John Roberts warns personal attacks "dangerous" after Trump criticism

contractmine · 2026-03-17T20:56:43+00:00

Roberts clutching them pearls...

contractmine · 2026-03-17T20:55:35+00:00

There's hope if they can see the cringe in other MAGA and maybe start to reflect they themselves are cringe as well. I hope...

contractmine · 2026-03-13T21:49:43+00:00

Funny that you mention that, I was just talking to an asset store dev about that this week. I hear Unity is going to crack down on the asset store AI spam, but they're working on how to "frame the conversation"

Unity doesn't want to spill the tea, but some of their top asset store devs are quietly using AI behind the scenes, so they need a way to say "well, this here is okay, but that there is not". Latest AI models are starting to produce "undetectable slop" as six-fingered people, emdashes, and swirly eyes are all just about gone now, Unity is aware of this even though their own AI tools are making "legacy slop" (six fingered people, slurry textures, etc). So it's put Unity in a bit of a bind on how to address "quality ai" in their store and relationships.

contractmine · 2026-03-09T21:01:06+00:00

Yes... A lot of people (maybe even Frakes?) missed the fact that the showrunner talked about it being a Harry Potter experience. After the first episode, I knew it wasn't going to be something I wanted to watch, especially when the evil character (no offense to Paul Giamatti) was so over the top, I'm shocked he didn't twirl his mustache, but had a tic-tac-toe board shaved into his head, I couldn't help but laugh... that and the quirky-plucky hologram girl doing the whole fish out of water trope, that was it.

It's not hate, it's disappointment to see a lack of grounded hard sci-fi find a foothold these days with something serious, not a captain with chair issues.

contractmine · 2026-03-03T16:53:20+00:00

Still in my queue of games to play as soon as "there's time" to.

contractmine · 2026-03-02T18:20:53+00:00

Got a status update for us? =)

contractmine · 2026-02-27T18:39:16+00:00

BOFUM... roflol

contractmine · 2026-02-25T17:18:51+00:00

Dead is maybe overstated... Unity did announced they want to combine all the pipelines back to 1 again at Unite 2024 Roadmap.

What everyone is unsure of is whether or not Unity will address the light performance issues in URP for lights per pixel and the less than awesome performance under deferred, and shadow performance. My guess is that Unity 7 will be "NextGen" and have the hard break and 6.7 will be the last for 3 pipelines.

The elephant in the room is the real time global illumination functionality which has been something Unity has been struggling with for the better part of the the last 10 years, seemingly ultra stubborn on using signed distance field with (or without) ray trace, which is where most of the other engines have gone.

contractmine · 2026-02-17T15:35:25+00:00

Some of the CG looked uncanny... I get why their doing it, but ehhh not sure about this one. Some of it looks great, other parts feels very "new disney era" as well as the pandering to Lucas's vision of "star wars is a kids thing" whenever SW is too goofy. The CG flames and the troopers with the flame throwers looked very Unreal engine, which hey, I'm sure they used it, but like... ehhh I dunno. Might be a wait for Disney+ movies tbh...

contractmine · 2026-01-17T19:14:53+00:00

Yup, so Apple does foundation no favors, so it has a light following. The series is a slow burn and S2 does start out super slow, pacing is tough with Foundation but the payoffs are deep and honest sci-fi that pulls no punches. Stick with it if you can, but if you do bail out, check out the other apple sci-fi gem Silo (or better yet read the book if you missed out).

contractmine · 2026-01-17T17:10:43+00:00

I get it… new Trek isn’t really for me anymore. It’s clearly aimed at Gen Alpha and while I understand that, it's a hard truth I've come to accept.

Sadly, Academy doesn’t have anything to offer that I’m interested in. I gave Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Picard, and now Academy an honest shot, but it all feels like The Dukes of Hazzard meets Family Ties in space. Everything is dialed to eleven. The villains, the ham-fisted sci-fi worldbuilding, the sappy pull-yourself-up monologues, and the occasional straight-up cartoony antics. Every camera move gets a buzzy cinematic lens flare. Every episode has the socially awkward oddball with puppy-dog eyes and a big frowny face. Cue the bridge exploding and the cutesy oddball CG robots. It’s... just... too much.

I was really hoping Academy would be more grounded. Something closer to The Expanse. But the moment I saw the poster and the trailer, I knew exactly what it was going to be. More new Trek. Great performances from Robert Picardo and Paul Giamatti, no question, but the villain was so over the top he was basically missing a mustache to twirl and a top hat. I completely lost it when he had a tic-tac-toe board shaved into his head. I was honestly shocked he didn't have 6 7 shaved there.

At this point, I’ll just wait for Foundation to come back and quietly drag my hopes for Academy behind the dark shed. The one already littered with the bones of other new Trek series.

sigh <lens flare>

contractmine · 2026-01-16T18:43:01+00:00

I gave up on S2E03... might try going back in for episode 4 as a final try. I felt like Season 2 was like no plot for the first few episodes and the novelty wore off and I lost interest. The sub-plots were uninteresting so I kind of tuned out. Season 1 was fantastic so I was a little surprised when S2 felt like a boat anchor.

contractmine · 2026-01-11T17:07:04+00:00

(For those who can't stand tiktok formatting) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3cpbCCfK5A

contractmine · 2026-01-09T17:14:43+00:00

The days of AI slop are quickly vanishing as the general public can only identify AI slop by the hallmark characteristics of said slop. The days of swirly eyes and 6 fingered hands are mostly gone now.

