milchek

Really impressive demo. I have to say that, but I do worry with this kind of fidelity to a human interaction that people will get more drawn into AI relationships and replace human contact.

I like voice as a mode of interaction with AI, but it’s always been clear with current tech that I’m talking to AI (and yet folks still got drawn into fantasy relationships thanks to sycophantic models etc) - I imagine with voice models like Dessa that could be worse for humans. This kind of fidelity blurs the lines of who or what the human is talking to and lets humans fall into an isolated world where they believe they are “socializing.”

Now, we could argue this is not a negative, maybe it is actually healthy for those who are looking for social connection or lonely, but my gut feel is that is not the case for most. It worries me that this kind of model will actually cause further deterioration of human socialisation and human-to-human contact.

Sure, but not all users hate AI generated assets, there are some who do not care either way (or can’t tell). I know plenty of artists (designers) in digital who are embracing generative AI and getting more done - granted, they are not artists who generate assets for games. But hey, maybe I’m biased working in the industry.

I can sympathise why many hate gen AI for the jobs it’s taken (and there is nuance here because often it’s not gen ai - it’s cost cutting or misaligned expectations from executives) but I feel like the craftsman who embraces the tool can create more value for the world than the craftsman who does not.

In any case, there will be a market for 100% human made art, media, and games -I’m just not sure we should obsess with enforcing (and gatekeeping), if someone who is a mediocre artist with a great game idea wants to make a game and use AI to accelerate themselves to deliver a better product for the world then that’s great.

I suspect you are right. Interestingly this reminds me of the John Carmack interview on Lex Fridman’s podcast where he mentions that game devs and game artists/designers are different in their need for attribution with the later treating the discipline more like art (which it clearly can be).

The thing is, customers/players generally don’t care. Just look at the annual incremental releases of games that continue to sell well. Sure, there is also a cohort of players who love the indie scene for its more grassroots or authentic approach to games. Both sides of that player spectrum would ultimately be happy with more quality content, but I agree with you that perhaps one side may be more averse to AI “assisted” game development.

I think the nuance here is for a fan of indie games, how much of the artwork has to be hand generated? What if the artist uses AI to help speed up tedious work like additional frames or animation? What the game is entirely coded in AI but hand drawn (or vice versa).

I suspect the economics and 'shape' of the gaming industry to change over the next few years. Currently we're in this strange place with game dev where a large portion of software engineers (majority?) are using LLMs and AI coding tools, but for some reason the gaming industry (or at least it's customers) are vehemently anti-AI to the point studios have to put out statements about AI usage to assuage the mobs online.

This will change. The silent majority of customers will vote with their wallets once they realise they will get a) more games and b) better games - because the barrier to entry has been lowered, the timeframes, resource requirements reduced, more unique IP or novel games, etc. Yes, there will be more slop/shovelware - that's bound to happen - but we will also get vastly more great games as well if we allow the industry to embrace AI coding and generative AI for assets to assist creatives and developers.

It is sad that EA announced they are choosing not to continue development of the next ME game. I'm sure there are many fans of that franchise here, I know I sank a lot of hours into the series (and the online co-op mode from ME3).

Maybe EA sell off the IP to a studio who can lean into fully AI assisted game development. There's a chance we'll get something decent - and hey, it can't be as bad as Andromeda, right?

Director (and Lingo) is how I got started before moving to Flash and ActionScript for ad agency projects. Was such a fun time to be a developer - you could build whatever you wanted online and brands were being pretty adventurous.

I’m curious why profitability is the concern here? I was under the impression that abundant clean energy would be of higher concern than profitability of energy companies - unless you mean that profitability concerns will reduce the willingness to invest and develop more nuclear?

I guess we could argue that these sorts of operations should be state owned?

Language emanates from intelligence. That means the patterns and structure that make up human intelligence will appear in language. LLMs are created through so much language training that they can approximate (and now to some degree exceed) human intelligence using pattern recognition, statistics, and autocomplete (in layman’s terms).

