palisade

I actually don't have a problem with Google myself. I love gmail and I use Google FI for my cellphone service. I agree their security has been fantastic. The only criticism I have for them is that they give up too easily on their new ideas. They're known for not seeing anything new through. And, while they saw things like Android and Gmail through to the bitter end, it has been a long time since they've had a win like that. Bard is impressive, but they were late to the game. Which is ironic, since they pioneered the research that made LLMs possible. They're very careful and don't take risks. To win big, you have to risk big. And, when you're as big as Google you stop taking the big risks. I think if I had any advice for them, it would be to create and announce a new accelerator to fund new startups. Something exciting with lots and lots of cash behind it to whip up innovation. They can steer that and ride the success of all the ventures that it starts. They have some funds but they're pretty low key about them. Companies like Nvidia have been funding some pretty impressive stuff with their accelerator. It is about how much noise you generate with that kind of thing.

I think maybe the concept of () vs [] for radio buttons and checkboxes respectively is in part due to the mathematical concept of a bounded number range where the numbers at the end of the range are included inclusively or exclusively. I'm not saying they're the same concept, but that it might have inspired their usage. Just a theory.

I mean I was basing it off numbers provided by the American Eagle Foundation. Which isn't a multi-trillion dollar industry, it's a small charity whose goal is conservation.

The American Eagle Foundation (AEF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Contributions to the American Eagle Foundation are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. The AEF’s tax identification number is 58-1652023.

That's odd because the official eagle foundation that protects eagles discusses thousands of recorded deaths. From the website, "At the infamous Altamont Wind Resource Area alone, more than 2,000 Golden Eagles have been killed by the wind turbines there." : https://eagles.org/take-action/wind-turbine-fatalities/

So which seems more believable that only 150 eagles died over a decade or thousands? Something is off here. Is anyone even checking properly? You can't have two completely distinct numbers like that.

The problem is that they're not wrong, turbines and even solar towers wipe out vast bird and bat populations. Obama had to pass a last minute law approving the numerous deaths of bald eagle populations unfortunately. Water desalination projects leave behind dead zones of salt in the water that wipe out fish populations. Another example is recycling centers grinding up the plastic and releasing a scary amount of microplastics into the environment. I think we need a little bit of self introspection when it comes to environmentalism. When our green tech isn't so green we need to "do better" and make it healthier for the environment. I don't think we should ever stop trying to figure out how to make it less harmful. Hiding our collective heads in the sand and saying, "Look it is green so it can't be causing the same problems," is going to put us into an echo chamber where we can do no wrong. And, in the end justify doing damage we'll regret later. We all live on this planet together we should be good shepherds of it.

In the paper he actually multiple times mentions that he's predicting what we will be using in the future. And, quite a few of his examples are along the lines of, "Imagine many decades in the future if we had XYZ." And, many of the things he's describing did not exist at the time.

I don't think anyone gets funded to do this kind of out of the box research anymore. Companies expect immediate results and a strict following of agile processes. If you're not tightly iterating a granular week by week towards a very specific task they don't want you around.

I think the most impressive thing about this is; 1. he predicted 3D CAD design i.e. the architect designing the perspective of a building and then asking to see the interior (on 3ft (36") wide display aka 42" (diag) monitor, unheard of at that time!), 2. he predicted AI assisted work i.e. asking the computer to tabulate information, to predict if light would hit a certain window and at which time.. 3. (pg 13) he predicted GPT predictive text, where text is gathered from a corpus of old draft documents and used to generate a reaction to prompts, 4. page 25 mentions a 3D color display device, 5. page 26 he strapped a pencil to a brick and tried to write with it because he wanted to think about what other beings who had different muscle structures than ours might have had to contend with in order to write symbols, 5. page 28, the concept of storing an entire dictionary and other information in a handheld device with a small display that anyone can quickly look up information in less than 3 seconds on the go and how that would propel humanity forward, 6. page 35, the concept of quickly translating data from one form to another, e.g. tables, graphs, formulas.. which we currently take for granted in today's spreadsheet and word programs. 7. page 36, moving graphical windows of information around and switching between 3D perspective and 2D orthographic mode of the same image data. 8. page 37, the cutting, pasting and stretching of image data, 9. page 41, concurrency, 10. page 48 - 56, attributed to Vannevar Bush - voice recognition / digital dictation, scanning images into a machine, searching for content via words instead of numerically, word processing, swiping left/right, the computer in a desk with screens, remotely controlled PCs, storing and sharing of data via microfilms, the average person creating a wikipedia / internet to assemble and lookup of information, transmitting video/images wirelessly, tapping into the eletrical currents in the the brain for thought recognition and control of a machine. 11. page 64, self-modifying programs and page 67 magnetic floppy discs, page 68 graphs, a laser pointer, duckhunt gun, page 69, handwriting recognition

The rest of the document after this seems to lose the plot and focuses heavily on punching holes in cards, computer timesharing and trying to comprehend the best and cheapest ways of storing data.

