I’ve been wondering, if you could combine LLMs with a logic programming language like Prolog. The latter is actually able to reason through things, you “just” have to express them in Prolog facts and rules.

Well, from doing a quick online search, I’m most certainly not the first person to think of this, which does not surprise me at all…

Yeah, and the worst part is that submitting the PR is trivial. You just offload the reviewing work onto the maintainer and then feed the review comments back into the AI. Effectively, you’re making the maintainer talk to the AI, by going through you as a middleman, a.k.a. completely wasting their time.

Yeah, there are still indie titles with infamous creators. It’s just that the limelight is now taken by big corporations with big marketing budget.

Yeah, feels like the correct move here would be to hold off with the next generation, if you can’t get enough of a performance jump without increasing prices. Otherwise you’re just offering a premium edition.

Dungeon Lawl Stone Soup 🙃

I think, the problem is that Nvidia has two customer groups. Those that buy their products and those that buy their stock options. Nvidia can produce garbage that completely misses the point of real-world usage, so long as they can convince investors that other investors will join the pyramid scheme. And for that, it just has to look like impressive tech, not actually good or artistically meaningful.

Will it smooth out a wall that is supposed to look like it can be destroyed?

Yeah, at the very least, it will throw a whole bunch of details into the general area, which will make it harder to tell what’s interactable.

We’ve had photorealistic games before, by taking literal photographs and using those as point-and-click levels. You practically don’t see that anymore these days, because not being able to tell what’s interactable was a major weakness.

Doesn’t mean that DLSS 5 or the like will strictly have the same problem, but it certainly feels like these companies are trying to throw in photorealism again, with no regards for the cost.

I mean, yeah, but you’re kind of saying what the others here were saying, too, in that when something fits the anywhere close to the “old hag” category, that the probabilities will shove it entirely towards “old hag”.

That it’s somewhat fitting for this character, I would expect to be coincidence. Like, maybe they did actually give the image generator somewhat of a system prompt for this demo, that it should make her look extra wrinkly.
But yeah, shoving all depictions of women either towards young model or old hag is quite emblematic of these image generators, so personally, I don’t think, it was even necessary…

Don’t think the playable characters are supposed to be creepy, but yeah, a yassified zombie would probably fit right in. 😅

Never cared for realism in games to begin with, so don’t particularly care to comment on how it looks, but I’ve been thinking that I genuinely find it creepy.

Not just Uncanny Valley material, but also having these faces stare at you, always fully lit, it just gives me the creeps, kind of like a panopticon situation.
I don’t fucking know, if that’s my own trauma playing into that, where for the longest time, people looking at me generally meant they’re about to bully me.

But either way, I’m about to head to bed and genuinely feel like there’s a 20% chance I’ll have a mild nightmare from that shit.
This whole AI craze has been a wild ride of all kinds of nightmare fuel, from depictions with missing/additional limbs to the weirdest warping of objects+limbs in those fucking generated videos. And the worst part is that some folks seem to just not see it or not want to see it, so they keep using the nightmare generators.

Yeah, there’s a bias in these image generator AIs, because model photographs are:

• easy to get in bulk and in relatively high resolution etc.,
• relatively uniform (even lighting, facial symmetry etc.), meaning they reinforce existing patterns in the training data, and
• relatively easy to generate good-looking results with them, for obvious reasons, so more likely to be optimized towards by anyone involved in the training.

I think, why people perceive that right image as older is because the wrinkles carve much deeper. Yeah, same number of wrinkles, but it looks like they got chiseled down by 20 additional years…

Was recently thinking this might happen to Pinterest, too. Their webpage was never great, with how it tried to prevent you from downloading images, when that was literally the only reason I would ever visit. But at least, they did have a big database of images and a decent algorithm for detecting visual similarity.

And well, they have an even bigger database of images now, but the majority of it is not worth looking at, because the images are not real. I don’t bother visiting anymore, because you can’t find anything worthwhile on there anymore.

They did announce going all-in on AI at some point, but I don’t know, if they actually decided to generate images themselves. That seems almost too stupid.
Could be that they have some financial incentives for folks posting and that alone lead to tons of AI-generated uploads. I don’t actually know how Pinterest was supposed to work…

Yeah, management wants us to use AI at $DAYJOB and one of the strategies we’ve considered for lessening its negative impact on productivity, is to always put generated code into an entirely separate commit.

Because it will guess design decisions at random while generating, and you want to know afterwards whether a design decision was made by the randomizer or by something with intelligence. Much like you want to know whether a design decision was made by the senior (then you should think twice about overriding this decision) or by the intern that knows none of the project context.

