domusaltera

Yeah I agree. Looks like this will begin to finally solve the uncanny valley problem. The crying is so loud though. I almost feel sorry for them. This is unstoppable. I wish they could see that but they won’t. It’s crazy to me that these anti AI cultists think that they’re going to shame AI into going away. It’s just not going to happen and they’re going to just get more screechy and moral and blind. I hope they get the help they need.

“I really wanted to like this comment but I think the writer has now abandoned it. There have been no updates and I think maybe AI was used for some of it. It also crashed my browser 5 times. I’d ask for a refund but writing this comment took me past the 10 second returns window.”

Joking aside, the problem with the Steam review system is that people tend to read negative reviews before they pay any attention to positive ones. As a result it has turned into a massive platform for review bombers and personal drama sandbox for entitled attention seekers. There isn’t any good faith left in any of it. I’ve learnt to ignore 90% of the reviews now and have ended up playing some excellent games I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Step 1 - Get really excited and wishlist this.

Step 2 - Wait… lots.

Step 3 - Finally it’s available! Go to Steam page reviews and it’s “Mostly Negative” and filled with comments that start with “I really wanted to like this but…” and “Trash”, “Slow, laggy even on my Geforce Quantum Space Folding powered by unicorn tears GFX card”.

No shade on the game which looks awesome but the Steam review system is so badly broken it’s such a bummer.

This raises an interesting point actually… I have a new Win11 machine but my old Win10 one is just being kept around for low level, non essential tasks. I don’t have any essential apps left on there really now. I signed up for that extra year of Microsoft support that was offered but when that runs out I guess what a perfect time to have a play with Linux and see what all the fuss is about.

There’s a simple way to stop that happening! You won’t believe me, but some of you will try it and those lucky few will indeed know the joy of efficient, non-wasteful wetwipe extraction.

Just take a hairband and wrap it tightly around one end of the packet. Pull the wipes out at an angle away from the end with the band. They will come out one at a time with no clogging.

Happiness.

Starbucks feels like the Blockbuster of the quick-stimulation market. Once there were no alternatives, now there are loads, often cheaper and better. Without constant customer flow, it’s suddenly just vast amounts of premium real estate that need paying for. And unlike smaller competitors, it doesn’t have much room to pivot. Watching how that unwinds will be interesting.

That is the question… 🤭

The TL;DR is that this is more about some dude wanting to fill time with vague ideas about learning lines that never get smarter than “repeat them a lot” than any actually useful advice.

I’ve done a ton of line learning for plays and musicals and I can tell you there is one actually useful system that never fails. I call it the first letter system. You could learn an entire play with this in very little time. You just reduce your text down to just the first letters. So, for example, Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” 259 word soliloquy would look like this:

T B, O N T B, T I T Q: W 'T N I T M T S T S A A O O F, O T T A A A S O T A B O E T. T D, T S, N M; A B A S T S W E T H-A A T T N S T F I H T: 'T A C D T B W’D. T D, T S; T S, P T D. A, T’S T R: F I T S O D W D M C, W W H S O T M C, M G U P. T’S T R T M C O S L L. F W W B T W A S O T, T’O’S W, T P M’S C, T P O D’D L, T L’S D, T I O O, A T S T P M O T’U T, W H H M H Q M W A B B? W W F B, T G A S U A W L, B T T D O S A D, T U’D C, F W B N T R, P T W, A M U R B T I W H T F T O T W K N O? T C D M C O U A, A T T N H O R I S O’E W T P C O T, A E O G P A M
W T R T C T A A L T N O A.

Then you just play a game of how many letters can you guess in a row. Gamifying the process is genius because it doesn’t feel like a boring chore. Also the brain naturally uses anchors for memory so each letter becomes an anchor and you’ll retain so much more that way without the stress of endless repetition.

Pretty soon you’ll be able to do the whole speech word perfect just looking at the first letters and then all you have to do is make the game about trying to say whole sentences just by looking at the first letter of each sentence. It’s a truly incredible system and now you know it without having to listen to some guy being vague for 10 minutes.

So the last time Cuba got nervous about the intentions of the US we ended up with the Cuban missile crisis. What’s different this time?