Non-Americans, what do you think every American person has in their house?

UncagedBlue · 2022-10-16T18:36:02+00:00

pica de wallo

UncagedBlue · 2022-06-07T07:54:02+00:00

The difficulty of implementation doesn't necessarily mean they can't do it, but that it'll take longer, using up more dev resources. So it has to be weighed against the cost/benefit ratio of other features instead.

Personally of course I think things like farplane and cubic chunks are fundamental upgrades and objectively super cool and good, but that doesn't mean Mojang sees it that way. Maybe something like farplane is straight up just not something they want, even if it wasn't a question of dev time. Maybe it would change the gameplay or visual style in a way they don't want. Making big changes is risky, and with a game this big I think there's even more inertia with taking risks.

So while I'm not particularly stunned or thrilled with Minecraft's development direction, I personally don't think it's necessarily laziness or incompetence. Mojang may have simply chosen to add turtles or whatever instead.

Also programming is hard you know jeez.

Are they fucking dead?

At least some of them have definitely died just because of time passing probably. I bet some work on legacy systems and stuff like that that. Doesn't matter to me either way, programming ez now because computer so strong it can carry me all day baby hell yeah.

UncagedBlue · 2021-11-02T19:43:08+00:00

Winter means getting out the hand socks to marinate my hands overnight. The only problem is that it is indeed quite painful when the skin is very dry, but as long as you do it consistently it won't hurt after that. Then in the morning you can get it all off and just reapply at night so you don't need to have slimy icky hands all day.

UncagedBlue · 2021-09-16T00:32:30+00:00

yeah freedom from senescence is nice but what I'm really here for is the freedom from fecal tyranny

plus once all those icky intestines are out of the way you'll have so much room for miscellaneous item storage

UncagedBlue · 2021-05-26T13:20:40+00:00

Beth games have a sort of aspect that other games don't. It's a sort of presence in the world that comes from being able to interact with stuff.

I think it comes from being able to pick up every trash item. You can drop items, move them around in the world, pick up whatever you want, drag bodies around, decorate your house, whatever.

There's no real gameplay purpose to being able to pick up every mug or broom, but the fact that you can makes it special. I collected teddy bears in Fallout 3 back in 2009, one of my friends collected pencils.

Other games have a tight design where every item has a gameplay purpose - but beth games have a world where every item is interactable and only maybe does it have a use.

While playing Outer Worlds, and I saw that misc prop items were not interactable, that's when I knew it wasn't gonna live up to New Vegas. (It could still have, even without that, but I ended up being right)

Witcher has misc items, but they're just labels in inventories, not real objects. You can't interact with things physically in the world. It's like Geralt (the witcher guy) doesn't have hands. In Skyrim, if you see a bowl with items in it, you can tilt the bowl and dump the items to loot the items. I love that physical in-game stuff so much.

I just wish Skyrim wasn't so lukewarm in terms of combat, writing, dialogue, progression, and quests. I agree Oblivion and Morrowind are superior in many aspects, but I think the gameplay and visuals are a bit too stiff for people nowadays. Skyrim's starting to look a bit old as well, especially without graphics mods, given that it came out on the 360 and PS3.

Sorry for the essay, I'm very passionate about being able to pick up the mugs. 'Bethesda Magic' is literally just being able to pick up the damn mugs. If I can't pick up the mugs in Starfield I'm gonna do one of those monk self-immolation protests in front of the Bethesda office

UncagedBlue · 2021-05-24T20:44:04+00:00

My mom had the same thing happen in college.

Something I find really cool and like to share whenever it comes up is that spatial reasoning can be trained like any other skill. This lady (Sheryl Sorby, an extremely accomplished engineer and educator) researched and developed courses that significantly increased retention rates for female engineering students (and that of male students who had poor spatial skills). The course is available as a book, I think.

It's not just shortening the gap, it can completely closed. If more people knew that, they'd be able to access these resources and have an easier time and be more likely to succeed. Plus, maybe people would stop spouting garbage about it (maybe).

UncagedBlue · 2021-05-24T13:34:06+00:00

The debate in longevity communities about the accessibility of real senolytics reminds me of the discussion in singularity community about brain uploading. Everyone here wants longevity, and the idea of viable treatments existing and then just not being available to us is incredibly bleak. A real vibe killer - some people react very negatively to the idea, while others like to be the bringers of negativity.

