robotkilla

This jumped out at me as well - absolute statements are usually a sign of bad science or bad reporting.

I have next to zero understanding of how quantum computers are supposed to work. Does anyone have something like an intro into QC "for dummies"? I want to grasp this subject.

>Intelligence does require communication

The claim he made is that people think intelligence requires linguistics - he then goes on to say that aliens may be communicating in some different way that doesn't require linguistics.

At any rate, a number of the arguments made in this thread are absolutely absurd. Of course intelligence doesn't require linguistics - linguistics is merely one of the markers of intelligence.

And of course creatures can communicate without language - it happens in nature every day.

What's with the reddit-style downvotes on my parent comment? Is it because I used the "shit" word?

edit: nm, based on the other downvotes in this thread I'm guessing zealots at this point.

Thankfully I have 2 gaming rigs, 1 outdated mac and 2 older custom rigs that are sitting around in pieces. I'm going to build and install a linux box for personal computing (all non-dev non-gaming related computer activity) and just keep it on right next to my gaming / dev rig.

Under Windows click "learn more" and then read under "Input Personalization".

I'm considering using a secondary computer (linux) for all of my personal internet activity and making my windows box purely game dev / gaming.

Linus Torvalds shit all over Ubuntu for the feature (and rightly so)... but I don't see the need to boycott the system (as he does) since it is fairly easy to disable.

edit: just wanted to mention that when I first installed ubuntu I forgot to disable the feature, performed some very innocuous searches, and was shown loads of porn results from Amazon. That alone makes the feature completely worthless and frankly dangerous (depending on the environment that you're using ubuntu in).

the problem for me (and people like me) is that I'm running a gaming / game dev rig. I actually need Windows as most of the games I play are windows only - plus my current rig is way more powerful than any mac I can afford. I love linux and attempted to dev my games in pygame so that I would only need Windows to play games, but this isn't a good solution either as I prefer Unity.

Guess I'll stick with 8.1 for now even though it is shit.

I haven't made it this far yet apparently. Good to know what to expect.

I think you're correct... saying that you created a AAA title means that you can compete with major game studios... I think.

However, in my opinion AAA doesn't apply to scope or budget but quality of experience. Super Meat Boy is one of the best games I've played in years and it doesn't come anywhere near the scope of say GTA 5 (which is also awesome).

I don't think anyone calls SMB a triple-a title though... so I'd say wikipedia's definition is correct.

So then, I think the real issue here is aiming to make a game that compete with major studios who have budgets of $50m and employ hundreds of specialized team members.

These devs claim it was a passion project, but then they throw in the towel on the entire concept of running an indie studio after the negative reviews come in. I understand the bankruptcy move, but if I were the founder's shoes, I would move somewhere cheap, take a side job and keep making games on the side. If I still loved the Wolfie project, I would fix it for free and I would find a way to send my KS backers whatever I owe them. I would read every negative review of my game, try to bucket the feed back (something like: legit, semi-legit, ignore) and then fix the game. I would also print my favorite positive reviews and hang them up around the house for motivation. If I no longer believed in the game, I would build something new but smaller. 13 years is a long time to wash down the drain due to one failure.

Currently I'm trying to make indie games along with my gilfriend. She has no formal 3d art training but has been teaching herself via the internet. I learned Unity and have been teaching myself c# / cg and all the other shit that goes with 3d game development (I come from a python / js background). We will most likely fail hard but I don't understand the concept of quitting when you got into something for fun in the first place.

edit: it also sounds like these guys tried to build their own engine... or something. If they did, that was a bad idea. If they didn't, I don't understand why they had so many issues with collision detection. Haven't played the game though... its just odd to hear that they had major collision detection issues.

wait a minute... my math might be a bit rusty, but 28 samples is rather low isn't it? I'm a bit less worried now.

edit: oops 28, 59 and 6 samples... maybe I really am becoming an idiot. still not much data though.

i hate being a human.

Very interesting and also terrifying - i'm trying to shift into the indie game space so hearing that my math may get worse than it already is terrifies me. I have a really hard time believing that comprehension of math would decrease with age though. It seems to me that instead people typically stop using it after a certain age and thus their skills deteriorate.

best damn comment too. very encouraging to hear someone has been at it for this long. Only 13 or 14 years for me thus far.

