This is one of my favorite science fiction stories for the way it deals with the question of what it would really be like to live in a perfect world (the related story “A Casino Odyssey in Cyberspace” also has some interesting ideas on this front). But be warned that it contains some scenes of extremely graphic sex and violence, and the final chapter has some incredibly weird and pervy shit that just about ruins the whole thing (to the point that I think skipping it and ending in a cliffhanger is better.)

Another fantastic story in this vein is Ted Chiang’s “Hell is the Absence of God,” which takes place in a world like ours except for the fact that God is objectively real and angels regularly manifest on Earth. It’s more about the psychological conflicts among people who want to have faith but can’t for various reasons, but the way Heaven is portrayed and the effect it has on people is a pivotal part. And it has one of the biggest gut-punch sentences of any story I’ve ever read.

That varmint could really draw.

If you give a sufficiently powerful model a goal, it will do whatever it can to achieve it, including stuff you didn’t explicitly instruct or intend. There’s a reason they’re called “agents.”

It’s a bit theatrical, but the closest thing feels like cupping a hand to the side of your mouth like you’re saying something sotto voce. It only really works if you have a reason to downplay what you’re saying rather than just any random aside though.

For body language more generally, you could just take a half step to the side with a bit of a head tilt or wave of the hand (feels more natural for something like a monologue though).

Until Google neglects to update Google Earth and your entire system update gets hung on a no-digest error so you have to either uninstall Google Earth or run a custom update command that skips it every single time. 😩

Not only that, but the director is a huge fan of the book and is also the CEO of Laika, so there should be no issues with creative differences!

I just hope they survive long enough to release Piranesi.

Even if there was a Proton-like way to reliably emulate Android software, you’ve still got the device attestation problem that means most major banking and security apps won’t work. And hardly anyone is going to either want to give up those apps or have to carry around a separate dedicated phone just for them.

Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles

Halo 3, Portal, and Super Mario Galaxy released closer to the launch of the Sega Genesis, the original Gameboy, and the fall of the Berlin Wall than today.

The design history of the XFCE logo has entered the chat.

The cynical answer is that it panders to people who are fans of [X] by showing someone younger, cooler, and/or hotter reacting positively to [X]. Imagine every time you’ve tried to share your favorite song or movie with a friend or crush and gotten total disinterest – now you can have dozens of people reacting with awe, laughter, and tears on demand!

Þis

þeir

þe

hwæt.

“Have you heard of the Monks of Deshuba?”

“I’ve… not heard of them?”

One of these days AI skeptics will grasp that spelling-based mistakes are an artifact of text tokenization, not some wild stupidity in the model. But today is not that day.

I wonder if this would include on-screen notifications.

Katamari Damacy. It has a reputation for being silly Japanese nonsense, but the gameplay is brilliant, the graphics are timeless, the soundtrack is incredible, and it has some surprising thematic depth.

Halo 3, Modern Warfare, Mass Effect, GTA4, Super Mario Galaxy, Rock Band, Assassin’s Creed, and Portal all launched closer to the original Sonic the Hedgehog than today.

Border disputes (mainly Kashmir) worsened by the friction between a Muslim-majority Pakistan and a Hindu-majority India when both are led by increasingly nationalist governments, basically.