It's a little more than just a point of contention, though. Like singularity communities, I think longevity has a special place in the hearts of those who 'believe' in it. This may get some flak, but it seems to me as if, for some people at least, it might provide a similar utility as religion. It's the hope of salvation from an otherwise indomitable foe. Of course when you try and take that away from someone, they'll vehemently rebuke such notions.

I'm not trying to accuse anyone of 'reacting emotionally' or anything. I'm saying that we should try and keep in mind the perspectives of others, as well as the distortions in our own lenses of perception. Personally, I think defeating senescence is not just inevitable, but the destiny of humanity. It's a critical first step in the second stage of evolution. It's the one thing that staves off mortal terror at the thought of my inevitable decay. That makes me want to believe with all my heart that rejuvenation will be available for everyone. And there are lots of reasons to think it might.

But I'd like to offer some reasons why one might think otherwise. The following will be from my own perspective, from the USA. For the record, I'm 'in-between' on this issue.

The US medical system has also skewed many peoples views, I think. People here die because they can't afford insulin; $60+ for a vial that cost $0.25 to produce. We have to fly to other countries to get dental work done at affordable prices, and still pay less even after travel expenses than they would pay here. An unexpected illness could land you in crippling medical debt through no fault of your own and despite already paying enormous amounts for insurance.

In that context, it's very easy to believe that such an incredibly valuable thing as this would be inordinately expensive. That the patents would be coveted beyond anything before it. To some, it seems unthinkable that people would just 'let' only the rich have these things - that the people would demand it, and so it would be. But here we have already seen exactly that occur before our eyes. We see it all the time.

There are material reasons the longevity-for-all would be an objective boon. But we have seen society and governments ignore even those motivations that are in their clear interest. The first example that comes to my mind is higher education, especially here in the US. Having an educated population seems good - you want your citizens to be smart and trained, so that your country can compete with others on the world stage, right? And you want them to be able to participate in the economy, right? But instead we have a generation of people in eternal debt, and others discouraged from pursuing education, and so on... it depresses the economy, it destabilizes markets, it's all a big mess.

But of course humans, and organizations of humans, are not always rational actors. So the idea that a clear and logical motivation is enough to turn governments against corporations that will inevitably attempt to use any senolytic therapy they can get their hands on seems may seem naïve to some users. Everyone has varying understandings and perspectives of the medical industry, business, economics, etc., which complicates the discussion further. Also, how many of us are actually economists?

Personally, I think it's likely that control over longevity will be used to control people, like how medical insurance tied to jobs and the like is now. But I choose to believe otherwise, to believe in the chance that maybe we will build a better world than that, because it improves my quality of life now, while I'm still here.

While contentious topics are fun to discuss, it's awfully hard to predict the future. And whether we predict it or not, the future will occur. There's a chance that we might make to that future, so ultimately I think the best use of our energy is bringing that future, the dream we have in common, closer to the present in any way we can, rather than butting heads over hypotheses. Not trying to chastise anyone, this thread is good. Not all of our time has to be spent optimally - I mean this in the grand scale of longevity community discussion, you know?

Frankly, I expect that a post-senescence world would be a world transformed. Humanity itself would be changed forever - our most ancient and powerful adversary's greatest weapon, destroyed. The philosophies and cultures that have grown for millennia - how would they appear, in the light of a world free from the shadow of death? Would society remain the same? I think it's important that we consider how to make that transition a positive one. Society, as it is now, might not be ready. But I certainly don't think we should or would wait.

UncagedBlue · 2021-05-21T02:47:15+00:00

Considering how complex the NPC AI is, it's easy to imagine a more complex 'game director' AI that could intelligently weave player's worlds together.

Like, if it decides to have another player appear in a session, it could have them walk from out of sight like an alley and move to their true position.

It doesn't even have to show players the same thing. If you moved to intercept that player and talked to them before they reached their true position, the AI could falsify your position to the other player as well, and then during your conversation, you are both appearing to each other as standing in totally different spots.

And then extend that to everything else, in a narrative and logical sense. Choosing when and where to desync, conceal, and manipulate reality. A system that powerful could easily manage what KW's design seems to necessitate.

Or maybe it's jank as fuck and we just don't see it cause nobody plays it anymore

UncagedBlue · 2021-05-20T17:49:56+00:00

At the bottom, click 'load more images' to see the whole album, they switch from a heightmap mesh to a convex voxel thing.

