aaroninsf

1,110 karmajoined vor 12 Jahren

quietamerican.org oneminutevacation.org archive.org

comments

gesterndiscuss

I've always wanted to set up automation that updates the text for the book every so often to preserve original intent, by changing the language around quantities to <whatever would make a contemporary reader be impressed>

Replace "megabyte" with "exabyte" or whatever.

As an aside, there's a great essay I think in Metamagical Themas about the fuzzy task of translating literary works, which takes up the question of whether it would be valid and how to translate say Dickens into French, by relocating from London to Paris.

Part of the premise is that this is an impossible task because the referential systems are not truly analogous; the cultures aren't identical so some concepts literally have no direct translation...

...in Neuromancer the mere existence of a bank of pay phones has stood out as one of those things which even my little updater would break hard.

Also related: I've seen a slowly increasing number of complaints in book forums about text from relatively recent novels being silently updated, to change references from e.g. Myspace to Tik Tok or whatever, to try to keep the text feeling current... a perilous slope.

gesterndiscuss

Personal take:

I immediately liked the game and was inspired to try multiple days,

my single biggest frustration was that once a day is attempted, it's locked, and, you can't continue after a single failure.

The "single point of failure" having heavy consequences would likely make me bounce off and not return.

Might I suggest an alternate design to try:

Keep the incentive to speed, but reduce the punishment.

Proposal:

Score is points-per-word as a function of time to complete.

With a non-linear asymptomic point curve.

Bonus for very fast, long tail decreasing from 1.x points to 0.x, after 30s you get 0 points...

...but critically you are not loocked out of the game and can take as long as you like.

Bonus for caching this state so you can return later

There are variations, e.g. a total time budget for all words... perhaps you retain a sense of tier, with players able to select a "league" which gives higher reward for fastest responses but more quickly drops you to zero for the rest of the game...

You can still have a leader board (implicit or explicit) where points are fungible.

You could even then have a "no stress" league which gives a flat 0.25 points per success with no timer at all or something.

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

ITT the consensus is they don't actually work better, but, were royalty free.

No idea about either, myself.

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

In project budgeting the material cost difference may well be relatively insignificant

vor 7 Tagendiscuss

ah yeah, I was on desktop at the time!

vor 8 Tagendiscuss

I assume it's a MINI, which is made by BMW

vor 9 Tagendiscuss

https://zcode.z.ai/en

There's an `EN` link at top right

vor 10 Tagendiscuss

> nostaliga is always for the last layer

Now there's a sentiment worth Jenny Holzerizing.

vor 14 Tagendiscuss

I wonder if this will hold as other models with different biases achieve parity.

vor 14 Tagendiscuss

People don't make this assumption, if you ask (or reflect);

arguments however regularly are implicitly predicated on exactly this premise.

(Infinite improvement, no; enough improvement that practically speaking the difference between effectively free and free is meaningless—that may well be the ultimate bitter lesson.)

vor 28 Tagendiscuss

My favorite easter egg by far in this domain, was the Apple II version of Karateka.

The game came on a floppy disk; if you inserted it in the drive upside down (the Apple II only used one side of the medium) you found (unusually) that the game would load, but was rendered upside down.

It was fully playable. Non trivial given the way those games were written!!!

vor 28 Tagendiscuss

True, and relevant (I live with a professional editor)... yet I immediately think of Ximm's Law:

Every critique of AI assumes to some degree that contemporary implementations will not, or cannot, be improved upon.

Lemma: any statement about AI which uses the word "never" to preclude some feature from future realization is false.

Lemma: contemporary implementations have already improved; they're just unevenly distributed.

vor 29 Tagendiscuss

The K-shaped economy kontinues.

vor 29 Tagendiscuss

ITT a surprising lack of perspective on the fact that despite the breathless pace of the singularity, people are still necessarily figuring things out as we go and we are well off the map.

Here there be monsters, and we don't have any real way of evaluating risk; and the leverage provided by tools already available affords systemic and even existential risk in a way no one—least of all an industry committed to shareholder value—has had to navigate, let alone with a million backseat drivers each with their own substack and brand to build.

vor 29 Tagendiscuss

Every time Peter Watts comes up, it bears repeating:

TRIGGER WARNINGS APPLY

The Rifters series, which has some spectacular images and conceits, is also author-insert misogynist sadism gratification-porn.

Didn't have to be that way. Shame that it was as IMO it renders the series and indeed Watts un-recommendable.

letzten Monatdiscuss

Same

letzten Monatdiscuss

Thank you TIL

letzten Monatdiscuss

This reads like literal propaganda.

Every assertion of personal responsibility (sic) in the face of billion to trillion dollar industry spending is bad faith, zero exceptions.

British Petroleum invented the concept of personal climate footprint. That was bad faith and to put a point on it, evil.

Tech industry claims that engagement farming and addition manufacture should be opposed by "parenting" are even less credible.

letzten Monatdiscuss

They're passionate about style and brand, not design and sound.

I say this as someone with expertise in a domain they nominally targetted.

Very "cool" looking kit, but: missing basic features, unremarkable in those provided; serious issues rendering it fundamentally inappropriate for its nominal application.

letzten Monatdiscuss

The repetition of some phrases/statements means it's either poorly edited, machine generated, or both.