2,025 karma · joined July 6, 2020
I feel that we don't understand well enough (scientifically) what "general intelligence" even is, and how it comes to be in humans - to make claims either way.
To me, the only honest answer right now seems to be, that we do not know. We have absolutely no clue how close - or far - we are to AGI.
There are those grandiose mega projects purely for the rich, purely for vanity and showing off wealth and meant attract outside attention... like "The Line" for example...
...but there also are more sensible projects, that are actually meant to help the local populace, improve conditions, and fight poverty... like "The Al Baydha Project" just for one example.
It's totally possible to do something ambitious and impressive, and with historic significance without becoming completely detached from reality.
Kinda weird how often that sort of conclusion pops up, in otherwise completely unrelated articles...
Nintendo as a company does greatly benefit from people talking about it and it's products. That's publicity, word of mouth, free advertising basically.
When they abuse takedowns, strikes and other measures, they do not want to stop that free publicity and word of mouth advertising. They are attempting to control it, manipulate it, and limit it to company approved screenshots, videos and information only.
If those attempts generate more publicity - including making the taken down screenshots go viral (Streisand effect style) - that's beneficial publicity and word-of-mouth for them and their products. And it also amplifies the message sent to others: use only approved materials, or face our wrath!
Therefore providing them with improved visibility and publicity - more word of mouth - and helping them spread their "fall in line!" message, can be seen as "rewarding" what they are doing. If instead most people were to completely ignore them and stop talking about them (out of fear)... THAT would hurt their publicity.
Like 4 nearly identical IE icons. 6 very similar PC+Keyboard icons. 6 very similar trashes?
People have gotten cease-and-desists from their lawyers for drawing fan-art of their characters. Streamers will get strikes/takedowns for playing their games. And similar stuff...
If you don't want to get legal threats, I recommend to never mention their name, any of their trademarks, or even ever publicly acknowledge their existence.
They have become the-company-which-may-not-be-named.
I understand where you are coming from - but it's not entirely true, that there's no additional money in it.
Blizzard had built a very strong reputation of making games all of which have this long life and thus are are always guaranteed to be worth buying straight at launch. Who knows how many of Diablo IIs lifetime sales can be attributed to that, but it sure had some influence.
And D2 again delivering on that Blizzard promise only strengthened that reputation - which again translated into a positive effect on sales on subsequent Blizzard releases.
Resurrected is another title that most obviously and directly benefited from the longevity of D2. The way D2 was designed surely did translate into sales of Ressurected.
But D2's longevity also contributed a LOT to the popularity of the franchise overall - which in turn surely had some influence on the sales of D3 and D4.
Then there's also the battle chest, which didn't sell badly to my knowledge - and don't even get me started on all the various Diablo Merchandise you can get. I'm pretty sure that made them a little bit of money as well.
It's not just the long tail of sales on the game itself - there's also a lot of additional, compounding long-term benefits. Publishers often disregard those benefits, because they aren't able to reliable measure those effects and put a number on it. And they generally often value short-time profit gains over nurturing a long-time fanbase.
And all off that of course leads down the path of yearly sequels that barely improve anything over last years game, but are still soooo expensive to make, that publishers need to sell loot boxes and battle passes and microtransactions and dlcs, just to make even - and then cutting short the long tail with next years' release. Rince and repeat until people get fatigued and the cash-cow is milked dry...
Maybe, just maybe, churning out a few less titles that each have a longer tail of sales and steadly grow a loyal fanbase and increase the sales-appeal of the franchise as a whole, is not that bad of a long-term strategy after all. Maybe this could serve as an example after all...
Never thought a job title could be both so wondrous and wholesome at the same time!
The biggest difference though probably is, that the architect who creates the blue prints - will not be involved in the actual construction work. Therefore the blue-print (which the customer signed off on) has to be ground truth.
Her favorite childhood berry was the mulberry - a berry completely unknown to me. Out of curiosity, I tried getting mulberries - but since those grow on trees which only start bearing fruit after 10 years of growth (!!!) - those can't be produced at a commercially viable price point.
