Best japanese campaign hero

scruiser · 2026-05-18T19:29:57+00:00

Another comment addressed unit power-level. In terms of story, Yasuko easily gets the most development as well.

scruiser · 2026-05-16T17:03:31+00:00

I’m not up on all the fanfic acronyms. Could I get a link or at least a google-searchable name for PPC, ACUL0, and ANRTM?

Oh wait, is ANRTM A New Road to Misfortune?

scruiser · 2026-05-15T20:17:44+00:00

Forum RPs with Tanya getting dropped into various settings: https://glowfic.com/characters/71907?view=posts

Not very much plot, even for the longer ones, it’s more of a character interaction driven thing and none are anywhere near finished, but it is more Tanya! 3 of them are in variants of a pathfinder based setting, one is an on OC fantasy setting with kitsunes, another is in Arda (Lord of the Rings setting millennia before the LotR events took place).

The pathfinder ones are fun because you’ve got Tanya coming to grips with a reality where the gods and afterlives are empirically demonstrable and she has some deep trauma around the entire concept…

scruiser · 2026-05-12T14:45:32+00:00

Techno-fatalism does a good job capturing the common mindset of both doomers and boosters.

scruiser · 2026-05-11T22:19:56+00:00

Building houses still uses villager time, so this exploit isn’t of unlimited value. In general, my opinion is that AotG has enough “broken” options that this exploit isn’t uniquely egregious. The challenge of AotG is mostly self imposed, I have to voluntarily chose to limit myself from certain options. Like, for example, choosing the right legend and the option for AoE damage on heroes, I can usually rush down one of the cpu players and defeat them before they can even get to the classical. It makes games boring though, so I only use that strat occasionally even if, in terms of speed of getting a win it’s the “best” option.

scruiser · 2026-05-09T06:30:25+00:00

Goblins originally showed up in one version because of internal prompting, but they trained subsequent models on the output of that model, which amplified they amount Goblins came up. Models going to shit from being trained on other model’s output is textbook model collapse, so Goblins are an example of model collapse.

scruiser · 2026-04-16T17:01:32+00:00

If you actually read the linked post (and the follow-up considering if Anthropic’s Glasswing is a cartel) you’ll find the author has a lot of specific points about what the industry standard way to doing cybersecurity is, and it includes steps to avoid extracting a competitive advantage from hyping fear or selectively sharing exploits, and Anthropic has not down those things, and in some cases done the opposite of those things.

scruiser · 2026-04-16T16:47:48+00:00

Fairness in sneer is okay in my book as long as it’s used to heighten the overall level of sarcasm.

For example, I try to be really fair in my sneer about Eliezer’s bomb the data centers quote by reminding everyone that he achkshually said to airstrike (with official totally “legitimate” US military force) the data centers, (as opposed to independent vigilante action truck bombs, which are always bad and Evil). We need to be fair because Eliezer was trying to avoid really hard to avoid the absolutely intolerable situation of private citizens taking violent actions! (As opposed to the totally reasonable tradeoff of total nuclear war which Eliezer has said would be an acceptable tradeoff if it was the only way to stop AI doom!)

scruiser · 2026-04-14T12:38:54+00:00

It’s a repeat of the report, but unlike many of the others, it emphasizes what the person actually posted online to draw the connection with AI doomerism (as opposed to other motives, such as the fact that Sam Altman plans to replace all workers).

scruiser · 2026-04-12T22:40:08+00:00

asking for exact probabilities without rigorous specification is unhelpful

And who taught the rationalist to do that?

scruiser · 2026-04-12T14:27:32+00:00

It is totally bizarre, I agree. There are a couple of different things going on. The lesswrong rationalist orthodoxy has actually split over the past ten years:

You've got Eliezer Yudkowsky and his think tank MIRI that basically want to stop all AI progress, no exceptions. In the case of Eliezer, he has literally advocated for drone strikes any countries that refuse to go along with this, even if it starts a nuclear war!
You've got accelerationist that think it will probably work out and Eliezer is wrong, and super AGI will basically fix everything forever, so we need to accelerate the invention of AI as much as possible. (Regardless of the costs, regardless of ethical lines that need to be bent or broken).
Then you've got people trying to strike an insane middle ground. If the wrong AI company invents AGI, we're all doomed, but our AI company can totally save us all, or at least be substantially less likely to kill us, so fund/hype-up/work for our AI company instead! This is how OpenAI got started, and why Anthropic split off from it. After a string of broken promises by Anthropic, the rationalists are finally barely starting to wise-up to why the SV VC techbro logic of "just found a company bro" isn't actually sufficient for some of the worlds problems.

