required them to get ongoing licenses in order for them to use... which is pretty much all the cars in the game.
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Comment on Ubisoft shut down The Crew. Here is what we can do about it. in ~games
cfabbro Link ParentYeah, just to be clear, I don't entirely support the status quo here either. As a gamer I genuinely hate losing access to games I paid for too. But it's unfortunately not quite as simple as "they...Yeah, just to be clear, I don't entirely support the status quo here either. As a gamer I genuinely hate losing access to games I paid for too. But it's unfortunately not quite as simple as "they should just release the server software" in a lot of cases, especially when it comes to licensed assets being included in the game, since there are loads of conflicting rights at play in situations like that.
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Comment on Many widely used reproductive health apps fail to protect highly sensitive data, study finds in ~health
cfabbro (edited )Link ParentThanks for the wellwishes (you too @sparkbet). :) I don't think it warrants a post. I will still be checking the site every day, and so can still do some stuff, but my response time will be a lot...Thanks for the wellwishes (you too @sparkbet). :)
That announcement might be worth a unique post.
I don't think it warrants a post. I will still be checking the site every day, and so can still do some stuff, but my response time will be a lot slower than normal, and for the next week I might not have much energy to spend tagging or editing topics. I will throw a note in my profile bio though, so people aren't confused about why I'm not responding right away like I normally do.
And yeah, I suspect my name being a lot easier to remember and spell than @mycketforvirrad's is the cause of me being pinged more often. Plus people probably don't want to bother Deimos over such minor things. :P
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Comment on Ubisoft shut down The Crew. Here is what we can do about it. in ~games
cfabbro Link ParentIt may not be illegal to reverse-engineer the servers for entirely personal use, but it's likely a grey area to distribute said reverse engineered server, and it is absolutely illegal to charge...It may not be illegal to reverse-engineer the servers for entirely personal use, but it's likely a grey area to distribute said reverse engineered server, and it is absolutely illegal to charge money for others to access your reverse-engineered servers. And even "donation" driven private reverse-engineered servers are not legal either, AFAIK. That's why a lot of private servers ultimately get taken down, either via the DMCA process, or even outright lawsuits.
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Comment on Ubisoft shut down The Crew. Here is what we can do about it. in ~games
cfabbro (edited )Link Parent"It's always been taken that when a consumer buys a physical copy of a copywritten work, they're entitled to that copy indefinitely and can transfer ownership of that copy." True, but that doesn't..."It's always been taken that when a consumer buys a physical copy of a copywritten work, they're entitled to that copy indefinitely and can transfer ownership of that copy." True, but that doesn't mean a company is obligated to continue supporting a product, paying for servers required to utilize it, or to provide players with server software they can run themselves once the original central servers get shut down.
And this isn't a new thing. Plenty of games, many of which even predate Starcraft 1 and UT2004 are no longer accessible or playable anymore. Which is especially true for MMORPGs. E.g. Star Wars Galaxies can't be played anymore. Neither can Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, and countless other games that had centrally hosted servers. And that's just the nature of those sorts of games, and always has been. You may have bought a physical copy of the game client, but that has never meant you will always be able to continue playing those games, even if you do still retain the right to resell that now useless physical copy. And The Crew is no different. Just because it had a single player element does not change the nature of the game or the ongoing service required to continue playing it.
You and @Akir are acting as if these rights are slowly being stripped away, but we never actually had them in the first place. If a game is online only with centrally hosted servers, then you have no right to continue playing it after the servers get shut down, and never have.
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Comment on A scam obituary site in ~life
cfabbro (edited )Link ParentLooks like you're not alone in experiencing this: https://support.google.com/websearch/thread/143597755/echovita-powered-by-google However it also looks like @DeaconBlue is correct in this not...Looks like you're not alone in experiencing this:
https://support.google.com/websearch/thread/143597755/echovita-powered-by-googleHowever it also looks like @DeaconBlue is correct in this not being an outright scam, even though the potentially scraped/auto-generated obituaries are a pretty unethical and misleading business practice, IMO. However, they do appear to actually arrange for flowers to be delivered to the funeral homes in question. Their trustpilot rating is pretty low though, so they clearly have some issues:
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Comment on Inside the surreal world of $20,000 pet portraits (gifted link) in ~life.pets
cfabbro (edited )Link ParentWas it really necessary to call people "out of touch" and "stupid idiots" because they spent that much on a pet portrait? I get it, it's a lot of money to a lot of people, and could have...Was it really necessary to call people "out of touch" and "stupid idiots" because they spent that much on a pet portrait? I get it, it's a lot of money to a lot of people, and could have potentially been put to better use. But I feel like you're also missing the fact that, at least in this case, it was a fairly sizeable oil painting... which is not something you can get typically get commissioned for "a couple hundred bucks" or even $1k in most cases. And it's not like that money is disappearing into the ether. It went to an artist who likely spent a significant amount of time and resources making the piece, not to mention all the time they spent over their life developing those artistic skills, and building their business.
