NBJack

R.I.P. Living Computer Museum (yes I am aware of its formal name). They took such good care of the systems there, and basically everything could be played with. It's technically not the only museum like it around Seattle, but it was incredibly memorable.

I'm sure you took the time to study the works of the artist over the course of their 23 year tenure and their body of work. Right?

This is true to the style of what it parodies. The lack of punctuation is part of the intent.

That's a cute attempt at ragebait. Consider a more aged account next time?

It's OK. You just didn't have enough cultural context to recognize that it is, in fact, a parody. And a rather good one.

I literally just indulged in some vibe coding to make a battle arena of neural network driven "agents" fighting it out for the rights to proceed and evolve. I managed to get some decently efficient little murder bots out of it. You now make me want to try and throw an actual model at the fight.

You may be exactly right about that. All the more reason for all of us to take care of ourselves.

Honestly felt like something trying to rip through my chest at one point. I don't recommend it.

I was quite in touch with my God during my attempt to drive myself to the ER. Looking back, I was probably in danger of meeting Him had I driven for more than a few minutes. Grateful I wasn't far.

Do scanners count?

I'm pretty sure they moved on from them, but a while ago I did seasonal work for a company that rented out scanners for year end inventory (tax related, IIRC). The scanners had to be "cooked" (flashed) on racks, boxed, and sent. The flashing usually worked, but on occasion, the scanner would fail the checksum or something and drop you into a DOS prompt.

On that note, please don't let your furry companion into your lap while you drive a vehicle. You don't want to find out what happens to them if an airbag deploys.

Depends on how the device gets data from your computer and how it connects. My Xreal Ones present themselves as a monitor via DP Alt mode when I plug them into my work laptop, switch to ultrwide mode (32:9 is my fav), and I'm done.

To use most VR headsets that are also standalone devices, I would start by fighting with IT on getting some kind of security exception to use the necessary software on my laptop, then get started with streaming/connecting/sharing screens with it. Hopefully.

What's worse is that, due to the motion tracking many of these devices have, you often have to enter a travel mode that disables some of the better features.

I've been that guy, though with a portable keyboard and wireless mouse using my Xreal glasses with a Samsung device in Dex mode.

It is as close as Ive gotten to the cyberpunk dream so far.

Really? Did you ever try adjusting the text sharpness?

I've a pair of Nreal Air glasses (before the rebrand) and a pair of Xreal Ones. I have found the latter remarkably comfortable and sharp enough for coding, reading text, playing games, etc. for extended periods of time.

The new widescreen modes are a real treat too. Still waiting for Real 3D to get upgraded to 60FPS though.

Sound fonts were a reovlution on consumer grade PCs. I can still hear the "Bloodwar" demo they shipped with.

But I also recall how much I struggled to get the emu10k1 chip to work with my Linux distro in the (very) early 2000s. I eventually gave up.

There was a bug? Is that why some of the Wing Commander 2 music would sound weird sometimes?!?

I had a decent midi collection well before MP3s were around (or even took off). MIDI was much more forgiving to download via a 14.4k modem.

Even when they did, I remember how revolutionary Creative Labs appeared (to me) with sound fonts on my Live! card. Or when the PC version of FF7 came with a software synth.

I occasionally run across songs on streaming services claiming to be 'orchestrated' versions of this or that, only to highly suspect the 'author' just grabbed a MIDI and threw it into a modern music writing studio package (perhaps replacing a few instruments here and there).

Yep, we've been doing this "agenticly" at my job for a while now. I can't say the results are often impressive, particularly if you underspecify what you actually want.

I'm slightly miffed that the pictured computer is technically an Apple IIc (though I'm sure they meant the Apple II family). Mainly because there actually was an Apple II computer. I see the original article got this detail correct.

A bit pedantic, I realize, but the original Apple II had a max of 48k of RAM, while the IIc had significantly more ram at 128k. Software is (AFAIK) otherwise compatible between them.

Not necessarily. One could argue my cell phone's signal is in the public when I use it (home or otherwise; it is rather omnidirectional), and the records thereof aren't subject to it the same way as say a search of my phone or my home.

However, in Carpenter v. United States, government entities were found to be in violation of the fourth when accessing historical CSLI records containing the physical locations of cellphones without a search warrant (at least over a period of 7 days or more, if I understood it right). Previously, it was considered fair game under the basis of records technically turned over to a 3rd party.

Then there's United States v. Jones (2012), where it was established a GPS tracking device was attached to a car constitutes a search.

It remains to be seen how Flock will ultimately hold up in court. Although a few cases have popped up, I think it's too early to tell.

These would be a nightmare to wear for kettlebells.

I was surprised when (finally) trying out Claude how much I preferred Gemini's way of communicating. I wont argue Claude is better at coding, but for knowledge work, I had to dig through Claude output to find what I actually wanted. At times, it even felt borderline incomprehensible.

Since the context here is the U.S., there are plenty of restrictions they are legally bound by. Here's a small sample:

- The fourth amendment (protection against unreasonable search and seizure)

- Mapp v. Ohio, 1961 (evidence gained without adhering to the fourth amendment is inadmissible)

- Wong Sun v. United States, 1963 (conclusions drawn from unlawfully obtained evidence/illegal entry can be challenged or outright discarded)

- Franks v. Delaware, 1978 (the right to challenge evidence collected on the basis of a warrant granted on the basis of a false statement)

Their competition isn't really raising the bar either.

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...

I, uh, would be more careful of making that statement given our public comment history. I know I can't cast any stones here.

More than interesting though, I will vouch for many of the points they presented in practice. Spreading partitions and taking advantage of the flexibility of Linux with how and where they are mounted has been a part of best practices for decades now. Many cloud-based solutions for Linux workstations I've used take full advantage of this for easier management of space (i.e. volume expansion) as well as security considerations, to say nothing of keeping your /var/log separate to avoid running out of space because you turned on verbose mode for something.

It isn't the right play.

Part of the reason Meta is scrambling for purpose is how much privacy laws and changes have hurt them while their platforms fail to attract new generations. Ads are still selling, but they can no longer tie them to actual sales. Users are still logging in, but aging (i.e. failures to capture the younger generation).

Personal AGI has massive hurdles to overcome to be anywhere near the levels of profitability their ailing ads network is. This will bring in new data for them to mine for sure. But it will basically have to outrun new legislature that will likely limit just how "personal" these systems can get as they seek the profit they need to sustain growth via said data.

I mean, sentences themselves are graphs of data and context with connectors of various types. Embeddings within these models help form the links to the underlying semantic concepts.

Directly representing things as a graph would likely reduce some of the 'translation overhead', done correctly.

Beyerdynamic has ruined me. And it's not even the best out there.

I am but an armchair expert here, but I do think most of what's missing is the complexity of real-life ecosystems and "connections". Having biomes that are substantially large on a given planet and diversity among them, animals unique to each, and some kind of connections between the sparse settlements (even just like 3-5 actual cities per planet would be a start) would be a big difference. It would be a bit less about the 'wonder' and more about understanding the interplay.

For now, all I can see is "optimization" and "system limits on numbers of unique objects for things to work at 60+ FPS".

I agree; I stopped playing years ago after completing what was the main quest of the time (uncovering the nature of the universe and getting to the center). I even setup a decent sized farm for one of the more rare materials to make a billion or so credits (until they nerfed the economy for that).

The planet variety is disappointing. And the prefab 'locations of interest' get really, really boring.

But, I admit I may have to fire it up if what I get to explore is player generated now. And if they're actually making some locations more lucrative for either the resources or what's available to actually process them, I would at least want to check it out.

That, and I totally want a base on an asteroid.