It wasn't until years later, that I found a mulberry tree in an old cloister garden, of a cloister that specialized in preserving old strands of plants that were no longer being commercially grown.
They are really tasty! If they were actually available, I could easily see them become just as popular as other berries.
The question asks "what is the best fruit?" - but the answers only show you what the most widely available fruits are.
Anything that's lesser known or more expensive to mass produce or harder to ship fresh - is a complete non-starter to begin with, regardless of how good it is.
The user wants to achieve something, and the general job of the software is to help the user achieve their goal.
If the goal of the user is to book a flight - then the software throwing an error about the request form not being filled out correctly, basically constitutes a bureaucratic hurdle.
"You will not be allowed to book your flight, unless you ask for it in exactly the right way!"
Sadly, software often has to be bureaucratic about it's input - but that's not actually helpful to the user. So you could argue, when the software rejects the users request because of not meeting bureaucratic demands - the software is failing it's primary job: to help the user.
A perfect software would not have to show an error message ever - because it would be so good at guiding the user, that everyone would intuitively know how to do it correctly. But "Perfect" does not exist.
So any software will at some point inevitably fail to guide the user to their desired outcome and be forced to display an error message.
There's nothing inherently wrong with being apologetic in tone for failing to guide the user and putting such bureaucratic stumbling blocks in their way.
But the error message should be focused on helping the user. On making things work. It should not be condescending nor assigning blame. It should also be short and concise, and respect the user's time.
And that means that there's no space for polite verbiage and apologetic phrases.
So, apologetic tone is fine, if it can be done without increasing the length of the message.
Still, trying to open it up to basically anything that's highly immersive feels wrong to me. I can deeply immerse myself into a book, becoming unconscious of my surroundings and even completely loosing track of time. Nevertheless I don't think that books count as "VR".
"Virtual" describes something that doesn't physically exist but is only (computer) simulated - thus ruling out any form of remote views through cameras, or stereoscopic pictures (or paintings). All of those are either not non-existent, or not simulated.
The article also says that:
> Many definitions also stipulate that VR must be interactive. This would differentiate it from things like 3D -movies, 360-degree video and other similar “look but don’t touch” media. The problem with this is that plenty of computer generated VR isn’t interactive at all, yet everyone considers it to be VR.
I still feel that "interaction" is a very good and meaningful differentiator, that would be helpful to employ, and that probably should be part of the definition of VR.
And yes, that does mean, that computer generated "VR" that is not interactive at all, should be defined as a 360 degree cg movie, and not as true VR. And I'm perfectly fine with that.
But if you want to keep that computer generated VR included, you can still allow for spatial control (walking/teleporting around) to be considered an "interaction" - which would allow back in a lot of that computer generated VR.
It was a fashion trend that lasted for more than 100 years! Sure, fashion moved a lot slower in medieval times, making 100 years somewhat short-lived for the time. But even so, including the less ostentatious non-padded versions, the codpiece in general was a practical piece of clothing and truly ubiquitous at it's peak.
In some ways it was way more successful than any modern fashion trend could ever hope to be...
1) Do I have to actively use Edge - or does this happen automatically in the background - even if I never open an Edge window?
2) Does any of the data gathered that way find it's way into Windows telemetry (anonymized or not)?
Since I'm neither "allowed" to uninstall Edge, nor "allowed" to fully disable telemetry... Someone in here writes that there is a possibility that Edge sends its browser history (imported or not) to Microsoft servers...
The 737 Max is like double the size of the original 737 - roughly twice the passenger seats, more than twice the weight, roughly 1.5 times the length... How much larger can a plane get, while still keeping the same certification?
All the pilots will need to get a type-rating on the new plane type as well, before they are allowed to fly it.
I believe the updated software now uses both sensors and only acts if both sensors agree (which is actually standard for such systems and should have been done right from the start) - and can be disabled by the pilots, who are now aware of it's function.
But please don't trust my word... I'm no aviation export by a long stretch.
For a more qualified take on this, done by an actual pilot and pilot trainer, I recommend checking out "Mentour Pilot" on Youtube. He's got a number of videos on the 737 Max and the reported problems at Boeing.
