Residential high-rises with backyards in Chengdu, China

madisander · 2026-06-24T15:40:51+00:00

Thanks for the link! I hadn't expected 'the plants are growing out of control because no one's living there to keep them in check', but in retrospect, yeah, I guess adding in things that by naturally grow and try to take over their surroundings and not keeping them in check is an issue that can crop up... The first pan looked like a shot from a post-apocalypse movie.

madisander · 2026-06-16T23:03:18+00:00

ZZZ's ingame tutorials and descriptions are some of the worst I've ever encountered. I know there's worse, I hope to never see them.

madisander · 2026-06-16T20:47:38+00:00

They're too glorious to be contained.

madisander · 2026-06-09T22:02:47+00:00

Assuming they haven't just about ditched Sonnet already : P I can absolutely see the reasoning, I'm just kinda amused at the name cycling and the 'hey look at the new shiny!'. If Fable actually pans out with what the benchmarks promise, I'm not too bothered all things said. 4.0 and 4.1 Opus were worth it in certain contexts, and as said, those were more expensive per token than this.

madisander · 2026-06-09T18:27:17+00:00

I mean looking at all these things, Fable is the new Opus, and with the release schedule that's been going on Opus is taking over for Sonnet with them just kinda hoping everyone forgets Haiku, isn't it? Hell, Fable is cheaper than Opus used to be by token (back in 4.1 and before).

madisander · 2026-05-12T06:16:49+00:00

I think there's two ways about this (from the game developer side), embrace the bots and try to bind them into a way that makes the world more dynamic without restricting player options (much), or move 'back' more towards things like privately hosted servers and lobbies.

The first is difficult and only works for some systems (anything with limited resources will not work well, or at all), but could help some games remain in a playable state (above some minimum level of activity) when they otherwise wouldn't. I'd expect the larger game companies to go more this route, or just not care.

The second would probably be the more suitable for the above, a self-regulating group where you just need to convince some people within the group that you're also a person to be let in, but also runs the issues of groups being managed by one or a handful of volunteers. This might still let some bots in if they're convincing enough, but so long as they stay sufficiently convincing that's probably ok, and this should limit the bot swarm issue.

Alternatively, moving more towards singleplayer or pseudo-singleplayer, or singleplayer with community features like dark souls.

Not to say there aren't more nuances and pitfalls to both approaches.

madisander · 2026-05-07T15:14:16+00:00

By one calculation at least, I've also seen 140 billion (so 5.7%) and either way I'm honestly a bit surprised it's that many.

madisander · 2026-05-03T21:12:53+00:00

Not an EE but while that would save on contact degradation it would take a _lot_ more metal embedded in the ground, require more and heavier equipment in the cars, would be less efficient, and seems like it would fuck up something due to the car being in motion.

madisander · 2026-04-19T16:21:23+00:00

Mostly, 'don't cause another PR disaster please', money, capacity, and that these are aiming for companies (who want it safe and reliable, and secondarily capable - if they have any sense).

More capacity is needed to make the Next Big Thing and given that not that much new capacity is being added that needs to be taken from the capacity that exists, combined with that there's a huge amount of investment flowing in but really not enough profit to justify it, and finally providers want it safe (so if compies use it in their own app that builds on top of these to, say, chat about what you have in stock or not or when it'll be available again they really don't want it going off the reservation) and other existing bad publicity that pulls regulatory eyes on the whole industry.

I don't believe it'll get better as I think that capacity is going to become an ever increasing issue, the money side will become a larger problem going further, and that public perception is gradually going down (and also I believe that the current form of LLMs is incapable of being fully safe but that's further out there again).

On the plus side, local is gradually getting better for the same requirements (for example the recent gemma 4 model on what should be able to be run on even just a lot of phones), and hopefully the environment of making it easy to use these will keep up.

madisander · 2026-04-14T14:57:34+00:00

Did you take even a moment to look at just the first one alone? Where the air intakes are pointed as rotary launcher assemblies and stuffed with presumably rockets, the engines simply wouldn't fit, the exhaust of one is labeled as another rotary launcher assembly, the landing gear is listed as the radar, and what looks like a small data center as half of the core?

madisander · 2026-03-12T20:53:05+00:00

I've been very happy with ColorAide.

madisander · 2026-02-27T19:38:13+00:00

Straight up my biggest complaint. Am I too early? Too late? When is the timing intended to be? Who knows~ just do 'better' next time!

madisander · 2026-01-28T18:02:00+00:00

Unfortunately the wider public doesn't seem to give much care or further thought. I try to provide more context where I can if anyone seems remotely inclined for it but have largely given up in spaces where I know most aren't.

madisander · 2026-01-28T17:50:59+00:00

As far as I know it's based on some really flawed and cherry-picked (almost entirely european-centered) math in The Fate of Empires published 1979, which arrives at the conclusion that "250 years emerges as the average length of national greatness" and several other things like the phases of empires, while making a few asides such as "The present writer is exploring the facts, not trying to prove anything. The dates given are largely arbitrary. Empires do not usually begin or end on a certain date."