> my mind might not be 100% as quick as it was when i was 20

care to elaborate? I'm 34 and I keep hearing that my mind is supposed to slow down but it hasn't yet. I drink 2 cups of coffee a day, don't smoke cigs, am not overweight, try to go for a walk for 30 minutes minimum each day, go to sleep by 9ish and am up by 3 or 4am. I also watch very little TV, read regularly and push myself to learn new stuff on a near constant basis (python > node > c# > cg within the space of the last 4 years, along with pixel art, a bit of 3d art, loads of 3d programming + 2d game programming - all in addition to being a web dev contractor).

The change I've seen in my brain as I've gotten older is that I seem to be learning at an accelerated rate. However there are days when my depression or stress gets the best of me and I have to just take half a day or so to "detox" (binge watch netflix, play video games etc).

I wonder if some of the slow down people feel is artificially induced, or even misperceived (it takes me longer to reply to questions, but that's because I'm considering more answers or sifting through more knowledge that I have).

edit: Alzheimers / other brain related issues are absolutely terrifying to me so I'm interested in understanding what people mean by slowing down specifically... also there's a small part of me that worries I've slowed down and just haven't noticed it yet.

> Among the many advantages to using the mouse as a model organism, the most important is their striking similarity to humans in anatomy, physiology, and genetics. Over 95% of the mouse genome is similar to our own, making mouse genetic research particularly applicable to human disease.

http://research.jax.org/mousegenetics/advantages/advantages-...

> So it's a matter of skilling oneself up, specialising or searching carefully. But I 100% believe there is no better industry to be job searching on our 40s.

I do agree with both of these statements which is why I try to level up on a constant basis.

You are correct, apps and closed appliances are definitely the wave of the now, possibly continuing into the future. VR is about to hit the market, video games are going strong, people still think they need phones, and websites are still going strong. So yes tech is a great industry to be in, and what else are you going to do? Swing a hammer?

But the more saturated the market gets with developers (and they don't have to be good as long as they're cheap and get the job done fast... something that is harder to do as you get older) the less value guys like myself or you will serve.

Sticking with a company and one technology is of course a slow form of career death, but getting strangled out by all the new growth and an abandonment of the old (be that human or technology) is also a very real problem that isn't just going to vanish by cramming knowledge into your brain.

> I don't think the comparison with lawyers and accountants really works

I do, but I think it was misapplied. My step-grandmother is a business lawyer who has passed the bar in multiple states including Florida. She is extremely intelligent, reads faster than anyone I've encountered and is very current with the times. She is also 60 and hasn't been able to get a job in years due to her age... so she has to contract.

You do realize that for the last several years we've been trying to churn out new developers who will accept jobs for very low wages (or even come on as interns and work for free) and they've got an edge on the so-called "new stuff" which pushes out the 40 year olds?

There's an even bigger push for this now. It seems like everywhere I turn someone is learning to "develop". Sad to say, most of these people only know how to pump out good SASS or HTML or know how to throw a bunch of APIs together.

This of course is a skill of its own, and clearly one that pays bills, but the market will become saturated and the bubble will burst again.

Hello sir, you have possibly found your doppelganger.

I don't have time to type up my whole story, and a lot of it is in my comment history, but the gist is:

I started programming with BASIC and later QBASIC. Self taught, no degree. Video games / text adventure games were my thing. Later fell into web dev and loved it... until I got further along in my career and was entangled in some really vicious office politics. I also suffered from untreated depression for years (which I have now managed to get under control). Those things combined with some really stressful personal family issues coalesced into a nervous breakdown of sorts and I holed up in my house.

I haven't had a fulltime job in 4 years - I just contract remotely. Almost everything I've done has been through recommendations which is really the only way to go when contracting. I've had multiple clients whom I've never seen - just spoke to on the phone for a few minutes and then slack / email for the rest of the contract. Sometimes this works out well, sometimes it doesn't. I only made $30k last year and it was very spread out - there was at least a full week where the only food in the house were biscuits made with water. This year has been better thankfully.