We haven’t actually started doing these separate commits, because it’s cumbersome in other ways, but yeah, deliberately obfuscating whether the randomizer was involved, that robs you of that information even more.

Yeah, that’s my biggest worry. I always have to hold colleagues to the basics of programming standards as soon as they start using AI for a task, since it is easier to generate a second implementation of something we already have in the codebase, rather than extending the existing implementation.

But that was pretty much always true. We still did not slap another implementation onto the side, because it’s horrible for maintenance, as you now need to always adjust two (or more) implementations when requirements change.
And it’s horrible for debugging problems, because parts of the codebase will then behave subtly different from other parts. This also means usability is worse, as users expect consistency.

And the worst part is that they don’t even have an answer to those concerns. They know that it’s going to bite us into the ass in the near future. They’re on a sugar high, because adding features is quick, while looking away from the codebase getting incredibly fat just as quickly.

And when it comes to actually maintaining that generated code, they’ll be the hardest to motivate, because that isn’t as fun as just slapping a feature onto the side, nor do they feel responsible for the code, because they don’t know any better how it actually works. Nevermind that they’re also less sharp in general, because they’ve outsourced thinking.

Probably depends a lot on whether it’s an anonymous survey…

Well, bullet bras were a thing for quite a while, too:

I feel like folks are antsy, because it doesn’t look revolutionarily different from the original Steam Machines, which flopped back then.
But yeah, there actually is a revolutionary difference, which is that the vast majority of games now do run on the new Steam Machines. This has also already been proven to the public with the Steam Deck.

And I do think there is a market of folks looking at a Steam Deck and thinking they don’t need it to be a handheld and would rather have more bang for their buck.

I guess, we will have to see, but I could also imagine the cornered memory market playing into the hands of the Steam Machine, as the better memory efficiency of Linux will let you do more for less.

Oh man, I don’t want to get deep into all the politics involved, but man, this reads like complete non-sense:

The outage comes following Iranian attacks on the UAE as retaliation for US and Israeli strikes on Iran.

If they did specifically target US corporations in UAE, that would make some amount of sense as direct retaliation.
I guess, you can also attack UAE and hope that they pressure the US to stop invading.
But in any case, this seems like a really good way to drag more nations into the conflict, or at least to force them to become active, which is not in the interest of Iran.

To be fair, Sarah Bond was in a similar position and is a woman of color, too.

Oh man, for some reason I thought the title was going to end with:

by boosting software and network service efficiency.

Of course, they’re just talking about offsetting the costs, not actually about reducing them. 🫠

Yeah, I was thinking that recently when I realized I’ve known

for as long as I can remember.

I’ve also known

before I was even old enough to watch the movies, too.

I’m sure they’re cool movies, with lots of cultural relevance, but they’ve been spoiled in every possible way for me, specifically because the older generation loves them so much that they can’t shut up about them.

Yeah, then you should get a mod for that. I can absolutely understand your qualm. Morrowind came out in an era when RPGs were still computerized DnD, and that’s a design decision which aged particularly poorly.

Admittedly, it was also perhaps just a bad design decision in general. In DnD, you don’t either roll a dice for each sword hit. Nor are you able to miss an enemy from just not being near enough. At the very least, they could’ve played a different sound, if your sword connects, but does no damage.

Yeah, it is the green bar. And yes, it drops from attacking.

As has already been said, stamina potions are often quite worth it. But it also helps, if you switch to walking for approaching an enemy, for example (instead of running). If you’re sprinting across the landscape and get ambushed unexpectedly, then yeah, the game punishes you for being exhausted.

In general, Morrowind is much more roleplay than the later parts. You can optimize the fun out, by waiting around until your stamina recovers, every so often. But the game gives you enough opportunities to become filthy rich and overpowered, so that you shouldn’t need it.

Speaking of the combat, I can’t say i’m a fan. Maybe there’s something i’m missing but it’s definitely a lacking point of it. I just find myself jabbing at the enemies until either one of us drop dead.

One thing that’s perhaps not obvious from today’s viewpoint, is that stamina affects your hit chance quite a bit.

It is also a good idea to be rather skilled in your weapon of choice.

And of course, the real pro tip is to install a mod which changes the hit feedback. 😅

The problem is that all of this happened outside the law. Calling it a “DMCA takedown” is misleading, because it’s not making use of the DMCA’s mechanisms. There actually are hefty penalties for false DMCA claims, but only if you file them with a court.

