bopbop

Christ, you scared me there. Stallman is not dead.

<not the original commenter> It's a bit more advanced and complex then gamemaker - when I used it a few years ago a more direct comparison would have been a 2d specialist Unity (although it does 3d as well, and this may have significantly advanced since I last used it)

Some background on the Adidas/Puma rivalry, which is quite a fascinating story:

https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/mgz97b/the-nazi-siblin...

Yes I am! Thanks!

To be fair, the 256 byte stack can essentially be used in assembly as 256 registers, which is also one of the features (along with indirect addressing) that make assembly on it awesome.

My relatively poorly researched impression of it is that it's half-way to portable C, with a proto-stack and pointers, essentially.

Interesting - what would the evidence that current paywalls are/have restored quality journalism be?

As in, do you believe this uptick in quality journalism has already happened/is happening? And what associates it with paywalls? Presumably you'd have to be seeing quality journalism behind paywalls for this to be case?

I wanted to follow along - your blog looks excellent, I'll check there and micro.blog. Thank you.

Incidentally (and rhetorically), how I have not heard of micro.blog? It looks amazing! This whole thread has become a goldmine of interesting things.

How do I get updates on the groups project?

Wiby seems amazing - the first three surprise me links were a human powered ornithopter, lego maniacs and a guide to knife throwing. Thank you for sharing!

Bread and circuses

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

I can't comment nationally, but I've been having fish and chips a couple of times at our local and near my parents, both in London, and they're all using vinegar.

Death note is almost a reverse bird box.

Bird box has an excellent premise, which turns out to just be a hook on which to hang some character development (I did quite enjoy it though).

Death note has a really derivative premise, and then goes nuts drilling down in to the exact mechanics of how such a thing would work - there's no deus ex machina (apart from the literal god of the plot), instead it plays within it's own rules very exactly and never cheats the audience, instead introducing very clever "hacks" to its own system.

I think it's mostly a psychological barrier in most respects. There's also no necessity to comment - lurking, despite the quite awful name we've given the behaviour, is a perfectly normal thing to do. Plenty of people read books who don't write them, etc.

I'd also presume (and it is a presumption!) that people who are commenting on one platform will likely also to be commenting on another. As in, I would presume they would establish a conversation as the preferred method of internet discourse they digest, as opposed to a one way consumption of data.

This also gives me an opportunity to use one of my favourite Cronenberg quotes: "The monologue is his preferred method of discourse" - Videodrome

To be fair, it was the PUBG developers themselves who called Fortnite a clone:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/09/22/pubg-deve...

And also Epic themselves stated Fortnite was their "own version" of "Battle Royale games like PUBG"

https://blog.us.playstation.com/2017/09/12/fortnite-battle-r...

There was a great list on BoingBoing recently of works entering the public domain this year:

https://boingboing.net/2018/12/31/thanks-justin.html

Also a rather sadder list following it of works that won't be (yet) because of the copyright extension.

This seems to be a classic example of an argument in which the ends don't justify the means (the means being allowing the lawsuits, the ends being publishers switch to "absolute paywalls")

It may mean that without a harsh letigious method, publishers do not offer "soft paywalls". It's more likely they will continue to do so to not be shut out of the market, AND we won't have waves of frivolous harsh lawsuits bankrupting independent developers.

The alternative you're proposing is to in effect be held to ransom by content providers - your argument could equally be made for any form of drm or appeasement (without root how do we know you are not recording this, wothout your location how do we know you are within our licensing area, without direct retinal scans how do we know who is really watching, etc)

That's kind of awesome. How good with names would you say you are now?

Also, is that the whole technique? Seems like you'd have to say it for quite a while to get it in to long term memory - if you're doing it straight after it doesn't seem like it would qualify for spaced repetition. Do you do it again later?

Ah, that's awesome! thanks!

Great article. Wish he named some of those "obscure Eastern European computers". I know there are good communities around the Japanese microcomputers, the Sharp X1, the 8801, the 9801, MSX, MSX2, etc. http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr/phpBB3/index.php?sid=88c8ee18...

There's some excellent games buried away on them. This series of books in particular is amazing:

https://www.amazon.com/Untold-History-Japanese-Game-Develope...

Anyone know what the author is referring to?

Do you have an online reference for that?

