Daytona USA vs Epona
I loved Daytona Racer and poured a whole summer into mastering every move and every track of the arcade game. How did I miss this?
Live Drumming the Drum Machines
Groveman Drums shows off his mad skills playing rap songs – originally mixed on synths and drum machines – played live on a real drums.
Cult of Done
The ‘Cult of Done‘ movement went through the maker and entrepreneurial worlds after it was written in 2009. These ideas are not new, but like all things mid-2000’s, everyone was tripping all over themselves to make themselves seem like an thought leader with (oft times comically ego-driven) exercises like defining disruption theory.
A few reflective notes:
- “Doing something makes you right”
This is dangerously simplistic to to the point of me saying this is wrong. I know that people say ‘right’ as in ‘it works in the marketplace’, and people that do things definitely change the world compared to armchair critics.
But the word ‘right’ carries moral connotation that is confused in today’s relativistic world. Action is better than inaction. The other points in the video about procrastination and awaiting perfection (from the book Art & Fear – discussion) are perfectly correct and great observations. But nobody would agree that Hitler ‘doing something’ about the state Germany after WW1 made him right. Just ‘doing something’ by inventing social media has turned out to have far-reaching negative impacts on society, mental health, and many of it’s founders now actively work against what they have made and claimed it was their biggest mistakes.
This kind of thinking is the ethical equivalent of ‘might makes right‘. Yes, we should be highly motivated to action and being first to the marketplace often defines the winners. It’s clear doing nothing changes nothing. But all you can really saying is that ‘doing something creates a thing than isn’t here today’. But doing something/action, in itself, does not make you morally ‘right’. - When you release something into the world – you’ve lost control of it. Accept this.
This is true – which is why it’s a very good idea to think out what you’re doing before unleashing it on others. I have had a number of ideas that would likely be successful in the market, but absolutely terrible for society. Others have created social media monsters and it’s created some of the worst parts of the society we live in today (lack of dialog, lack of respect for others’ opinions, justifying violence).
This is also a warning about coder meetups and contests. Once you show or work on an idea in public, or work on it with others without an NDA or protections, it’s public domain. The race is on to get it done first if you already lost your public disclosure protection. It’s a good idea to patent or copyright anything that could potentially be really amazing. - Fake it until you make it – What this is supposed to do is help encourage you that you’re good enough to figure something out. However, there is a difference between faking knowledge and giving yourself the confidence to learn while doing.
For a couple hundred years, scientists called this the ‘scientific method‘. It starts, however, when you first admit you do not know something. You make some assertions and then try to prove them out with intellectual honesty, and transparency of learning while running repeatable experiments. That’s different than someone that pretends and asserts they do know how to do something. The recent 30 under 30 scandals, the Fyre Festival, and FTX’s implosion are all great examples of when people faked it and did NOT make it (well, they made it into federal prison). Start by admitting you don’t know what you’re doing and then use healthy skepticism until you prove the idea out. You start from a position of confident humility. That’s worked in science for hundreds of years.
Admitting your mistakes
Speaking at QCon back in 2009, Tony Hoare admitted to probably one of the biggest mistakes of his career – one that every programmer knows all too well. The invention of NULL because ‘it was so easy to implement’.
I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965.
At that time, I was designing the first comprehensive type system for references in an object oriented language (ALGOL W). My goal was to ensure that all use of references should be absolutely safe, with checking performed automatically by the compiler. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years.
Sylvania and 3M win headlight restoration
It seems Sylvania’s headlight restoration kit edges out 3M, but both work really well.
As usual, Project Farm does an amazing job testing these out.
Yanko Designs turntable
Yanko Designs reports that Miniot has decided to re-invent the record player. Miniot calls it simply Wheel. It features a neat upright design and plays records from the back. One of the most unique elements is the barely visible tactile control system that lets you press and push parts of the hidden wheel to jump tracks, change volume, and even set the stylus weight.
The Miniot site shows it runs $2187 – $4156 depending on the options and color you select.
Introduction to making your own Light Plates
Joshua Vasquez walks through his adventure of making his own cool looking Portal light plate. He introduces us to Snell’s law, how companies do this for other purposes with a sandwich approach with acrylics, window tint layers, diffuser layers, prism layers, reflective backing layers, etc).
Definitely a cool little project and worth a read if you’re interested in creating such a panel
Oregon Promise of Free Community College Failed to Deliver
Oregon was hailed as a national leader by Bernie Sanders and Democratic leadership when it pass Senate Bill 81 in 2015 offering free community college to residents. Fast forward to 2023 and it’s now on the chopping block.
A new report by the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Committee (Which has been interestingly removed by the state and replaced with a much slicker brochure-style with NONE of the relevant data that summarizes these failures. The original report is still on the wayback machine and I include a local copy here) found that the Oregon Promise has failed by almost every measure. Here’s just one of their conclusions:
It has failed to encourage more high-school graduates to enroll in college, failed to narrow equity gaps in enrollment, and failed to increase college completion rates. And while it has helped a small number of students afford to go to college, most low-income students approved for the program still can’t meet the costs of higher education.
“While Oregon had some unique issues, overall the findings are not unique to Oregon,” he said. “Other places where this has been tried, you find a small pop in enrollment the first couple of years, and then it comes back down to pre-program levels, doesn’t really seem to do much in the long run to boost enrollment, or even movement onto four-year degrees.”
Articles:
Japan’s Highest Literary Award Won by Author Using AI
Rie Kudan has won Japan’s most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, with her most recent book: The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy. The judges praised the book, with one even calling it ‘flawless’.
What came next is unexpected. She revealed that she use AI to write parts of her novel (The Times). She revealed about 5% of the book was verbatim sentences she generated using AI.
This wasn’t the first time AI has won a top prize either. The winner of 2022’s Colorado State Fair’s prize for digital art also turned out to be AI-generated.
Nor is it the first time AI has won a writing prize. Journalism professor Shen Yang at Beijing’s Tsinghua University wanted to write a science fiction novel about the metaverse and humanoid robots. The AI ended up generating his entire book – which then took out a national science fiction award Jiangsu Science Writers Association . Using 66 different prompts, the AI drafted ‘Land of Memories‘ in just 3 hours.
After we went through dozens of prompts, the AI generated all of the content – from the pen name, title and text to accompanying pictures. And it’s not half bad. Here’s an excerpt:
In the metaverse’s edge, lies the ‘Land of Memories’, a forbidden realm where humans are barred. Solid illusions crafted by amnesiac humanoid robots and AI that had lost memories populate its domain. Any intruder, be it human or artificial, will have their memories drained away, forever trapped within its forbidden embrace.
Land of Memories
Links:
Microsoft Excel World Champion
I didn’t even know an Excel world championship even existed, but Andrew Ngai, a 37-year-old Australian actuary, has won for the 3rd straight time.
He gives us mere mortals some tips