There are different skills than just physical execution. Pokemon isn’t easy because RNG or because it’s turn based, it’s easy because the NPC team compositions are awful, the AI sucks, and the game only has very lenient soft caps on grinding. A mod like Radical Red solves these things, and I’ve played other turn based games with plenty of RNG which require lots of skill.

I didn’t think it was a choreographed publicity stunt. I just know Altman has used AI fear in the past to keep people from asking rational questions like “What can this actually do?” He obviously stands to gain from people thinking they are on the verge of agi. And someone looking for a new job in the field also has to gain from it.

As for the software thing, if it’s done by someone it won’t be openai and megacorporations following in its footsteps. They seem insistent at throwing more data (of diminishing quality) and more compute (an impractical amount) at the same style of models hoping they’ll reach some kind of tipping point.

This fear mongering is just beneficial to Altman. If his product is powerful enough to be a threat to humanity then it is also powerful enough to be capable of many useful things, things it has not proven itself to be capable of. Ironically spreading fear about its capabilities will likely raise investment, so if you actually are afraid of openai somehow arriving at agi that is dangerous then you should really be trying to convince people of its lack of real utility.

MusicBrainz Picard

Amazing music tagger and batch renamer, for those of us who still have all our music as files.

Criticism of China isn’t necessarily sinophobic. However being particularly concerned that a Chinese automaker is doing something most US automakers do might be. Especially when you consider that on an individual level it is less of a concern for Chinese companies to be tracking you then US companies. If you live in the US then local companies will gladly turn over information to authorities or shut off features for some reason. And to be fair I also think it would be better for a Chinese person to use a foreign for similar reasons.

I don’t really want to do everything in one language but if I did have to pick it would probably be Julia. It’s slightly simpler than Python, and significantly faster without relying on APIs written in C. And has some really great features like broadcasting, multiple dispatch, and a good type system. The only place I feel like Python has it beat is quantity of libraries and support network, which both basically come from the same origin of just having more users. I’m hoping more data science types switch over in the next few years, since Julia is already great for most things mathematical. And I hope that momentum allows Julia to perhaps reach out to other domains.

Side hustle culture. Pandemic. Decline of customer facing jobs. Those would be some of my guesses.

I use Rate Your Music but I use it in a very peculiar way. Most of my listening is from scrolling through Latest Reviews for something that stands out and listening to it.

The second most common way I use RYM is to go to the page of an album I think is really special and click on user made lists that album is a part of and scroll through for things that look interesting.

The third way is when I notice I've liked a few things from a specific scene I like to go to the page for the record label that often represents artists from that scene. Currently I'm exploring Dischord Records.

Fourth, is if a genre is obscure or specific enough I will look at the charts for that genre. This is most common with electronic music, because it's so heavily taxonomized. Take for example Purple Sound which only has a couple hundred releases associated with it.

This definitely isn't how I recommend everyone find new music. But I do recommend freeing yourself from an algorithm and forging your own path. I find that algorithms often funnel a person into some kind of local maximum where most music presented is palatable but the chance to discover something revolutionary to their tastes decreases immensely, and to me that's just a bummer.

So much clothing, even poor quality clothing, gets discarded for newer clothing before it has even become worn down. Sure we could use better fibers, but even if clothing was more durable it would get discarded at about the same rates because people want something new and opt for a throw out and buy culture rather than an exchange culture. Also we shouldn't turn back to animal fibers, unethical and its own environmental blight, especially if scaled up to supply the current apparel industry.

I thrift everything that's not undergarments, and for those I invest in quality ones that don't get destroyed within a few years.

I only really agree with the endgame being lackluster and that’s something that will certainly improve with time as they add more mechanics that get incorporated into Monoliths. The core gear and skill systems are good, which is something that can make or break an ARPG, so saying the developers are unskilled seems a little harsh.

Until it is more fleshed out though I would definitely recommend Grim Dawn over it, which is a game with a lot of content and polish, as well as modding if it’s not enough. I would recommend PoE, but it’s complex enough that it might be better to wait the 1+ year until PoE2 and try that, maybe also learning PoE if it maintains a large playerbase and good support, they claimed they will continue to release just as many expansions for it.

Big fan of Julia for anything that requires a lot of computation. It feels easy to write things in an optimized way without having to work against the language.

I have a soft spot for Common Lisp. It encourages me to write chunks of code that are very evergreen in the sense that I could easily use them in a future project without modification. I don’t find myself using it all that much though.

Opus Magnum. It’s an optimization puzzle game. You have to assemble mechanical arms and other bits (that grab, swing, rotate, push, and pull) into contraptions that assemble resources that look like molecular diagrams. Optimization puzzles aren’t unique but I felt like the pieces you build the contraptions out of in this game are pretty unique, the game is on a hex grid so rotation can play a big roll. Another interesting thing the game does is that to beat a level you simply have to accomplish a proper assembly, which in itself isn’t that hard, but the game grades you on three different metrics (speed, size, cost) and gives you no overall score to tell you how much you should value each metric. In this way it is up to your preferences what you want to optimize for if anything. I had fun trying to minmax every stat separately on every level before building my “compromise” machine was not supposed to make big sacrifices in any field.

A lot of people have mentioned it but I definitely recommend Obra Dinn, haven’t played a mystery game as unique and enthralling.

Write the whole thing, and only then, scrap it and rewrite it. This way you actually have a good understanding of the entire implementation when you are rewriting. When I refractor while writing my draft I will slow myself down and trip over myself, I’ll be way more likely to rewrite something I’ve already rewritten.

Sure there is a limit to the size of projects this can work for, but even for massive projects they can still be broken into decently sized chunks. I’m just advocating for not rewriting function A as soon as you finish function B.

Even if enemies got a lot stronger you’d still have numbers go up, and less superficially you’d still have significantly more options than a bunch of level 1 characters. I don’t want to feel like Superman when the roleplaying situation is supposed to feel grim and insurmountable. My mood to use caution and diplomacy is really killed when I know I can destroy any encounter. I also just want a fun tactical experience in addition to the roleplaying elements, is that too much to ask?

Currently, the game on tactician, even without abusing resting, consumables, or strong multiclass is too easy in my opinion, and this is coming from someone with no prior DnD experience. I do have a little bit of Pathfinder experience as I got WotR during the Steam Summer Sale.

I generally scroll through either local or everything sorted by “New Comments”. That’s why I’m replying to this two month old post, because someone else did, so it rose to the top. Feels like a combination of Reddit and a classic forum where you’d have posts that would get bumped by activity.

I didn’t get many bugs with later content, but a big problem with later content is that the player gets immensely stronger but enemies stay about the same. It also becomes way too easy to pass out of combat checks. I doubt this will be fixed any time soon, maybe in the future they will add a new difficulty.