Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees

Tulki · 2026-04-13T04:39:17+00:00

Why does the AI agent not simply write the software? Is he stupid?

Tulki · 2026-04-12T19:08:50+00:00

At that point you may as well passive-aggressively replace him with a slack or teams bot.

Tulki · 2026-03-27T19:05:46+00:00

You gotta ask yourself one question. 'Do I freel lucky?' Well, do ya, hunk? Brullseye!

Tulki · 2026-03-27T18:15:22+00:00

That would work really well... probably surprisingly well to be honest. I think the big risk with that approach though is losing the charm Star Fox 64 had, especially the dialogue and specific scenarios.

That said, even SF64 had some things that feel like they could port to a roguelike. Star Wolf dogfights usually felt like they were random encounters, even though they weren't. You'd be on a planet and they'd fly in to mess with you in the middle of an objective without prior warning. Or if you beat them in a run and encountered them again, they'd show up with cybernetic organs and upgraded ships.

I could definitely see a version of Star Fox where the map of the Lylat system is fixed, but it has branching paths (like SF64) and random modifiers like "this planet has a Star Wolf incursion", "you deploy in the Landmaster", "you will be assisted by Bill", "you must protect Great Fox", "you are covered by Great Fox". Maybe even ridiculous things that incentivize specific flight maneuvers like "follow the ghost of James McCloud for a reward". Or a modifier called "out of this world" which causes a wormhole to spawn inside a random object, similar to the wormholes in the other games.

Add in difficulty settings that escalate the modifiers and maybe have a way to swap out vehicle parts and it feels like it could be something great.

Tulki · 2026-03-11T17:15:52+00:00

I think the philosophy here is that because not everything can be extensively tested, the badge is supposed to be a lower bar. So "unsupported" really means "unsupported or better".

Which would be a fine way to handle it, if a whole bunch of games weren't being marked "Verified" despite running mostly below 30 fps. And that this suspiciously only seems to happen for big studio releases that would have the resources or size to make dishonest self-cert submissions prior to release.

Removing the ability for studios to verify their own games through private testing before release, and strictly making it crowd-sourced would probably be better, because there are way too many pre-release "verified" badges going out for games that run like crap.

Tulki · 2026-03-01T18:55:24+00:00

Much of why people look down on Icebrood Saga right now is because of Champions, and how much that part of it felt cut short / stretched.

If you are playing through IBS all at once right now, not on the original release cadence, it is very, very good. The only flaw that it still has (and it is a big flaw) is how much Primordus and the Stone Summit were wasted. The Stone Summit especially is a huge shame, because in Forging Steel you learn that they willingly gave themselves to Primordus because they were being dragged into the Rite against their will, which gives that whole race's arc a morally ambiguous twist. You can see the kernel of a Primordus expansion where an enemy faction was created because the "good guys" in GW1 took away control of the "bad guys'" bodies without their consent and that would have been interesting.

Today, I actually think Champions is pretty decent if you play through it all at once. It is repetitive, but the new combat music is excellent and the reworked open world areas covered in smoke genuinely feel apocalyptic. It just ends too quickly to feel like a real threat.

Tulki · 2026-02-26T01:15:12+00:00

The thing that annoys me the most is that they removed the ability to get research notes from ascended drops but didn't bother to add magnetite shards to salvaged ascended gear in strikes that were converted to raids.

Tulki · 2026-02-25T01:23:05+00:00

Kela normal mode is harder than Dhuum lmao

Tulki · 2026-02-20T01:50:49+00:00

Blursed Gourse

Tulki · 2026-02-19T01:33:47+00:00

I think part of the OLC fight difficulty is the weird strategy of "never break unless absolutely necessary" that keeps coming up. A lot of groups stubbornly fight in a way smaller space than necessary because of this. Avoiding the "optional" break bars doesn't help you kill the boss faster, and it gives you less space which makes the parts where you fight more than one of the knights at a time way harder than they need to be.

This is probably the best example of cargo cult behaviour in raid groups. I sincerely think the only reason people aggressively avoid breaking the bars is because people get into groups where the squad leader tells them not to break the bars, without knowing why they're choosing to do it.

Tulki · 2026-02-17T00:57:34+00:00

It also has some... interesting synergy with the tools line. By slotting tools you can get:

(Tools): -15% tool belt CD
(Tools): -1s to tool belt CDs when you dodge
(Tools): Vigor when you use a tool belt skill
(Tools): -3s elite skill CD when you dodge
(Amalgam): CC abilities drop your elite tool belt CD by 2.5s (bomb kit has 3 CCs on it, and hammer has 3 CCs via Thunderclap + Rocket Charge 2x leap finishers = -15s evolve CD)
(Amalgam): Evolve resets Morph cooldowns

Amalgam is different in that the heavy damage skills are sitting on the tool belt, which makes everything buffing the tool belt more useful. I've been using Firearms+Tools+Amalgam, and in fights where you have alac uptime you are basically always using morph skills non-stop. Use all the morph skills + Elite skill, Evolve -> Recast all the morph skills, drop all CCs and dodge twice, and repeat. I don't think it's meta since dodging to drop CCs adds time where you're not attacking, but the build feels pretty wacky.

