Jfc just spent 15 minutes trying to cancel a newspaper subscription this morning. Shame I couldn’t wait six months to do so.

For those interested in more, I found this People Make Games video to be super interesting. https://youtu.be/lYaDXZ2MI-k?si=pxrioKZq_S7ka9il

For me and mine, it’s carrots. Do you know how difficult it is to find carrot-free items? Impossible.

Devastating loss for the science community. I used this database in my PhD, and didn’t expect it to shut down ever.

Agreed, seems like a no-brainer. Typically this stuff is handled at an institutional level, with bad professors losing/ failing to achieve tenure. But some results have much bigger implications than just “Uh oh, I cited that paper and it was a bad one.” Often, entire clinical pipelines are developed off of bad research, which wastes millions of dollars.

See also, the recent scandals in Alzheimer’s research. https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease

Touche, forgot this was PatientGamers. Grim Dawn is basically the same sans MMO. It’s the best ARPG I’ve played like, ever, and it’s due for a huge DLC soon. Goes on sale for very cheap often.

Unlike Last Epoch, it’s more item-focused. Unlike PoE, the items aren’t a total nightmare to optimize…

Very interesting - I haven’t hit a single bug during my play.

A handful if my PoE friends have picked up Last Epoch which I’ve found to be more approachable. Little less MMO but a very similar game.

Nah. Fenced epee for a bit in a college club. Height advantage was pretty great. I guess it just depends on the weapon.

Outer Wilds was the best game I played on PS4. I strongly recommend experiencing it for yourself.

I would say the space ship/0g flight is maybe 30% of the gameplay, and you don’t need to be really excellent at it, thankfully.

Can’t say I’ve heard anything since launch, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Grim Dawn Item Assistant is your best friend. While you’re at it, Rainbow Item Names (or whatever it’s called).

Well if you liked PoE I doubt you’ll like D4. It’s a much simpler game. Sadly my only advice is to try GD and Last Epoch again. I’ve got hundreds of hours in the former and I just got 10 hours into the latter.

Last Epoch feels like a more approachable PoE. I thoroughly enjoy how the skills interplay with one another, but I still prefer the itemization in Grim Dawn.

The only reason I’m not playing GD currently is because I have too many QoL mods installed so my cloud saving doesn’t work, but I can cloud save for Last Epoch for my steam deck lmao.

My job is 8:30 - 5 with a 30 minute lunch break. So almost.

But, we also get 2 days/week at home, and can flex time as required. Tons of international work, so the flexible hours are a godsend when time zones are against us.

It’s a salaried position and depending on your supervisor and stage of your career, you’re expected to work 40-45 hours a week. Deadlines and ugly projects tend to increase hours work. I’m very lucky, as my industry can be pretty brutal with sudden ends to projects and unexpected layoffs.

We’ve got some really good theories, though. Neurons make new connections and prune them over time. We know about two types of ion channels within the synapse - AMPA and NMDA. AMPA channels open within the post-synapse neuron when glutamate is released by the pre-synapse neuron. And the AMPA receptor allows sodium ions into the dell, causing it to activate.

If the post-synapse cell fires for a long enough time, i.e. recieves strong enough input from another cells/enough AMPA receptors open, the NMDA receptor opens and calcium enters the cell. Typically an ion of magnesium keeps it closed. Once opened, it triggers a series of cellular mechanisms that cause the connection between the neurons to get stronger.

This is how Donald Hebb’s theory of learning works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory?wprov=sfla1

Cells that fire together, wire together.

Actually, neuron-based machine learning models can handle this. The connections between the fake neurons can be modeled as a “strength”, or the probability that activating neuron A leads to activation of neuron B. Advanced learning models just change the strength of these connections. If the probability is zero, that’s a “lost” connection.

Those models don’t have physical connections between neurons, but mathematical/programmed connections. Those are easy to change.

I’ve been quoting Jordan Peterson for years?! Ahhh fuck.

Actually, we’ve got some pretty sophisticated models of neurons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project?wprov=sfla1

See my other comment for an example of how little we truly understand about neurons.

Even assuming we can model the same number of (simple machine learning model) neurons, it’s the connections that matter. The number of possible connections in the human brain is literally greater than the number of atoms in the universe.

It’s not a terrible idea by any means. It’s pretty hard to do, though. Check out the Blue Brain Project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project?wprov=sfla1

ETA: not to mention the brain is a heck of a lot more than a collection of neurons. Other commenters pointed out how we just discovered a new kind of brain cell - the brain is filled with so many different types of neurons (e.g. pyramidal, Purkinje, dopamine-based, myelinated, unmyelinated, internet Ron’s, etc.). Then there’s an entire class of “neuron support” cells called neuralgia. This includes oligodendrocytes (and Schwann cells), microglia, satellite cells, and most importantly, astrocytes. These star-shaped cells can have a huge impact on how neurons communicate by uptaking neurotransmitters and other mechanisms.

Here’s more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripartite_synapse?wprov=sfla1