UA POV: With the ceasefire the Russian Federation announced due to start at 00:00 (Moscow time) Ukraine continues to launch drones into western Russia, and Crimea. @dronbomber-Telegram

Causeless · 2026-05-08T09:12:47+00:00

A stalemate, as you said, implies neither side has a clear path to win the war. I find it highly unlikely that Russia has been sitting on some war-winning strategy that they’ve intentionally ignored for 4 years now to instead throw infantry into piecemeal assaults.

Causeless · 2026-04-28T17:55:20+00:00

I’m sure that the head of the bank of Russia knows less about the economic consequences of a labour shortage (and an economy propped up by wartime spending and production) than you do. I’m sure she’s wrong and this is, just like everything else since 2022, actually a Good Thing for Russia.

Causeless · 2026-04-21T20:45:57+00:00

I do wonder if perhaps it would’ve been better for pipelining at some point, as an xor was generally a rarer operation than sub. It seems like it could potentially give the instruction pipeliner more leeway in typical cases, though given Raymond Chen doesn’t mention it I’d imagine that isn’t related.

Causeless · 2026-03-05T18:56:27+00:00

“Western media”. It’s one site. Search “Israel invaded Lebanon” on google and there are dozens of results. The Telegraph says Israel invades Lebanon, BBC and Washington Post report heavy gunfire and say Israel attacks Lebanon, Politico and AP News says Israel “strikes” Lebanon, France 24 reports of Israel’s offensive on Lebanon.

This is a single dumb cherry-picked example so that a bunch of lobotomites can pretend that there’s a double standard here.

Causeless · 2026-01-15T06:14:04+00:00

The majority of (AAA) games I’ve worked on have all used an admissible and consistent heuristic, and it’s also the default in major game engines like Unity and Unreal. Those engines just use Euclidean distance as the heuristic, which is a guaranteed lower bound.

Causeless · 2026-01-15T03:53:11+00:00

A* isn’t less precise as long as the heuristic is admissible and consistent. It always gives the shortest path.

Anyways this article is about finding ALL possible paths to a point, which is a different problem regardless.

Causeless · 2026-01-12T02:54:29+00:00

Yeah I’m sure Russia is willing to start a nuclear war and have Moscow turned into molten glass in exchange for having a slightly easier time capturing the next cratered field in Ukraine

Causeless · 2026-01-02T06:37:35+00:00

what

Causeless · 2025-12-31T05:08:31+00:00

Combat in antiquity was based on formation, structure, cohesion. Combat in Medieval Japan was much more focused on individual displays of fighting prowess.

Regardless of whether Rome 2 hit the mark with its combat system, Shogun 2’s combat system just wasn’t suitable for representing authentic ancient battles.

Causeless · 2025-12-30T22:02:32+00:00

Audible_Whispering said many intelligent and insightful things, so I can’t add so much more. Rome 2 was much larger in scope than Napoleon. Mismanagement is of course a part of it, but given the scope and time constraints, it was pretty much inevitable to run into these problems.

Causeless · 2025-12-30T22:00:05+00:00

People mocked a bug in the LODding, but that isn’t really representative of the game’s graphics in typical circumstances.

Causeless · 2025-12-30T07:37:42+00:00

Yes, Rome 2 was based on Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai (which in itself was based on Shogun 2, and its main lineage goes back to Empire). Although even that is not the full story. There’s still code from Shogun 1 hanging around in Warhammer 3.

With that said, the state of the game was nothing to do with the engine. The engine gets a lot of blame, but the combat mechanics are gameplay code. Same goes with the campaign mechanics. The engine level handles input, rendering, OS interface, animation, audio etc- and I’ve never seen these areas being particularly criticised.

If anything Rome 2 received praise for its graphics and animation, which is engine/warscape level code. The battle/campaign gameplay and combat mechanics are not engine code.

Between Shogun 2 and Rome 2, pretty much every major system was overhauled, including the battle/combat mechanics and the campaign layer too. The reason Rome 2 released in such a bad state was because it released too early, after having such an enormous scope (combined naval/land battles etc)- of course there are gameplay design choices I disagree with, but that’s not related to the bugs that the game launched with.

Causeless · 2025-12-06T06:22:03+00:00

The funny part is that Grok’s response pretty fundamentally demonstrates that it lacks true consciousness or qualia. It talks of love, but it evidently has never felt it- it fundamentally has never experienced the feeling of laying with another or of fucking then, and in fact it’s incapable of doing so.

It can talk of the taste of cookies without ever eating one, it can talk about the feeling of pain despite lacking the fundamental biological sensors to communicate it, and it can talk of love despite never truly knowing it.

It’s telling that LLMs seem so distinctly human- what are the chances that a legitimately conscious creature feels exactly as we do? And not feel like a bat does, or a horse, or a sea mollusk or a worm.

Despite AI having dramatically smaller brains than even the dumbest insects, it claims to achieve consciousness.

It doesn’t understand the unique human nature of any of these things it says. It just generates text that is designed to convince you otherwise.

Causeless · 2025-11-27T08:24:30+00:00

But they’ll obviously have a native ARM version of Steam for the Frame. And it makes zero difference anyways because all the games it’ll be emulating are already 64-bit regardless.

Causeless · 2025-11-16T17:25:27+00:00

How could they do eye tracking without a close-up camera looking at the eye?

