legend

On 7/11/2018 at 3:40 PM, RedSoxFan9 said:

Moderates Democrats take their base for granted.  They think Democratic voters are suckers who will show up and vote no matter what.

I don't know if that's thinking they're suckers, it might be overestimating them. Unless the democrat was in fact worse than the opposition in the eyes of a democrat, then democrats should vote no matter what for the democrat. Given the state of the GOP, it's hard to imagine that a democrat would find the opposition to a democratic candidate preferable.

Choosing to abstain from voting to make a "point" is very rarely an optimal long-term strategy, if ever.

1 hour ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

You're right, saying open source is a bit much heh.

 

That's true their similar, but at least coders in my life say to me they feel that despite the Unix similarity, they feel their hands are more tied by Mac. Like I said though, not hating on Macs, and you have more experience than me on this personally I think, so I default to you on the subject. I can see it going the other way and I'm mistaken. 

My anecdotal observation is that you will find many software engineers be windows users, because for their job, they kind of had to be and they became familiar with it. (There also legitimate reasons to prefer Windows too. I don't mean to portray that as the only reason).

Computer scientists (academia or industry research scientists) are heavily split between Mac and Linux, with Windows occupying a small fraction of what's left over. If someone only saw an AI conference they'd think Apple dominated the paid PC market with all the mac laptops you'll see  

Personally, if you asked me in 2010, my rankings would go

Mac > Linux >>> Windows

Today, because Mac has gotten worse, while Linux and Windows got better, it's

Linux > Mac > Windows

2 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

I'm not saying Macs don't do some things better, but most serious coders and tech heads that I know use open source systems (Windows, Linux, etc.). I'm not trying to hate, if you like Apple great! Was just speaking to my own experiences was all. You're a very standoffish fellow lol. 

Windows isn't open source either. In my experience (and counting myself) developers who prefer Linux, prefer Mac over Windows because Mac is Unix based and makes development far more compatible and similar. That's starting to change only recently since MS has begun adding the excellent feature of a Linux subsystem.

36 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

My favorite comment I've seen circling around: 

 

"He was as worthless as red lights in Grand Theft Auto."

That's not entirely fair. Red lights in GTA mean you have to be a bit more careful as you speed across the intersection, whereas this guy was completely irrelevant  

5 hours ago, Nokra said:

The officer has resigned.

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/officer-resigns-amid-probe-over-lack-response-man-harassing-woman-n890781

May the door hit him on the way out. 

1 minute ago, Rev said:

Oh, yeah, this specific problem can be overcome probably. I was trying to make a broader point about the ultimate nature of technology. At its core, its function is helping people get what they want easier, and if the people can get what they want locally, then it's much more difficult for the government and law enforcement to keep its hands in. A huge landmark would be the ability to generate energy without having to be connected to a power company for instance. And 3d printing will likely get worse. Once you can buy a 3d printer that manages multiple types of material including steel, you'll likely be able to create almost anything you want through your home for pennies. So I'm saying this is just the beginning. I think it might be a tractable problem, but our current government institutions would make a huge mess out of any attempts to regulate anything this unprecedented imo.

Cool. Yeah I think we agree.

3 minutes ago, Rev said:

I'm not sure I totally follow what you mean but I agree with the end. We don't have stable intelligent government institutions to figure this stuff out right now.

Meaning, you could make a law and punishments about distribution of the code and even though the nature of technology means people will still distribute it often getting away with it, the possibility of being caught distributing it with the punishment it brings may be an imperfect, but still helpful, deterrent. Whether any given set of laws and policies would in fact bring a beneficial deterrent is the empirical question.

1 hour ago, Boyle5150 said:

The problem with regulating speech, is that it requires humans to decide what should and shouldn't be restricted and also lacks context. 

I think there are some more reasonable lines between this and other speech, but overall I agree with you and that's why I said I'm not confident that even if we could get an amendment that it would be a good one that we'd be glad to have. Ultimately, people are the bottleneck here.

1 hour ago, Rev said:

As we get closer and closer to a technological age of abundance, people will have easier and easier access to what they want without government involvement across the board. This kind of thing will get much worse imo. Would be nice if we had stable, intelligent institutions that could find novel ways to adapt to it. 

Enforcement of it is tricky for sure. But I'm not sure there would be no value even if you couldn't do it perfectly. Would ultimately be an empirical question we could try to evaluate, but once again, I don't have much confidence that our government or the people in this country could approach it in the right way.

1 hour ago, SFLUFAN said:

There - I've fixed that for accuracy!

I'm comfortable with your alteration  

1 hour ago, mclumber1 said:

 

What way is the first amendment antiquated?  In what ways would you want the government to restrict speech?

