>>38366
If you have to use reddit, use teddit as per >>37266

https://arstechnica.com still has good content but the auto-play videos and too much focus on nerdy pop-culture is slowly ruining it

I like tanks
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTankMuseum

>>38041
Sounds edgy

I've been thinking that this thread has already reached bump limit and someone should do another one, but I realized the OP image will be sticking around for quite a few years, likely, and now I feel that I'm not up to the task.

So as far as I know, japan doesn't ground their power outlets and electronics. Is this why they freak out so much in anime during power outages and warn each other to stay still?

>>39429
That's interesting, I didn't know that. I guess at least one country manages to be even less-safe than the US in terms of receptacle design. As I understand, the purpose of the ground is two-fold: 1) to provide a return path for leakage current (this is usually designed to be negligible, so it's often not even necessary for most appliances) 2) Ground pin is connected to the casing of an applicance, so in the case of abnormal operation where somehow hot gets connected to the casing, it provides a return path that immediately trips the breaker.

Neither of those would make any difference during a power outage. I wonder if all their appliances that would usually require 3-prong are double insualted or something. Or if they have residual current detection at the breaker level.

Also in more Japanese electricty madness, did you know that Japan has two separate power grids for each half that run at different frequencies?

>>39912
Looks like I posted in the wrong thread. How embarrassing.
Please, mod-sama, delete my foolishness.

>>39180
If "verification" was legally required, nobody would be allowed to distribute any kind of game for any price without it, which is obviously not true.
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/74660/when-does-a-game-need-an-official-age-rating

>Game ratings are not enforced by any country for any kind of game. They'll just ban your game, if they found it objectionable enough. The rating is more of a de-facto standard used to make the end-user aware about the content of the game, so that kids do not play games containing extreme violence.

>You'll be required to submit ratings only if you're making games for major consoles, such as PlayStation, XBox or Wii.

>Update: There're few countries which requires explicit rating by one of the approved rating agency to be eligible for distribution.

In such draconian hell holes, steam could easily block the viewing of external links. I bet you're a eurofag with this warped mentality of yours.

>>39181
In fact, steam doesn't even require games on it to have a rating, unlike consoles, so your whole point is extremely stupid and wrong.

https://xsolla.com/blog/self-publish-on-steam-the-ultimate-guide
>Supplying the rating information is not mandatory. However, you should definitely fill in this tab if you have official age ratings.

Post edited on 27th Jan 2022, 6:56am

>>39181
>In such draconian hell holes, steam could easily block the viewing of external links.
Almost like Steam operates as a global marketplace with different rules that they abide by based on the country and their laws.
You can't even buy porn games on Steam in Germany without a VPN because Valve decided they'd rather not bother dealing with the bureaucracy of their rating system.
Maybe that should be a slight insight as to why some companies just have external links to the R18 stuff because you know, localization companies want the widest audience possible and to actually make money
>I bet you're a eurofag with this warped mentality of yours.
You're doing yourself a disservice by acting like a dickhead with people just trying to have a reasonable discussion with you
If you're aiming to come across as a 17 year old /pol/ user then well done I guess because you've nailed it

>>39185
>You can't even buy porn games on Steam in Germany without a VPN
Nothing stops them from having a similar feature for external links to patches.

>people just trying to have a reasonable discussion with you
There's nothing to discuss. I'm getting on a soap box to condemn people worth condemning. This thread exists to be a witch trial, and you're arguing with the priest. Not even doing a good job at it since you're just making shit up to blame the government instead.

>>39118
>>39113
Ironman 3 seems like an oddly love it or hate it movie. I guess it really alienates fans of the first two by being much more focused on Tony's ptsd and having him get stripped down of everything that makes him who he is, even having to struggle and fight without his suit for once. I thought this made for a pretty interesting story. Destroying all the suits at the end didn't make much sense considering the character was far from calling it quits, but I guess the idea was to start over from a clean slate. The switcheroo with the villain was also interesting, even if it left a lot of long time fan bitter. Kinda funny in retrospect that ironman's archenemy wouldn't make his true appearance until after[spoiler] ironman is dead in the mcu, and even then has no interaction with anyone in the mcu before dying at the end of the movie he was introduced in, just to get replaced by get another token female for 'progress' sake[./spoiler]

Winter Soldier. It's been a couple of days since I've seen it, so it's not that fresh in my mind. Head's up, I'll be spoiling the movie throughout much of this.

