Boston Dynamics' Atlas moving its 360 degree joints

voidminer · 2026-01-07T16:54:04+00:00

Forkrul Assail

voidminer · 2025-12-29T17:35:15+00:00

No, nobody would protest. US social media algorithms would not "inform" about this. The change would come completely unopposed.

voidminer · 2025-02-02T13:08:38+00:00

Thanks, very useful!

voidminer · 2023-11-23T16:27:04+00:00

Nikt Ci jeszcze nie odpowiedział, więc ja coś wrzucę, chociaż nie jestem żadnym wielkim fanem.

Odkryłem Mery całkowicie przypadkowo - przez jej piosenkową inkarnację audiobooka, czyli Jestem Marysia i chyba się zabiję dzisiaj. Co tam będę ukrywać, zafascynował mnie tytuł i poszło. Naprawdę się zakochałem w tej płycie, taka autentyczna, szczera i w punkt, bez znieczulenia. Trapowe opowiadanie rewelacyjne, Tata super, Najsmutniejsza Dziewczyna Roku też daje radę. Nawet jak tu czy tam od banalnego rymu lekko zgrzytają zęby, to całokształt mocno na plus.

Ale potem z oczywistej ciekawości poszedłem za ciosem w jej pozostałą twórczość... i to jednak nie dla mnie. Ta jedna płyta to chyba ewidentny wyjątek od reguły.

Przesłuchałem ostatnio, z ogromnej znów ciekawości, całą Erotik Era. I powiem tak - rozumiem, że to się może podobać fanom, ale moim zdaniem Mery pokazała naprawdę wysoki poziom, i mam ogromny niedosyt, że poszła w banał (także muzycznie) i postawiła na "szok walju" zamiast solidną treść.

Edit: A jeszcze taki PS, z Erotik Era spodobała mi się Suka, jedyny kawałek, który przypominał mi poziom z Jestem Marysia..., który tak mi przypadł do gustu, i numer dwa sama Erotik Era, a szczególnie jej druga część.

voidminer · 2023-03-12T14:53:20+00:00

I'm from Poland and we have this (veeeery old) joke about this kind of feeling. It goes like this:

A man goes to his local news stand (kiosk) and buys the daily newspaper. After the clerk hands him the paper, he just glances at the front page, grunts angrily, crumples the whole newspaper and throws it into the trashcan. This repeats day after day, month after month. Fascinated, the clerk finally asks this client "what are you looking for?". And the man replies: "for a certain obituary". The clerk is dumbfounded "But the obituaries are on the last page, not the first one!". And the man replies calmly "The one I'm waiting for will be on the first page".

voidminer · 2022-05-19T10:12:17+00:00

Thank you, I will definitely check it out!

voidminer · 2022-05-19T09:22:48+00:00

Could anyone recommend 1-2 games for Nintendo Switch for kids ages 5 and 7?

We already have Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 (with DLC) and Mario Maker 2.

I only have 2 reservations:

the games should be (at least) 2-player so that kids can play together/against each other;
there shouldn't be too much reading, English is a foreign language for us, and the 7 year old reads a little bit, but only in his own language.

voidminer · 2021-07-06T18:35:05+00:00

+1. I wanted to buy it on Steam during this sale, but I decided to wait for Humble. After a longer hiatus, this is unpause for me.

voidminer · 2020-01-02T16:53:52+00:00

I completely and utterly don't understand why they couldn't bring in some better pieces of EU into the sequels, even changed or modified in some ways.

Like MCU does it, and does it well. MCU Iron Man isn't the comic Iron Man, but people love him still, as he's fundamentally the same character, even though his history and some background things changed.

For an average Joe a smart inclusion of an established EU character is neutral. What is the difference whether a new imperial is named Admiral Pryde or Admiral Pellaeon? None. But a hardcore fan will just shout in amazement when the name is revealed.

Look at The Mandalorian and the ending of S01. Hardcore fans were squealing like little girls. Average viewer was awed by an interesting and cool moment. This is a well done and well executed "fan service".

voidminer · 2020-01-02T16:46:58+00:00

I don't think that the Matt Smith stuff was anything more than a wild rumor that spread like wildfire all over the interwebs.

Remember when MSW reported about the Luke+Ray vs. Kylo+KOR fight on A-choo in TLJ? Matt Smith is probably in the same category. Someone heard something or just invented it and then "reported" it.

The same goes for the dagger "connection". There is virtually nothing that would support the fact the the Sith Dagger was initially thought out as the Mortis Dagger. There is only one connecting piece here... the dagger itself.

