The poems of Thomas Zane in the old gods of asgard concert in the book about max Payne in the video game Allen wake in the video game control in the amazing TV series the threshold kids in that song the janitor is singing.
… Pretty sure that’s the continuity.
Somewhere, some patent lawyers are going to make millions debating about whether or not this constitutes “public disclosure”.
Dude, they flubbed this so damn hard by over reaching. A few years ago, when they mentioned there would be a button in word that you could use to make a slide deck of your word dock, I was so excited. The teams meeting part where it will summarize meetings is honestly fantastic in doing Roberts rules of order type stuff. My response was “I hate what this means in terms of privacy, but godamn that sounds useful”.
In turning into an everything all or nothing they massively screwed up. I have a self hosted instance of llama-gpt that I use to solve the “blank page” problem that AI was actually great at.
I have a lot of issues with AI on principle, like a lot of folks. But it blows my mind how hard they screwed up delivery (and I don’t just mean the startups, that’s to be expected). There’s plenty to be said about uber at a principle level, but it’s still bloody convenient. The entire roll out of a AI-ecosystem reeks of this meme: “but we made plans!”.
CDPR is still on my “probably pass” list after cyber punk. I read the launch news, stayed faraway. I picked it up this year, after all the patches and work and… yeah it’s still fundamentally broken.
Not in terms of balance or bugs, but it didn’t have the magic. To start, I really don’t like fantasy games. They’re just not my thing. Witcher 3 had bad combat mechanics, could be terribly grindy and YET is one of my top five games. The story telling, from the plot itself the tiny immersive details in the world, hooked you. They nailed the big things, but it was the little things like sometimes you’d free someone, and realize they murdered a bunch of dudes who were minding their own business, and none of this was mentioned in or affected any other plot line, it was just a random detail in the universe.
Cyberpunk has a semblance of the big stuff, but exactly none of the soul. I cared about some of the main characters (emphasis on “some”) but exactly none about the world. It never felt like more than a backdrop.
A loss and misstep is ok, particularly given a growing studio, the problem with CDPR is they think they fixed cyberpunk. With that mentality I’m giving their next game a huge berth.
And if you liked cyberpunk, enjoy. There are parts to be enjoyed. There are some neat plot threads, some nifty side quests, if you enjoy it don’t let people ruin it for you.
Or just… Don’t make a launcher?
Life arises from beautiful choas, where in the random but rhythmic dance of chance evolution gives rise to incomprehensible and beautiful complexity made possible by rafts of soul crushing failures buoying the statistical miracle of success.
I am sorry your genes are of bad stock and you’ve been deprived of enjoying the best of this world.
I mean you’re spot on, it’s really not the end of the world, and you’re correct on the parks and rec.
I think people get prickly because of what you mentioned about the substance of the article probably being way worse, everyone’s just primed these days lol. We’re kind of sorting some shit out over here…
Anyway thanks for the conversation, it’s always fun to see your own culture through someone else’s eyes.
I guess what it comes down to is there a plenty of things, big and small, that I don’t have an issue with as an American but I know matter to the other person. Usually it’s small stuff (how people comport themselves in relation to work, the line between direct and rude, etc) , but when it comes to things where people died, I think it’s best to defer to the people involved.
Maybe that’s a trap of my upbringing as well but I don’t see that as American lens, I see that as recognizing there are a lot of lenses.
And again, the original joke is decent, its a role reversal and punches up not down, but I wouldn’t want an American paper making jokes about Finnish biathalon Olympians spanking the Russians.
Any joke with cultural baggage carries the risk you miss context. Again, I don’t think that’s just true for Americans.
You do you, it’s just in poor taste. It’s not the end of the world or anything, it’s just funny to me that it’s the same thing “boorish Americans” get flack for.
What’s ironic is you’re displaying exactly what you’re critiquing. This joke is a bit funny, but it’s on par with something like “Prince Charles asks NRA to fix his car”. There’s just baggage. And lord knows Italy has plenty of its own.
Trees actually do a lot of this on their own. If you want an absolutely fascinating read check out “the hidden life of trees” by wholleben.
The tl;Dr is that a forrest is an organism unto itself. Trees literally use each other for support, regulate the temperature, and terraform the ground around them (pine being the most visible example). The natural cycles and interspecies communication is jaw dropping.
how much you can build without a complete understanding
We’ve never actually never had one. I’d have to check the timelines but Tesla was almost certainly working on a functional, but inaccurate atomic model (Bohr). Medicine is actually a great example of all this. We are so used to just kind of knowing “there’s a bad bug or bad gene that’s making me sick”. Like you may not know the details, but you’ve got some loose concept a bunch of cells in your body are pissed off. For the vast, vasssssssst history of medicine, it was all empirical, and the thing is, it kind of worked… sometimes.