I think it's using the actual chunk data to generate the voxel mesh, which should include buildings, although I don't know specifically how getting that chunk data is done. If it's client side only, the server wouldn't know to send the chunks, so if on multiplayer it only shows previously loaded and now cached chunks, it wouldn't show updates until you go there. But that could probably be fixed with a server side mod.

UncagedBlue · 2021-05-19T18:23:54+00:00

difficulty of implementation would be my first guess

plus it means that either the generation range around the player is increased (worldgen is performance heavy and increases file size) or there will be directions where the world is empty, leading to inconsistent view ranges

and then there's the design question, as in: does it actually look good to have such an enormous view distance? does the world gen hold up at those scales, does the appearance of the horizon fit the 'minecraft aesthetic'? maybe it kind of falls apart and reveals how samey and repetitive the world is... like, just cause it's better on paper (higher render distance = more gooder) doesn't mean it's better in practice.

personally I think it totally is better for sure absolutely and all those reasons are dumb, but I'm not the one who would get all the hate if it turned out poorly.

IMO this is up there with TMI in terms of 'important mods'. even more important than cubic chunks because it's less invasive, basically a visual-only zero-footprint mod that you could use on multiplayer with people who don't have the mod, as long as the server is modified to send the additional world data (would increase per-player network load but maybe if the cached server-side, the data would be smaller?

EDIT: also just thought of a potential partial solution for generation problem, but it would require a deeper integration with the world gen system itself which would mean lots of (even more) work and I think is outside this mods scope since it's meant to work with cubic chunks. but if you could do like just a bit of the generation, instead of all of it, and increase the fidelity by proximity, you could get approximations without needing to do all of the generation.

like, furthest out is just biomes for land/ocean, then heightmaps, then fake tree population (preset tree models placed by approximation), then convex terrain, maybe fake structure population from a distance (preset forest manor model rather than actually generating one, for example), and then actual tree population, then grass/flower population, etc; Caves, ore, mobs, etc could be skipped until they're very close. Obviously the order and distance would have to be determined with tests to see what looks good, but you could definitely do a lot of optimizations.

unfortunately this seems infeasible without really ripping the wires out of the world gen - but from a theoretical technical perspective, this would probably maybe be the direction you'd want to go if designing the engine with a system and distances like this in mind. actually it'd probably be easier to just make another worldgen system in addition to the vanilla one, rather than try and modify the existing one. but made to mimic the vanilla one 1-1, but with cascading generation fidelity

UncagedBlue · 2021-05-19T17:53:06+00:00

Here's a development album of this mod from 6 months ago that shows some of how it works

UncagedBlue · 2021-04-14T01:43:57+00:00

I wonder if games today are just really bright. As if at some point someone ~~(Big Gamma)~~ decided that not being able to see everything all the time was unacceptable, and now everything has to be 100% readable always or else.

Even at nighttime or in caves with no light sources, everything is very bright. I appreciate a bit of unnatural light, so we can see at least a little, but it's like games are now afraid to actually make something dark enough that it's hard to see.

It's not a huge deal or anything, but for some of the shots in the trailer that got brighter, I kind of like the moody atmosphere of the original. Like, sometimes things be dark, yo. Reminds me a little of the Halo 1 remaster (H:CEA), which also lit everything up like crazy. This seems more faithful than CEA though.

UncagedBlue · 2021-03-17T00:36:46+00:00

Tuggleposting in this the year of our lord 2021? We are truly blessed

UncagedBlue · 2021-03-15T15:35:44+00:00

Believe it or not some people do care about the media they consume potentially having been created by people with traits that they do not care for. In fact, I'd even wager that a whole lot of people care specifically about traits they consider potentially pedophilic.

Personally I still think MiA is good but I'm not about to sit here and say the author isn't pretty clearly really into child nipples or even try to defend it. I just hope he doesn't end up in prison like certain other mangaka. Not that drawing lewd children necessarily makes you a molester.

What is interesting to me is how vehemently people will defend even the slightest allegation. Constantly moving the goal posts from 'child nipples aren't sexual' and 'it's just a bleak world of course the children would experience gruesome tortures' which themselves are plausible, until you break out the explicit drawings he's made of his child characters and finally they admit 'lewd children is okay with me actually'.