I personally wouldn't spend $20k on a pet portrait, nor could I afford to... but I totally understand the sentiment and desire to have something like that done. I recently lost my dog, Quincy, and have been considering commissioning a piece of digital art to remember him by, which is why I posted this topic. My price range is "a couple hundred bucks" though, so I do get where you're coming from in being a bit taken aback by the $20k price. But I also don't think it's fair, healthy, or productive to look down on and deride anyone who chooses to and can afford to spend that much on a custom piece of art to memorialize their pet.
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Comment on Medieval historian and game developer, Jason Kingsley CBE, reacts to Manor Lords in ~humanities.history
cfabbro (edited )Link ParentYeah, I personally wouldn't recommend completely disabling the combat, as that makes the game far too easy, and a lot less interesting too. But to each their own. Some people just want to build...Yeah, I personally wouldn't recommend completely disabling the combat, as that makes the game far too easy, and a lot less interesting too. But to each their own. Some people just want to build nice looking settlements, and that's cool.
But even for people not really interested in the combat, I would recommend only just changing the AI lord to "responsive" so that he doesn't just conquer the entire map while you're learning the game. And since the raiders are easy enough to deal with using the initial resources the game gives you (20 spearman worth of gear), and since killing their camps actually gives you much needed resources, I would recommend leaving their settings as is. cc: @fefellama
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Comment on Ubisoft shut down The Crew. Here is what we can do about it. in ~games
cfabbro (edited )Link ParentBut it is though. If you as a consumer purchase an online game which has licensed assets from another company for use in that game, and those licenses expire, your rights as a consumer do not...But it is though. If you as a consumer purchase an online game which has licensed assets from another company for use in that game, and those licenses expire, your rights as a consumer do not supersede the rights of the company that licensed their content to the game's developer.
Should Ubisoft have negotiated perpetual licenses instead of limited time/ongoing ones so they actually could legally release an offline mode for the game after they shut down their own servers? Yeah, probably. But to do so would have undoubtedly cost them a significant amount more money for those licenses, if the companies involved are even willing to grant those kind of licenses anymore to begin with now that DRM is a standard expectation in the industry.
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Comment on Ubisoft shut down The Crew. Here is what we can do about it. in ~games
cfabbro (edited )Link ParentSorry, but that is a pretty naive expectation, IMO, and also not how liability works since behaving in good faith and fair dealing is an obligation in contract law. And any online game company...Sorry, but that is a pretty naive expectation, IMO, and also not how liability works since behaving in good faith and fair dealing is an obligation in contract law. And any online game company that did something like that, sneakily releasing an offline mode for their players to download right before the game asset licenses expired, would likely end up getting justifiably sued by the asset rights holders.
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Comment on Many widely used reproductive health apps fail to protect highly sensitive data, study finds in ~health
cfabbro (edited )Link ParentDone. cc: @sparksbet BTW, I won't be around much for the next week or two or three, since we're in the middle of doing a bunch of work around our house in prep for potentially putting it on the...Done. cc: @sparksbet
BTW, I won't be around much for the next week or two or three, since we're in the middle of doing a bunch of work around our house in prep for potentially putting it on the market. So if you or anyone else needs topic edits done in that time, it's probably better to ping @mycketforvirrad or @Deimos asking for help instead of me. I will still try to check in at least once a day to help out where I can, but for the next week I'm going to be doing lots of pretty physically demanding landscaping work, so I likely won't have much spare energy left for doing regular maintenance stuff on Tildes.
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Comment on Tildes Video Thread in ~misc
cfabbro LinkCan I Climb Skyscraper in Prague? | Urban Climbing with Adam Ondra cc: @rosco... Adam Ondra's finger strength, endurance, and recovery is absolutely insane. That is by far the most impressive...Can I Climb Skyscraper in Prague? | Urban Climbing with Adam Ondra
cc: @rosco... Adam Ondra's finger strength, endurance, and recovery is absolutely insane. That is by far the most impressive climbing I think I've ever seen.
Series 17, Episode 8 - 'The umbrella wink.' | Full Episode