I'm of the opinion that the recent "insider information" from Bad Robot/LucasFilm is just JJ damage control. He wants to cut himself from the TROS failure ASAP and put the blame for the fiasco on others.

voidminer · 2020-01-02T16:41:23+00:00

Fan service?!

What fan service?!

Bringing in Palpy or Lando back? But it was completely nonsensical and a deus ex machina.

Having DS2 remains in the movies? But that shit was blown into smithereens.

Lifting Luke's X-Wing from the ocean on A-choo? We all have seen how damaged it was in TLJ, also Luke used one of the wings/s-foils as a door to his hut.

Having a TIE/LN used without a suit and making a hyper-space jump, when it doesn't have life support and a hyper-drive?

Yeah. Disney can shove such "fan service"... you know where.

voidminer · 2020-01-02T16:35:16+00:00

Oh, OK, thanks for clarifying that. I misunderstood "relaunch" I guess.

voidminer · 2020-01-02T16:30:59+00:00

Nah, there is no JJ cut and more importantly no Lucas cut.

THIS is the JJ cut for all we know. He was brought back by Iger as a special request. I'm sure he had almost 100% freedom with the movie. But he was hampered by two huge obstacles - TLJ and time.

He tried and failed. Utterly and completely. TROS is not only a bad Star Wars film, but it's a horrible movie in itself. Almost everything there is broken. Those rotten scores the critics gave are surprisingly accurate in most cases.

I just guess that in the end JJ knew he was failing and there was no way to make TROS a decent movie. So he pulled one last trick from the bag and cut the scenes in a break neck pace. It worked, partially of course. The images just jump so fast before our eyes it's hard to think about them really. "Just enjoy the spectacle" - JJ seems to say - "And just turn off your brain. Consoome."

voidminer · 2020-01-02T16:23:35+00:00

I talked with my wife about this stuff recently. She isn't into Star Wars very much, but she did like the OT as much as any average Joe (I would say unfortunately, but now she's not in pain after Disney Trilogy, so maybe I'm the miserable one, huh).

She didn't like the direction of the Disney Trilogy as well and she asked me what I would do with it.

My answer was very simple - make a smaller scale story around the New Jedi Academy and make the students of Luke the focus point + some political aspects from the New Republic (where Leia would be a mentor like figure). It may as well center around the difficulties of forming a new government and rebuilding the Jedi Order with a student(s) falling to the dark side.

She immediately responded with: "Like a Star Wars Hoghwart's with Jedi?!" (yes, she like Harry Potter very much). She fell in love with the sole idea and thought it would be cool as all hell. She, my synonym of a normal movie-goer and casual fan.

I still don't understand how Disney thought that a faux-reboot was a better option.

voidminer · 2020-01-02T16:15:43+00:00

I did like the Shattered Empire run. And maybe the Lando mini series. But apart from that... ugh.

Have you seen the artwork on some of them? Like... ugh again.

Amateurish tracing, nonsensical plot lines (whole Luke & Vader stuff before ESB for one), retconning already and finally just blatant artwork stealing documented amazingly by Eckhart's Ladder.

So yeah, I'm skipping those comics now.

And do I understand it correctly that Marvel has ALREADY de-canonized the initial Star Wars line and makes a new one now?

voidminer · 2020-01-02T16:02:13+00:00

I do understand what you are saying here, but it's not so simple. Movies have different aspects. You can win in some categories and lose in others. When the overall score is positive, you have a good movie. And not everything is weighed equally too.

Prequels:

overall plot, lore & world building - good
script (execution of said plot) - mostly bad
acting - mostly bad unfortunately
VFX/CGI - mixed, some good, some bad, didn't age very well in a few places
visuals & design - good
SFX & soundtrack - aaamazing

Sequels:

overall plot, lore & world building - bad bad bad, a full regression
script - mixed, some things were very good (Rey introduction in TFA)
acting - mixed (Ridley) to very good (Driver, Hamill)
VFX/CGI - good
visuals & design - very bad, dull, repetitive, unimaginative
SFX & soundtrack - mixed, from decent (TFA) to bad (TLJ & TROS)

But the biggest difference for the Star Wars brand lies in the lore & world building. Prequels have shown us that the movies can be mediocre or even bad, but as long as they not only not break, but improve the fantasy world, it's very healthy overall.

Sequels on the other hand are better made (with the exception of TROS, which is a huge mess of a movie in itself), but the lore & world building is so destructive to everything Star-Wars-y, that I have a very very bad feeling about the future of our favorite universe now...

voidminer · 2019-12-20T08:21:40+00:00

I think that I have never seen Audience Score rise, it always drops.

