Coconut Monkey Cornerclub

[ZedClampet]

Someone spread a rumor on my sports site. It's pretty obviously not true, but everyone is believing it. I posted that I would bet anyone interested $100 that the rumor is not true. So far the bet is up to $400.

Keep it coming, boys.

I feel a nice boost to my PC build is in the works.

I actually know that I'm correct. I talked to the player's mom on Facebook. I didn't believe it to begin with, but thought I'd make sure before collecting everyone's cash.

 

[neogunhero]

Someone spread a rumor on my sports site. It's pretty obviously not true, but everyone is believing it. I posted that I would bet anyone interested $100 that the rumor is not true. So far the bet is up to $400.

Keep it coming, boys.

I feel a nice boost to my PC build is in the works.

I actually know that I'm correct. I talked to the player's mom on Facebook. I didn't believe it to begin with, but thought I'd make sure before collecting everyone's cash.

Might be a good way to start “betting fraud”. Get correct information about players from their family, friends, colleagues etc., have someone spread rumors that are the opposite of the facts, bet people that the rumor is not true, prove it then collect the money. Seems like easy profit

 

[BeardyHat]

It's just my parents-in-law, we wouldn't have space for any more guests. I don't really mind them being around. My father in law is the type of guy who loves fixing stuff, so he immediately started working on fixing one of the broken legs of our couch despite being horribly jet-lagged, while my mother-in-law mostly cares about spending time with our daughter, who is more than happy showing off all of her skills.

My wife however is a lot more stressed about the entire thing. Getting the house ready was already stressful and we weren't really done yet by the time they showed up, plus she doesn't always get along with her parents very well, so we'll have to see how that goes.

Your Father in Law sounds like my kind of guy, as I have similar issues.

 

[Brian Boru]

I have similar issues

Aw, sorry to hear your couch leg is also broken—shame.

 

[BeardyHat]

Aw, sorry to hear your couch leg is also broken—shame.

That's what I get for choosing to have children

 

[neogunhero]

I thought Co-Pilot should be proficient in helping me fix issues with Windows 10 since you know they’re both made by Microsoft (I know ChatGPT is made by OpenAI but you get my point). I’m having an issue where all my icons are blank white boxes or generic default Windows icons. My image files no longer show thumbnails but instead just default image file icons.

After doing about 15 different suggestions Co-Pilot gave me to fix my problem, still nothing. I then remembered when I did a clean install last September, I went into performance options and turned everything off, things like animations, transitions, shadows etc, just to give me a insignificant boost when I don’t need it. Among those options is “show thumbnail instead of icon” which was unchecked, and wouldn’t ya know it, it fixed all icons regardless if they were image files or not.

I get Co-Pilot offers tons of general suggestions especially if I’m not too specific in my message about what I think may have caused it, but every suggestion it gave me did nothing. Things like manually rebuilding thumbnail indexing, force restarting file explorer, running the DISM tool in command prompt, all good suggestions but the real solution seemed rather simple. I’ll still use it, but I was a bit unhappy that it didn’t help like I wanted it to.

 

[Brian Boru]

especially if I’m not too specific in my message

That's the key in my limited experience—the more you can nail down your requirements, the better the result will be. Which is quite like normal search.

I'm really disappointed it didn't tell you to turn it off and on again as a first step tho, that's poor

 

[ZedClampet]

I thought Co-Pilot should be proficient in helping me fix issues with Windows 10 since you know they’re both made by Microsoft (I know ChatGPT is made by OpenAI but you get my point). I’m having an issue where all my icons are blank white boxes or generic default Windows icons. My image files no longer show thumbnails but instead just default image file icons.

After doing about 15 different suggestions Co-Pilot gave me to fix my problem, still nothing. I then remembered when I did a clean install last September, I went into performance options and turned everything off, things like animations, transitions, shadows etc, just to give me a insignificant boost when I don’t need it. Among those options is “show thumbnail instead of icon” which was unchecked, and wouldn’t ya know it, it fixed all icons regardless if they were image files or not.

