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Cake day: July 26th, 2023

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  • Well, I’ve decided to check the financials of a couple of VR companies since your counterpoint sounded reasonable. The only one working at a loss is Meta. I could argue their business model is in Death Valley right now. After all, they have major capital expenses, which aren’t easily covered unless you have a big userbase.

    But that’s their VR sector. Overall, Meta’s profitable and can easily cover all the expenses several times over.

    Also, what do you mean by “they have to dedicate several multi-person teams to manage the clients?” Firstly, who’s “they,” secondly, if I understood you right, that sounds prepostrous, unless you’re talking B2B.



  • I think what you’re forgetting is scale.

    Lemmy is niche. VR is niche. Gaming is mainstream.

    You can’t call a niche dead just because there aren’t that many people into it. It’s a niche for a reason.

    Linux is booming, even though it’s “dead.” Lemmy has never been this active in its entire existence. Why do investments from large companies matter?

    What truly matters is growth. Negative growth is what kills a platform/industry/company/whatever else. VR is growing, Linux is growing, Lemmy is growing. It may not be fast, but they all have active userbases that support their development.

    You cannot call a child “failure” just because it never achieved anything in life, can you? They are growing. They can get sick, they can recover. They can also regress due to that illness and die. Only then they’re truly dead.



  • Mistic@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldMinecraft is losing VR support next year
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    2 days ago

    That’s not even accurate.

    If VR gaming is dead, then what does it say about Linux with about 5 times less users? Like, a low poly game about monkeys has a daily playerbase of a million people there. Mind you, Mincraft has 1 to 1.5 million. Not bad for a “dead” platform. Also, Valve isn’t even the last one to enter the market.

    I think what you’re actually trying to say is that it’s too niche, which it absolutely is.



  • Some important info that is missing:

    1. Proposed legislation is far from being an actual law. It has only once passed the committee (1st stage out of 5), after which got sent to be re-written. Now it’s at pre-1st stage.

    2. So far, it has received 2 negative reviews from the administration. First one, from 2022, said it’s redundant, and second one, from 2023 that it’s… still just as redundant as it was.

    3. 2 out of 3 authors have removed their signatures since the first negative review.

    Basically, there’s little to no chance this would ever pass. Our “crazy printer” may be insane, but it only does so if there is an ass to lick.

    I could even link everything if anybody wants me to. Doubt it won’t get removed, but still.


  • Understandable, ty

    To give you some insight, afaik, MacOS is the most horrible to port to because you can’t just compile for it and have to get the hardware first, pay for some sort of key second, and reacquire it every time you fail to port it. All of that is for a very insignificant bit of sales.

    Linux, on the other hand, that I can not explain.




  • Mind you, there are two types of under screen fingerprint sensors: optical and ultrasonic.

    Optical blasts the finger with light and forms a 2d scan. It’s pretty slow and arguably worse than conventional (capacitive) scanner on the back of the phone.

    Ultrasonic, however, because it uses sound waves, maps a 3d scan. It is significantly faster than conventional scanner, and it also doesn’t care about your fingers being wet.

    Ultrasonic sensor only requires a quick tap to unlock the phone. It’s actually really convenient to use, I like those. I’d take the capacitive sensor over optical one, though.


  • 980 pros are fine. You just need to update the firmware. Otherwise, there’s a small risk it’s one of the older batches that degraded quickly.

    My personal recommendation would be either SN850X, SN770, or 990 pro if you’re feeling fancy. Unless you need a drive for something very specific, you’ll be happy with any of the bunch.

    Should you bother with PCIe 5.0? Not really. The difference is barely noticeable. It’s like with monitors, big difference between 60hz and 120hz, but very small between 120hz and 240hz. Plus, you’re not reading and writing lots of data every second of using the PC.


  • Negotiations happen when one or, more likely, two sides don’t see a way to improve their positions with military force.

    The rumors you’re speaking of are a direct consequence of Russia being an autocracy. When you have a country whose ruler doesn’t leave on their own (a dictator), people start speculating on when he’s going to die. These rumors have been going around for about a decade, I believe, and are pretty much meaningless.

    Now, about “securing a legacy.” I think it’s much more trivial than that. Invading Ukraine was a good way to secure presidency for the next 1-2 terms and to eradicate opposition within the country. If that’s the case, then, in a sense, he got what he wanted, although he likely also expected the war to be short and victorious (judging by the state media narrative at the time). That didn’t happen. And now there are other issues at hand for him.



  • In Soviet Union, the rock genre was for a very long time existing underground due to the inability of artists to be properly published.

    Only starting with the 1980s could the artists finally publish their songs officially. And even then Soviet government put a lot of measures to prohibit rock music in the country.

    This resulted in the appearance of many beloved bands and artists, like

    • Kino (tl. Cinema),
    • DDT,
    • Aria,
    • Chaif,
    • Grazhdanskaya Oborona (tl. Civil Defense),
    • Mashina Vremeni (tl. Time machine),
    • Sektor Gaza (tl. Gas Sector)
    • Korol i Shut (tl. King and Jester)
    • And many others

    The history of Russian rock is actually quite fascinating. It was inspired by bard songs and often touched darker subjects as well as being satirical and judgmental of Soviet government.

    Due to that, some artists, like Yegor Letov from Grazhdanskaya Oborona and Yuri Shevchuk from DDT, had troubles with KGB (Soviet FBI).

    Nowadays, rock artists are still being persecuted for their views. For example, DDT is de facto prohibited from performing in Russia.





  • Let’s assess the effects this change could cause on real numbers.

    Note: This is a duplicate of a part of a comment I’ve written here above as a response, but I don’t want it to be buried. Hope that’s fine

    I’ll take Nutrien’s 2023 audited financial statement as an example. (Numbers in brackets are what’s deducted to get what’s not in brackets)

    • Sales - 29056
    • Freight, transportation, distribution - (974)
    • Cost of goods sold - (19608)
    • EBIT - 8474
    • Interest - (w/e)
    • EBT - 1952
    • Taxes - (670)
    • Net earning - 1282

    Out of cost of goods sold (2858) is cost of labour, let’s also add (626) from general administrative expenses, and just say it’s all wages.

    • Effective tax rate - 670/1952*100% = 34,3% (wow, that’s a lot for where I live, also ignoring mining tax for simplicity)

    Let’s see what happens to our efficiency if the changes take effect.

    All of costs can be divided into Fixed and Variable ones. Labour, in this case, is Variable because we can manipulate it by employing more staff to compensate for reduction in working hours and keep the sales at the same rate. (Contract workers are usually Fixed Cost, but it’s all relative, as no Fixed Cost is ever truly fixed.)

    Going from 40 => 32, we have a 20% reduction in working hours. Mind you, this doesn’t mean there will be a 20% hit to productivity. It may be more, it may be less (most likely less), for simplicity let’s say it’s 20%. So, we need 20% more workers to compensate. (2858+626)*120%=4180.8

    • New EBT = 1952 + 2858 + 626 - 4180.8 = 1255.2
    • New net profit = 1255.2*(1-34.3%) = 824.7. Mind you, the effective tax rate will probably be lower if employment affects deductibles and/or grants tax privileges.

    So, our net profit margin went from 1282/29056 = 4.4% to 2.8%. Looks bad at first glance, but it’s also a bad year. A year prior net profit margin was at whopping 20.3%, so a decrease from 4.4% to 2.8% would be nothing in comparison.

    Will it result in increased prices? Yes, but it will also lead to economic growth, because more free time = people spend more money = companies earn more = companies grow faster, but so does inflation. If they can manage the inflation, I don’t see why this couldn’t be possible.