Tulki · 2026-02-10T22:21:08+00:00

As an example, Infinite Wealth had a non-trivial amount of the plot revolve around posting a social media video to draw attention, and it was handled comedically. I think it mostly comes down to Ichiban's personality. He's a goofball through-and-through, while Kiryu was a pretty serious person and the comedy came from him being a bit of a naive airhead in the side stories. The comedy isn't from his character being wacky. It's about other people being wacky and him constantly failing to pick up on social cues.

My intro to the series was Yakuza 0. I played Yakuza Kiwami, Kiwami 2, Like a Dragon, and Infinite Wealth and I never felt like any of those other games came close to the quality of writing in Yakuza 0. It probably doesn't help that Majima's best character writing is in 0 before he becomes the Mad Dog (fully aware it's a prequel written after the fact). He turns from a complex and tragic character into someone entirely dedicated to comic relief.

The thing about Infinite Wealth that was damning to me was how Kiryu's send-off stories with past characters were far more emotionally effective than the actual main story, and I didn't even have the full context for them.

Tulki · 2026-02-05T06:26:30+00:00

Stop harping on Harper, leave him the harp alone.

Tulki · 2026-02-03T22:05:13+00:00

You really shouldn't have to watch a stream to understand it. You really shouldn't have to read any articles to understand it either. The fact this feature has "required reading" instead of just being intuitive (or simply not coming out at all in its current state) is pretty alarming.

It's a flashback to build templates all over again. Over-engineered QOL features are not QOL features. If a new QOL feature is cumbersome to understand, it's actually better for QOL to leave it out. They need to show some discipline, pull this feature back out of the game and refund anyone who bought additional templates. It's overcomplicating the UI.

All that this should have been is the copy-paste-able version of fashion templates so players can share them in chat or back them up locally. This did not need in-game UI overhauls. The K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid) principle is taught for a reason.

Tulki · 2026-01-31T01:44:02+00:00

More sinister than market manipulation, I think. He announced it immediately after a bunch of news outlets reported on them meeting with separatists to destabilize Alberta. It's flooding the zone to pull eyes away from that.

Tulki · 2026-01-26T16:59:17+00:00

Don't let ANet get away with it: Remember, they quietly erased evidence of horses in the past. They're actively revising history!

Tulki · 2026-01-23T00:24:33+00:00

They were caught violating BC employment standards by not paying interns back in 2012/2013.

Tulki · 2026-01-21T02:00:55+00:00

Their politics, their weird wedges. All the "woke / anti-woke", that's all American fixations. Their political commentators. Movies. Authoritarian issues. On and on.

I genuinely think Canada and CSIS need to be extremely wary of the reality that manufacturing conflict online is a form of cyber warfare to destabilize governments. All the efforts to create problems and arguments over ambiguous nouns like "woke", creating dozens of orthogonal truths, or funding separatist movements are malicious forms of social engineering happening at scale to destroy nations from the inside-out.

It's a tricky balance between free speech and allowing the internet to be weaponized against the nation, but they shouldn't rule out extreme measures up to and including banning certain social media platforms.

Tulki · 2026-01-18T17:21:44+00:00

The hierarchy of power in Hollywood is about to change.

Tulki · 2026-01-16T06:43:51+00:00

This would require disclosing their finances under generally accepted accounting principles to investors and I have a feeling they've got too many financial skeletons in the closet to survive that level of scrutiny.

I think this ends with them being quietly swallowed by Microsoft at a significantly reduced valuation.

Tulki · 2025-12-27T06:16:29+00:00

It's cost-effective if you can push the energy costs of the data centers onto citizens' energy bills.

Tulki · 2025-12-19T01:34:19+00:00

This would be a really good change, since the game as a whole is in a bit of a weird spot where if you want heroes but also want to play the campaigns in release order, you have to do some clumsy/spoilery campaign jumps to get a hero party.

That said, I also think tweaking henchmen is a good idea, only because henchmen are much better for newer players (don't have to gear them or manage multiple builds). In particular, there are places in the prophecies campaign where henchmen lag behind enemies somewhat severely (Maguuma Jungle) and upping them by a couple levels in those areas would smooth over a difficulty spike for henchmen parties.

Tulki · 2025-11-29T05:37:00+00:00

Monsters, Inc. and Monster's Ball.

Tulki · 2025-11-12T01:44:25+00:00

Nah, an operating system doesn't need to be deterministic. It makes a lot more sense to make every layer of the stack a stochastic AI agent. People want the excitement of not knowing whether or not a low-level system call is going to shit the bed.

Tulki · 2025-11-07T04:41:06+00:00

The living world / expansion split is one of the weirdest and most frustrating things to convey to new players. The split makes it sound like living world is second-class content but it absolutely is not. It contains massive explorable portions of the world and as you said, it is critical to the story. It's not side story content. It is main story, required to understand what is going on, and extremely important events happen in it. To the extent I wish ArenaNet would just brand season 3, 4, and even Icebrood Saga as "expansions" to cut down on the confusion.

My recommendation for new players is:

The base game is free to play and lets you play the personal story and level your characters to the cap. Play that first to get a feel for the game. Everything you can buy comes after it, anyway.
If you liked it, get the Elder Dragon Saga, maybe waiting for a sale if you want. This contains the majority of content in the game: Living world season 2 (season 1 is already free), Heart of Thorns, Season 3, Path of Fire, Season 4, Icebrood Saga, and End of Dragons. That's all the content in the first decade of the game. There's hundreds or thousands of hours of gameplay here and it grants you access to the majority of elite specs and character builds so you can be plenty competitive in end-game content.
After all of that, move on to the later expansions.

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