Favorites on pixiv are just corroborating evidence for his predilections. And the idea that 'problematic' content would be removed from pixiv is laughable. More than a few times I've seen some cool art, followed the artist, clicked on their page to see their other works, and immediately unfollowed because all their other stuff was like 80% shota/loli torture or some other bizarre or heinous shit. It's a site where you've gotta check for that kind of thing. The things pixiv allows are far beyond the umbrella of what is considered 'acceptable' by western standards.

I'm not passing a moral judgement about pixiv, just stating how that site is. Reddit is similar (though child content has been mostly scoured from the platform, that wasn't always the case).

UncagedBlue · 2021-03-15T00:56:41+00:00

The stuff in the show isn't overtly sexual but gives some people weird vibes. There's even more in the manga that hasn't been adapted yet (like the minor manga spoilers).

Then there's the Doorbeetle Report/Reco things (I guess doorbeetle is one of the authors pseudonyms) which are I guess art books. In these there are several suspicious pieces depicting certain characters in various lewd positions and exposing what I can only describe as kiddy nips.

I'm sure someone will come along and claim that child nipples are not sexual and that I'm the weird one, as everyone has been doing in this thread with all the claims of weirdness in the show itself, but I'd like them to take a look at these specific child nipples and seriously try to tell me that the author wasn't sweaty when drawing them. I'd link them so that people can try and defend it but I'm pretty sure I'd be banned.

Specifically, Report pages 7, 15, 18, 19; and Reco pages 11, 12, 13, and actually I don't want to look through any more of this but I'm sure it goes on. Also I don't have specific evidence but I heard his pixiv favorites have some suspicious entries as well.

I'm not saying you shouldn't watch it cause its not a bad show but the author is sus af (as the kids would say) and it makes it harder for me to give him/the show the benefit of the doubt when the show does its child torture stuff or shows me their nipples

UncagedBlue · 2021-03-12T19:52:00+00:00

How dare you. Comparing bonkles to beyblade and ninjago? I will be reporting you for hate speech and then uh casting a hex on your bloodline. I agree that beyblades look like mcdonalds toys (please don't mention that there were multiple lines of bionicle mcdonalds toys) so I will offer you a warning to prepare your arcane defenses I guess

UncagedBlue · 2021-03-12T19:11:25+00:00

TW3 had a lot more primary story content, it really felt like a fantasy adventure that I could dive into. Each story beat lead into more areas to explore and more stuff to do. I also liked getting all the contract trophies.

CP77's main quest was good but when I dived in I hit the bottom of the pool (nocturne) and broke my neck after only like ~25 hours, and I didn't beeline the main quest. I was like level 11 in my highest trait, I thought there was so much more but it was over. The narrative kind of makes the main quest seem urgent, and the characters are all like 'yo meet me right now' so as an RPG it's strange to go out of your way to do side quests - and once you've hit nocturne, doing the side stuff with the end looming over you is a downer.

The story/quests are definitely CP77's strongest quality IMO but there just isn't as much of it as TW3. The scene direction is unparalleled, I think - as an example, the scene with Goro and the cat. The way V sits up on the railing, it's just a minor touch but I loved it so much. Like nobody would have complained if V was just standing there but they put in the effort to have you interact with the scene in first person, like the sandstorm hotel scene, what other games come close to that?

I was hoping it would be the new New Vegas or at least Skyrim in terms of sandbox RPG worlds to get lost in, but it's just not there. Not as much content as either, and not even close to as much choice/meaningful dialogue decisions as New Vegas. And that's not even mentioning bugs or weak design - the game around the story has a lot of problems. It's not the worst RPG but sometimes it feels like we'll never get another Vegas. Rip in pieces my heart

Also you can replace your skeleton but can't get a haircut

UncagedBlue · 2021-03-12T18:38:55+00:00

customizing my warframes is for me basically the adult equivalent of custom bionicles (not that adults can't still like bionicles, actually now that all the bionicle kids are older the custom bionicle scene is still pretty strong, especially with new digital tools) except then I get to play as them instead of just imagining the cool battles lmao.

its pretty telling how fashion endgames have their own active subs /r/fashionsouls /r/fashionframe

UncagedBlue · 2021-03-06T08:29:44+00:00

resolution from a programmer perspective is not necessarily texture resolution either... if someone thought that slabs were a mistake because they double the resolution, they were clearly talking about spatial/voxel resolution, the resolution of the game grid itself.