Not sure how it is now, but early “reasoning” was simply the big labs sticking “wait a minute, what if I…” type language blocks into the process to trigger something like our own internal reasoning.

This is dense. I skimmed through hoping to see examples of the “aesthetics” with screenshots of old school installers (like the ones from Razor 1911, Class, Deviance etc) - it looks like these are scattered around the web, though. If anyone wants to relive some of the old chiptunes from these installers there’s https://archive.org/details/codex-installer-music-5-2018-03-...

Is this a US thing? In Australia all sports/shoe retailers have been stocking Nike the whole time. If I understand correctly folks are saying in the US Nike gave up its retail shelf space in favour of their own stores and online?

Memory and intelligence are linked.

Someone with a better memory for ideas or concepts will be able to more quickly incorporate those into novel ideas or recall them when necessary to assist in solving a problem than someone with worse memory.

To those here challenging this with “yes but I’m smart and my memory is bad” - a) define smart and b) perhaps your memory for trivial things like life events, what you did two weeks ago on Monday or people’s names is bad, but I suspect your memory for “work” or problem solving is strong.

Another example I used to see (hear, rather) is how musicians rip off each others riffs and hooks without noticing (unintentionally - they claim), which I long suspected as simply “forgotten” riffs they heard in other songs that once they started playing themselves by chance they attributed to their own creativity. Creativity and intelligence are somewhat linked that way I suspect.

In any case, this all boils down to the same thing, you can think of yourself as a dynamic model made up of memories and biases to some degree, and your ability to store and recall useful information to solve problems increases what we call your intelligence.

Interesting question. I suppose it comes down to how much you allocate his involvement or presence to a product? I’d imagine Grok is built by hundreds of engineers who are all unique individuals from various backgrounds. If Elon simply “leads” from a very surface level where he has no direct day to day involvement in Grok releases does that make it more palatable? Or is the question really about how involved he is? Or is simply being the leader (even if he was 100% absent and only had his name attached to a project/company) enough to boycott?

On a similar note, how much Elon hate is about his politics vs his trillionaire status vs what I like to call “watercooler hate” where folks simply parrot the loudest opinion in order to be accepted into the group?

On a final note, my son is in primary school and recently brought up in a dinner time discussion that “Elon is really bad” - this is a kid who has no social media (unlike some of his peers who are already on TikTok) and doesn’t watch traditional media.

Very unexpected but also really uplifting to see that they would spinoff a division to tackle this - it's ambitious. Obviously they've identified that the vertical is big enough and that they have the expertise or novel approach to tackle it, but i'm really curious to know how this came about internally.

I’ve tried in a 36GB MacBook Pro and haven’t had much success beyond very basic work. Issue for me was the context runs out quick even with smaller models and it’s slower. To get some half decent performance I’d imagine you want 128gb memory and are spending a lot more on hardware. At that point it becomes a question on whether you’d rather have frontier models at a subscription or sink that money into your own equipment. Of course, for those with privacy in mind your only option is forking out the cash for the higher end machines.

I see CPAP rightly getting mentioned a lot here. What worked for me was a MJS (Mandible Jaw Splint), it’s basically a mouthguard you sleep with that moves your lower jaw forward and thus brings your tongue forward so it doesn’t obstruct your airways.

Best bet is to get this custom made. Here in Australia there are specialist dentists that do this for you. It’s far easier than CPAP and works just as well for many like myself.

Often folks will use CPAP at home and these mouth guards when travelling.

I tested briefly with a MacBook Pro m4 with 36gb. Run in LM Studio with open code as the frontend and it failed over and over on tool calls. Switched back to qwen. Anyone else on similar setup have better luck?

If you liked it and want something in a similar style (conceptually) but with a bit more personal/human element I would recommend The Raw Shark Texts.

As for best sci fi books I’ve read in a while: The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch (think sci fi meets True Detective) - some awesome concepts here and really strong pacing. The other one was Version Control by Dexter Palmer which is a bit slower and more subtle sci fi (big concepts presented in a personal drama style of book)

I wonder if that is just a correction of the rampant hiring that took place just before this employment “crash?” - if it is as you say that its intermediates and non high performers then does that make it a good thing as well.

