• 0 Posts
  • 22 Comments
Joined 18 days ago
cake
Cake day: March 2nd, 2026

help-circle


  • Mostly agreed. For me the actual biggest problem here is Nvidia presenting this as the assumed default experience everyone obviously wants and using a heavily genericized face as a win. The tech needs to be much more energy efficient and configurable on both the developer and end-user side before I’ll give it any serious attention.

    Regarding future versions of this tech, I think “death of the author” still applies to video games, so changing artistic intent isn’t always bad, especially for games that get frequently replayed. I certainly don’t play stock Skyrim or Minecraft anymore. To use your example, yes, a photorealistic (attempt of) Ocarina of Time would probably be too off-putting, but give me style options like BotW, Spiderverse, Pixar, anime, etc.? I’d be down to try those.


  • So, I actually like generative AI (disclaimer I feel I have to include every time: local open models only), and my main problem with that image is how genericized the new face is. If you’ve seen a lot of AI images, it’s immediately recognizable as the default mixed Asian/Caucasian face you get when not prompting something more specific than “woman” due to the datasets dominating the training data. It heavily implies all faces will be similarly genericized.

    I don’t think this tech will be viable unless creators can give the AI a reference image of what a character should look like when photorealistic, and that’s just going to increase the workload of running this in realtime.








  • Roughly, it grades you by how much you reduce the pool of possible answers with each guess. The total pool of Wordle words is somewhere around 2300, so to get the answer in 4 guesses, each guess needs to average removing 85% of the pool, something like 2300 > 345 > 52 > 8 > 1.

    Side note: This is related to why I refuse to play hard mode. Sure it’s technically more difficult, but it removes a huge strategic element of the game.

    Let’s say you have _OUND where _ could be any of BFHMPRSW. In hard mode, you just have to guess one at a time and hope you get lucky. In normal mode, you can guess something like BRUSH or WHOMP and knock 4 words out of the pool at once.

    Here’s my game today using this strategy for guess 2:

    #Wordle1727 3/6 Grade: A

    🟩🟨⬜⬜🟨 B
    ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ A
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 A+

    https://gradle.app/#SP83VvGPfG9wTrV9

    In hindsight, I should have done

    spoiler

    MORPH instead of OOMPH :::, but I was in a rush at the time and got the same information anyway.

    Edit to add: I suspect the optimal strategy for hard mode involves trying to get as many yellows as possible without hitting greens. I may test this the next time I don’t have a streak to lose.



  • Interestingly enough, I don’t seem to have that exact problem. The content speeds I’m comfortable with are highly variable, and I think it has something to do with attention bandwidth.

    My default speed for videos is 2.5x when I have it on a big screen and I can pump the audio directly into my head via headphones. Without the headphones, anything over 2x usually feels too fast, so I guess filtering ambient noise is using 0.5x worth of brain power. When I lose the visual component (as with audiobooks) to anchor attention onto, I’m most comfortable at 1.5x.

    In real life conversations, so much of my attention is on other things (like what my hands and eyeballs should be doing) that 1x is back to feeling normal.

    The only thing it maybe hurts is watching videos with other people, but I don’t do that a lot and can usually still get away with 1.25x or 1.5x. Also, I sometimes get the feeling that I’m talking too slowly, but I think I’ve always felt that.


  • Brain not broke. Priorities changed, and it’s okay.

    As someone who has always loved reading, books just aren’t something you can multitask. And before anyone says “stop multitasking; people don’t actually multitask as well as they think they do,” it really depends on what tasks you’re pairing together. I can pair audiobooks with driving, dishes, laundry, etc. and feel like I’ve not hurt either task one bit while gaining time back, so that’s how I consume most of my books.

    I think there’s still something to gain by sitting down and devoting yourself to actually reading a book, but I think it’s okay to save that for the very rare book that’s special to you for whatever reason and take your time doing so. And yes, LOTR is one of those for me too.







  • In case you’re not being hyperbolic (or for anyone else legitimately thinking this because I’ve heard it multiple times), I think Valve really did the best thing they could. I know Valve feels huge, but MasterCard and Visa together are over a hundred times bigger, and any payment processing system Valve could make would definitely be a pushover.

    Also, never underestimate the casual normie population. If Valve lost Visa and MasterCard support, I’m pretty sure that would mean losing two-thirds of their playerbase if not more. Those people would either prop up alternative stores like Epic or Microslop’s or just pull away from PC gaming altogether.

    Anyway, it’s a bit like the people saying Valve should make their own DRAM to combat the shortage. It doesn’t acknowledge how entrenched the existing manufacturers are and how far away Valve actually is from that level of manufacturing.