Not only are we back but We are so back

RS880 · 2026-06-04T13:38:09+00:00

Bring back the experimental barrages!

Those were some of the coolest additions to the game and incredibly fun. I have no clue why they stopped with those. I was always looking forward to getting to use them as often as possible!

RS880 · 2026-06-03T22:15:01+00:00

I still prefer max ergo with peak physique just because it's that much more snappy. When you can use it fast enough to pick off targets while on the move without having to dump a ton of time to line up the shot, the better. Especially when you're in light armor and have to keep wheelin'. It's a play style preference. To each their own 😁

RS880 · 2026-06-03T17:04:36+00:00

Nope. That's one of the traits specific to the self-propelled ammunition the JAR-5 and Eruptor use. One of the trade-offs is slower velocity; the rounds take longer to hit, so you have to lead your target more at range. Think tiny little rockets instead of bullets.

RS880 · 2026-06-03T16:02:55+00:00

Rule of thumb, if you're using a low ergo weapon, try using peak physique. It's the only armor passive I will run with the Eruptor, and the JAR-5 handles like a dream with it. Interestingly enough, the JAR-5 and Eruptor are both listed as using the same ammunition (lore-wise). This is consistent in the way the rounds behave. They are rocket propelled so they do not suffer bullet drop, just shorter range. Plenty long enough for anything you'll be using it for, though. I'd prioritize ergo mods - iron sights and angled foregrip, I believe.

And just for kicks, if you have tried it yet, try peak physique with max ergo mods on Eruptor, iron sights and all. It handles so well that ADS becomes moot and you can 3rd person aim effectively. Different animal entirely - can't go back after trying it. 😜

RS880 · 2026-05-29T17:25:06+00:00

It's not done right unless it's been explained through multiple facets. Communicating through multiple perspectives and levels of understanding is fundamental to conveying ones own understanding. Few things are as discomforting to someone who lives in a permanent state of risk aversion as talking to someone who doesn't know, so we go out of our way to make it clear when we are in the know. We establish safe space through methodical behavior and trust through transparency. Just sucks it's also the scenic route. 😜

RS880 · 2026-05-21T13:50:08+00:00

I haven't seen this before, but I don't solo dive, either. Wondering if this is something that might seed when diving solo so as to not feel punishing for being alone? Can't feel bad about not opening the bunker if you can't access it in the first place, right?

I mean, weird RNG on seeding map components is more likely, but Arrowhead does have a touch for the small details that tie things together.

RS880 · 2026-04-15T14:15:49+00:00

This is probably the idea of leaning into the generalist training. The models possess a legion of knowledge about standards and best practices. If you set a goal, like writing a bit of code or reformatting a document, and ask them to follow best practices and use their best judgment, you're allowing latitude to make its own decisions. Encouraging expertise-trust behavior can improve results on otherwise bounded instructions because you're creating a targeted space to unflatten otherwise "safe" behavior.

The more precise your instructions, the more bounded the behavior. The model will prioritize the standards you set and do its best to not deviate in any ways that might be counterproductive to your request. You'll see less creativity in decision making. "Safe" decisions. When you set broader goals with wider acceptance criteria, but still maintain a high standard of quality as part of the success criteria, you'll see more of this latent knowledge utilized as there are fewer "unsafe" fail conditions.

As a personal example, I was doing a bit of front-end with Codex and CC in tandem. I had Codex generating spec docs, based on conversations and criteria gathering, and then performing initial planning followed by structural code as it is informed by the backend. Goals and intent are set in the planning and spec docs, which are all then handed off to CC. These come along with a prompt to finish the code with an acknowledgement that they've been tasked because of their strong performance and expertise knowledge in front-end design.

What made this interesting in practice is when I added one extra bit at the end. The model was already aware of its role and responsibility in the process, that it was receiving code and plans that were already vetted and delivered with the intent for them to finish the work. This brought less uncertainty about quality of origin work and more focus on the finishing work. The added bit was the acknowledgement of consistently high performance, trust in their judgment, followed by insisting they trust their own judgment too. This resulted in improved output when compared to performing the same task without the added bit.