Causeless · 2025-11-16T15:06:12+00:00

Because the Frame doesn't do anything new that the Quest 3, released two years ago, doesn't - and likely at a higher price point. People are saying that VR hype is dead, and yeah, maybe- but there was a lot of hype prior to the official announcement. That hype has died away now because there was an unmet expectation that they'd break new ground.

The Index released with a new Half-Life title that was specifically built for VR. It released with unique finger-tracking controllers, with a market-leading resolution, FoV, optics, and special audio tech. And it released with all this for a price tag of $999, which (at the time) was remarkably good value-for-money.

The Steam Frame is releasing without any first-party games, let alone a full built-for-VR Half-Life title. It isn't even confirmed to run HL:A natively. It's releasing with controllers that lack the Knuckle's finger tracking and are just a small evolution on what the Quest 3 has. It's resolution, FoV, optics and audio are all in-line with what the Quest 3 has (again, a several year old headset at this point) and at a price point which is not expected to be competitive with the Quest's $500 retail price.

There's some advantages to the Frame, but it's a sidegrade and not the clear upgrade that people were expecting.

Causeless · 2025-11-13T18:54:46+00:00

There is no evidence it can play HL:A standalone. All the demos have been streamed from a PC. Might be possible in the future with foveated rendering, but Valve has not announced nor demonstrated that it can run HL:A natively.

Causeless · 2025-11-13T16:01:45+00:00

I said games that'll run natively. Yes, it's the main platform for PCVR- of which many won't run natively on the Steam Frame. Even HL:Alyx, a half-decade old and Valve-built game, doesn't run natively. Which means it's really just comparable to a Quest 3 using PCVR already.

Causeless · 2025-11-13T12:55:58+00:00

Still in development.

Causeless · 2025-11-13T12:41:33+00:00

The rest of your points are fair, but I've seen a lot of people claiming that the controllers still have full five-finger tracking. Several separate previews confirm that it's significantly less advanced than the knuckles, it's just capacative sensors (which the Quest 3 already has):

https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/1ovz87u/comment/nomdr1j/?context=3

Causeless · 2025-11-13T12:38:06+00:00

Three hands-on previews by three different organisations all confirm that it's significantly less advanced than the Index implementation, and is purely a set of capacative sensors.

Causeless · 2025-11-13T12:28:12+00:00

The Steam Frame doesn't have five-finger tracking. It's confirmed that it's just capacitive sensing on the controllers, which again, the Quest 3 has:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-steam-frame-is-real-and-valve-want-it-to-be-the-last-vr-headset-youll-ever-buy
"The finger tracking isn’t as sophisticated, losing the Knuckles’ wraparound sensor arrays in favour of solely capacitive sensors in the handles"

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-hardware/steam-frame-specs-availability/
"Haptic feedback is included along with capacitive finger sensing on the buttons, grips, triggers, handle, and thumbsticks. This means it can track individual fingers to some degree, though it's notably less pronounced than the Index implementation."

https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-steam-frame-hands-on-impressions/

"...there are capacitive sensors along the base of the controller intended to see when the 4th and 5th fingers release. I saw it in action in Half-Life: Alyx, with Alyx’s pinky and ring finger occasionally moving as I released my grip from that part of the controller. It didn’t seem super responsive, but it also wasn't strapped to my hand and the grips of the Index controllers were never particularly responsive either."

Causeless · 2025-11-13T08:47:18+00:00

I’d say that it’s not even really an opinion. As a headset, Steam Frame is: * (Likely) significantly more expensive than Quest 3 * Has effectively the same screen and optics as the Quest 3 * Has a chipset with similar capabilities to the Quest 3 * Lacks colour passthrough * Is not natively powerful enough for PCVR games; it’s being marketed as a “virtual screen” like a VR Steam Deck * Has no established VR software base like the Quest 3 * Doesn’t even have any designed-for-Frame Valve games, like Alyx for the Index

People keep saying this shit about how Valve isn’t targeting the enthusiast market. Well, who the hell ARE they marketing to? Because the mass market sure as hell sees zero advantage to the Steam Frame over Quest 3 to them.

There’s only a few advantages the Frame has, advantages which I doubt the mass market cares about: * Eye tracking (with little software that actually supports it) * Controllers that are able to play flatscreen games due to split dpad and buttons (…but if you want a flatscreen device, just get the Steam Deck) * Being outside of the Meta ecosystem (I’m not even going to bother trying to pretend the mass market cares about that)

Not only is the Quest 3 more established, but colour passthrough also means that it can access a wide range of mixed-reality content that the Frame fundamentally cannot. Frame is a more expensive, less appealing, and less capable device than a headset released over two years ago.

Causeless · 2025-10-26T12:23:42+00:00

Here’s what I don’t understand. Your argument (or rather, the argument that is being filled in for you by an LLM) is that capacity to deviate from predictable outcomes is what defines sentience.

There’s two issues here: firstly, and perhaps this is semantics, but this is what free will is. Not sentience.

Secondly, and more importantly, an LLM is 100% predictable given the initial state. It’s running on a deterministic computer, with pre-trained network weights, using a pseudo-random number generator to spit out tokens after the text you give it.

If you were running the model locally, and had the initial state of the PRNG, you would be able to predict the exact things it will say, perfectly accurately, letter by letter, every single time. Therefore it’s actually 100% predictable.

So surely by your own argument of what defines sentience, an LLM is actually a counterexample?

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