gardenmud's comments

I mean, it wasn't really a trick.

It's truly the exact same as someone saying "onefive can be read as (one five), but it's not (fifteen)" - to a non-English speaker I mean - I don't read 'prank' in that statement

It's a Bible reference.

>The fifth miracle of Davies' title refers to Genesis 1:11: "Let the Land Produce Vegetation." (The first four Biblical miracles are the creation of the universe, the creation of light, the creation of the firmament and the creation of dry land.) It is proverbial in the popular science publishing world that God is good for sales, especially since Steven Hawking sold millions of copies of an otherwise unremarkable book by promising that a unified physical theory would enable us "to know the mind of God." Commercial requirements alone seem to have dictated that word "miracle," since Davies begins the book by disavowing it. Like other evolutionary scientists he starts with the presumption that "it is the job of science to solve mysteries without recourse to divine intervention." Life is not a miracle because scientists wish it to be a product of natural forces which they can explain.

- http://www.arn.org/docs/johnson/fifthmiracle.htm

You can easily do this by just giving them a throwaway email. They don't check. Legally they just have to record your name but there's nothing saying you have to give them a real email.

Not only that, but it doesn't work on Google Chrome releases, only the (upstream) Chromium, and Google Chrome canary. Very few people use raw Chromium all by its lonesome and I would guess only for testing/development, not downloading random extensions.

Because Linux isn't made with the goal of getting as many people to use it as possible.

I feel like the post fails to address that fairly obvious point. It's like proselytizing a type of screwdriver. It only works on people who already care about types of screwdrivers.

I actually kind of appreciate the laws there. It's sort of weird because it's one of those things where -- if you just use a VPN it totally negates the problem. Like somehow it's just "common knowledge" that you can do any of that with a VPN and you're risk free. It's this loophole that... you can't really close as a government without being completely authoritarian.

So it's not shocking that some might want to shut down VPNs or make using a VPN illegal (like, uh, North Korea, Belarus, Iraq, Oman, Turkmenistan... oof).

Oh wow. I found this by him too: https://theeggandtherock.com/p/the-ihole-by-julian-gough-fic...

Really good! Not sure how I've missed this guy. I guess I never did play Minecraft all the way to the end.

It's a good one! :)

Based on the article, she provides the services of a sort of on-call talk therapist/emotional support that overlaps with services typically provided by a personal assistant or maid of honor, like keeping the bridesmaids organized and on track. Honestly, I get it. If you don't have a willing volunteer, there's no shame in hiring a personal assistant for the job. Where she really excels is selling it as something fun and chic, not desperate; 'extra bridesmaid to fill out the group' is a lot more palatable than 'hired help'.

I don't think this person is asking to protect against all possible harm. I find it strange that you seem to think it is unreasonable to not want your baby shaken so hard they die, and to want to clearly know how much force that is.

The use of models is fantastic even if only to provide easier ways of handling pre-written text; like taking player input and categorizing it according to sentiment or estimated topic. I'm playing with it in Evennia and dialogue and interactions with the game are somewhat night and day. Just not having to guess for keywords is a wild improvement. However, it's also very slow unless you want to throw money away; running on a cheap droplet using Meta's zero-shot-classification for relatively brief queries... each takes a few seconds.

Text generation is where most people's minds go but as far as players are concerned UX is more important than a million different room descriptions; you can always write rooms yourself.

Yes, and Minecraft also inspired a generation of new makers to create Minecraft-y games. It's what happens with good genres and the evolution of games.

I don't think this is fully wrong!

A lot of it is just that there's only so much free time, and those of us that really want to create MUDs wind up putting our time into that instead of playing as we find it more enjoyable and rewarding. In fact, for some it is a hobby in and of itself, ballooning into a passion project that may never see the light of day, like restoring a car you have no intention of ever driving.

People who are active in the "meta" community outside a specific game tend to want to create MUDs. It's like how there are billions of people playing board games, but if you join a board game community you are far more likely to find others who want to create them; it's self-selecting for more interest in the guts of the hobby.

The difference is that people merely somewhat interested in MUDs have dwindled over time, leaving the die-hards behind and a small, small sprinkling of new players just discovering them.

If there was a MUD that got all of the coders wanting to build their own MUD to go "this is incredible, let's just work on this instead, everyone we're moving house" -- I think people willing to do that join teams at extant games instead.

Very cool! A lot of this tech still is fascinating today. Well... visually not so stunning, of course, but in concept and execution.