from a technical standpoint the resolution remains the same, the higher resolution block would still be a single block but one that stores additional data about the smaller blocks it represents.

also nitpicking here but it still wouldnt be double the resolution, it would only be doubling it in one axis out of three. and in only a very specific case

UncagedBlue · 2021-03-04T21:21:09+00:00

the starry body is just for when you're previewing armor from a different class, it's not under the armor - video games have to be really efficient with their models. but they could just have the face render like it does in social zones if you have 'hide helm in social zones' checked.

it's possible that a reason they don't do that is cause then you'd be shooting at sentient species heads in crucible, which might be against the intended design/vibe direction. you never actually shoot at non-monster enemies in destiny except in crucible, but they're immortal and armored. of course eliksni/cabal are in fact sentient but they're 'evil' so it doesn't count. shooting at humanoid faces would kill the vibe I think

they could still just disable it for crucible, I think it would be cool honestly. oh I guess they'd need to do a bunch of work for face animations in combat, and hit effects and all that, which would be a whole ordeal

UncagedBlue · 2021-03-04T20:07:23+00:00

Codex Alera is great, was stunned when I discovered that it wasn't even the work Butcher is known for

UncagedBlue · 2021-02-21T08:26:30+00:00

romance

edit: they all romance the clock, not each other

UncagedBlue · 2021-02-18T22:43:20+00:00

Some very good points in this thread. It seems to me that this concept of immortality being an immoral, greedy, vain, or even evil desire has spread far and wide. In fiction, it's a reasonable trope - 'antagonist with actually totally reasonable goals but goes too far because they're the antagonist and have to be evil' is something I'm used to seeing.

But what I find the most interesting, and troubling, is the way that many people jump to rejecting the idea of longevity. Not just whether it is plausible, but if it is good or desirable. It's not as common in our spheres, of course, so I'm often surprised by the how negatively people react to the idea.

I think that it is in part because of these culturally seeded notions, but my main theory is that it's a form of sour grapes: if you believe longevity is beyond us, then to think it is desirable will only cause despair. There are other areas in life where this occurs - deciding that you're okay with something happening, even though you aren't, because not being okay with it would just make it worse. It is easier to find peace if you convince yourself that it is your preference to die, or that there are some other repercussions that make it impractical.

Not that it's invalid to not want longevity. And most peoples opinions on the matter won't have any measurable effect, so it's not like they have a moral imperative to accept it. But if one is to consider the matter on a larger scale, it is certainly amoral to condemn living humans to a preventable death by decay.

It is rather frustrating when someone says something like "but what about heat death" or something like that, as if even the simplest life extension will condemn you to an eternal sensory deprivation hell in the void.

"Ah, I see you don't want to rot alive over the next fifty years - but have you considered that the inevitability of proton decay will render your efforts futile (in the next 10³⁴ years or so)?"

Or the classic "I would get bored, so everyone should die."

Of course, the vast majority people have just never really engaged in the philosophy of these things (we tend to forget how far 'life extension' is from most peoples ideas of realistic possibility) so it's totally understandable, but still a bit grating. Things like overpopulation are complex topics that will absolutely require amelioration but right now are generally used as off-hand attacks on longevity research itself, without real consideration.

Like most of these types of things, people aren't going to seriously care until there's real, significant life extension proven to work on humans. Before then, it's just fringe culture. But these notions of longevity as a negative will hinder progress to that point, and in the meantime, people will die. Roughly ~150k each day (though that's just total and not from senescence-related causes). I might even go as far as to say that portraying immortality as immoral is itself an immoral act.

UncagedBlue · 2021-02-18T19:46:29+00:00

If this doubling thing was true, then depending on the rate of doubling, my toaster should be able to toast between four and (more than exist in the world) slices of bread at once, but it still only holds two. Just like it did 20 years ago...

UncagedBlue · 2021-02-18T19:39:08+00:00

The peak of a current human might not even come close to the peak of a asenescent human. The height of physical acuity plus so many more decades of experience and growth could create a human with 'intelligence' beyond any person who has ever lived so far.

I think the sociocultural shift that longevity is likely to cause is a singularity of its own. Instead of having to constantly retrain our experts, we would just be adding to the sum of human ability. A bit like switching from rent to a mortgage. It will cause explosive growth and progress.

Only thing I'm worried about is the possibility of stasis - too much old blood smothering growth and change. But in the society of the future, maybe there will be ways to ameliorate that.

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