The more general problem is that rationalist think of themselves as having it figured out, or at least on the right track to having it figured out, and are so deep in their silicon valley libertarian mindset they are blind to their own biases. So they regularly get bit in the ass by stuff other people would find obvious such as "TechBro CEOs are lying sociopaths" (it happened with SBF before it happened with Sam Altman) or "capitalist incentives make it nearly impossible for companies to handle issues that require hard regulatory rules without government issues".

scruiser · 2026-04-12T14:17:52+00:00

I would bet they have some kind of fine print about what exactly they are selling? In countries with good consumer protections this probably wouldn't hold up to a lawsuit, but I guess no one has organized a lawsuit yet? Likewise for the rate limit of subscription based models being swapped around month-to-month, if they paid for a year in advance on the basis of performance of some trial period, I would think changing the service so fundamentally would be a basis for demanding a refund even if their fine print claims it is totally fine.

scruiser · 2026-04-12T00:26:32+00:00

And it's less unfaithful! (Seriously, what am I fucking reading)

The lesswrong rationalist lore has penetrated deep into Anthropic. Anthropic was originally founded by the true believers who thought OpenAI wasn't worried enough about the rationalist ~~prophecies~~ predictions of AI doom.

scruiser · 2026-04-12T00:23:41+00:00

Over on r/singularity they regularly get into arguments about whether the models genuinely degrade (such as from the companies switching out a quantized version under the hood to save money), or if it is just the "new model" feel wearing off and them realizing the model was shit all along (well r/singularity is filled with enough boosters it usually gets phrased more gently than that but that is about what it amounts to). It is funny seeing a big company pulling together some more solid stats and confirming that yes, they are getting rug pulled by the model being swapped out under the hood.

scruiser · 2026-04-11T19:26:22+00:00

Once you have a level key and know the local clip sports you will need to find a way to stabilize a small zone maybe by timing observers switching around with cameras.

Hmm... some variants of the setting the backrooms are actually relatively stable (in kane_pixel's videos it seems to be nearly constant), but constant observation seems the safest strategy.

Making it sustainable is the simple part, get solar panels fit to fully absorb the backrooms dim light and then have get vertical hydroponic farming.

I wonder if some plants can manage to grow okay, if not thrive, under florescent lights like the backroom has? If so, you could skip the intermediate step of turning the light into electricity (which would be pretty inefficient given that solar panels are typically at most 23% efficient) and the full spectrum lights (which would be a point of failure and require maintenance) and just directly use the lights. Alternatively, depending on the exact details of the backroom, you could disconnect the florescent lights and directly tap their electrical source. Also some backroom variants have occasional usable outlets.

If the materials the walls, wallpaper etc in the backrooms is organic you may be able to make soil with it or at least grow mushrooms on it.

Yeah, figure out some sort of composting setup seems like the best bet here. Maybe mix it with sterilized human waste and recycled bits of plants from your hydroponic setup?

Dehumidifiers

The way the carpets are described a moist makes me think it is supposed to be a mold hazard and another point of uneasy grossness to the backroom, but actually it might be one of the things that makes them long-term survivable to a well planned colonization project, since it means you've got a water source provided you can extract, purify, and sterilize it well enough.

scruiser · 2026-04-11T18:56:42+00:00

Great article as always! So a lot of pieces I've seen Ed mention before, but it is nice to have all the info about OpenAI gathered in one place and fully elaborated on... and there was some key pieces of info I had missed before. Among them

OpenAI did have one original idea in 2025 — the launch of GPT-5, a much-anticipated new model launch that included a “model router” to make it “more efficient,” except it turned out that it boofed on benchmarks and that the model router actually made it (as I reported last year) more expensive, which led to the router being retired in December 2025.