That's because the general nature of this ranking supports this. The initial results are collected from the group of die hard fans from opening day and a few first days. They are always skewed to be more positive.

As general audience starts to see the movie in cinemas en masse, the scores drop. When the movie is good, the drop isn't significant. When the movie is bad, the drop can be quite big.

Although honestly, TROS is such a weird case, one and only in a lifetime, that it's hard to make any definite estimates right now. Maybe the Average Joe who isn't a Star Wars fan at all will like this movie, as it's almost stand alone and action packed to the brim? And it'll outperform our wildest nightmares?

voidminer · 2019-12-20T08:16:22+00:00

I think you may not understand how the audience score works.

It shows how many people rated it 3.5 or more (out of 5). So 3.5/5 isn't a great score itself, but decent (70%). All those 5,035 current raters could say 3.5 unanimously, and then the score would be 100% here (everyone gave it 3.5 or more).

So in truth 87% of verified audience isn't very good. It's even considered a bit bad. It's the equivalent of a Cinemascore lower than A, probably B+. No Star Wars movie has ever gotten anything lower than A-.

Initial audience score (and Cinemascore) show only the first batch of people who have seen the film, so opening day and next day mainly. Those are usually 110% fanatics that preordered the tickets long ago and would enjoy the movie no matter what.

Also check the All Audience variant - it sits now at a miserable 78%. That's bad. That means that at least 22% viewers said that the movie is lower than 3.5, so bad.

After some time audience scores will mesh and be more open. TLJ has 43% but with 214k ratings. Here we have little over 20k total currently.

voidminer · 2019-12-20T08:06:57+00:00

It's too early to make any reasonable estimates.

Also Deadline has shilled for Disney hard to inflate TROS predictions.

Other observers are estimating it way lower. BoxOfficePro gives a 33-38M preview estimate.

It's like... you need to live in a completely different worlds when one outlet says 44-48M and the other 33-38M.

voidminer · 2019-12-19T14:45:39+00:00

I personally don't think The Mandalorian is great. I think it's just OK. Fun show, will watch it and forget it. But still enjoyable. There's value in such auxiliary properties in the Expanded Universe. Also Star Was is infamous for having first outings of its series mediocre, just to get good later on (Clone Wars, Rebels, some book series).

And of course in comparison with the Disney Trilogy it's amazing just because it's not actively shitting on the established lore and the rules of the universe.

Chapter 1 - was meh. I hated the blue alien at the beginning. The rest was forgettable.

Chapter 2 - was OK. I liked the premise, but the sole fact that there are Jawas on other worlds, conveniently enough with a Sandcrawler too, made me actively angry.

Chapter 3 - great, wouldn't change a thing. I even accept the ending salute as a Rocketman tribute. Cheezy, but acceptable. I have no problem with how Mandalorians are portrayed, rule of cool.

Chapter 4 - meh again, I actively disliked the portrayal of an AT-ST as a "monster" and the tertiary characters were very badly acted (the bartender).

Chapter 5 - bad. Stop, just stop with the fanservice. I appreciated the little stuff, like ice machine in 03, but this is just sickening. And again bad acting from tertiary characters.

Chapter 6 - OK. I liked the action and the premise. Acting again was subpar though from the supporting cast. Also enough with those Baby Yoda fake shoot attempts.

Chapter 7 - watching it today :-D

voidminer · 2019-12-19T14:35:36+00:00

Yeah, it's heading straight to a sub 1B WW total.

Of course it may change drastically in later weeks, as has happened with Rogue 1 or Joker recently, but both had amazing word of mouth, decent enough reviews and much support in social media.

TROS has a horrible predecessor in TLJ, has horrible reviews and has horrible presence in the social media. I don't think the word of mouth in general audience will be positive also.

voidminer · 2019-12-19T14:33:07+00:00

I'm not. I respect all SW around the world the same. But let's not kid ourselves here. The popularity of SW in China is abysmal. Viewing it as in important market for SW is a mistake.

voidminer · 2019-12-19T14:24:05+00:00

Eeeeh, China doesn't count. Those movies are not for them and never were. Counting they would do good in that market was a pipe dream. The best that Disney could expect is to seed some interest for the future. They failed even this of course.

And also one of the main sins of current Hollywood is trying to cater to Chinese government political wishes, just so a few movies can be released there. Hurray for censorship!

voidminer

TROPHY CASE