On a 737 those engines cannot be placed in an ideal position, because that would mean they'd clip into the ground.
The engines are being put above and I think in front of (might be wrong there) where they should be for maximal flight stability.
The original 737 was self-correcting - meaning that if for example the aircraft stalled, the resulting forces would cause the nose to dip down, pulling the plane out of the stall automatically.
The newer versions no longer have that inherent self-correcting ability - and instead use computer software to take over controls and pull the nose down, in case of a stall.
A new airplane design could be made to accommodate much larger, modern engines, while also having the stability and inherent self-correcting ability of the original 737.
But that would require changes to the overall shape and form of the plane - which will require complete recertification. By sticking to the old design, they avoid that.
I swear, I haven't run into this.
Yes, it is true, that on Linux there are many, many things which are best done through command line fiddling.
But installing a system update, that update borking things, belching up a totally cryptic error message, and then forcing you to clean up the mess through the command line, is nothing something I've experienced on Linux so far. For me, apt updates have always been super reliable - and error messages have mostly been quite specific and easy to google.
So, this specific case seems nothing like Linux to me.
The imho rational thing to do, would be to compare the pros and cons of each option and find a conclusion that way.
Comparing only the pros of one solution with only the cons of the other, seems a bit... disingenuous and an emotionally-driven line of argument.
And I personally just do not believe that making decisions with such wide-reaching implications as monolith or microservice based on emotional arguments, does lead to useful results?
The only thing that imho can come from this sort of arguing, is the kind of religious divide, evangelism and proselytism that ultimately only hurts both sides of the argument, because it makes people favor dogmatic choices over considering what's actually useful in the current situation?
Are things really that black and white as people here paint them - with monoliths unavoidably and necessarily becoming a tangled mess of spaghetti, and micro-services being the singular, only way to achieve clean separation, autonomy and partition? With microservices inevitably being an organizational nightmare that leads to problems in inter-team coordination, while monoliths automatically ensure that everyone always is perfectly the same page?
Because by my personal experience, you totally can code a monolith in a strictly modular fashion, with clean interface-based API boundaries between the separate parts. And if you put those "modules" into separate packages, the dependencies between them end up being managed and documented as well. Just like you totally can setup microservices and surrounding procedures in a way that actually increases the feeling of product ownership in the teams, and reduces the hassle of inter-team coordination - especially in larger companies.
Obviously there are ways to do monoliths right, and spectacularly wrong. And there are ways to do microservices right and wrong...
I see so many arguments here, that do compare one method done wrong with the other method done right - and then imply that this is a strong reason for choosing that second method.
I don't get it?
And that's my point - in my granddads time, all devices came with plugs that could be repaired and re-used (and my granddad never threw them away) - and today, all devices come with plugs that can only be cut off and thrown away.
I fully believe that the molded ones are actually both cheaper AND more durable (will last longer without needing repair). But they are neither repairable nor reusable, and thus still end up in a landfill sooner than the old ones, when those old ones do get repaired and reused.
And the same is true for most other components of any device.
I haven't seen a plug with screws in ages. They all are a single molded piece now, aren't they?
See: https://www.kulthifi.de/WebRoot/Store19/Shops/80012341/5E84/... for example.
But everything electrical in that house was repairable to a degree that seems unimaginable today.
For example, every single power plug had screws. If you removed those, it would come apart in two halves, to reveal another set of screws that held the cable in. If you undid those screws, you could easily shorten or replace the cable - in case it was broken. There was no glue, no solder, and most of the plugs had even metal inserts for the screws to go into.
The appliances on the other end of the cables were just as easy to take apart and put back together. And their insides were (mostly) free of proprietary parts - almost everything was "standard" stuff, that you could get replacements for, from a supplier of your own choice.
Many of those appliances still worked perfectly fine, after my grandparents had died, and the house had been torn down. That doesn't mean they never broke - but if they did, my grandpa was able to easily fix them himself. And if he could not fix something, he still was able to salvage it for parts that then could be used to fix other things.