a1studmuffin

Have you noticed Claude Code now gives a suggestion for what to reply with that you can autocomplete with tab? Wouldn't surprise me if Fable used that concept in some way, whether directly or indirectly in training.

And that's a dangerous game because the cheaper compute gets, the more likely consumers are to self-host rather than pay a subscription.

This is a cool tech demo, not a video game. The fact that video game stocks slid by so much after this release just shows how reactive, speculative and uneducated most investors are.

Your health is ultimately your own responsibility - it's your body. You have free will, and your appetite for risk is yours alone. You can choose to ignore expert advice and refuse to wear a seatbelt, skip your rehabilitation exercises, invest all-in on crypto, or smoke cigarettes. None of this responsibility should fall on the expert if they communicated the risks clearly.

I really don't understand the modern hate towards OOP. From my experience over the last few decades working with large C and C++ codebases, the former turns into a big ball of mud first.

I really hate the way The Register use terms like "techie" and "boffin". It always comes across to me as anti-intellectual.

Great minds think alike! Here's my attempt using an ESP-based smart watch that clips onto your clothes at night: https://github.com/a1studmuffin/lilygo-twatch-sleepdevice

Plus 2) would require additional design, engineering and QA work to implement the code to drain users' batteries. And it would cause plenty of users to uninstall/complain if Messenger was draining huge amounts of battery. It really doesn't make sense considering Messenger has 1.3 billion users, and remaining battery percent would likely be a bell curve across all users regardless of sample size.

Hang on a second, you consider Jan 2014 to be "very, very old"? Commercial software often has dependencies on libraries going back decades.

Some people just enjoy their job. I know several engineers who retired, only to return after a hiatus because they missed working with a team on something they were good at and passionate about. Work isn't always about money.

Hell yes, I use it daily. I'm in AAA gamedev and the codebase I deal with goes back 20+ years. The last 10 years are readily accessible in Perforce and the rest can be found in another version control system. I am forever grateful to past engineers for outlining WHY they made their changes, and not WHAT the changes were per se. With thousands of engineers that have come and gone, this is incredibly useful information in addition to the code itself.

IMHO revision history is just as valuable to a company as the code itself.

Game AI has nothing to do with AGI (or even regular AI) beyond the surface level description OP provided. The reason game AI hasn't progressed in the last few decades isn't because technology is holding us back - after all we can already achieve impressive machine learning feats using current-gen GPUs - it's because bad NPC AI is by design, so players can learn to overcome them and succeed. Very few people want to play a game that always beats them. Most games use simple state machines or behaviour trees with predictable outcomes for their NPCs because it would be a waste of effort to do anything more, and actually negatively impact the game by making it less fun and burning engineering time on things the player won't benefit from.

I have to agree. Pumping out C++ revisions every 3 years means I can no longer assume a game written in C++ will port relatively painlessly from one C++-compatible platform to another, as it all depends on which C++ standard is supported by the platform SDK/toolset I'm forced to use.

I automated searching for a rental property across all the major property websites in my country. In particular I was looking for properties with certain attributes (bathtub, lock up garage etc.), in a specific set of areas (GPS-based areas predefined on a Google Map based on proximity to train station, dog park, nearest shops etc. in suburbs my wife and I liked). None of the existing property websites offered anywhere near that level of search and notification customisation, so I cobbled together a Python script that scraped the websites on a daily basis and ran all the results through a filter. Anything interesting was emailed to us both so we could reply by email and have a conversation about it. My wife and I decided to be super fussy since we didn't need to bother manually searching. After about 6 months my script found a winner and we're now in an awesome place that ticks all of our boxes.

I didn't dare automate the application process... I had nightmares of 450 property managers calling me at once saying "Congratulations". :)

Yeah I'm really interested to see the g-forces involved in one of those flights, I can't imagine it's a gentle take-off and landing.

I'd be willing to replace my one-off expensive tech purchases with a subscription model for a specific hardware manufacturer instead. The subscription would get you your device (smartphone, car, fridge etc.) and ongoing support & servicing. You'd be entitled to an upgrade at a predetermined interval.

I'd hope this scheme would be good for the consumer as they'd find it easier to budget (spread out regular payments), good for the environment as manufacturers would no longer have any incentive to make things hard to repair (forced upgrade cycles, ecosystem lock-in), and good for the manufacturer as they could focus less on forced upgrade cycles and more on a quality product to keep the consumer subscribed.

if (!is_not_cancer(cell)) { preserve(cell); } else { kill(cell); }

Wait, hang on...

I knew a Londoner with an almost identical commute, seems quite common over there. At the time my commute was 60 minutes one-way, and even though it was pretty easy (a single train leg, always seats available), it was still enough to make me vow never to do it again. Those 2 hours a day could have been used exercising, cooking with my wife, playing with my dog. I guess it's all about life priorities, but I'm skeptical any time someone suggests it as a healthy lifestyle.

Your mileage may vary. Replacing the battery in an HTC One M8 is like performing eye surgery via the rectum.

I'd love to see an automated karma system that scored posts on correct grammar, spelling and readability. I guess that would discourage non-native speakers of a language from participating though.

I'm in the opposite situation, I have all the ANSI art I created but none of the Remote Access database + config files. CRC error. Oh 3.5" floppy disks, how you made storage exciting.

Very novel approach! I can't see this scaling to the scope of most modern games though. Eventually it always comes back to an army of QA testers.

Yeah I second this. I could diagnose a PC problem, pull it apart, swap hardware out, put it back together again without a second thought. But something goes wrong with my car and I'm all like "car's broken, better call the mechanic". Can anyone recommend a beginner's guide to mechanics? I feel like even some basic knowledge would go a long way.

Don't most smartphones have emergency broadcasts built-in these days? Who doesn't have their phone on them when they're driving in a car?

smart but artless

This depends entirely on what you're working on - programming is just a tool to make something after all. As an example, I'm a video game programmer who specializes in gameplay (characters, weapons, metagame, other mechanics), AI, and user experience. This means I'm also part game designer, so there is a ridiculous amount of creativity required for my role on a daily basis (which I absolutely adore). It's really nice not working to a hard spec, a lot of my job is trying different approaches and seeing what's fun.

Here's the BBS documentary miniseries - worth a watch either for nostalgia or learning about how electronic communication worked pre-internet: https://archive.org/details/BBS.The.Documentary

Thanks for sharing the code! I've been looking to explore deep learning a bit more with Python, this is a great place to dive in head-first.