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Comment Rogue (Score 4, Insightful) 228

Invented the very concept of procedural generation.

This was the first major differentiator of computer games vs hardware-designed games. Pong, for instance, offered nothing at the time that was better than pinball machines. It's only novelty was "And it was done on a computer!"
Same thing for Zork - perform your own adventure books were already well known when it was written. It just automated the process of "If you enter the cave, go to page 39".

Rogue, on the other hand, was the first computer game that did things no other media could accomplish. Every game was unique. And even today, people speak of procedurally generated games as "Rogue-likes".

Comment Breathtaking visuals, rich storytelling? (Score 3, Interesting) 58

It certainly wasn't conveyed in the trailer. It more looked like yet another paint by the numbers "Magic Kung Fu" movie, where the entire plot consists of seeing the chosen-one MC beating up an ever higher power scaled set of opponents in one-off battles using battle moves they have to yell out for them to take effect. The dramatic tension coming when he almost loses a battle against the big boss. Before winning. The end.

At least he looks underaged, so I doubt there's the typical subplot of scantily clad girls all hanging around him in a virginal harem that he - like most Asian MCs - is somehow too clueless about romance to ever pursue.

It's basically the equivalent of US superhero TV shows. Not the darker superhero movies made in the '90s, but the "SuperFriends" and "He Man" ones made in the 1970s and played on Saturday Morning, where everything has the depth of a soap dish and the audience is presumed to be about seven years old.

Did SlashDot get a kickback to promote this?

Comment It's not AI itself that's destroying IT jobs... (Score 5, Insightful) 113

It's the anticipation of AI making jobs obsolete that is causing CEOs to refuse to fill these positions, despite their obvious needs. That, and trying to fill senior level positions with inexperienced overseas junior developers (which has been going on forever).

The thing they miss, of course, is that AI can only answer questions. It really can't proactively figure out business needs. Further, most AI has only limited input prompts. Meaning, whatever its original output is (even if correct), must be understood by humans for further modifications to be made. There also still remains a large quality gap in what it produces. Much like what junior coders from overseas diploma mills churn out, the quality of AI code always needs to be double-checked by people capable of doing so.

But customers (meaning CEOs of technology companies) never get what they actually need, only what they think they want. So we are where we are until they learn another harsh lesson.

Comment Re:Reporters strike again (Score 1, Insightful) 132

Quantum mechanics, that is to say the math, predicts observations and measurements flawlessly. It has never once given an incorrect answer.

Quantum mechanics produces many results that are not correct on a macroscopic scale. We don't see superpositions, for example. Schrodinger's alive and dead cat is a classic thought experiment intended to illustrate the deficiencies in QM as a complete theory - not to imply that alive/dead cats are real.

And spinors, which you are describing are not even quantum! They are a characteristic of electrons, but have no "quantum leaps" in their states buried anywhere in their math. You might has well try to compare them to electromagnetism - and be equally incorrect.

QM is far from a complete Theory of Everything, which nearly every physicist will tell you if you ask them.

Comment It's another attempt to "corpo-wash" consumers (Score 0) 57

Oil companies aren't the ones providing hundreds of billions of dollars for energy. That's drivers, and boaters, people heating buildings, running their industrial equipment. And my oh my do consumers get angry if oil prices rise by even a penny a gallon. Entire governments fall when that happens.

But neo-communism-as-religion nutballs can't admit this, so instead they blame the vendors for the existence of the market.

That said, there is also corruption in the oil industry - especially around acquisition of new oil fields and the like. The environmental disasters in Nigeria come to mind. But that isn't what the Guardian is complaining about. Instead, they're trying to pretend to their readers that nobody other than oil companies are responsible for the public's voracious appetite for global warming emissions. Much like prostitution, they want to pretend that the real problem somehow isn't the demand, and that blaming the suppliers does something.

But they know the truth won't sell. So they never mention it. They're in the "news" industry, after all.

Comment LOL. Of course he doesn't... (Score 4, Insightful) 506

Just about every "I'm above voting - none of the candidates reach my lofty standards" non-voter, is really someone who is too lazy and content with society to do so. Just trying to hide it, and does so badly.

I mean it's not exactly evil to be too lazy to vote. But if you are one of those people, at least don't lie about it, or worse - put on airs about how superior you are to everyone else for not giving a shit.

Comment You're just lying at this point... (Score 1) 231

Again, the Japanese Military was so bought into its ability to stave off America though a war of attrition, that when Emperor Hirohito decided to surrender, the so-called "Jewel Voice" broadcast of his surrender had to be smuggled out of the imperial palace.

As many as 1,000 officers and army soldiers raided the Imperial Palace on the evening of August 14, 1945 to destroy the recording. The rebels were confused by the layout of the palace and unable to find the recordings, which had been hidden in a pile of documents. The two phonographs were labelled original and copy and successfully smuggled out of the palace, the original in a lacquer box and the copy in a lunch bag. Major Kenji Hatanaka attempted to halt the broadcast at the NHK station, but was ordered to desist by the Eastern District Army.[2][3]

In trying to pretend that the US just dropped atomic bombs of Japan for fun, you are aping a long-ago debunked piece of Soviet Union agit-prop.

Comment Re:Why is this garbage "news"? (Score 1) 167

You're clearly attempting to be sarcastic, but judging by the increasingly unhinged attacks by Trumpster Fires on her, they clearly are trembling in fear about her. Considering yours, she is literally the most constitutionally active Vice President in the history of the United States, and indeed does have a long list of accomplishments.