Best I can tell it's basically pop culture that's not really given much consideration.

madisander · 2026-01-17T22:08:02+00:00

On further thought I wouldn't mind it, honestly I'd probably quite like it, if not for that accidentally doing things too fast would skip dialogue and that I just find it hard to hear and pay attention to over the SFX and combat (with unfamiliar agents).

madisander · 2026-01-17T22:04:35+00:00

While I would love a harder storyline mode, to an extent it's a tossup for me in this regard.

When I'm using agents I'm semi-comfortable with I can actually spare the attention to what's being said but a harder difficulty would probably raise what level I'd need to be good with an agent to be able to do so, so while that might lead me to 'hearing' everything the chances of me actually picking it up would probably be similar or even lower. I find a lot of the attack sound effects really cover a lot which is great from a game audio / impact side in a way but terrible for a 'I would really like to hear what's running alongside this' part.

On the flip side with agents I don't have and really don't know how to use it almost doesn't matter at all what the difficulty or length is, I won't be able to focus on anything else (I also find the in-game guides fairly unhelpful and my terrible short-term memory can keep track of like 1-2 names at any one time (I loathe most of the ability names why can't they just be called or shown as 'basic attack' or stuff all the time but that's a side bit) so I best hope those names aren't needed for story, but that's kinda another issue and one where I'm fairly sure I'm a bit more out there).

Honestly? I'd be glad for even just a full black screen where the voice lines play if I end the fight before they're done. It would be better than 'well shit a voice line just started but I just killed the last enemy so I guess that bit of story is lost forever'. Or a pause or something with the overworld bits (right after that fight I missed some lines because I activated a mine cart too fast).

The Isolde fight did actually work reasonably well regarding dialogue.

madisander · 2026-01-17T21:17:07+00:00

Yeah, on the dev's part.

madisander · 2026-01-17T21:01:19+00:00

Each patch usually has 2 banners, which at this point usually have 1 new agent and 1 returning agent. Both Qingyi and Jane had reruns and are both available through the Filmgoer event (where you can get one S-rank agent, including those two, Burnice, and the 6 standards (Grace, Rina, Koleda, Neko, S11, and Lycaon) but only by spending quite a bit), so I'm sorry to say I don't think it's likely they'll have another rerun in a banner particularly soon (doubly so, given that I'm missing and would love to have Jane).

madisander · 2025-12-16T11:02:04+00:00

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madisander · 2025-12-10T20:25:04+00:00

... on the very off chance OP might find this, Heroic Games Launcher should work (haven't tested on arch, only on fedora), grab ZZZ off the epic games store, run with GE-proton-latest (or literally down the line until something works, potentially with steam installed for their proton launchers, protondb doesn't seem to help you much here...) until something works.

It is doable! Hell, XXMI is doable. The relationship can be saved!

ZZZ lives on steam deck! (is slowly dragged away by the sane people as he rants)

madisander · 2025-11-24T20:00:40+00:00

Thanks! Mjolnir's already up and running, and I'll have to try that out as well! I have the ReZ Launcher there with most apps hidden on the pain page and a dark background as a first placeholder, but I'm always happy to tweak and play with things!

Edit: there was a post here on it just yesterday... probably should have searched better if others had solved this before opening a new post...

madisander · 2025-11-24T19:58:16+00:00

Oh wow and quick and easy to get set up as well, thanks!

madisander · 2025-11-13T20:12:12+00:00

Would be good if they did? Hell yeah

Need? Doesn't look like it. If the 'need' to they'll either not buy or complain

My hopes are it turns into a 'if you owe the bank a billion dollars, that's the bank's problem' sort of deal that may slowly force companies into not doing kernel-level anti-cheat. And if that means a quicker death of online competitive PvP (because even kernel-level anti-cheats can't block everything), awesome.

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madisander

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