I'm still reading the document I'm sure I'll find more interesting predictions. This is a pretty groundbreaking document considering the year it was written. But, of course, he invented the mouse (which is mentioned to be a "pointer" in this document btw, a few years before he actually invented it) so it makes sense he'd have this kind of foresight.

BTW, the idea for the computer mouse seems to have come about because he was trying to brainstorm "de-augmenting" humans as a mere thought experiment, e.g. what if things were harder not easier due to limitations that humans do not possess because we never had to deal with certain issues. And, how would we have evolved our interactions with the world instead given those limitations, e.g. writing. This is a potentially new and interesting way to think up new concepts and inventions that might be useful.

He could probably have sped it up a little bit further with the headshot plugin for character creator.

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/sponsored-by-reallusion/how-to-g...

They also have ActorCore AutoRig for free now that'll quickly rig any model. And, they sell anims for a couple of bucks per anim on there as well.

https://actorcore.reallusion.com/auto-rig

https://courses.reallusion.com/home/actorcore/accurig?v=acto...

Though, if you use the steps in the golum tutorial I linked above you don't even have to bother with the autorigger because you'd be mapping directly onto the CC body which is already rigged. But, if you wanted to modo/zbrush your own body and then autorig it you can. Then you can morph it to fit what you need and attach any hair, weapons and clothing items you purchased or created.

Another technique is to export a CC body from character creator and convert to ZTL and hand that to a zbrush artist. Then, you can GoZ the ztl back to Character Creator already rigged and fully animatable.

Note: I don't work for the company, I just really like their tools.

The other problem is that ChatGPT is getting its answers from the source it is now polluting with its own wrong answers. Therefore making its results incrementally more wrong than before. Eventually, ChatGPT will generate absolute gibberish given enough time.

After reading about this I decided to try my hand at using ChatGPT. I decided okay, let's see if it can recreate some code that took me a few hours at work to figure out. I asked it very precisely what I needed and my mind was blown as it produced code that looked similar to what I had coded at work. And, I was like, well that's that then, we're all out of a job. But, then I tried to run the code, and it didn't work. I looked more closely and the code had a lot of flaws. Even after manually fixing those, it still didn't work. And, then using my knowledge of how to actually solve the problem I rewrote the code 40% and made it perform the action needed.

I think all ChatGPT is doing is grabbing a lot of different answers off the interwebz and squishing them together and hoping it answers your question. But, in a lot of cases it only kind of looks like what you want. If you look at images generated by AI, it is the same issue, they sort of look like what you want but there are flaws, like faces that don't look quite human, fingers that are just squishy appendages barely resembling actual fingers, etc. I mean, the tech is getting better, it's impressive, and uncanny.

But, I think we're pretty far from having these things write themselves, they need quite a lot of human intervention to be useful. Still, very impressive and something that could potentially get you closer to an answer. But, no more than spending a little time googling or learning the skill yourself. And, if you learn the skill you're better off, because then you can do it right yourself IMHO.

Also, anytime someone gets a fully working program generated out of this thing the saying, "A broken clock is right twice a day." comes to mind.

Nope didn't know about him. I just overthink things. :D

Another possibility is that we are the ancient alien civilization that we keep looking for. We are in a less active and older part of the universe. It is possible it has taken this long in a more shielded realm for a civilization to properly form that could possibly begin to approach a type 2.

Another possibility is that there are plenty of dinosaur planets, but no sapient life. For example imagine if the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out in exactly the way they had here on Earth. Then perhaps small mammals dedicated to tool use could have never had a chance to develop.

Either option is a sad and lonely prospect. And, if that happens to be the case, then in a way we owe it to the universe to seed it with intelligent life. What is the point of a universe if there is nothing living to observe it? Consider, if our species vanishes and the probability of our existence was so rare that it hasn't occurred anywhere else yet in the known universe. Then this snowflake of a civilization is really the few chances the universe has to exist.