Truth is, when I was part of larger orgs/enterprise I definitely saw some folks who were dead weight, and I don’t mean to be harsh, a few of these knew they weren’t contributing and were being malicious in that sense.

Similarly, I wonder how many high performers now are taking multiple jobs thanks to remote work and exposing the mid to low performers. Like some kind of developer hypergamy taking place.

It comes down back to that whole discussion around intelligence becoming cheaper and more accessible but motivation and agency remaining stable.

I’ve worked with a few folks who have been given AI tools (like a designer who never coded in his life, a or video/content creator) who have absolutely taken off with creating web apps and various little tools and process improvements for themselves thanks by just vibecoding what they wanted. The key with both these individuals is high agency, curiosity, and motivation. That was innate, the AI tooling just gave them the external means to realise what they wanted to do with more ease.

These kinds of folks are not the majority, and we’re still early into this technological revolution imo (models are improving on a regular basis).

In summary, we’ve given the masses to “intelligence” but creativity and motivation stay the same.

I think for a lot of folks it basically comes down to just using AI to make the tasks they have to do easier and to free up time for themselves.

I’d argue the majority use AI this way. The minority “10x” workers who are using it to churn through more tasks are the motivated ones driving real business value being added - but let’s be honest, in a soulless enterprise 9-5 these folks are few and far between.

I would argue even with kids it is great (but of course can be expensive!). I lived and worked there for a couple of years during COVID with a young family and loved it (once the lockdowns and pandemic stuff blew over of course).

As you mentioned, for families, it’s extremely safe, everything is well run and maintained so healthcare and education are not a concern. Proximity to other countries for travel is excellent (well, I’m from Melbourne so much easier to get places than from here!), and the country it self has plenty to do for families in terms of activities, shopping, and food.

Beyond that, I found Singaporeans just really great to work with and be around. It’s really multicultural, they value education and talent so the workforce is full of bright and capable people, and there is a huge expat community as well.

The only major downside for me - the heat and humidity! It was a struggle the first few months for sure.

I used to believe the same thing but now I’m not so sure. What if we simply cannot fathom the true nature of the universe because we are so minuscule in size and temporal relevance?

What if the universe and our place in it are interconnected in some way we cannot perceive to the degree that outside the physical and temporal space we inhabit there are complex rules and codes that govern everything?

What if space and matter are just the universe expressing itself and it’s universal state and that state has far higher intelligence than we can understand?

I’m not so sure any more it’s all just random matter in a vacuum. I’m starting to think 3d space and time are a just a thin slice of something greater.

Once ads start to make their way up to the Plus paid tiers (and they will), I’ll probably switch to something else like local LLM on my home machine or put something together myself to use a non adware LLM via API (for example with Replicate). Especially if these are just intended to be spammy blocks at bottom or in between discussion threads, or worse, audio conversations.

From what I’ve read, this will be about ads in chat as suggestions? So “active” ads on response?

Why not go the approach of passive background “agentic” ad suggestions like, “hey, we know X, Y, and Z about you - would you like us to monitor certain brands related to your interests for deals and allow advertisers to pitch these deals to you?” And make these hyper specific so you can opt in.

I, like many people who dabble with music as a hobby, have GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) - why not let me toggle something like “ok, I don’t want ads, but if any of your partnered brands have a sale or good deal on X, feel free to email me, and use your ChatGPT smarts to pitch me on why it’s a good deal and how it suits my current gear set up”

I used ChatGPT to set up my guitar pedal board so surely this isn’t a huge leap.

Looking at many of these now they definitely appear dated. At the time, of course, these would have been “cutting edge”

I think one clear thing we can see is a trend toward more homogenized UI on web in the last 20years.

I worked as a web dev in ad agencies in the early 2000s and built a lot of Flash sites, banners ads, and games that - like a lot of the sites showcased here - were quite unique in their design and aesthetic.

Slowly over time these started to disappear as people embraced web design trends and techniques that meant everything started to look the same.