I assume, Valve may be liable as well, for distributing copyrighted material (especially after they’ve been notified of it). At the very least, YouTube also has a system like that, where they allow claimants to bully creators with no repercussions.
Basically, Valve, YouTube et al need their own copyright takedown system to be preferrable for companies, so that those use it instead of filing an official DMCA claim.

Of course, the root cause of the problem is still the DMCA.

Well, there might’ve been some change that made it even more like the original, which could’ve prompted such a title either way…

Well, there was an effort to solve it on a technological level, via the Do Not Track header (DNT). The idea was that when users actively signal they don’t want to be tracked, then even in weaker jurisdictions, you can’t justify doing it anyways.

But Google and Facebook said outright that they would not honor DNT, which meant virtually no webpages could honor it, since Google Analytics and the Facebook Like-button were omnipresent on the web at that point.
And then Microsoft killed it off for good by enabling it by default in Internet Explorer. That meant the DNT header did not anymore necessarily represent a user actively choosing to not be tracked, so it became meaningless in court.

Well, and after that had failed, the EU came about with the GDPR to solve it with laws.
But here it also needs to be said that a cookie banner is effectively only required, if you implement tracking.^[1]
But of course, the ad industry did not want webpage owners to realize they could avoid needing a cookie banner by removing ads or going for non-tracking ads, so they spread a whole bunch of FUD.

And now we’re here, with cookie banners virtually everywhere, which are often not even GDPR-compliant either (like the PC Gamer cookie banner here), since it’s supposed to be just as easy to decline, as it is to accept. If it is not, then that’s not legally consent, because consent has to be freely given.

TL;DR: Ad industry bad.

There is also pre-made blocklists for uBlock Origin for Cookie Banners, which you judt have to turn on.

Combine with e.g. Cookie Autodelete to automatically remove cookies, and it’s effectively as if you declined.

I would still call it virtually the same game, especially since they didn’t even bother to fix lots of awful bugs.

But I think, we can both agree that Morrowind would need a significantly larger overhaul, if you wanted to make it feel ‘modern’. You’d need voice acting. Perhaps optional quest markers. Well, and the combat system would basically need reimplementing from scratch.

For PC, there’s already OpenMW to do that: https://openmw.org/

Basically, it’s a fan reimplementation of the Morrowind engine, which you feed the original game files into. It also has a number of improvements over the original, like higher resolution, higher view distance and virtually no loading times.

I’ve only heard of them being trash so far. I was hoping they’d still have some resemblance of fun. But if the small fraction of folks who’ve upgraded to a Switch 2 actually were to play more than those on Switch 1, then that would be a pretty clear sign that it just isn’t fun on Switch 1.

But yeah, I’m not yet taking that for granted from this piece of news. I would assume, they wanted to drop the Switch 1 so quickly, because then they can start extending the game in ways that use more resources, which might be fine on their other supported platforms.

Damn, really makes it feel like they were waiting to drop that platform ASAP. I doubt, they have more players on Switch 2 at this point, well, unless the Switch 1 version is really terrible to play, I guess.

Ragebait headline. The guy does say that a proper remake or a new game set in the Morrowind region could be good. Just a remaster like the Oblivion remaster, with modern graphics slapped onto the original gameplay wouldn’t work too well.

Well, Nintendo gets a share for any game licenses sold through their store, so it does hurt them somewhat.

It’s pretty much just a hook into infodumping about medieval cities…

Some game a friend wanted to play also requires these and she complained that she had to reboot into the BIOS to enable these every time she wanted to play. We told her that the battery on her mainboard might have run out of juice.

…but yeah, we’re techies. There must be so many people who this also happens to, who will not learn of the solution. She did say, she did not expect there to be a solution, she just assumed you have to do that every time.

Hmm, they might’ve scrambled to add Recall et al, because those other features you named don’t particularly need to be offloaded. Except for maybe TTS, you’re not gonna run these in the background all the time. And if you need the occasional translation, it’s fine, if it takes a bit longer.

At least, I would’ve absolutely seen headlines à la “Microslop wants you to buy an expensive new PC – to do things your current PC can perfectly fine”.

Yeah, it reads like they wanted to make that reality show and then just slapped a random franchise on it for PR reasons.

I actually reinstalled it myself after writing that comment. 😅

I only really started to fully appreciate it, when I learned that drifting gives you a boost. So, if you’re going around curves, you pretty much always want to drift, which then kicks your speed up once you stop drifting. Maintaining a higher speed than your car normally goes, is vital for beating the harder difficulties.