Comment Politicians are actually quite smart (Score 1) 136

They simply don't trust the public.

Imagine the political ad: "Minister Kraus voted against the kiddy-diddling act. Minister Kraus is in favor of kiddie diddling. Vote (fascist party of the specific nation)!"

Yes, the nuances of laws like this can be explained. But the old political truism: "If you're explaining, you're losing" applies. A lot of voters don't want to hear the truth.

I know some people want to think it's all a big conspiracy to view other people's foot-fetishes, but usually the truth is a lot simpler than that.

Comment Re:The real reason to ban Tiktok (Score 4, Informative) 197

because the deep state has trouble controlling what information people can get from Tiktok, so it must either be banned or be brought under control.

The so-called Freedom of the Press is meaningless when all MSM are own by a small group of people.

I dunno. The Chinese Communist Party's "deep state" seems to have no trouble at all controlling what information goes on TikTok. Right down to shadow-banning and tailoring comments to create a false-bandwagon effect.

Comment Re:Oh come on... (Score 0, Troll) 146

The difference is that Palestinians are facing real genocide

Russia has lost ten times the number of soldiers in its invasion of Ukraine that Hamas and their human shields have lost in their war against Israel. Yet there's no "Russia is being genocided" messaging anywhere, not even from the Vatniks. Why is that?

When these pro-terrorist Jew-hating bigots say the word "genocide", they don't actually mean genocide. What they really mean is "Jews daring to fight back against rapists, murderers, and torturers".

Submission + - 'Russia Might Have Caused Havana Syndrome' (washingtonpost.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A just-published investigation by Russian, American and German journalists has unearthed startling new information about the so-called Havana syndrome, or “Anomalous Health Incidents,” as the government calls the unexplained bouts of painful disorientation that U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers have suffered in recent years. The new information suggests but does not prove that Russia’s military intelligence agency is responsible. Earlier, agencies in the U.S. intelligence community had concluded that “it is very unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible.” They need to look again. [...]

[T]he new investigation by the Insider, a Russian investigative news outlet, in collaboration with CBS’s “60 Minutes” and Germany’s Der Spiegel, paints a different picture. It identifies the possible culprit as Unit 29155, a “notorious assassination and sabotage squad” of the GRU, Moscow’s military intelligence service. Senior members of the unit received “awards and political promotions for work related to the development of ‘non-lethal acoustic weapons’” — a term used in the Russian military-scientific literature to describe both sound- and radiofrequency-based directed energy devices. The investigation found documentary evidence that Unit 29155 “has been experimenting with exactly the kind of weaponized technology” experts suggest is a plausible cause. Moreover, the Insider reported, geolocation data shows that operators attached to Unit 29155, traveling undercover, were present in places where Havana syndrome struck, just before the incidents took place.

Even more concerning, the investigation found that a commonality among the Americans targeted was their work history on Russia issues. This included CIA officers who were helping Ukraine build up its intelligence capabilities in the years before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. One veteran of the CIA Kyiv station was named the new chief of station in Vietnam and was hit there. A second veteran of the CIA in Ukraine was hit in his apartment in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Both these intelligence officers had to be medevaced and were treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The wife of a third CIA officer who had served in Kyiv was hit in London. “Of all the cases” examined by the news organizations, they said, “the most well-documented involve U.S. intelligence and diplomatic personnel with subject matter expertise in Russia or operational experience in countries such as Georgia and Ukraine,” both of which were the scene of popular pro-Western uprisings in the past two decades. The news organizations point out that Russian President Vladimir Putin has often blamed these “color revolutions” on the CIA and the State Department. They conclude, “Putin would have every interest in neutralizing scores of U.S. intelligence officers he deemed responsible for his loss of the former satellites.”

Comment Re:It's got nothing to do with that (Score 1) 97

It depends on where you live. US education is heavily decentralized, in rural kentucky it was still possible until the early 1980s to have 1-12 (kindergarten would have been a pipe dream) in the nearest town. Most districts consolidated first the high schools (9/10-12) and then middle schools (6/7-8/9), but I'm 45 now, I attended a half-day K-8 in my local town. Our local population supported about 1.5 classes (~40-50 students) per grade, so we had a bunch of splits
half day Kindergarten
regular 1st
High 1st/Low 2nd graders
regular 2nd
regular 3rd
high 3rd/low 4th
regular 4th
regular 5th

at 6th grade, a close by k-5 elementary joined with our population
high 5th/low 6th
2 rooms of regular 6th
3 rooms of 7th
2 rooms of regular 8th
1 room of the highest math aptitude ones, we got pre-algebra in 8th grade instead of their general math and our reading was generally higher so we might have read 1 or 2 extra books over the year in our english class
The 4 K-8 schools went to a common 9-12 high school, so that would lead to a 9th grade math breakdown like:
2-3 sections of honors algebra 1, we would net out 1 class of 12th grade AP calculus AB from this
2-3 algebra 1 these kids would end in trigonometry and geometry in grade 12
2-3 pre-algebra these kids would end in algebra 2 and basic geometry in grade 12
2-3 general math these kids would end in algebra 1 and basic geometry in grade 12
The district I grew up in has changed since then, they've got a common 7th-8th building now and the 9th graders attend an isolated building of their own (7-12 is on the same giant physical campus in the middle of our county)

Larger urban districts like the one my kids attend now have opportunities to slot and track high math aptitude earlier, there are some 6th graders that take pre-algebra so their end target would be trig as sophomores and AP Calculus BC as seniors

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