Actually a good example:
Self Driving Cars - were getting used to the idea because of the half baked stuff that’s already here but it’s realistic this will make it mainstream in the coming years
“Cure” for cancer - the rapid progress in immunotherapy drugs is making more and more cancers realistically treatable. Cancers.are still terrible conditions but it does feel realistic that we are moving towards a “cure”. After that it’ll be a focus on preventing and reducing the horrible side effects of treating cancers.
Regrowing organs - this also seems increasingly realistic. We’re already routinely regrowing people’s immune systems for some conditions (autologus ransplants - where the donor is also the recipient). We’re also increasingly growing different types of tissues and organs in lab experoments. It’s looking plausible although hard to say when it’ll become mainstream.
AI - I’m not convinced this one is on its way. What I mean is true General AI. What is labelled AI now is nowhere near General AI; it’s sophisticated and impressive but also limited and deeply flawed. We’re in an era of hype to drive up share prices but the actual technology is error strewn and is essentially a remix engine for human generated creativity. I’m not convinced true General AI is on its way because at the moment they don’t understand how the current AI systems work. It’s unlikely you can proceed from what we have to full general AI stumbling around in the dark or by shear luck. Not impossible, but unlikely. I think the current methods will more likely hit a brick wall in prpgress - they are useful tools but may be an illusion when it comes to full AI.
I deleted my account.
Yeah, “stupid” is not defined around average intelligence. This whole panel is an example of a straw man fallacy to undermine someone saying “people are stupid”.
I’ve started seeing US pick up trucks here in the UK in a city and they really are rediculous. Really large (comically so) and the truck bit is open to the elements although I have never ever seen anyone using the truck bit for anything whatsoever. Rediculous waste of space and I’m surprised they’re ever legal here.
In fairness to Apple that is good design. Computers including phones should be intuitive and easy to use, but also accessible to more experienced users.
The keeping up with Jones stuff with apple though is really bad. Like kids going off the university getting premium Mac books when they could save money and get a generic windows lap top. Or the seemingly ubiquitous purchase of earpods - an expensive way to purchase earphones when there are so many cheaper alternatives, not least the dirt cheap 3.5mm wired earphones that phone manufacturers are trying to obliterate.
Well first off have Taco Bell stopped providing napkins? One person couldn’t find napkins in one store and suddenly it’s greed driven corporate policy according to OP?
It seems unlikely that a food chain would completely abolish napkins. It is possible they’re no longer freely available because people were taking them “for their car” whatever that even means!?
Yeah the GUI is horrible with Gimp but it is very powerful software. I’m used to it’s idiosyncrasities but it really needs a GUI refresh. It’s powerful software held back from it’s full potential.
Are there bigger versions of the same communities elsewhere? One of the problems at the moment is duplicates, and finding the one where people have coalesced can be be hard, sometimes just dumb luck.
Yeah it’s a nonsense. Argentina and Turkey have atrocious economies, with inflation at crazy levels. Turkey’s is at 60% and Argentinas is at 143% currently, on a background of years of terrible economic decisions. Their local currencies are effectively trash so it makes absolute sense for Steam to move to dollars if they’re going to continue bothering trading in those countries.
It’s how hyped it was and expectations set by Skyrim. Starfield was seen as the next step on from Skyrim in terms of game scale, and Bethesda hyped it up as their biggest and best game ever. It’s neither of those things.
Also frankly in terms of RPGs, it feels dated. Witcher 3 set a new bar for what an RPG should be, but Starfield doesn’t seem to have learnt those lessons. Baldurs Gate 3 has also set a high bar for RPGs this year, and Cyberpunk 2077 (for all its own flaws) also set a high bar for RPGs.
Starfield is an ok game but when it’s hyped as it going to be the greatest game ever from Bethesda and going to be biggest game of the year, I’m not surprised it’s being shat on when it turns out it’s not.
But hopefully Starfield will be an important bump on the road for Bethesda. Bigger is not necessarily better and hopefully that lesson will carry in to Elder Scrolls VI.
Yeah reptuational is part of the issue but there is also a big financial issue too. Delaying a game is financially difficult as it affects financial projects for each year with shareholders (who only care about share price growth). If you release a game in a poor state you get to hit some of the financial targets which benefits the publisher particularly, but for the developer it means longer terms sales are much lower as reviews and feedback come in that the game is crap. You then have to patch and repair the game.
Patching has allowed publishers and developers to get away with this releasing of games in bad states, but it doesn’t change that fundamental issue which disproportionately affects the developer. Dev studios often only have 1 game being worked on at a time. An unready early release which is poorly recieved can be an existential crisis. For publishers, a poorly recieved game is a disappointment but generally have other many other games also on release so they can move on and not care as much.