I imagine if the universe ceases to have observers then observable time ends. And, thereby the universe comes to completion immediately. It would cease to exist... The only thing "holding" it here in this moment is our observation of its existence. That is, if we are truly the only thing left in it that can observe.

If I'm right, it is possible many universes came before ours that were lifeless and unobservable. That is, before the universe we are in now managed to hit the breakpoint in time where something existed that could observe it.

I also have a separate theory about the moment we as individuals die. Subjectively for ourselves in that instant you reach the end of time. As you pass on essentially for you, at least, observation of the universe in that moment has ended. Your own observation of your environment holds you to this moment in the time of the universe. Dying skips to the end of time. Though I think sleeping or a coma still tethers you to observable time, whether you're actively aware of its passing or not. Dying and being brought back to life just skips to that next "breakpoint" where you are brought back, so you are still tethered to the observation of the universe.

I also have this weird idea that our observation of ancient light arriving from other galaxies has an impact on observable time in those galaxies for the moment we observe it. It could be that the reason we keep miscalculating the expansion and nature of the universe is because observing it changes it. The watched pot never boils.

Obligatory Data & Riker clip on the passage of time:

https://youtu.be/hTlVc_hKi2M

I own an IQAir AirVisual Pro, it has identified when the air from ovens affect air quality. And, I bought a Honeywell HPA300 True HEPA Air Purifier and you can see air quality improve significantly when it is on. Also, when a large group of guests come over the CO2 monitor accurately tracks the large increase. And, it detected when Elon's factories had their fires. In addition, anytime there were forest fires in California it detected the increased pollution from those as well. The air quality several states away is affected by those fires severely btw, pretty interesting. The smoke plumes travel all the way to Maine. I've been pretty happy with both products. When the air quality drops outside, I close the doors and windows and let the air purifier do its magic. I leave the HPA300 on "Germ" mode, it is pretty quiet and still gets the job done.

If I maintain a tool or library used by others, I do see it as a personal duty to maintain it on their behalf. And, clearly the volunteers in the post we're referring to here feels a duty, or they wouldn't be concerned about making the necessary changes to update the tool and libraries provided. Their argument in the post is that their duty to update the tool and its libraries supersedes the perceived entitlement, as they put it, the end users have to an expectation of support. I'm pretty certain what we're discussing here is a feeling of duty, they just have a different opinion on what that duty entails.

There has to be a better way. The reason I think the distinction is important. One is a world where we spend more time as developers struggling to keep our balance as the floor constantly moves. And, therefore less time spent on solving actual problems. While the other potential world is one where we create a self-healing structure that somehow makes life easier for both the maintainers and end users.

I honestly don't know how it would work, but I definitely feel it exists somewhere in our future.

I see this from a different perspective. The developer using the API or tool has a valid expectation that their software should continue to work as-is for years even as outside changes are made to the underlying tools, libraries and features. The flaw here is instead, in my opinion, a willingness on the providers of these tools and libraries to pull the rug out quite frequently on their end users.

If there is a security risk, you can mitigate that by redirecting your users who still use the feature to what I'll call a "diversion" along with a warning that they will no longer receive updates and to consider the feature obsolete. Perhaps with a popup or console blurb that warns the user of the problem, this way the end user developers eventually do have to fix it because users will bother them about the issue.

I understand it creates clutter that maintainers would like to avoid, but the alternative is constant rug pulling that undermines productivity and the usefulness of your tool or library. You created your software or tool to help others whether for financial gain, altruism or ego boosting. I think you forget that when you decide to throw your hands in the air and rug pull. It is irresponsible and lazy. You are shirking your duties onto others.

We need a new system, process or design pattern to help alleviate this issue in our industry. Because end user developers and system or library developers are constantly butting heads over this. There is a strong smell here that needs to be resolved. It is a problem in search of a solution. I think we can potentially engineer our way out of this.

For example, if you developed software for the first Google Android phone, it no longer works on the latest phone. It should. Why wouldn't it? I wrote a piano app that no longer works, it would require a full rewrite and recompile. And, this isn't just between an ancient version and a new version of the phone. Just one SDK update and they've suddenly changed all of the interface names, function arguments, etc. Just because they thought a name sounded cooler or clearer. This is irresponsible design.

Microsoft does a great job with their APIs being backwards compatible as much as possible. But, the cost is having to carry a massive history of APIs and tools they can never truly sunset. If you develop something for the first DirectX SDK it still works on the latest release. Because, they number their interface names. I'm not saying this is the ultimate solution, but it is one way to address the problem. But, it has problems of its own.

