This makes sense to me. A hybrid would be nice. Have a calendar or some art while it’s “off”. But then, that’s probably pretty expensive. (Not that I’ve looked, I’m just assuming.)

Honestly I think people would unironically that as an option.

Gaming is my big issue. But now that my quality gaming time with family has gone from Warzone to ARC Raiders, it’s a far less daunting concern. I’ll probably wait and see if DMZ 2 supports Linux, which sadly I doubt, and if that game will cost

I may be wrong as I don’t really play the genre, but I think Marvel Rivals is kinda the king of the hero shooter genre right now.

But that said I generally do agree that “another live service game that doesn’t clear a very high bar” is the issue. The recent success of ARC Raiders despite social media telling me people “don’t want extraction shooters and to give it up” really drives home the point of “if it’s good enough… It’ll probably do well.”

(And I realize those two are third person games, so not “first person shooters”, but I’d still consider them competition for them.)

And with the economy the way it is, yeah, money matters a lot more. People are more likely to dedicate their time to one big game, and sometimes a couple of smaller ones. It makes things an “all or nothing” proposition. And most games don’t look like “all”.

AI in games (using code for entities to make non-player decisions) is about being good enough, cheap enough. It’s just like how games determine their physics. The existence of large scale “black box” AI like OpenAI does not reflect what’s good or cheap. It can’t play chess. You think it’s going to understand The Sims and make reasonable choices in that system?

They’ve already created well tuned system to give your Sims in obtaining their needs. It leads to you having to manage the chaos, and that’s what the fun is. To better hone that is to have the AI play the game for you. And even that, if efficiency of play is the goal, is better done by TASbot and machine learning.

That generic black box style of AI like popular LLMS is like creating a hammer. Now everyone is treating every problem like nails. AI decisions making in games is like washing windows; don’t use a hammer.

The problem is that “AI” is a poorly defined, very vague, and widely used term. Most people here have assumed you meant LLMs because everyone pitches those as ways to solve everything. “Oh, irer up an agent, give it instructions, and let it make requests that are context dependent”. Then, like everyone says here, that usually turns into people testing boundaries and breaking your game. So that makes it both “not good enough” and “not cheap enough”.

Now, look at AI with the term “machine learning” in mind and it’s different. Games like ARC Raiders use machine learning to teach NPCs movement behavior, and to train AI voices like Siri so they can’t add things without further paying people. They think that up-front investment is worthwhile. But those are both far cries from “uploading it to Claude or ChatGPT and see what happens”. Especially when you would have to teach that black box AI your system anyway, for it to use it. And you’re already doing that with current “good enough, cheap enough” bespoke methods, for much cheaper, and they’re good enough.

I get it and was very skeptical at the time… But soon after I began to believe they’d stick around, and my annoyance at installing through multiple discs (and also putting discs in the tray to play a game) won out.

I bought and moved like 1 in late 2013 when it spiked just to play with it and see how it worked, out of curiosity about the tech. (And soon after, mined Dogecoin on Reddit when it started, and we all began tipping like crazy because it was fun and funny.) I made a few bucks off the BTC and kinda regretted not holding it longer. Then cut to a decade later… Sheesh. I may be more sour on the tech now, but damn I’m not so crazy as to not regret selling it.

I can easily imagine tiny towns, neighborhoods (and even apartments) using a Mastodon server to create a community based social media. Now, whether people would WANT to use that, and if it would just turn into NextDoor, are separate issues.

haha, I’m 45, so you don’t have to explain the pre-Internet-ubiquity world to me, but I appreciate it. My first car was from 1982, which I got in 1995. I had a big boom box in the back seat that took D cell batteries. (Because it had no radio and I didn’t have money to buy one, but I had the boom box already.) I get the appeal, I just mean to say that there are people who do make their own cars. And while they make incredibly impressive and even outlandish things, I’m pretty certain they could also make you a very basic car, for a price. And probably a lot less than most new cars. They’ll just want the money to front is all. And there’s probably not much in the way of guarantees.

What you want to look into is body kits. It’s taking a car, removing parts, and putting on replacements that have fittings that attach the same, but look completely different on the outside. There are many types of cars that have become the most popular to customize and have the most options, but tons of cars can be changed significantly. There are even some body kits that change everyday cards into looking like completely different cards (“kit cars”, I think they’re called), and lawsuits around some similarities of body kits. There’s also tons of YouTubers that do videos on this, and a whole culture about it. Usually they go for more flashy, and more tech, but you can probably go the other way pretty easily too depending on your taste.

It’s completely possible to do as a hobby if you have time and money, and more possible to GET done if you have lots of money. Honestly I have no idea about it. But my cousin is a car guy and I stayed with him for a few months earlier this year. Damned interesting stuff out there.

It reminds me of when Google added everyone’s phone numbers to search. Everyone freaked out. “What do you mean anyone can find my number?!” And this is back when phone books were ubiquitous.

It’s pointless now as anyone actually making a call (scammers) buys numbers from providers or other thieves. But it’s really interesting how publicly available data being more publicity available can be scary.

Usually nothing. Occasionally a few eggs with a little cheese in a microwave omelette.

You should wrede a book they wrote, and after you’ve wred the book, write your own.

Even wilder to me is that they own the *.new TLD. So they have shortcuts like sheets.new and doc.new, which take you to those respective documents in Google Focs. And that’s neat for people using them, and unfortunate for literally everyone else in the world who might want to make a fun *.new domain.

After I made my comment I saw someone else make a comment about getting a message saying that. I never did. Mine just worked. Weird.

That’s the old way of handling it. (And I think it still works.) They have a new implementation that’s just the family group admin sending an invite and the recipient accepting.

I get annoyed just hearing a pre-recorded greeting at a drive thru. I can’t imagine ordering through an LLM, and yet I imagine I’ll have to deal with it sooner rather than later.

I initially uploaded it on March 30th, 2021. YouTube still shows that as the upload date for the video, and I’m stuck on my phone at the moment, so I’ll look to see if I can find a date for the claim updates later to sate my own curiosity, but that’s recent enough that I trust my memory of it being months, plural. I got an email about the claim that day, disputed it, got a copyright strike the next day, disputed THAT… And was eventually approved. I don’t have another email about that video saying it was approved or dropped or anything, until there was another claim (after apparently a manual review) on February 9th of 2023, resulting in a regional block.

So maybe it was because I disputed the actual strike and not just the initial claim?

Not that I’m complaining at you. I’m just surprised. I thought this was typical. Though I was annoyed at YouTube. I thought the video could’ve done a little better on YouTube than it did in Vimeo if I pointed people there instead, you know? (100-ish on YouTube now vs 30k on Vimeo those months earlier. But it was a timely video.)

But thanks for the insight. I appreciate it.

If you’re knowledgeable, I have a question. Years ago I uploaded a YouTube video that wouldn’t publish because of an automatic claim. I instantly disputed it, and it took like 5 or 6 months to resolve. But I saw someone today say that claimants had a week or two to respond to a dispute. Do you know if that’s the case now, or if someone was talking trash?

(I found a similar claim on YouTube, but they may’ve found the same line and repeated it, and who knows if FAQs are actually up to date.)

It’s funny, I remember watching The Scene from torrents (or maybe eDonkey2000/eMule?) 20 years ago. And it was relatively popular. Though I don’t remember the last time I even had a BitTorrent client installed. If you’re right, then we’ve failed ourselves. (And you may be right.)