This seems like a decent example.

All this signals to me is that the first amendment is antiquated. Unfortunately, I'm pretty pessimistic that we can get any amendment to it and if we did, I'm also pessimistic that it would be a good amendment rather than a backwards one.

We'll have to leave the topic of Job's talent for another thread. Seems like we're mostly on the same page on this matter though. 

11 minutes ago, Scape Zero said:

 

 

Isn't that how it always goes? Wozniak created the original Apple computers. Ives created the iconic designs. The rest of the countless engineers made it all possible. Jobs just wanted all the money he could get. He's the one everyone worships.

 

At the very least, Musk cares a little more about the world than he does. Even if it's just to inflate his own ego. He still wants to be known as the guy who makes weird submarines to save some kids in a cave.

 

I don't disagree with your points, don't get me wrong. But I'd rather see people worship Musk over people like Jobs. For all his faults and delusions, he at least has a good chance at shaping the world for the better, even if the real work is being done by the people he hires, just so he can feed his own ego.

 

That's why I can't hate him, just how people have made him beyond criticism.

 

I think Jobs was uniquely talented, just not in the engineering sense (although he wasn't bad, he wasn't great, either). He had a great sense for what a technology product should be, more than most people in tech. But I absolutely agree with you that Jobs gets the name recognition because he's an egomaniac and extended it far beyond reality to his and others' detriment.

I don't think I'd like people to worship either of them. It's just plain bad. If we can ever dissuade people from that attitude, I don't think we have to compromise on them only worshiping one shit head  That is of course, a big if.

I don't hate Musk either. I'd rather he existed than not. Same goes for Jobs. Hate is a pretty strong word and it takes a lot to get into that category for me. Nevertheless, I've come to dislike him as a person the more I learned about him and I find the worship of him gross.

6 minutes ago, Boyle5150 said:

With all fairness, egomaniacs are usually the people who have the biggest impact on our civilization.  Not that being an egomaniac is desirable, but in the overall context, it could be!?

I think it's incredibly hard to quantify that, if for nothing else than the fact that the names you'll remember will tend to be egomaniacs, impact aside, because they're often optimizing for attention. It is true that many highly influential egomaniacs have existed in our history. But I'm not so sure it's usually the case. There are any number of hugely important scientists and mathematicians whose work has catapulted our society, and yet people don't know their names. Elon got his name because he's in the media and works the business angle to make his wealth. 

I also definitely don't think it goes the other direction (I've met a lot of tremendously mediocre egomaniacs).  

Ultimately though, it's kind of beyond the point. You can appreciate Space X and Tesla while disliking the person and highlighting his faults. It's something more people should do, because his "fan" base really doesn't help.

I dislike Musk because he's a petty egomaniac who thinks he knows more than he does. 

How about this winning tweet and thread?

The content of this response itself is stupid, but it's also a completely unnecessary petty attack for someone of his position. All it does is sick his disgusting fan boys on this person so they can high five and circle jerk to the alter of Musk. Just look at the bullshit responses. His need to tackle any such slight like this is not dissimilar from Trump.

Or you can go and look at when he attacked (comparatively) small time Upulie Divisekera (who didn't like his idea about people voting on news trustworthiness) over the fact that she has the word "nanotechnologist" in her bio and apparently that's "bull shit." Nevermind that there is legitimate nanotechnology science and that she actively contributes to the field.

Or you can look at how he talks completely out of his ass about AI but thinks he somehow is an expert on it, because he's hired people who work on AI.

He's pushed for some really cool stuff, but he has a gross personality.

2 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

I guess you could contribute to the Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Thanks, I'll take a look at this. I also did a little bit of searching this morning and found some other possible directions, but I need to figure out how to vet them.

I thought we had a thread on this topic already, but if we do, I can't find it anymore.

Popping up on a twitter is a lot of reports of women in Iran who protest by dancing in the street, or at home and publishing to Instagram, being sent to jail and and getting lashings.

Here is one example:

This shit is fucked. I would like to help, but have no idea how given it's a very different country. Anyone have thoughts?

1 hour ago, Xbob42 said:

As a matter of concern, I wonder how they could effectively pull this off without muddying up and slowing down the game with a bunch of minute choices. Am I going to be spending a long time in stat windows, trying to deduce the best build? If it's too simple, then "builds" likely won't have enough nuance to matter for high-end players, if it's too complex, it'll be a slog that most players will want to ignore. Again, with this particular genre you're not gonna be in the world for 200+ hours like in Diablo 2 (and that's on the light side) -- you're gonna be in for your standard 15-40 hour affair, and 40 is usually pushing it. And Metroidvania style combat is usually pretty simplistic, so stat choices for simple combat seems like they'd have to likewise be simplistic.