I'd like to see a large effort to address this, we keep avoiding it as an industry.

My dad explained to me that in the 1960s and 1970s, USDA assessors would just drive down the road and look at a field and scribble a random number into their notebook. The data might not be very accurate. The reason he said they never cared to write an accurate number is that after they gave the numbers to the USDA, the USDA would just write the number they wanted to hear down instead. It had something to do with keeping the price they needed to keep exports flowing. For farmers of course, it hits them right in the pocket book because it prevents the prices reaching where they should be. On the other hand, subsidies help alleviate that a bit.

I'm not sure if this is true still today. But, I doubt they're counting every successful crop correctly. And, there's a lot that can happen before they are actually harvested; floods, insects, blight, drought, etc. For example, there'd be a huge drought and the USDA would announce a bumper crop and he'd laugh. And, that was recent.

Either way, past data is probably pretty suspect. And, today's data might have the same problem. Which means if you're basing prediction models on this you might expect to be disappointed when things don't pan out. This is especially dangerous if we enter an era where food becomes more scarce. It is an accounting issue if you think about it.

You could've stopped them by breaking off the plastic covering the read-only hole, it would have prevented writing to the tape. And, then when you were using the tape and wanted to write to it you could cover it with adhesive to make it writable again. As long as they weren't aware they could do the same, your tapes would have been safe. Because, the moment they went to record over it they'd think the tapes were defective or not compatible.

It is also a lot safer today if new reactors are built. The problem are the old reactors need to be shut down because they're based on older designs. We need to start building Pebble Beach reactors where even if there is a containment break, safe small carbon balls with a thin sliver of fissile material just spill out on the floor. These spread out and reduce their combined temperate averting a meltdown. Individually the balls themselves are not dangerous, they're lukewarm and could be held in the hand (not that you would). I think there are some even newer designs that go beyond this in safety. The problem with the anti-nuclear argument is that it is based on the old rod reactors like the one that failed in Fukushima prefect, Chernobyl or 3 mile island. Of course we shouldn't run those older models anymore. You need to start building the new safer reactors before you begin shutting down the old ones so you can logistically switch, however. Instead we're unfortunately heading for a future where we eventually just shut down these old reactors for safety without a real plan for replacing them. Or, we keep running the old models until they become the very cautionary tale that makes everyone nervous about nuclear.

"Rather than return a list of Google search results, Siri uses Wolfram Alpha to generate what it believes is the correct answer."

https://www.siriuserguide.com/what-is-wolfram-alpha/ https://www.siriuserguide.com/how-to-use-siri-knowledge/

"Siri Knowledge uses a combination of web searches, inbuilt apps, and Wolfram Alpha to find the answers to a fantastic variety of questions."

If you ask Wolfram Alpha for more information about Siri: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Siri

It returns:

"Siri is a personal assistant application for iOS. The application was first available from the App Store, then came standard on Apple's mobile devices starting with iPhone 4S. Siri uses natural language processing to answer questions and perform actions by delegating requests to an expanding set of web services, including Wolfram|Alpha."

Well, I kept pointing out if that wasn't possible to partner with another company that already had such an infrastructure.

There is actually a lot of money to be made with the various suggestions I made. Ignoring that leaves a lot of potential revenue on the table.

I don't know if it could really be considered to be in the dustbin of history. Wolfram Alpha is actually what powers Siri and other services like it. It is what gives her the intelligence. That is a massive accomplishment.

In 2019 Unity reached out to me for feedback after I cancelled my subscription. I wrote them a pretty long and detailed email on how to save the company. But, since most of things I suggested never happened they ignored it I guess. Though, they did sort of fix integrating a bit and they closed unity connect. However, they never replaced unity connect with something else which is a problem.

My email response: "1. I felt that throughout my subscription that there was a lot of "do it yourself" and "here's a video." Some of that is fine, but there's a point at which it all feels a little money-grabby. You've paid for the subscription! Now pay for some extra lessons, assets, etc.

I would recommend extending personal assistance, e.g. assigning someone to be a studio's success guide that sticks around from beginning to end.

Also provide a job market similar to fiverr for commissioning logo, concept, 3d artists, musicians, sound effect, software engineers, etc. If you can't swing that maybe partner with sites like upwork or fiverr that can handle it. I'd actually recommend the fiverr model for art and content, it's more affordable in the long run. Upwork's model is better for developers or writers, though. Unity connect felt like walking through a dark alley in a 3rd world country waiting to be mugged.