My favorite example of “knowing without fully understanding” is Mendel and his peas. If you do a 4x4 punnet square (that gene cross thing), and look at the frequency of co-inheritance, you can track how far genes are from on another (because the further they are, the more likely there will be a swap during the shuffle). Thing is… because DNA is an integer thing (no such thing as ‘half a base pair’) it works DOWN TO THE SINGLE BASE PAIR. Mendel was accurately counting the number of freaking base pairs separating genes without knowing what a base pair, or indeed even really a molecule, was.
Tesla would have lived to see some absolutely nutty stuff in physics. Boltzman, Einstein with relativity, it must have seemed like pure madness at the time.
So yeah, we discover new and interesting stuff all the time. I personally think that some of the weird quantum stuff is going seem as rote in the future as germs do to us now. As in, the same way any lay-person shoved into a time machine would at least be able to give the basics to a medieval European, someone from the future would be like “well I don’t remember much about quantum tunneling, but…”.
And that’s all before getting into some of the bizarre things going on in math itself. Be careful if you look into that stuff though, it’s easy to fall into the “Terrance Howard” style rabbit hole. Suffice to say there is some really interesting and unexpected implications we’re discovering, but if you don’t have a solid grasp of theory, it is easy to be led astray but sources that want to gloss over details to talk about a conclusion that isn’t actually supported. It’s like if you tried to explain time dilation to an ancient Greek, and they excitedly hopped on their fastest chariot thinking they could “fast forward” to the future, because time moves “more slowly” for you when you’re going faster, right?
You are right, it is incredibly use dependent. In a weird way, EVs kinda of outline a lot of the cultural divide in America right now. The majority of America is freaking BIG. If you live on the coast, and are road tripping on the coast, odds are 300 miles seems like a lot because it was settled by horses, but that just doesn’t work for a lot of people. At least 3-4 times a year I do 400+ miles one way.
So EVs do make a ton of sense for a LOT of people, but it’s definitely not all people. From what I can tell, most of the people that have that need for that range are also 2 car families, in which one EV and one ICE works perfectly. It is so close to almost there, and in many, mannnny use cases it already is. But adding 20% to my travel time was not acceptable when I was shopping for a new vehicle.
This was sort of my impression to. Like I loosely liked him, but couldn’t really tell you what he’s directly responsible for. Which isn’t a bad thing on its own and doesn’t mean he wasnt doing a good job, just that I don’t know much about him.
So the road trip item you’re talking about is incredibly subjective. I just had an ev for a few months, yes I was able to find CCS on the highway, but you’re looking at ~1hr charging per 3 driving (give or take). That’s a deal breaker for a lot of people.
But youre right, leaving every morning with “a full tank” was wild.
oh I’m not shortchanging it, I work in the field. It’s crazy how “simple” it is in concept and hard to deliver. But it’s on par with antibiotics with how many lives it’s changed. Like you said, it’s like a lot of civil stuff. A solid highway system, for instance. Just some dirt with fancy rocks on it right? Righhhhhhht?
And don’t get me wrong, wastewater has tons of complications. Any plant is operated in equal parts science, engineering, and art. It’s a living, breathing, bioreactor. They’ve each got their own distinct personality.
Thrilled you asked! So yes: Treatment is always required, but the final destination of the treated water can vary. For instance, in a lot of places they may have municipal water TO a home or business, but that may be discharged to septic, as opposed to the river. Also in a lot of areas, water may be taken out of an underground aquifer (either by private well or a municipality) but when treated it may be discharged into a river or ocean. That can create problems because if you’re near the coast, the empty space in the aquifer may be filled by salt/brackish water that can lead to salinity rises in the aquifer. To solve that some places turn to “ground water recharge”, which is just a fancy way of saying “we built a big well to put it back in the aquifer”.
Increasingly, you’re seeing some places essentially sell their treated water. Santa Rosa CA, for instance, built an entire pipeline that goes from their treatment facility to another municipality to be injected into their groundwater.
So yes, everywhere treats it, but the final destination makes a difference. Las Vegas (or anyone else on the river) only gets credit for what goes back into the river, so any evaporation etc is a problem. It sounds trivial, but there is a reason those other strategies exist. It essentially doubles every pipe, limits where you can park a treatment plant etc. Vegas also does some great grey water re-use. That essentially means it doesn’t go “back” but can get used many many times, limiting the initial draw.
Wastewater is funny because it’s far from rocket science, but the numbers to implement any of it get staggering very quickly.
I don’t know about power, but Vegas is actually incredibly water efficient. Due to the way the water rights work with the Colorado river, they’re not allowed very much, but it doesn’t “count” if you put it back in. So nearly every drop they use is treated and put back (probably cleaner, tbh). Boggles the brain, but somehow it’s actually a fairly sustainable city. More than any other other major metro, in any event.
“what do you mean it’s not a real show? Does my agent know? I still get paid with real money though right?”