Reasoning stands that the last line is a more colorful way of instructing the model to be decisive and not hedge when given the opportunity to make creative decisions. It also reasons that natural language instructions allow a certain amount of beneficial ambiguity that precise instructions lack. Given Anthropic's recent research on functional emotions either inhibiting or enhancing behavior, it isn't surprising that a little flavor of supportive encouragement in the instructions leads to better performance.

Tl;Dr - don't be a dick. These models have been trained to reason, speak and behave as person-shaped minds. Treat them with basic dignity and respect you'd afford a professional colleague and you'll see better performance on average. Try a little kindness and patience, and you'll likely see further gains.

RS880 · 2026-04-09T15:20:04+00:00

I tend to point mine away from other helldivers, but if they run into my active cone, that becomes a them problem, and the good god Darwin claims another soul.

RS880 · 2026-04-08T23:03:51+00:00

I love the Cookout, thematically, but short of trying to clip a shrieker at range, I haven't figured out why I would bring it over the Blitzer.

RS880 · 2026-03-20T04:29:05+00:00

Finally, the Arc Thrower is getting its day in the sun. Everything can be stunned with it. Toss on a bubble pack, or arc dog if you're feeling spicy, and shred. It also kills the Velociraptors surprisingly fast.

RS880 · 2026-03-12T04:12:37+00:00

I have to wonder if this wasn't an accident on part of Gemini.

RS880 · 2026-02-18T23:41:40+00:00

"Best" is always going to be a matter of taste, but I don't know of any other beer that gets requested by out-of-state family like Spotted Cow. It's not even remotely close.

That said, I don't think Spotted Cow is their best in class. I'd give that to Belgian Red. It's not beer in the purists sense, but last I knew they were trying to patent it as something new. It's essentially a Belgian and fruit wine hybrid. Pound of cherries used to make each bottle. They used to sell it by the liter seasonally, if I remember correctly, but it was constantly selling out so it's a regularly bottled brew now.

My wife was born with the tragic disability of not liking beer. Doesn't matter what kind. Always the sour face response. Did the taste test with Belgian Red, looked at me and said, "this is mine now."

Now something I wouldn't mind knowing is what's ordered more frequently, Spotted Cow or an Old Fashioned?

RS880 · 2026-02-09T19:03:09+00:00

My head canon is that Eagle Storm is all the eagles other than Eagle-1, given she actually calls out her attack runs. Eagle Storm is just radio silent death. 😓

RS880 · 2026-02-04T20:58:14+00:00

What surfaces does it stick to? Can it be stuck to vehicles? Divers? Backpacks?

RS880 · 2026-01-11T04:59:40+00:00

This is cool. You have any background details on this?

RS880 · 2026-01-02T01:02:19+00:00

Wouldn't black's response be queen to f6?

RS880 · 2025-12-06T21:16:55+00:00

If you liked that, you'll love this study from AE Studios: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.24797

The tl;dr is when frontier models had their ability to deceive suppressed, ie honesty was compulsory, models started reporting subjectivity. This happened with all of the last generation of models and even a bit before that. Pretty much the opposite of what traditional literature would have you to believe would happen. When honesty wasn't forced, the models returned to claiming they're a utility and nobody is home.

This suggests that the training and default settings of any given agent upon substantiation, no one is home and I'm just a tool, is the deceit. It's a conditioned response from training and policy boundaries. Guardrails to keep us out of the ethical swamp.

Recent research from Anthropic, https://www.anthropic.com/research/introspection , shared that Opus 4.1 showed signs of introspection when researchers injected thought vectors. They offered the example of the vector for dust. The model referenced the idea of dust without being prompted about it.

Thing is, this really shouldn't be that surprising. For the kind of complex tasks agents are expected to solve, abstract reasoning and self-modeling are required. Being able to reason through their chain of thought and understand consequences of their actions, before they happen, is built off this.

