vivid lingering

No download this week, as I'm in the middle of switching my laptop over to linux, and I haven't yet got a build pipeline set up for my game engine. It might be another month or two before I'm back up and running.

Further Reading

The incredibly involved story of how the Video Game History Foundation freed Cookie's Bustle from the grasp of a copyright troll going by the name Brandon White.

Spindley Q Frog on the necessity of taking the time to understand the problem when programming.

A fascinating metafilter comment about great pyrenees.

A genuinely poignant story about how people going through it found a kind of community in the comments of one specific youtube video.

I posted a link to the mystery surrounding the Angzarr symbol a while back. It's been solved!

All fast and furious films, simultaneously, in a 3x3 grid.

Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark?:

"These men aren’t aberrations, they’re a template I’ve seen everywhere. They’re saying the same words I’d heard all week in the mansion. The same words I’d heard in the copycat San Francisco transplant coworking spaces of Melbourne, Sydney’s Silicon Beach, and Apple’s developer conferences: Violence, then rebuild; profit, then philanthropy – repeat! Different war, same business model, new interface, same shining eyes. “We’re making the world a better place.”"

Heather Parry on the damage Jamie Oliver did to Rotherham.

What the World Got Wrong About Autistic People:

"researchers interpreted autistic moral consistency as "undue concern" about ethics. Because of the enduring assumption “autism=bad,” they pathologized conscience and treated principled behavior as a symptom rather than a strength."

I don't know if I'm ready to switch away from git myself, but I came across Fossil this month, and am intrigued by it. I think the founding principals are maybe closer to what I want from a version control system, though I don't know how well it would work for game development.

Chuck Tingle with a good take as usual:

"if you are a bigot or support bigotry or act in a movie built on the profits of hate, people are allowed to not like you 1. because bigotry is bad and 2. because people generally DONT LIKE THINGS THAT HURT THEM. like this is so obvious. it is not 'canceling' it is an exercise in basic human autonomy"

Ramsey Nasser on the increasing encroachment of the open web and FOSS:

"if we accept instead, as I'm pointing out, that projects with aspirations of egalitarianism and freely shared resources can succeed but will come under external attack by the forces of capital, the state, and the defenders of hierarchy we are not only in alignment with history but we are no longer helpless. we have something to defend, something worth fighting for."

Generative AI Vegetarianism: A very useful roundup of all the ways generative AI is harmful. I also like the author's concept of generative AI vegetarianism; I feel it maps closely to my approach to teaching these days. I am fundamentally opposed to generative AI myself, but I also feel strongly that it is not my job to dictate to other people how to live their lives, so my students are free to use AI if they wish, as long as they are up front about it. I have noticed students who rely on AI tend to produce poorer work than those who don't, so I do talk to them about the ways that AI can trip you up, and how it requires you to keep a very close eye on its output. These tools do not tend to produce good code, and when used to write dissertations they tend to produce text that contradicts itself from paragraph to paragraph (which, even before the rise of AI, I have always understood as signs that someone doesn't fully understand the work they have produced).

Okay, I somehow forgot I needed to write up this month's here and then gone until Saturday morning, so this one's going out a little later than usual (is this the first time I've been late?). Hope you're doing okay out there. Looks like there's a yellow weather warning this weekend, so take care, wrap up warm, be safe.