I get Co-Pilot offers tons of general suggestions especially if I’m not too specific in my message about what I think may have caused it, but every suggestion it gave me did nothing. Things like manually rebuilding thumbnail indexing, force restarting file explorer, running the DISM tool in command prompt, all good suggestions but the real solution seemed rather simple. I’ll still use it, but I was a bit unhappy that it didn’t help like I wanted it to.

I had a problem with my sound settings resetting a couple of times a day. It was no help. I finally figured out it was losing connection with my headphones due to a faulty cable.

****

Daughter got a job at Sam's Club. She wasn't working for about 5 months, just living off her college fund, but apparently she got tired of the tight budget. She's making $4 an hour more than she was at her old job.

 

[ZedClampet]

I've been almost a vegetarian for about a month now. What I really, really want are half-a-dozen large gyros, so I can dump all the beef and lamb onto a plate and devour it.

Edit: I've changed my avatar to my true love.

 

[Pifanjr]

It's been a week since my in-laws arrived and it's going about as well as I could have hoped for. Our daughter was only shy around them for a few minutes and is now okay with being left alone with them for a couple of hours. Our dog similarly adjusted to them pretty quickly. I've been able to work from home with them around without issues. Only my wife is stressed, but she hasn't gotten into any major fights with her parents yet.

I just haven't had time to play any games and I'm not sure I'll get any until my in-laws leave.

 

[Brian Boru]

I just haven't had time to play any games

Waddayamean, you're winning a co-op game of In-laws Visit Simulator!
Okay, partner needs reviving occasionally, but you got this!!

 

[BeardyHat]

I've been almost a vegetarian for about a month now. What I really, really want are half-a-dozen large gyros, so I can dump all the beef and lamb onto a plate and devour it.

Edit: I've changed my avatar to my true love.

These are awesome

Honestly I'd mostly rather eat these than ground beef. In the air fryer, their crispy and got a nice bite to them. Plus if you still want some meat, can throw some bacon onto them and then you're getting all that flavor and some meat without all the extra stuff that comes with a beef patty.

Maybe I missed a post, but how come you decided to do Vegetarian?

 

[ZedClampet]

These are awesome

Honestly I'd mostly rather eat these than ground beef. In the air fryer, their crispy and got a nice bite to them. Plus if you still want some meat, can throw some bacon onto them and then you're getting all that flavor and some meat without all the extra stuff that comes with a beef patty.

Maybe I missed a post, but how come you decided to do Vegetarian?

Just trying to get rid of as much dietary fat as possible and see if I feel better. Been sick for awhile, though, so I need to get completely rid of this virus before I can expect to feel good.

 

[BeardyHat]

Just trying to get rid of as much dietary fat as possible and see if I feel better. Been sick for awhile, though, so I need to get completely rid of this virus before I can expect to feel good.

Sorry to hear.

I ought to do something similar, because the lack of energy I have in general is pretty pathetic. Granted, I have two little kids, but that might only be an excuse...

I watched the first episode of the new Fallout show and it's...fine? I've seen nothing but raving about it so far. which doesn't feel completely warranted. The acting is so-so, the characters are so-so and the setting, while cool, probably isn't enough to keep me going with the rest. I may end-up watching more, but if I didn't watch anymore episodes, I don't think I'd be terribly sad.

Granted, I was only partially paying attention while building a new model (which was a frustrating POS), but by the same token, it wasn't exactly gripping my attention enough for me to set that aside and fully invest.

 

[neogunhero]

Either people are way too over-paranoid about AI, or we are failing our youth to read and write properly.

In the past month, 4 of my YouTube comments have gotten replies along the lines of “AI generated comment” “this reads as a ChatGPT response”, etc. I’ve used GPT and Co-Pilot a ton and have dabbled with other smaller AI like Facebook’s and Snapchat’s AI. My comments read nothing like what ChatGPT would release. I just type more “proper” than a lot of internet commenters. I commented on a song talking about how the vibe and art direction of a song is different than the artists usual output and how I really liked it, 2 people commented below on that with those responses. It makes sense when the rest of the comment section is full of emojis or internet slang, I just type how I normally talk, so because my comment doesn’t fit in the same style as the rest of the comments I’m immediately considered an AI lol. Also it’s super easy to go to someone’s channel and confirm if they’re real, if it’s been around for many years or there are lots of uploads, 99/100 times it’s gonna be a real person. Anyone wanting to use AI to write YouTube comments would most likely start a brand new channel I would assume.

