Apparently Google showed off this week that its AI will be able to look at your photos and tell you stuff like when your kids learned to swim?
I really REALLY don’t like that. I’m okay with AI tools using impersonal data, like the best way to do a left join in SQL. But this means they’re no longer mining personal data but CREATING it.
I’m about ready to delete all my Google data.
@UncannyKyle I'm so happy that I moved all my stuff off of Google years ago.
What prompted me was rather harmless, at least compared to what they're doing now. They sent me a mail with "look at this cool video we made from your vacation photos". My wife was pregnant with our first kid and at that exact moment I decided that we weren't going to upload any pictures of our kids to Google.
I can't vouch for it, but to the best of my knowledge, big tech still doesn't know what our kids look like.
"What P4G does so well, is it ties caring about these characters into your success. The closer you become with them, the stronger they get, and the better chance you have at winning. Everyone has felt misunderstood at some point in their lives, so we can relate to the stories of high schoolers being deeply affected by rumors, perceptions and leering glances." https://uncannykyle.substack.com/p/persona-4-golden-and-empathy
So on my newsletter, last week's post has 20 views and this week's has 5. Which is VERY small numbers considering everything else on there on the internet. But it also means a handful of people engaged with something I wrote and at least checked it out, and as long as the immediate reaction wasn't "WRONG, SUCKS!" I'm happy!
@UncannyKyle ouh that reminds me that I wanted to say something about your latest MGS5 post. 🙂
I enjoyed reading it, even though I haven't played the game. I'll gather my thoughts and reply to where you linked the post.
"The game feels like there’s something missing. Yes, there’s concept art and information on cut content available online, but it wouldn’t matter if the game felt like a whole package. There’s a reason why it feels lacking."
@UncannyKyle It was also satisfying to read that even diehard MGS fans noticed the "fake twist". 😅
I'd actually go even further than Matt Bird. A twist should not only explain everything that happened before...it should recontextualize the whole story.
Memento, Fight Club and Angel Heart come to mind immediately, but there's tons of movies that pull it off successfully.
MGS 5's twist might be mindblowing, but it doesn't change any of the experience.
@UncannyKyle A good way to check that is moving the twist reveal around.
I've heard that there was a different cut of the movie Memento, where the story was told in order. Knowing the reveal from the start, it becomes a very different movie.
I feel like moving the twist in MGS wouldn't have affected the story itself, nor how players perceived the story.
@UncannyKyle I looked into it...Seems like Tumblr before it tried to jump the shark and put all that useless recommendation mess in my feed. I will keep an eye on Cohost!
Metal Gear Acid for PSP is such a weird beast compared to the usual Kojima-led titles. It’s more similar to a traditional MGS than I thought but also different due to movement and combat all being card-based. #ShareYourGames
Currently about 1200 words into an essay about Persona 4 and empathy, because I think I might start another blog. After Destructoid deleted the blog section and the four or so essays I wrote there.
@UncannyKyle@COMPU73E if you're a bit tech savvy you can use a static site generator and host it on GitHub pages or Codeberg pages. 🙂
My homepage is basically a collection of markdown documents that are converted to HTML and hosted by GitHub pages.
@UncannyKyle@COMPU73E okay sorry. Tech savvy should probably read: if you can work with Git.
Not knowing/understanding Git is very much not the same as not being tech savvy. 😬
Sorry if that came out wrong.
If one more app recommends sharing something with my friend who died last month saying “it’s been a while!” I’m gonna lose it. It’s been a while because he had cancer and I’m not ready to unfriend a dead guy yet.
@mforester Thanks, this is a weird problem for us elder millennials, my Mom's been dead for four years and I haven't deleted her number from my phone either. When's a good time to delete someone?
Couple pickups from eBay.
A PSP 1001 that I got at a discount because the UMD drive apparently doesn’t work, but not having discs never stopped PSP players before, wink!
Metroid Prime Hunters First Hunt, the demo that came with the first NDS. The manual is a bit ratty but it’s mostly for completion. #ShareYourGames
Had a moment where I realized the last game I actually finished was Batman Arkham Knight back in like October. Since then I’ve started and dropped like seven games.
@mforester same here with the energy, I only get like an hour a day to play games, so now I don’t care to grind or try a hard section over and over again.
@UncannyKyle Totally.
I've also embraced the state of "I get it!"
Some games are enjoyable after that point, but if they become too tedious, I stopped feeling bad about quitting and looking up the rest of the story somewhere. Often I find that I'm not even that interested in the story anymore. 😅
Maybe there's a twist coming, but Persona 4 Golden is surprisingly cozy. Join some after-school clubs and make friends, oops you're on a date? Adorable!
@UncannyKyle When I played it, it reminded me a lot of those "Dating Simulators" that used to exist. 😅
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I'm not admiting to anything with this post. 😬
Are there RPGs out there where an enemy will run away immediately if you're likely to destroy them in one-shot, or have some kind of "charisma" system where you can talk your way through conflicts?
@UncannyKyle Probably 15 going on 16 (a long time ago). I was able to watch both one after another because I had a VHS recording of both. Curiosity got the better of me and I need to know the truth...
Playing Arkham Knight, I think I realized what makes Batman’s rogues so attractive; the most popular ones are just themed psychos. No powers, just “thinks death is funny,” “wants to kill people dumber than him,” “obsessed with duality.” Even Mr. Freeze became popular after he became murderously obsessed with his frozen wife.
The less psycho ones with powers like Poison Ivy, Killer Croc or even Bane are harder to write so pop up less often.