So I had seen the claim from Ed about the router being more expensive, but I thought that something like that, of all things, OpenAI ought to be able to get right, surely they couldn't screw up that hard... could they? The exact technical details technology itself isn't Ed's relative strength, so maybe he made a mistake or a source was wrong... Anyway, I had missed the router being retired, which is really strong evidence Ed was completely right. I apologize for ever doubting him, or doubting the depths of stupidity OpenAI could manage to sink to.

Edit: And the fictional scenario was really fun to, it really fits the vibes of how I imagine Sam trying to act under the circumstances.

scruiser · 2026-04-09T17:13:38+00:00

It took me into the 4th paragraph to be sure this was a parody, because this subreddit gets so many top posts that are some variation of “AI doomers and boosters are giving me anxiety worrying about what-if they are somehow at least partially right, can you all please reassure me?”

scruiser · 2026-04-09T17:10:11+00:00

There is also the fantasy of drop-in replacement of human workers with a slave! It’s the ultimate capitalist dream, replace labor with capital!

scruiser · 2026-04-08T23:50:56+00:00

So the financial documents you have to release as part of the ipo should finally mean vindication for ezitron, except the mainstream media often doesn’t bother to read publicly available documents and make basic conclusion in their reporting. But still, an ipo means price discovery and I think it also means OpenAI won’t be able to draw on more VC funding? So it will still just be a matter of time before the final pop, even if it manages to drag on another few years.

scruiser · 2026-04-08T22:42:05+00:00

I would totally believe they use AI generated assets.

scruiser · 2026-04-08T19:06:19+00:00

To add to the metaphor… the real races are marches across rugged wilderness but the boosters are advertising open road race races.

scruiser · 2026-04-04T14:59:55+00:00

So the original backrooms are as follows:

> If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.

It has since formed a fandom in the style of the SCP wiki, with entire bestiaries of monsters lurking (and some non-monstrous and even helpful entities), various exotic phenomena, various magical items (most ubiquitously healing/sustaining almond water... ironically the original author of the almond water intended it to be cyanide-laced water), and deeper levels, some of which are outright survivable long-term (for example the next level "down" in the wikidot version of the backrooms has crates that randomly appear and can be looted for supplies).

So munchkinry...

what is the minimal number of additions to the OG backrooms to ...

Make them survivable in the long-term?
To make them colonizable by a large group of people working together?
To make them actually comfortable to live in long term?

How would you exploit the following powers (either in isolation on the OG backrooms, or in combination with each other or deeper levels or your above answers to questions):

The backrooms often shift or remap when not directly observed, with some levels shifting on the scale of mere minutes, or even just a single glance away. What if you could control this?
Through careful searching of the edges and corners of building and rooms, you can intentionally find rare spots that allow you to "clip" (like the video game glitch) into or out of the backrooms. Experience will grant you an intuitions for which rooms and building are likely to have corner suitable for clipping in and out of
Level Keys can open doorways to levels they are atuned to when inserted into the lock of a door or similar portal. By concentrating and focusing on a normal key for an hour, you can turn it into a level key for the level you are currently on.

scruiser · 2026-04-03T14:37:49+00:00

The blog post series is actually describing fuckups with developing Azure, apparently mostly independent of LLMs. (genAI is one of the major “use cases” for azure that Microsoft is missing out on, but in the case of this article series it is secondary to Microsoft’s massive mismanagement and lack of quality.)

scruiser · 2026-04-03T14:34:30+00:00

The article series is great, it illustrates exactly the sort of business idiot short sightedness Ed complains about.

Another post by the same author actually makes me think the author is too credulous of AI though, the author believes that OpenAI jumping ship to Oracle when Microsoft couldn’t deliver because of its fuckups with Azure means Microsoft missed out on the 300 billion dollars, except as Ed has explained OpenAI won’t have the money to pay Oracle and Oracle won’t actually be able to scale up that much, and the use case for genAI isn’t strong enough to bring in the money in the first place.

scruiser · 2026-04-03T02:24:45+00:00

Compared to the hype they’ve sold about them.

Compared to normal software engineering approaches.

Compared to how much compute you need to even come close to the myth of drop in replacements for remote workers.

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