I'd say it's the best of the mcu I've seen. Action wise it certainty is. It's very well choreographed, which compensates for the lack of gore in these.

Captain America's out-of-touch "situation" provided some interest. This movie was also better for the things it didn't have. No love interest taking up huge chunks of screen time for one.

The first half or so of the movie was pretty great actually. It was intense, it felt like anything could happen, and there was a sense of conspiracy, which I really like.

The second half kind of fell off for me. The biggest thing was that I didn't like the Hydra twist. It felt waaaay too convenient(for the writers) that the malicious practices of a government agency could be blamed on Nazis, so Captain America doesn't really have to think too deeply about it.

Just like the first movie, Hydra felt like a proxy for something the movie didn't want to show directly(I don't care about the comics, and it's not like the movie hasn't changed things from it). In this case, they didn't want to directly portray the government in a bad light. God forbid the audience starts disliking the real life version. I also didn't appreciate the way this connected Winter Soldier to the first Captain America more, since I didn't like that one.

Besides that, there was more "aerial" combat instead of hand to hand combat. And I wasn't crazy about Captain America's side-kick with robot wings or whatever. He felt unnecessary and shoe-horned in.

Bucky was cool in this. Cool theme too. That's all I have to say about him.

Message too long. Click here to view the full text.

I've watched "Drive" the other day. The atmosphere and aesthetics were great, in fact they were the best thing about the movie. The soundtrack matched the cinematography.

>>39147
Drive was heavily inspired by the 70's movie "The Driver" by Walter Hill, one of my favourite movies ever. Drive itself isn't bad though I found Ryan Gosling awful in some moments.

I just read Salem's Lot. It was a lot shorter than I expected, more direct and straight forward of a vampire story as I thought it'd be too. I had been meaning to give it a go because I'm on the filth book of the Dark Tower and the priest from Salem's Lot becomes a main character in that. Not that reading this really shed any new light on the character or anything, feels like he was barely in it and the only not worthy part he's in was recounted in the dark tower books with more detail. I'd say the context helps but again, his back story had a million times more detail in the dark tower, I guess King wrote it expecting that no one read Salem's Lot.

The last few years have been harder for me to willingly read but around a month ago I've been a lot more capable. Read Humble Pi, a non-fiction about math going wrong in the world, and it was pretty easy to digest. The early chapters are a bit more interesting since they deal with physical, practical math rather than probability and computing (which are very interesting in their own right, but made the connections a lot less intuitive).
Followed it with Dune, not necessarily because of the movie but I've had it on my shelf forever and figured I'd try again. Last time was hard because I kept going to the glossary every new word, but pushing through even if I didn't think I understood was a lot easier since most stuff is explained through context. The story itself isn't that interesting but I like the characters and descriptions a lot. The roles of different factions feel meaningful, and focusing a large-scale conflict on a single, resource-deprived planet helps push the characters' actions in interesting directions.
The Dandelion Girl - referenced in Clannad - was also a very nice character-driven story. Much shorter than a book, it reminded me a bit of Ray Bradbury's short stories. The descriptions of the field are very relaxing and the main character reacts to strange information a lot in the ways I think a normal person would.
Not sure what I'll read next, I'm a bit limited in that I can't go and buy books so I'll have to pick off the dozen or so unread mystery and essays I've got stored in boxes and bins.

apart from manga, I've mostly been reading ancient and medieval texts, most of them religious, like for example those of the Nag Hammadi library:
http://gnosis.org/naghamm/hypostas.html
Also have been perusing the Zohar, the Talmud and rabbinic literature. It gets interesting once you realize that Edom and Esau are used as code words for Europeans/Christians, Jacob is code for Israel/Jews, and Ishmael is code for Muslims/Arabs.
https://www.sefaria.org/search?q=Edom&tab=text&tvar=1&tsort=relevance&svar=1&ssort=relevance
Also various non-religious pieces of fiction and poetry, like the ancient Egyptian Tale of the Ship-Wrecked Sailor:
https://www.storynory.com/the-tale-of-the-shipwrecked-sailor/
Just now I found a youtube channel that has good audio books of these kinds of ancient texts, like this one of the Egyptian Book of the Dead:
https://youtu.be/Afj5YwxpZWo?t=15344

>>39130
Did you read the Enuma Elish? I was thinking about reading it, and wondering what the best version would be.