I tried this IBM one but it has a terrible clickthrough to attempt to avoid GDPR:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-ppc/index.html

And, as seems to pretty much always be the case, the wikibooks looks promising but then appears to be empty:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/PowerPC_Assembly/Instructions

This one seemed pretty good:

https://www.cs.uaf.edu/2011/fall/cs301/lecture/11_21_PowerPC...

Whether an individual building performs its function well or not, its still a central tenet of Brutalism to embed the function in the form.

I appreciate that if everything was Brutalist it would be an overwhelming sight, but I definitely think it has its place.

I'm also not keen on the Hayward personally, but places like Brunel University, the Barbican and the airport in the article have a really nice reduced functionalist style with interesting angles and use of glass.

Edit: Also in terms of popularity of Brutalism, the Barbican is constantly getting praise, and I think has or had architecture tours happening.

I can see how building a process directly into a building can lead to an inflexibility with changing the process.

I think the argument you're making lends itself well to a criticism of any pre-planned system.

That's likely subjective, as I think it's extremely aesthetically pleasing - I've always seen Brutalism as having strong links with the Bauhaus style, something else I have high regard for.

I won't argue with your city of the past argument as I'm not sure I'd term it as the dominant architecture of a city of the future, but I think it definitely has a place. I would argue against Brutalism expressing domination over people - I've always seen it more as expressing function in form, which would be the opposite. Given it's close ties to Soviet architecture I can see how a lot of the buildings built in the style would have literally been used for the oppression of individual will, however.

Also, with regards to it's opinion in the UK and worldwide, Brutalism is experiencing something of a revival:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/t-magazine/design/brutali...

https://www.europeanceo.com/lifestyle/brutalisms-message-may...

https://houseandhome.com/decorating-design/brutalism-revival...

They're just making the point that she didn't marry him for his social credit score, even though he happens to have a high score under the system.

Yes, that makes sense. I still hold that the deliberate omission of her party relationship until later in the article is to initially position her as a third party positive voice who happens to support the system.

And yes, the network affects are particularly awful.

Just for reference the original title was 'Leave no dark corner'

I'd imagine given her husband is a Chinese civil servant, this is either with approval or she has been asked to do it.

There's no way a marketing consultant and a civil servant don't understand the potential ramifications of being part of the article!

Amazing anecdotes.

Yeah, the title is awful - I was happier with the article then I thought I'd be, as it did go in to some of the negative points. To point to any atomic automatic judgment of ones citizens based on their beliefs as a good thing is a bit of a weird view, however. The examples they give are all terrifying.

It's also not great that the lady they report as pro social credit is only revealed later on in the piece as being married to a high ranking party member. She's introduced as "a marketing professional" when I'd argue the most relevant facts towards her support/non-support of such a system would be that she is married to "a civil servant in the justice department, a loyal cadre to the party."

The article makes several strange emotional appeals regarding her, actually. For instance, I'm glad she "married for love", but I don't see why it would be relevant to the issue at hand unless it was an attempt to further humanize her and, by extension, this new Permanent Spotlight system.

Awesome, I'll check them out.

Ah, shame! I haven't read it in several years.

I have not found anything better then Borges. Actually, it's kind of annoying because somehow reading Borges appears to have become synonymous with pretentiousness, at least to my friends, and my earnest appeals to others to read his magnificent fiction have been poorly received. But he really is so damn good!

Let me know if there's anything you'd recommend.

I'd say the Wind Up Bird Chronicles is a lot closer to the Hard Boiled Wonderland.

1Q84, while it has an excellent rendition of a cult member, is a simpler story, and has a tendency to repeat itself quite a bit. I don't know if this was because it was originally printed as two books or not, that might just be a UK thing.

The Wind up Bird Chronicles starts on this relatively intriguing but normal sounding premise (a mans wife doesn't come home one day, and he finds a receipt for a dry cleaners in her pocket) and then just starts to go nuts, but with each fantastical step being laid on in a coherent enough fashion to take you along with it. Of course, all of this is just opinion.

I'd also recommend his book of short stories - I think it's "The Elephant Vanishes". They are some with really excellent premises.

In terms of other authors, maybe try Borge and A Universal History of Infamy. I think it has a similar level of fantastical whimsy and excellent language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Universal_History_of_Infamy