shadower @shadower@mastodon.technology

Finally read Ted Chiang's The Story of Your Life. It's a sci-fi short story that the Arrival movie (which I haven't seen yet) is based on.

It's absolutely brilliant. Reminded me of the best Asimov's ideas, executed perfectly.

Heartily recommended.

Star Trek, Star Gate, Star Wars: staple of popular TV sci-fi. What else can we came up with?

Rules: "Star <x>" where
1. x is a single syllable
2. the title is safe for work and could air on TV (no "Star Fuck")
3. has a good punch to it
4. could spawn a multi-decade franchise

The Play Station itself it a mixed bag. It boots up fast and there are no hardware or driver compatibility issues. Presumably no OS falling on its arse either.

BUT: multiplayer support in games is a (paid) PlayStation Plus subscription. And I still had to wait 2 hours to download an update.

I did not know this up front frankly, the idea of Sony upselling a gameplay feature like that never even crossed my mind.

Not it did and crossed I remain.

For games where I've got a choice, I'll stick with PC.

So I finally got around to getting a PS4 and trying Bloodborne. Got lost on the way to the first boss (who is much farther than the first one in DS 1&3).

I'm having great fun. It's very much like Dark Souls, but tweaked enough to be refreshing. And the setting is intriguing.

Lukewarm take: Into The Breach is really very good indeed!

I'm not into tactical games that much, but this one is forgiving enough (especially on easy), lets you experiment (you can try out different ideas before you commit) and it's fun.

Lot's of cool squad types with very different approaches.

Plus just like in FTL the music is gorgeous.

PSA: you can use Specs (the popular Rust Entity Component System) with WebAssembly if you disable the "parallel" feature (it's on by default and you get a panic with it).

Cargo.toml:
specs = { version = "0.14.3", default-features = false }

So the old Einstein's line "God does not play dice" apparently actually reads as follows:

"Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice."

Clearly, this is a Lovecraftian remark.

Einstein was talking about Cthulhu.

Wonder how many more people would read scientific or technical papers if the "Abstract" section was called "TL;DR" instead.