I don’t know, it’s so weird but hilarious at the same time. I think kids on the internet are so brain rotted that seeing a properly typed and punctuated comment amongst a flood of fire emoji’s makes their brains hurt.

 

[Pifanjr]

Either people are way too over-paranoid about AI, or we are failing our youth to read and write properly.

In the past month, 4 of my YouTube comments have gotten replies along the lines of “AI generated comment” “this reads as a ChatGPT response”, etc. I’ve used GPT and Co-Pilot a ton and have dabbled with other smaller AI like Facebook’s and Snapchat’s AI. My comments read nothing like what ChatGPT would release. I just type more “proper” than a lot of internet commenters. I commented on a song talking about how the vibe and art direction of a song is different than the artists usual output and how I really liked it, 2 people commented below on that with those responses. It makes sense when the rest of the comment section is full of emojis or internet slang, I just type how I normally talk, so because my comment doesn’t fit in the same style as the rest of the comments I’m immediately considered an AI lol. Also it’s super easy to go to someone’s channel and confirm if they’re real, if it’s been around for many years or there are lots of uploads, 99/100 times it’s gonna be a real person. Anyone wanting to use AI to write YouTube comments would most likely start a brand new channel I would assume.

I don’t know, it’s so weird but hilarious at the same time. I think kids on the internet are so brain rotted that seeing a properly typed and punctuated comment amongst a flood of fire emoji’s makes their brains hurt.

ChatGPT and such can only copy, so they must be copying their writing style from a large selection of people who just write like that.

 

[Brian Boru]

ChatGPT and such can only copy, so they must be copying their writing style

Don't they have any of the analysis and correction tools that Word etc have had for at least a decade? Checkers for grammar, style etc.

Either people…

Did you write this post yourself?

we are failing our youth to read and write properly

I had to physically sign a document recently. I had to think for a moment to recall how I do/did my sig!
How are your fountain pen and inkwell skills these days? Quill?

I'm pretty good at simple mental arithmetic—but if I had a calculator in my pocket like most kids these days, I would have spent my learning resources on something else.

Point being that language as a comms medium—and its main expressions, speech and writing—moves on. Writing more than speech, of course.

Ogham is pretty obtuse, only so much you can do with grooves in stone. Like Roman numerals, before most moved to the Arabic numerals we all use today—which will be equally quaint when it's all binary next century.

Scrolls depended a lot on the scribe's handwriting—there's a rumor they were a bit like doctors are today… The advent of printing—with its resulting explosion in document proliferation—was the main driver for standardizing written grammar and introducing approved dictionaries to try and overcome the countless dialects across a country.

The main difference with the web is that the gatekeeping for what's to become standard has moved from the likes of Académie Française and Samuel Johnson to the web users—ie a dialect will catch on, or it won't. Looks like emoji-speak is on an upward trend 👏🤷‍♂️

So I wouldn't worry about 'properly', even if you or I can't understand them—previous generation couldn't understand me either when I was an idi a teenager

Of course, writing for artistic status or general public consumption is a different thing to casual in-group comms, so you still see the older widespread rules in place there.

 

[Pifanjr]

Don't they have any of the analysis and correction tools that Word etc have had for at least a decade? Checkers for grammar, style etc.

There's a good chance they normalize the texts they feed into the algorithm, but it's also possible the sheer amount of text would be enough for the algorithm to ignore the occasional misspelling.

I had to physically sign a document recently. I had to think for a moment to recall how I do/did my sig!

I had to write my signature on a touchscreen recently and I failed three times in a row, then gave up and just kind of scribbled the last part.