Contracting is not my end goal - independent video game development is. At the end of the day I don't care about the money all that much. If magical riches await me in the future then I will accept them with open arms of course - but I'm only seeking enough to survive. I care about making things - I really don't want to go implementing the ideas of clients. I always fancied myself a creator and need to find a way to make my projects profitable so that I can find self-fulfillment through the things I create.

So, in addition to contracting for these last 4 years I've spent the vast majority of my free time improving my skill set (improved my python, dabbled with node, started building "modern" websites - SASS, Bower, Gulp etc).

I also started teaching myself how to make 3d games using Unity and c# (in case you're wondering, I'm creating my own assets, not purchasing them - and I have almost zero interest in creating mobile games). My girlfriend teamed up with me, started teaching herself 3d art and has already produced some pretty impressive models for the game we are working on.

I'm very interested in teaming up with a programmer similar to myself, or perhaps a group of similar programmers.

Edit: left out some words

Correct - its a slower process but it can be done. Programming is all in your head, how you get it into the computer is irrelevant (recall programmers used to use hole punches on paper). I suspect that we'll have non-invasive mind to computer interfacing before my hands give out anyway.

> exercising your brain - is a must to keep your memories and sanity

And this is why I never plan to give up programming and learning new tech. Constant brain stimulation.

which industry? I assume you mean development / programming. How old are you and why do you think 25 at most? I'm 35 and plan on doing this until I'm dead. There is absolutely no reason that you ever have to give up programming (outside of dementia).

I've met blind programmers and programmers that can't use their hands. If they can do it, we can do it, even if we have arthritis and become legally blind.

Edit: also if i become unemployable due to ageism, i've alrady decided will create a persona online of a 30 year old and only take remote jobs.

from em3rgent0rdr in a below comment:

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3anjgm/on_the_librem_...

To follow up: the crowdsourced page does indeed make a large number of claims which at least make this sound like a very secure and privacy ensuring device. When I mentioned regulations, I was thinking along the lines of ad companies in the US. For example, an ad for a sleeping pill wouldn't be allowed to outright claim to put you to sleep if the pill didn't work... unless that pill was labeled under homeopathic medicine, then all bets are off because homeopathic "medicine" is unregulated (or was the last time I checked).

New (and also old) privacy focused companies remind me of homeopathic medicine.

from the crowdsourced page:

> Bundled with the fully free/libre, no mystery software Trisquel GNU/Linux operating system, with free/libre professional quality web browser, email, graphics, drawing, word processing, presentation, spreadsheet, and media software, users can easily replace their existing computer. Since it is a GNU-based distribution, users can add hundreds of thousands of free/libre and open source applications easily.

interesting thanks for the link

None actually. edit: something like the EFF perhaps but even then you're just trusting the skills of whoever volunteers for / gets paid by them.

Not to discredit this product, but I'm having a harder and harder time trusting products that feature high security. They seem like trojan horses. I think I'm probably just being paranoid - is there a trustworthy independent third-party of some sort that verifies just how private these types of products are?

Edit: to be clear this is most likely an awesome product put out by people who care about security and privacy. I'm not trying to call this product out specifically. Privacy / security are really bold claims and without any specific regulations in the area that I'm aware of I feel extra cautious around anything claiming to provide those things. Like I said, I'm probably just being paranoid, but I like to think strategically, and if i were to be a spy agency of any sort and thought I could get away with it, selling a not-so-private privacy product would definitely be a move of mine.

Things seem to have shifted on my end as of late. People are very skeptical when if I'm interviewing for a job, more than in the past (I tried recently a few times when work dried up bombed on the interview processes a few times... i have comments about it in my history).

I need to get my resume cleaned up and put together a new portfolio site.

I'm starting to become disinterested in full time gainful enslavement. Three reasons I keep contracting:

1. freedom (i make my own hours and jump between contracts every 3 months or so, taking a short break between... usually around a week). When I do work, I only take on fully remote contracts.

2. my "interviews" consist of asking how much I charge, asking what my availability is, asking a few simple tech questions, and then having me sign a contract. That's because I get my work through recommendations from other people so I no longer have a need to prove myself on this front.

3. i make more money than when i was employed.