No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk are high profile exceptions. The gaming world is littered with abandoned flops, often due to not being ready for release.
The sequel Yoot Tower is worth a look too. Sim Tower was a rebadge of a Japanese game called The Tower.
It’s not immovable, it’s just locked so you don’t accidentally move it by clicking and dragging. Try right locking on the bar in a blank area lower down - the right click menu should have an option for moving it.
Yeah I was surprised they took it down. I think it’s a foolish knee jerk reaction and is patronising towards readers.
Ironically there is know nothing to put the current spike of interest in context as you can’t read the letter on the guardian website.
I’m actually really unimpressed with the guardians action - they don’t respect their readers and clearly no longer believe in freedom of speech. They could have modified the article to put the letter in context themselves rather than link to a 20 year old article criticising it. It also makes it hard for those who want to push back against the letter and answer those who are pushing it.
Ironic for a company that published indie hits like Terraria and fresh mainstream games like A Tale of 2 Sons.
This does not reflect the whole gaming market but rather the failure of publishers to innovate well and make new things people like. Big publishers are risk averse and it’s a common path them as they get bigger, and care more about shareholder value or venture capital. They won’t take risks, and can’t accept failures so they retrench. It’s not a recipe for success as that end of the games market is already dominated by big publishers churning out annual versions of their mass market games.
A publisher like 505 r ally only has two possible futures on this road - go bankrupt as they can’t compete or get bought out by a big fish who want their IP.
It doesn’t say much abou the games market as it’s actually very large, vibrant and varied. A publisher like 505 is not on the vanguard of the games market and like most people I had to look them up to even see which games they had published. This is just yet another company being mismanaged into oblivion and well beyond its hey day.
If you implement it from fresh then it is a new program. What matters is what your contract says about what you produce - some contracts pay claim to anything you make even outside of working hours.
Also if you rewrite it, while technically it is a fresh project if there are substantial similarities in how you implement it there could be an argument made that you have reused code that belongs to the company. Even if that is technical false it could be something you’d have to defend sometime in the future. As others have said, implementing the program in a different language and using a different methodology wherever possible should help protect against that.
I think the advice others have given that you should review your contract with a lawyer is sound even if this will be FOSS. It’s mainly about ensuring you don’t inadvertently open yourself to potential legal repercussions down the line, even if your employers at the moment seem benign. If you do work for a company that lays claim to everything you produce even in your off hours then I would strongly recommend you consider leaving or an exit plan, particularly if you are the sort of person who would be working on your own projects for fun or even your own business ventures.
Almost the whole of black Friday is a nonsense. The only things worth buying are things you would have bought anyway but know are on discount.
Many items prices go up for a period before black Friday so they can then be discounted, and manufacturers even have cheaper versions of models of their products that they supply to discount chains and companies like Amazon for black Friday.
The only things I’d buy on sale are items I’m watching via camelcamelcamel which have hit discount, or software on discount. There are a few specific items I need to buy that I might buy if they’re genuinely on discount but most of the stuff thrust in your face during the sales is cheap tat or lies.
I’d go back and prevent the 11th Sept attacks.
The world would be a different place because so much happened as a knock on of that but at the same time it’s hard to imagine what the world would be like. Probably very similar but also different in substantial ways.
Like obvious things like no war in Iraq or Afghanistan (at least not those wars), and less obvious things like how the attacks have reshaped liberal democracies like the US and Europe (for the worse imo), and how they empowered right wing politics in many countries (also bad imo).
All browser companies monetise you to some extent. Even Firefox does this a bit (Paid deals make Google is the default search, and Amazon search is also paid to be included as a link for example).
However the big difference is the private companies like Vivaldi, Brave etc monetise your data more and less transparently, plus the entire Chromium ecosystem is basically under Google’s control. Manifest 3 will not be restricted to Chrome, it is being built into the Chromium project and will end up in Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Brave etc. Chromium is a trojan horse project, used to push Google’s priorities and objectives across the web, not end users.
The only viable alternative is Firefox based browsers. I use Firefox itself (aware of it’s compromises and using a whole host of extensions), but there are also forks and projects that strip even Firefox’s compromises back - LibreWolf in particular. For all the flaws of the Mozilla foundation, it is transparent on what it does to keep the project going, and the independence of the project compared to chromium is hugely important. Note Firefox is also going to support Manifest V3 (so that extensions can continue to be cross-browser) BUT it is also keeping support for the key APIs that Google is removing (i.e. the ability for extensions to use the block webRequest API which is foundational to current Ad and privacy protection extensions).
Vivaldi is no different to other Chromium based broswers; it uses the exact same Google controlled code base, plus it is doing everything it can to monetise you. You are the product; all these companies are stealing and financially exploiting your data and we’re all just handing it to them on a platter for free and thanking them for fucking us over.