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Month: June 2024

Live and let live is not good public policy

Live and let live is not good public policy

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“I don’t care what others do so long as they’re not hurting anyone else”

Obviously directly hurting others is bad and most would agree with that. But what about things that ‘only’ affect that person? People can hurt themselves psychologically (self-imposed isolation, addictions to porn/drugs/social media/etc), physically (drugs, dangerous driving, overly dangerous risk taking, overeating, bulimia, etc), and emotionally (codependent behaviors, addictions, etc).

The reality is that behavior you claim is only hurting yourself is never just bad for you. It is also bad for others. Others must deal with the consequences of you hurting yourself. Alcoholics and drug addicts very often say they don’t hurt others – but anyone who has a family member or loved one that is an addict would disagree.

Communities are often losing a valuable person with unique talents and things to offer. They aren’t able to live full lives or contribute their talents. Those are all losses to the person and to the world. In worse situations, it results in life-long health issues and more medical treatments that put stress on medical and emergency services. Destruction of property can lead to higher costs for things and higher insurance rates.

“I don’t care what others do as long as they’re not telling others what to do.”

It’s nice in thought, but the fact we live in a democracy with voting means we DO tell each other what to do in the public sphere by how and who they vote into office. That is why the truth about human worth and understanding what makes just laws and just governance matters more than feel-good measures.

Handling tone or direction in a (game) team

Handling tone or direction in a (game) team

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This was a really good conversation about game team dynamics – especially for younger folks. I think it hits the nail on the head based on my own experiences. Here’s a summary (not my words):

It has become more common in most media (games/movies/etc) made by people under 30 where it’s “cool” to not take their creative work seriously. It’s easier to avoid serious work or make fun of a movie/game/topic (no matter how serious, dramatic, or well done) rather than embrace it and put their best work into it.

It’s sad because in most cases those people are just afraid to really try.

This is especially true if people are using self-aware meta humor about how bad things are in their work/group/project/life. Instead of figuring out how to fix it, they just lampshade it, by making jokes about how badly it’s going. I’m sure they’re doing it as a nervous habit because they don’t want people to criticize their game, so they’ve got to do it first and make their game’s defects “part of the joke.”

The only thing you can really do is talk to them about it and get them to agree to take it seriously. Then keep them on track. If that doesn’t work, you’ve got to find other people to work with. A good process is:

  1. First define what is at stake
  2. Prove how what they are doing threatens what is at stake
  3. State clearly “If we do this, then the result will be that”
  4. If you cannot prove anything, then just make your most persuasive case

Discussion thread:

You Can Succeed, Too!

You Can Succeed, Too!

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Did you know Japan made 50’s style musicals? I was recently introduced to Kimi Mo Shusse Ga Dekiru – 君も出世ができる – or it’s English title: ‘You Can Succeed, Too!’. It follows the adventures of some aspiring young professionals trying to make it in the business world that’s split between tradition and modernity. Even though the movie is 60 years old, if you’ve ever worked in corporate world you’ll recognize each of the characters: the over-zealous corporate climber, the guy just trying to do the right thing, the aging boss, and the up and coming VP trying to apply the latest corporate techniques learned abroad.

It has some absolutely AMAZING set and costume designs, the music is composed by a famous avant-garde composer and famous jazz performers to the lyrics of a renown Japanese poet Shuntaro Tanikawa. The story is even more fun if you understand the traditions embedded in Japanese corporate culture.

The whole thing is astounding, super-catchy, and fun. I’m shocked it hasn’t gotten more recognition elsewhere.

You can watch it here on Rarefilm and at the Internet Archive. I only wish it were available on DVD/Bluray somewhere.

I found out about this gem from the guys over at Important Cinema Club podcast when they broadcast on Twitch (and then were promptly banned for a copyright strike)

Fifth Element – 1950’s style

Fifth Element – 1950’s style

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Abandoned Films is back with another trippy, AI-generated movie trailer. This time, they took the 1997 sci-fi classic The Fifth Element and applied a 1950’s big-screen aesthetic.

While definitely not perfect, these AI generated trailers are amazing ways to generate and explore artistic concepts.

Creating Augmented Horror experiences – in your own home

Creating Augmented Horror experiences – in your own home

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We’ve all seen the low-budget horror movie where a killer chases down their victim in their homes. Imagine if you could don some AR goggles and live that experience in your own home.

David Montecalvo has made a name for himself experimenting with mixed reality experiences. His YouTube videos explore a lot of his interesting ideas such as hoping on a real motorcycle and creating mixed reality teleportation:

He started with the Quest 3 and created experiences as Hauntify and FPS Enhanced Reality in which ghosts and soldiers appear in your home to hunt you. You run around your real-life house trying to escape them. It’s quite amazing and scary:

He recently moved onto the Vision Pro since the Quest 3 has limited augmented reality capabilities. The Vision Pro was better and now he has made an experience of creatures following you in the real world. It reminds me very much like the movie It Follows.

He’s experimented in large outdoor environments like a forest and apparently the Vision Pro does an amazing job automatically mapping the terrain and calculating occlusions and lighting. It’s pretty scary!

I’ll admit is has some really innovative, amazing, and terrifying. He recently gave an interview with Mixed about what he’s learned.

Realtime Human ‘tele-operation’

Realtime Human ‘tele-operation’

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Carnegie Mellon researchers have developed a real-time human tele-operation system. Using a simple camera, it is able to read the actions of a human person and then translate that into real-time full-body control of a robot.

Individuals can now seamlessly teleoperate full-sized humanoids to execute a myriad of actions. According to researchers, they can perform simple tasks like picking and placing objects to dynamic movements like walking, kicking, and even boxing.

Read the paper here: https://human2humanoid.com/resources/H2O_paper.pdf

There’s lots of possibilities for this kind of remotely operated humanoid robotic system. Remotely controlled humanoid robots could save countless lives operating in dangerous environments.

They could be used to go in and shut down equipment after dangerous chemical or industrial accidents. Search dangerous buildings for survivors after earthquakes. They could perform dangerous police or urban warfare operations without loss of life. Stop terrorist by defusing bombs. Another such place would be effecting repairs, shutdowns, and cleanup in highly radiated areas like Chernobyl, Fukushima, or when there are nuclear accidents. In the future, we may never need the horrors of Chernobyl’s biorobots to deal with such disasters.

Articles:

Blue-screen Windows on purpose

Blue-screen Windows on purpose

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I wrote awhile back on how to crash Linux/cause a Linux kernel panic in order to test how your program can handle a crash – but can you cause a Windows blue-screen programmatically?

Raymond Chen of the New Old Thing describes a variety of methods to crash Windows purposefully. He also cautions against ad-hoc methods like killing winlogin.

Methods you can use to cause a Windows Blue-screen:

  1. Windows allows you to configure a specific keyboard combination to cause a crash. You set some registry keys and then can crash a system by holding right CTRL then pressing scroll lock key twice. You can also customize the key sequence via registering custom keyboard scan codes. If you have a kernel debugger attached it will trigger the kernel debugger after the crash dump is written.
  2. The best way to trigger an artificial kernel crash is to use NotMyFault, which is part of the Microsoft Windows SysInternals tools.