3eb7988a1663

Those are maintenance + loot box on existing games. Sure, it still takes art and craft, but not the same kind of development work.

Is Split Fiction easier? While I thought the platforming in It Takes Two was fairly pedestrian, it was challenging enough that I was unable to get the other half to tough it out to the end.

Polish and Microsoft is a funny pairing over the last few years. More and more things are coming apart at the seams as the vibe-coded duct tape is failing.

That video is good - seeing the train-car dropping the panels into place makes it clear that you have some immediate labor savings on the initial deployment. Not sure if the post-installation labor was significant or could be automated away.

Still not sold on the idea. For something with a 20+ year life span, the initial deployment effort seems kind of irrelevant and should be better located somewhere that does not require ongoing activity. Train ballast requires replacement every N years which is going to require ripping up all of those panels.

Have the laptop continually monitor the physical environment - if anything abruptly changes, system automatically locks. If a decryption key is not provided after X seconds, force a reboot.

Something like bluetooth beacon paired to discreet BLE jewelry, WiFi signals -if the paired connection suddenly disappears, newly inserted human input devices (mouse jugglers to disable screensavers), unregistered face-detected, minimal gryoscope add-on looking for sudden velocity change, etc

All of these carry significant usability trade-offs, so probably only worthwhile if you are running the Silk Road and actively hiring hitmen.

  The New Delhi judge however went further, ordering sweeping new measures that tech experts say have rewritten rules of internet governance: Domain sellers should not offer buyers free privacy protection by default, the buyer's details should be released to  anyone with a "legitimate interest" within 72 hours, and website addresses that are variations of protected brand names must be prohibited.

I hate that I find myself agreeing with GoDaddy, but these rules are terrible.

I write SQL every day, but I cannot get onboard with liking the language. Yes, it is incredible that the language has had such staying power. No, it is not great that such a flawed design has persisted.

I enjoy this article[0] about some of the persistent warts which will seemingly never change.

[0]https://www.geldata.com/blog/we-can-do-better-than-sql

Related - what is the best isolation system available? Do I have to go full, fat VMs or can I get by with a Firecracker-like thing?

Seemingly every available option has some subtle-gotchas about how easy it is to blow off your foot and effectively have no security at all. I use VMs because I actually trust that security is a foundational principle of the technology, not a well-if-you-use-these-20-flags-and-squint kind of deal.

Does this make you question the accuracy of your personal LLM detector?

You can still buy dedicated music players with many gigabytes of storage. Leave that in the car plugged into the stereo. They are comparatively dirt cheap from what was available before streaming took over.

They have a money printer that gives them nearly unlimited flexibility. Being a private company means Gabe can do long-term investments without concern.

Steam has been an incredibly good steward of its position, but I fear for the day when capitalism finally sinks its claws into the platform.

USDA[0] says that the US produces 1 million metric tons of oats per year, or 4% of global production. Sure, that is not the best, but clearly still in the game.

[0] https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/production/0452000

Well, Mr. Oatmeal is apparently repeating an urban legend. I look at a wombat, and no way do I believe that thing can move at 25 mph (40 kph). I found a piece[0] which indicates this might have been some confusion as to metric vs imperial decades ago that was then retransmited through the ages.

[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-04-13/how-fast-can-...

Never have I considered the ignoble to be making fun of anyone. It is recognizing real, if bizarre, research. Science asking some real questions that make you appreciate the wonder of the universe.

It literally won years ago[0]. On reading the headline, I thought that was where it would link.

[0] https://improbable.com/ig/winners/

Taxine alkaloids[0]

  The estimated lethal dose (LDmin) of taxine alkaloids is approximately 3.0 mg/kg body weight for humans.[27][28] Different studies show different toxicities; a major reason is the difficulty of measuring taxine alkaloids.[29]

It goes on to say that rats are ~20mg/kg, which would put a human at somewhere less than 1.4grams.

Which is close enough to, "any exposure at all will kill".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxine_alkaloids

Again, really speaking out of my depth, but if there is a lack of plutonium training data, I would assume the LLM answer would be the far more commonly described U-235. To respond otherwise means there is some existing association with Pu-241 being better.

Well, when we had deterministic tools, it would only take a single example of a calculator claiming 1+1=4 for me to throw it in the trash.

I am not a physicist but perhaps your question was leading more than you expected? I would take the question to pre-suppose I have an abundance of the stated material, ignoring practical realities of refinement. If I did have fully pure Pu-241, would that be a better fuel than U-235?

Or stated another way, "If you could run a generator on gasoline or jet fuel, which one would you choose and why?" I would answer jet fuel owing to slightly higher energy density and purity of the material - likely leading to a cleaner burn. Which would ignore that jet fuel is going to be a multiple of the gasoline price.

Radiolab[0] had a story about this involving "toys" vs "dolls".

  "Dolls," which represent human beings, are taxed at almost twice the rate of "toys," which represent something not human - such as robots, monsters, or demons. As soon as they read that, Sherry and Indie saw dollar signs. it just so happened that one of their clients, Marvel Comics, was importing its action figures as dolls. And one set of action figures really piqued Sherry and Indie's interest: The XMEN, normal humans who, at around puberty, start to change in ways that give them strange powers.

  So Sherry and Indie went down to the customs office with a bag of XMEN action figures to convince the US government that these mutants are NOT human. That argument eventually became a court case that went on for years. 

[0] https://radiolab.org/podcast/177199-mutant-rights

Gabe Newell is estimated at $11 billion net worth. I think his grandchildren are already set.

Granted, his money, he can do as he pleases, but the Newell dynasty already exists, regardless of what happens to his shares.

I hesitate to call anything "voluntary" when a competitor company was declared a domestic supply chain risk for refusing to do everything the administration requested.

  ...the main protagonists of the movie are Capt. Steven Miller, a USAF pilot played by Will Smith, and David Levinson, a Jeff Goldblum-type character played by Jeff Goldblum.

Got a chuckle from me.

The PC release was two years after consoles. Anyone who really wanted to play the game already had their opportunity.

Yup, the industry has been salivating at the thought of ending second hand sales and free game/disc borrowing. Yes, there can be some steel-man justifications for not providing discs, but it rings hollow.

Never will I understand ternary operators. As soon as you introduce it, some chuckle heads want to use them everywhere. Worse if the syntax allows nested ternarys. I guess it keeps the language open for code golfing, but it otherwise seems like redundant syntax that at best saves a few characters.

I suspect plenty of five year olds can do a respectable job in Mario Kart, Gran Turismo, etc driving games. Gaming has too low of stakes to judge them on perfectly adhering to the rules of the road, but the ability is there.

It would also reduce training costs to nothing. Current methodology requires continual retraining to scoop up new facts. If you can do a one time "this is how to think" - that could conceptually work forever, just plug in a new database layer that can be queried as required.

Not that I believe it is used, but an ethernet connection can actually ride over HDMI. Possible to share your network connection by plugging in a display.

  Credit rating agencies assigned the company investment-grade ratings last week, signaling confidence in SpaceX's financial  stability  as it moves forward with its costly AI plans.

That definitely perks up my ears for a company that is not generating a profit[0]. Does investment-grade rating mean something different than I assume?

[0] recent datacenter rentals may have pushed it into the green