Kind of — Bob Hope made the joke in the late 1950s:

Bob Hope, back from his Russian junket, noted that there had been TV in all the rooms of his Moscow hotel–”only it watches you”

Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/in-soviet-russia

I’m just trying to find sandy loam.

I don’t have it on Steam yet, but I have Balatro’s Completionist++ on mobile.

I’m working on getting it on Steam too. Once you’ve done it once, getting it again isn’t hard, just time-consuming. It’s a 0.2% achievement, I think.

This is a very old topic, such that IMO, it’s not worth putting in the effort to discuss it online. Fortunately, it’s also a very well-researched topic.

For the question of whether disruptive protests help or hurt, the answer seems to be slightly more on the “help” side (mostly in terms of drawing attention, as I understand it). Here is a recent article that looks into the question in depth: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13064859/

Horizon Forbidden West added a “photo mode”, I think mostly just to show off how good the graphics can be (when nothing is being animated). It does look awesome. If you zoom the camera in, you get anatomically correct facial features.

There might also be some conversation scenes with close-ups of Aloy. Depending on your graphics settings, you might get some extra details rendered.

I am absolutely convinced that the game is not rendering fine hairs while you’re fighting robot dinosaurs, since, as you suggest, that would be kind of ridiculous.

But, hey, you really kicked the shit out of that straw man! Great job!

A fun counterpoint to the “albums weren’t meant to be shuffled” argument is Apollo 18 by TMBG.

On the track list, “Fingertips” is track 17, followed by “Space Suit” at track 38. That’s because Fingertips is actually 21 mini songs (mostly 10 seconds or less), each with their own track, that are supposed to appear randomly between full songs when you listen on shuffle.

On the other hand, modern streaming services usually just have a single track for Fingertips, so I’m now used to hearing those 21 mini songs in the original, “play it straight through” order.

While the article focuses on Mercedes-Benz, as a Volvo owner, I was immediately concerned about what will happen when my lease is up.

Buried at the bottom of the article are these three paragraphs:

Volvo, which is majority-owned by Shufu’s Geely, said on Tuesday that it received specific authorization from the U.S. government to bypass federal bans restricting connected vehicle software and hardware linked to China.

Volvo confirmed its special authorization but did not immediately respond to questions about the other bills and their potential impact on the company.

Volvo Cars sold 121,600 vehicles in the U.S. last year. Mercedes-Benz sold 303,200 passenger cars and 12,400 vans in the country during the same period.

Clearly, the correct answer is Dr. Acula.

The sound of a dog drinking from a sprinkler?

Huh… As a big The The fan (literally wearing a The The t-shirt while writing this), I’ve never really thought of Infected as being different from the rest of the catalog. Some of his other songs are pretty up-tempo and “noisy” in the way that Infected is.

I think I managed to win my first run after about 40 tries, where I got lucky with a really good build. I think it was with the rail and a couple of the bomb upgrades from the Daedalus hammer – the rocket and the 5-shot. I probably had a boon that increased special damage (Aphrodite, maybe?).

I didn’t win again until number 55-60, but then I started winning every three runs or so. Eventually, I started winning every run, regardless of weapon. Then I started dialing up the heat and winning without using Olympian keepsakes. I eventually hit 100% on Steam.

A year later, I replayed it on Xbox when it was on Gamepass, and I think I won on my 11th run. (I needed a bit of metaprogression and time to relearn the enemy patterns after being away for a while.)

My opinion is that it’s a near-perfect roguelite in terms of luck and metaprogression helping beginners, but there’s still a definite skill element. Builds that I hated when I first started eventually became some of my favorites. I feel like the learning curve wasn’t punishing, but the game wasn’t “easy” for me.

Isn’t it a reference to the trick that mentalists have been doing for decades? My mind immediately went to Uri Gellar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_bending

I built an RS232 cable from parts from RadioShack 25 years ago, with no soldering, just electrical tape. It’s surprisingly easy if you don’t need speed. Mine capped out at 1200 or 2400 baud. Was it good? No. Did it work? Absolutely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms

In this case, they’re talking about being in the natural numbers club, and applying the “successor” (or “succ”) function.

Exactly.

Most of the comments in this thread are accusing him of trying to take credit for the work of a machine that’s just imitating other work. It’s the FuckAI echo chamber and people who didn’t actually read the article.

In this case, it’s more like he’s claiming to have created a genuinely creative being that deserves rights previously reserved for humans (like copyrights and patents).

It’s a completely different (and IMO, much weirder) story than people are assuming.

Yeah… Checking his website at https://imagination-engines.com/founder.htm, he certainly seems like an “interesting” character.

My understanding is that he did do the work of creating the AI. This isn’t just someone using ChatGPT.

In this case, it’s not that he’s trying to claim copyright for himself based on coming up with a prompt. He’s spent years applying for patents and copyrights with the AI listed as the creator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DABUS

Michael Ironsidearm

Doesn’t Iceland still follow the tradition of using the father’s first name followed by “son” or “dottir” for their “last names”?

So, when a Jonson meets a Jonsdottir at a singles bar, they just know that they both have fathers named Jon (hopefully not the same one).

OP: Asks what will run well on a 2017 mid-range business laptop.

ITT: Idle games! Text adventures! Literally games from the 1990s that would run fine on a 486.

🤦‍♂️