You provided me with plenty of customer loyalty specialists to bother me to resubscribe after the project failed, but didn't support my efforts when I needed it most. The outcome could have been different if there was a support structure along the way that assisted in the different aspects of building a successful game company and product. That just wasn't there.

2. Funding is hard to acquire.

Why doesn't unity have it's own kickstarter/indiegogo/gofundme/fig system? You're a well known company, many people use your engine, and the public at large knows about it. Why isn't there an effort to push to help fund those using your engine to accomplish something? At the very least partner with one of those sites or help guide your customers to acquire that type of crowd funding. Epic is doing this with a $10mil grant.

And, I don't just mean making a video saying, "If you had funding, this is how you'd probably get it." Either provide assistants or create a webpage or app that helps guide the creation of a game design document, crowd funding pitch, provides a timeline for milestones of where your company should be along the way to hit their targets, production goals, provide marketing expertise, etc.

3. The community in unity connect itself is rather toxic; filled with naysayers, pessimists, and scammers.

You need to revamp unity connect entirely. It is barely salvageable as is.

4. The forums were good.

This was one area I felt shined.

5. Sometimes assets would try to release a new update and your store would block them for months. Other times assets would get deprecated or removed that still had life in them. The store also lags very badly, logs you out randomly, and is difficult to search.

Fix the store. And, make things more convenient for asset creators.

6. Planning and staying on track is also very difficult.

I'd also recommend providing a system similar to Notion, Hacknplan, and Slack integrated into your own site for gamedevs to build, design, document, and track content and progress. Don't overcharge for this. Also, importantly, provide a way for them to export their data. If you can't swing that yourselves, again partner with someone who already has the infrastructure.

7. Your company felt very distant; like it exists simply to consume money and doesn't care if the customer succeeds or not.

Make your customers feel like you're with them in their struggle. Don't wait until they cancel to suddenly be concerned.

8. Time to iterate is so slow.

When I hit play the game should launch and simulate immediately, there's no excuse for the extremely long load times. Unreal shines here in comparison. This really slows down development.

I would suggest working on a rewrite of the editor that allows real-time runtime editing of content, scripts, prefabs, scenery, etc where everything can be saved / persisted without having to click Stop. In other words, you're ALWAYS running by default. This is how HeroEngine works for example, and it's really cool to be able to create an entire world WHILE the game is running. And, you can play it multiplayer with the other developers and artists while building the world and see collaboratively the pieces come together in real-time. While HeroEngine might not be one of your big competitors, it's worth looking at how they pulled that particular feature off.

There are probably more things that could have helped that I can't think of off the top of my head.

Hope that helps."

Addendum: It is also worth noting that Nvidia Omniverse allows the real-time editing that I recommended.

I wonder what this means for Starlink. I know that Elon put them into a slightly lower orbit accidentally than what they originally intended. Which probably had the positive side effect of better latency. But, now that solar weather is accelerating orbital decay, this perhaps affects Starlink more adversely than it would have otherwise.

It's not all bad, though. Sometimes it's used for good like the gunshot direction detection mics.

The legalese and marketing terms CCTV companies use to describe audio capture is, "situational awareness"

We need a new law. The Freedom To Have Our Farts Go UnHeard Act. ;D

I worked at a place once where we got a memo that asked everyone to stop clipping nails and farting because the microphones installed in our desks were picking these noises up. The memo even added that if you need to fart please go to the bathroom. It wasn't a joke email, they were serious.

Oh, also not many people realize this but CCTV cameras all have the capability to convey audio captured via an internal microphone. It just depends on whether they have hooked the wires up to enable this feature. But, the innate ability is there. And, the CCTV software the guards use have the ability to store, retrieve and play this back alongside the video playback.

"Time. I had nothing but time. Endless time. At first it was madness. Then enlightenment. Then madness again. But perhaps it was a gift. I could see the life of time. And as I watched the life of time, in all its fleeting, terrible light, I wondered: 'Had I lived? Was I just the object in another story? Was that all I ever was? Could I be more?' I had nothing but time. And still, no answer. Time without purpose is a prison. I have glimpsed into the mind of eternity. Perhaps the mind of God. And, found nothing but silence. I think we should just be friends... Fuck off! I'm a Time God!" -- Jessica in Rick & Morty, Episode: Mort Dinner Rick Andre; June 20, 2021

In the last paragraph I indicated that they never insulted me. The very last sentence is referring to the article and that I'm sad to hear that this is the case now for others. When I personally interacted with Microsoft that wasn't the situation I had at all. I had a good experience.