 

[neogunhero]

Went on a weekend trip to Plano TX. Ate a ton of Japanese food and spent a fortune on Asian groceries. Since I was gonna be away from my PC, I decided to download some games on my phone to occupy a little time but found it hard to find games I really wanted to play. I decided to try Apple Arcade which is $7 a month. The only game I actually managed to play over the weekend was Slay the Spire and it was not a great experience on my iPhone. It was slow, lagged a lot and was not very smooth at all. That’s one of the key features for the game on PC to me, it’s so smooth and ultra responsive and all of that makes it great to play. I was very surprised to see how poorly it performed on mobile, I was expecting it to work way better.

I may try a few more games on there but I already turned off the auto renew.

 

[BeardyHat]

Went on a weekend trip to Plano TX. Ate a ton of Japanese food and spent a fortune on Asian groceries. Since I was gonna be away from my PC, I decided to download some games on my phone to occupy a little time but found it hard to find games I really wanted to play. I decided to try Apple Arcade which is $7 a month. The only game I actually managed to play over the weekend was Slay the Spire and it was not a great experience on my iPhone. It was slow, lagged a lot and was not very smooth at all. That’s one of the key features for the game on PC to me, it’s so smooth and ultra responsive and all of that makes it great to play. I was very surprised to see how poorly it performed on mobile, I was expecting it to work way better.

I may try a few more games on there but I already turned off the auto renew.

I'm actually heading to the same area right around mid-June! Never been, but I'm only going for, essentially, a day. Fly out Friday, head home on Sunday, but the goal is to get a tiny vacation for myself and visit VCF Southwest. Had no idea there was a large Asian population in the area.

Playing games on phone, even in a pinch, is such a turn off to me. I've done it here and there and had some games I do like, such as Hoplite, but something about gaming on the phone just doesn't get me excited.

Now, that said (prepare for long windedness), I'm taking that trip to Dallas but also to the UK pretty soon here and I've been mulling over what to bring to keep myself entertained. The Steam Deck is cool, but it's so large and only serves one function while being that large, so it's out completely and I'm sticking with my laptop, since I can game on it and use it for multiple other functions. So I want a handheld and after messing around with my collection for months now, I think I've finally settled on one to bring and the library to play: Gameboy.

Why? Well, it fits in my pocket pretty well, I like the idea of using regular batteries, because it means I can just swap them in and out and not be tethered to a charger and the games are perfect little things to sort of mindlessly play and not get too invested into. I had grand ideas of getting deep into some RPG or something on my various travels, but realistically, I know I need something that's mostly a distraction and the Gameboy library and the 8 or so games I'll have with me, will be perfect for that. I also think that having a much more limited selection of stuff to play ought to be helpful; on my other handhelds/PC, I have tens of games and it just leads to choice paralysis, so having only a handful to choose from makes things easier.

 

[Pifanjr]

The only game I actually managed to play over the weekend was Slay the Spire and it was not a great experience on my iPhone. It was slow, lagged a lot and was not very smooth at all.

Slay the Spire is high on my list of games I want to play and it seems like it would be a perfect game to play on a phone, but I've read multiple times that the performance is underwhelming.

Playing games on phone, even in a pinch, is such a turn off to me. I've done it here and there and had some games I do like, such as Hoplite, but something about gaming on the phone just doesn't get me excited.

I've played quite a lot of games on my phone, but the small screen and the touch screen controls just aren't very comfortable for most games. I'm planning on getting a Bluetooth controller for my birthday next month and I'm curious whether that will be better for the games that support it.

 

[BeardyHat]

Slay the Spire is high on my list of games I want to play and it seems like it would be a perfect game to play on a phone, but I've read multiple times that the performance is underwhelming.



I've played quite a lot of games on my phone, but the small screen and the touch screen controls just aren't very comfortable for most games. I'm planning on getting a Bluetooth controller for my birthday next month and I'm curious whether that will be better for the games that support it.

I do own one of those and actually, until I got my Deck, it was great for streaming stuff via Steam or Moonlight to my phone, definitely made it more tolerable.

I do think the touch interface has something to do with it. Just so imprecise for most interactions, even writing this comment from my phone is annoying.