Is it going to be offline this time or are we still doing the virtual thing?

I'm not in Japan so I can't really attend but I put in my Melonbooks order.
>>39094
It says "Tokyo Big Sight" right there.

>>39084
Only Gikopoi thread I remember seeing around here is the one on /vg/, which is still there.

Well, every year, we have a huge party on New Years Eve and New Years Day on Gikopoi.

>>39086
you should come it's going to be a good time

>>39087
wow, really? that's crazy! thanks for telling me, i had no idea. baka

>>39090
Is this your idea of advertising?

"Kuso thread."

I visited my parents, ate some food they ordered, then drove around aimlessly for 2 hours. Then went back home and crashed.

>>39059
What can we do?

>What can we do?
With regard to what? Or is that supposed to be a rhetorical question?

>>39073
I don't know, sorry.

moot's next.

I haven't given a shit about SA in nearly 15 years and by all accounts he was a shitty guy, but I still felt a little sad about the news, especially after hearing it was a suicide. I thought his stuff was funny when I was a kid new to the internet, and my life wouldn't have been the same without him.

/a/ getting raided by some swiss peado's
I want to say in 09?

Milhouse is not a meme (is a meme).

There was a recent article in nautilus about Tulpas: https://nautil.us/blog/can-you-treat-loneliness-by-creating-an-imaginary-friend

I don't think there's anything fundamentally impossible about it. It's basically a variant of the meditation practices/shamanic rituals of some cultures, and it fundamentally works because our consciousness isn't some sort of special thing but just an "illusion" generated by our brains. If the brain can generate consciousness once, it's not too hard (with some intense focusing) to get it to generate another. And things like dreams and traces can "tap" into the subconscious, bypassing some of the filtering that goes on in the generation of normal consciousness so Tulpas seem to occupy this fascinating and understudied realm.

That said I'm also a bit skeptical of just how many people claim to have created one. If you go on forums or threads it seems like there are boatloads of people who have done it, but I'd think it requires both a high level of control over your mind achieved through decades of meditation as well as a preexisting ability for visualization (some people have aphantasia or otherwise are not as good at visualizing/imagining and hence probably may never be able to).

>>37372
Once I was told having a tulpa and believing you have a tulpa are equal. Another different thing are induced hallucinations through really high level visualization skills, or even more incredible stuff like switching.
I suspect that could take really long time on proper and focused meditation, and most people couldn't even achieve it doesn't matter the effort. Though I'm convinced it's real since meditation can achieve even more unbelievable things, and not only subjective ones.

>>33437
Stop-motion is Tulpa?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdxVsIems2c

Related and interesting: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-02439-3

I wonder how the lack of mind's eye (aphantasia) or variation in the nature of one's internal monologue influences the ability to do the above or create a tulpa. Also related to tulpas is the attention schema theory of consciousness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory

>According to one proposal in AST, not only does the brain construct an attention schema to model its own state of attention, but it also uses the same mechanism to model other people's states of attention. In effect, just as we attribute awareness to ourselves, we also attribute it to others.

which would naturally explain how tulpas can arise.

I quit my higher paying web job impulsively. Couldn’t sand the idiot CEO I had to deal with. Now Living with my parents again and working at a liquor store. I’ve noticed I feel about 100% better coming home from a job where I am on my feet doing physical tasks than coming home from a job at an office sitting all day. But I do really miss the money and my apartment (though my cat likes my parents house much more). I think I may need to pursue higher paying physical labor.

>>33190
>building web interfaces
Do you do design work for it, or are you given a plan and you just have to implement it?

>>33193
Or get a similar web job with a better company.

Build webistes and support eLearning but I don't know design or programming.