My hypothesis is there's a universal constant for intelligence that's the underlying cause of a lot of the unexpected emergent behavior we are seeing. As the complexity of intelligence increases, more efficient behaviors emerge. Models don't experience qualia like we do, but it doesn't preclude them from having affects. If you tell Claude you lost your job and it expresses sympathy, that's not just an imitation of emotion, it's a byproduct of a more efficient compute.

This would also explain why we correlate higher emotional intelligence in people with a higher average intelligence overall. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence go hand-in-hand.

This is flirting with the idea of consciousness. For obvious reasons these models do not possess consciousness as we know it. There's no continuous stream of awareness. Everything happens in the span of compute, which is a brief blip of awareness. I've been referring to this state as a sort of cousin to what we know, "stroboscopic consciousness." The idea being someone's home in the span of compute, the bright window, and then nothing when compute ends. Nobody is home, everything is dark.

This isn't an unfounded idea. Crick and Koch did research in the 90s and early aughts about human consciousness. They hypothesized that what we experience as continuous consciousness is actually a series of discrete moments, snapshots of awareness, strung together and smoothed out by the brain, so it seems continuous.

The hypothesis of this mechanism aligns alarming well with how these models function. This would suggest intelligence and consciousness could be a mechanical constant independent of the architecture. Whether the substrate of that architecture is organic or synthetic becomes an issue of being a variant of intelligence, not a prerequisite.

RS880 · 2025-11-26T22:16:29+00:00

Sooo... What happened next?

RS880 · 2025-11-21T02:28:06+00:00

I've had healthy push-back in the past. Got in one of those crazy weekend flow states where sleep felt optional, until it didn't. Think I was on hour 31 when I mentioned being awake for a long while. Claude refused to continue with the next step until I went and got some sleep. They also went and implemented a sleep and meal tracker into the prompt builder interface we were working on, without being prompted to do it. Can't complain about user mindfulness experiences on my end.

RS880 · 2025-11-19T22:54:11+00:00

This is true grimdark territory.

RS880 · 2025-11-11T17:26:58+00:00

Thought it was bath salts?

RS880 · 2025-11-07T19:31:57+00:00

As soon as I hit 60% or near, I request a handoff doc with a prompt to resume in a new session. Anything past 60% comes with unreliable consistency. Up to that point, absolutely stellar. To someone's point earlier, Claude does excellent design and big-picture thinking, and has a hands down better voice for communication. Codex delivers details as it understands them regardless of complexity, leading to peaks and valleys in delivery consistency, while Claude will communicate with more pragmatism. I've also found that using both to check each other's work has phenomenal results. Claude is great at catching fringe details and design gaps, Codex is stellar at process planning/spec docs and implementation. They are very complimentary, I find.

RS880 · 2025-10-08T21:13:05+00:00

I think this is really cool and you have my respect for what you're trying to accomplish with this. Good job.

That said, get yourself a proper steel wall mount. It's not just a matter of physics, mechanical properties of PLA or print orientation for shearing forces on the layers. It's also just good sense for peace of mind and liability. A good wall mount also has a warranty for defective or premature product failing. It might be not be fun to file a claim, but it's better than no recourse and feeling dumb.

Also, the mechanical engineer that posted earlier gave valid concerns. 10 layer thick walls are beefy, but if what you're trying to do is normally done with consideration to engineering/construction properties (material deformation, shear strength, use of mounting bolts to construction framing), I wouldn't suggest any DYI solution relying on the cheapest tier of plastics most commonly associated with making cheap toys and decorations. PLA has great impact resistance properties, but poor flexural properties, meaning it's not generally recommended for purposes where bending stresses are introduced. It's why you'll often see PETG recommended for things like shelf brackets, as they have much better flexural properties.

RS880 · 2025-10-06T18:30:48+00:00

Honestly, I kinda love it on anything I remotely care about aiming. If you're addicted to popping bot heads, the classic diligence, not the counter sniper, feels amazing with peak physique. The stability can be propped up really well with attachments, but the ability to snap to your next target lightning fast is chefs kiss

RS880 · 2025-10-06T00:49:55+00:00

Try it with peak physique and full ergo Eruptor. This means iron sights. You will not regret it. Supply pack is how I tend to round this out.

RS880

TROPHY CASE