One thing I did do, however, before getting more into handhelds was emulate Nintendo DS games on my phone. I played through all of Advance Wars DS on my phone and it was a pretty damn good experience, given that it's turn based and it uses "buttons".

 

[Pifanjr]

I do own one of those and actually, until I got my Deck, it was great for streaming stuff via Steam or Moonlight to my phone, definitely made it more tolerable.

I do think the touch interface has something to do with it. Just so imprecise for most interactions, even writing this comment from my phone is annoying.

One thing I did do, however, before getting more into handhelds was emulate Nintendo DS games on my phone. I played through all of Advance Wars DS on my phone and it was a pretty damn good experience, given that it's turn based and it uses "buttons".

I have played quite a lot of emulated games on my phone. It helps that Gameboy and DS games were made for small screens, but there's not all that many of them I actually like playing.

 

[ZedClampet]

@neogunhero People have just become paranoid. It's like not being able to tell what is reality.

Speaking of ChatGPT, Weed Shop devs announced the next game on 4/20 with this:

Happy 420! May your day be filled with good vibes, great company, and even greater snacks. Here’s to a laid-back celebration surrounded by laughter, relaxation, and plenty of your favorite green. Enjoy lighting up the moments that make today special. Cheers to high spirits and chill times!

Thank you, Chat GPT!
We know that came from the heart... now onto the news!

As for games on your phone, I've tried Total War Rome and XCOM (can't remember which one), and they were just totally frustrating, and yet better than doing nothing. What they really need are "undo" buttons since the controls suck so badly.

We recently went to visit the kids. My wife took them clothes shopping, which is my worst nightmare, so I stayed at their apartment and had a couple of hours of alone time with my phone. I downloaded some random free games, and it all felt so dirty. All the pop-ups and progress stoppers. I don't know how people can stand to play these things. I guess they grew up playing them, so they feel normal.

 

[BeardyHat]

I have played quite a lot of emulated games on my phone. It helps that Gameboy and DS games were made for small screens, but there's not all that many of them I actually like playing.

There's definitely a particular mood you need to be in for them. GB games are hitting right for me now because I just want something pretty simple and it helps that I can play a Gameboy with one hand.

Plus you might be surprised at the sheer variety of them. DS is pretty great, as it had a lot of very weird, very experimental games on it and weirdly, many PC ports. Anno 1701 is on DS and it plays exactly like the PC original.

@neogunhero People have just become paranoid. It's like not being able to tell what is reality.

Speaking of ChatGPT, Weed Shop devs announced the next game on 4/20 with this:



As for games on your phone, I've tried Total War Rome and XCOM (can't remember which one), and they were just totally frustrating, and yet better than doing nothing. What they really need are "undo" buttons since the controls suck so badly.

We recently went to visit the kids. My wife took them clothes shopping, which is my worst nightmare, so I stayed at their apartment and had a couple of hours of alone time with my phone. I downloaded some random free games, and it all felt so dirty. All the pop-ups and progress stoppers. I don't know how people can stand to play these things. I guess they grew up playing them, so they feel normal.

Ads are such a killer and often forget just how bad they are on my phone until I leave my house. I have a PiHole on my network, so I end up using an app outside my house, only to discover it's riddled with ads I don't normally see.

Only decent games I've found on my phone that are buy to play are Hoplite and Meteorfall. They're decent in a pinch, but again, I carry around handhelds anyway, just in case I find myself in such a situation.

Helluva week this week and it's only Tuesday. Both my kids are sick and home from school, the little one is the worst, just because he gets a lot of attitude when he's tired and crabby (just like Dad, but we'll discount that for now...), but the worst part is, we're going to have to cancel our planned Casa Bonita trip tomorrow most likely. That place is cursed, apparently, because when we were able to actually go last year (it's tough to get tickets right now), my oldest got a migraine and vomited all over the brand new carpet in the magic show. Oops.

But more than that, we had to plan another trip for the summer, because it looks like my sister in law is in her final days, so we need to make it out to Oregon to visit before the inevitable. Too bad under the circumstances, because between May and June this year, it'll be more than I've traveled altogether in the last 10 years.