I think a large part of this at the time was due to Flash being killed off, trends like “flat design”, frameworks, jQuery, and Wordpress becoming popular.

Marketers and designers became more savvy to what “works” online and everyone copied each other in a race for attention.

I had the same idea a little while back and ended up creating playlists by year going back to the mid 90s. It’s a great way to deep dive and create “keys” to memories.

However, there is one major flaw. I’ve found that treating music as a key to unlock memory from certain periods means I tend not to revisit that same music casually because I know that each time I listen to music it gets re-encoded to current events in time.

I can’t remember where I read that (some study from ages ago) but basically if there was a song you listened to a lot as a kid and then you hear it again it will remind you of that time in your childhood, but if you keep listening to it then the song also gets attached to current memory and in 20 years when you hear it again you will have a mix of childhood and adult memories flooding back - or some diluted memory.

It might not work that way for everyone but I’ve found it to be true at least in my own personal experience.

Thanks for sharing. I've recently been thrown into the 40k universe thanks to my son (who is 9) becoming obsessed with it.

What started out as a "oh look, they've opened a Games Workshop store in this shopping centre... hey it looks like they're giving away free miniatures and showing you how to paint, lets kill 5 mins in the store" has turned into starter packs, combat patrols and lore deep dives with books. All in the span of... 4 weeks.

That said, I have to say, it's been awesome learning about everything Warhammer 40k from him. Normally, I would research something myself to the point of overkill so I could answer his questions, but on this one his enthusiasm is driving it all and he's constantly telling me about this particular faction or that faction.

It's just nice to have a hobby that keeps him away from screen time these days. It also requires patience, dexterity, and creativity - plus there is obviously an incredible amount of lore, world building, backstories, etc, plenty to keep his imagination entertained.

The one big problem, of course, is the money required! Which is why someone recently said to me "maybe get a 3d printer" and we had this exact discussion about quality of printing etc, and regardless, I just don't see that impacting things like book sales or codex's.

Anyway, cool to read about how people got into it and just thought I'd share!

Thanks for sharing, interesting they have both left to right and right to left writing form and that it’s so simple and intuitive to tell which way - but I guess now I want to know why they went with this dynamic system? Guessing it’s due to the form/medium and need for fitting things - perhaps like if you enter a room and are reading the wall as you walk through on your right side your are reading right to left as opposed to if the glyphs were on the left wall?

Sorry about that, added the sources

This was a little over my head so I did some digging of course into the negative or potential harmful effects:

Covert biological manipulation: If cells in specific organisms (including people) are engineered to respond to particular light patterns, then light could be used as a trigger to turn on harmful genes or disrupt normal biology in targeted groups, raising concerns about new classes of biological or “neuro” weapons.

Military and control applications: In combination with existing neurotechnology and optogenetics work (e.g., brain interfaces and neural stimulation), there are concerns about using light‑controlled genetic tools for enhancement, interrogation, or behavior influence in military or intelligence settings.

Ethical and societal risks:

Autonomy, consent, and “mind control” worries: Optogenetics already raises concerns about manipulating brain activity, permanence of genetic changes, informed consent, and vulnerability of specific populations once their cells are engineered to respond to light. GO intensifies this by linking genetic programming directly to external optical signals, which magnifies fears of remote influence or coercive use.

Safety, equity, and regulation: There are unresolved questions about long‑term safety, off‑target effects, error rates in in‑cell DNA/RNA synthesis, and who gets access to beneficial applications versus who is exposed to risk, all in a regulatory landscape that is still catching up with advanced gene and neurotechnologies.

Sources: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10730653

https://unidir.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/UNIDIR_Neurote...

https://www.asimov.press/p/darpa-neurotech

https://www.bioinformatics.org/forums/forum.php?forum_id=154...

"Medium Setting!" - https://frinkiac.com/gif/S03E22/319309/322862/

The GIF generator works well. Nice work!

You could probably delete some of the frames that have credits shown over them - since you have plenty of material already anyway, for example: https://frinkiac.com/caption/S17E16/137763 or https://frinkiac.com/caption/S16E09/162162