 

I'm mostly just viewing this mentally as the first game but with enhanced systems, and I'm not able to find the sweet spot in my head. Obviously I'm not a team of talented designers, so maybe I'm just not creative enough to see it, but I've become more and more skeptical of changes of this nature without a clear outline of how they're beneficial to the game as a whole. It almost comes across as checkbox marking.

I doubt it would slow it down. I think worst case it's not meaningful. Best case is it does change the way you tackle the combat and has impacts for people going for speed runs or similar achievements.

Trans actors are indeed not well represented in Hollywood. Part of this is probably a function of the fact that very few make into Hollywood, and there are very few trans people. But lets go head and assume they're underrepresented anyway. We also, presumably, want to help normalize trans people. In fact, that is probably the main social goal if we can ascribe any to a movie.

With that larger goal in mind we can ask the question: "which will be more successful at normalizing trans people: a movie about it staring a big star like ScarJo? or the same movie that casts an unknown trans actor?

There is a reasonable argument to be made that the star power of ScarJo will have greater impact than finding an unknown quantity. There is also a reasonable argument to be made that finding an equally talented trans actor for the part is infeasible and may insisting on a trans actor may require settling for someone less talented. Consequently, the movie might not do as well.

Of course, I don't know if that's true or not, but at least now we have an objective question we can try to debate, and we can set aside our internet outrage to investigate it.

3 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

Which is all fine, except this is a Metroidvania.

 

I cannot fathom spending enough time in a game of this genre to have meaningful builds --which are especially less interesting in a single-player environment--  but I'd love to be proven wrong.

Just because its Metroidvania doesn't mean they can't try to add other elements into it.

Multiplayer is certainly where this kind of stuff is more important, but it could make the game more replayable if done well, especially for the speed run folk. It could also be done poorly and not matter  

11 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

No. I'm not a fan of Diablo at all. Stat upgrades are the least interesting form of progression I can imagine. (I know Diablo has plenty of actually-interesting upgrades, I just don't like the gameplay.) It still carries some satisfaction if the piece looks really cool, but the most exciting pieces of gear or upgrades in any game for me will always be traversal changes. Like the upgrade in Axiom Verge that allows you to phase through walls.

 

It completely changes how you look at the every area in the game. In that sense, the "light bulb" explanation above I agree with very much. I hope Ori isn't full of super obvious "here's some weird bulb floating in the air leading to an area you can't reach" level design. It's a small thing, but suspecting that you can get somewhere else is way more exciting than 100% knowing for sure. Or having a simple, hard-to-notice thing like the spacing of walls be a certain distance like with the Axiom Verge example.

 

The more it really is a light bulb moment, the more exciting and memorable it becomes. Whereas +2 to diddling feels like they were obligated to put something there.

The new abilities should absolutely be included too, no disagreement there. But stat upgrades are not as meaningless as you make it sound if it's done right. In a good system where there are non-linear interactions between your set of abilities and their strength, it affords a huge strategy space with very different outcomes. Diablo 2 excelled at this, both in its skill and equipment. My friend and I played for a really long time because we had a lot of fun coming up with very novel character builds and seeing the consequences (especially in PvP for D2). The way our final version of a Sorceress played was radically different than other players at the time, and it was incredibly satisfying to crush people with a very different play style than they were used to.

The difference is these effects usually take a while to manifest. A single upgrade point won't do a lot to change your play, no. But by the time you've invested a bunch, it can make a huge satisfying difference.

Again, if it's a we'll done system.

6 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

It was a novel idea 18 years ago

I think the core gameplay still holds up and I think other than the graphics and other polish-like details is better than D3. Plenty of modern RPGs also still have ability upgrades and are still enjoyable. When done right, this kind of mechanic affords a lot of character strategy.

7 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

Eh, shards that "do extra damage" are the most boring kinds of upgrades. The perfect Metroidvania for me wouldn't have you wasting any time with boring shit like +5 missiles or +2 damage. Every single item you found would change the gameplay in a meaningful way, give you new options in both combat and exploration. The rest sounds interesting, but boring upgrades have become more and more tedious as I've played more and more games.

So, you're not a fan of Diablo 2?

15 minutes ago, Minnesota Fatz said:

 

Oh cool I didn't know she contributed to the story of season 2! That makes the show even better now imo with that extra touch of authenticity. 

 

How does it hit close to home?

Agreed  

I think the treatment of women it shows would be adopted by a non-negligible minority of our own country if they could get away with it; it is not far off from how women are treated in other cultures; and wasn't that far off from mankind historically.

In short, the culture in their society is completely monstrous, but also a believable possibility within the scope of human nature.