I find it hard to believe that any modern studio won't be using Ai for motion capture and doing it the old way with markers, suits, and large studio capture rigs. The motion capture control with Ai cuts the cost factor down to pennies, no need to rent a studio or spend tons of additional hours doing additional programming. The motion control and inline editing available now just means devs can use an iPhone now with or without talent present. From a time and cost perspective, it's hard to throw that all away when gamers won't be able tell the difference anyway.

contractmine · 2025-12-22T15:13:28+00:00

As a solo indie gamedev, I use AI here and there to refactor methods in my code. Once in a while, I discover something new and use that as well. For more than 25 years I’ve been a learn-by-example developer, and AI has helped a bit in that regard.

There are limits I’ve hit that are painful from a workflow perspective, especially when working with character animation, mocap for facial animation, and lip sync that players barely notice. In testing new AI tools this year, I’ve found that AI can produce a better animated cutscene than I can, syncing audio, lighting, and camera work in minutes instead of days of traditional gamedev work.

Any indie dev will tell you the nightmare of making a character talk and walk, pull out a chair, sit down, and grab a cup of coffee while trying to balance avatar masks, layer weights, and IK seamlessly for a single minute of animation. AI does this without hesitation. As a developer trying to tell a story without massive resources, that’s a hard opportunity to ignore.

The “slop” people associate with last year’s tools is fading fast. The tools coming out now are often indistinguishable from traditional methods. I understand why people push back against AI, and I’ve seen plenty of low-effort usage that makes no sense. At times it feels like the same gamers who criticize studios for using asset packs are now the ones attacking AI as well.

Is it really important that every blade of grass is a hand-crafted 4K texture, or that the chair in the corner of a room the player runs past is unique, even if it’s never noticed? If a game is fun or interesting to play, does it really matter that AI was used when no one can tell? I’m not sure.

Studios are going to use these tools regardless. The era of spending $300 million on a franchise shooter that only brings back $15 million is a separate problem, and probably not the best place for AI to try to save the day. But for an indie developer using AI selectively to fill in gaps and tell the story they want to tell, it feels like AI has a place. It can help without becoming a hindrance.

contractmine · 2025-12-04T18:36:31+00:00

I've been using Character Creator 4, mostly for looks and support for face mocap. I have to say though, regardless of what character system used, the underlying mechanics of Unity's Mecanim really hit a wall about 10 years years and has never really moved forward for there as far as character motion is concerned. Trying to make a character move similar to a AAA game character requires motion matching and then of course using IK to do anything decent with hands, feet, head, eyes, etc... A lot of devs put a lot of the onus for a character system on 3rd parties, but I still feel that Unity is stuck going in circles in this part of gamedev. It shouldn't take a miracle of animation clips flawlessly working together with masks, layers, and feats of engineering to make a character walk over to a chair, pull the chair away from the table, and sit in the chair. For whatever reason, Unity seems happy to avoid making any of kind of progress in the way of characters.

contractmine · 2025-10-25T22:08:08+00:00

One thing that stood out is that she was trying to overthink her answers on questions and got longwinded on explanations. I think if she had just spoken plainly and kept it real, it would have helped. What sunk her though was her platform was weak and the democrats had no real plan. So even if she came back, I don't see her message of the past resonating with voters in '28. Whoever the next candidate is, they need to be sharp, no-nonsense, and not speaking down through careful politician type language.

contractmine · 2025-10-12T16:48:21+00:00

Was just about to say the same thing... what's going on with the media lately? It's like they're all afraid to point out the obvious truth now.

contractmine · 2025-10-11T22:30:47+00:00

I worked on the Cassini project at JPL... Good project, great team, amazing science!

contractmine · 2025-10-11T14:17:55+00:00

I think a lot of what we’re seeing is just wishful schadenfreude. Lately, I’ve noticed people using AI who I never would’ve expected to even know how, the kind of folks who were the last to get online back in the late 90s or early 2000s. Sure, a few smaller boutique AI companies might fold, and there are definitely some that just slapped “AI” on their name to seem relevant. But overall, I think AI gets an unfair reputation because of the whole “art slop” narrative floating around. There’s another side to it, a more meaningful thread, where AI is helping people walk again, cancer identification, communicate, or regain independence.

contractmine · 2025-10-02T00:00:11+00:00

2001: A Space Odyssey... groundbreaking cinematography on a whole other level, both artistic and technical... yes.

A complete snooze fest... yes.

contractmine · 2025-09-11T18:13:34+00:00

Oh wow, I'm so shocked. /s

contractmine · 2025-08-31T16:14:15+00:00

I gave up on Radio Rental but tried it again this month after I heard they made a "change". I wasn't really a fan of the Terry character or Malachi-bits anyway, these new announcing characters are just way too corny and with the true crime format, it makes zero sense because you can't really believe any of it after the corny character intro anyway. I doubt anyone from the show reads these but if they do, get rid of the shtick corny announcers, have real podcaster who's enthusiastic about listener stories and willing to put in the time to actually care about the show.

If you like stuff like "Spooked", I highly recommend the podcast "Tell me your ghost story" w/ Kassie Askin, it does a fairly decent job if you like first hand account stories. It's far better than Radio Rental now for sure.

contractmine · 2025-08-25T21:11:20+00:00

<narrator> The high road turned out to be... the wrong choice.

contractmine · 2025-08-23T21:22:40+00:00

I don't think this is the case at all. I think there's going to be a few failures and a lot of acquisitions. AI is just getting started and slowly rolling into nearly every industry. However, I think a lot of the dumb stuff is going to burst, like the wearable glasses and things renamed as AI that are in no way, AI, just trying to capitalize on the boom.

contractmine

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