frog 🐸 @ frog @beehaw.org

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2 yr. ago

I literally responded to that link with an out loud "oooooooooh!", my standard "yes I want it" sound. Spiritual successor to Freelancer with Lovecraftian elements? Ticks all the right boxes.

I've definitely thought about modding Freelancer, but haven't quite found the right ones yet. I tried Discovery (I think it was), and felt that the changes to the enemy AI and equipment (such as constantly using shield batteries and nanobots) just made gameplay more frustrating than enjoyable, because it made every single battle challenging - no more just chilling out while hauling random stuff through trade lanes. I'd really love a mod that adds new systems, planets, locations, ships, etc without dramatically changing the gameplay to be exclusively about the combat.

Agreed! I think a lot of games benefit from trying to do one thing really well, rather than multiple things badly, and Freelancer is unapologetic about focusing on doing the in-ship stuff well. Games that try to do both the in-ship and not-in-ship elements end up either with both being done badly, or one just feeling like it serves little purpose in the game.

I still have a soft spot for Freelancer, despite all the years that have gone by (and aside from some minor UI issues, plays perfectly on a modern PC), and it still looks remarkably nice for its age, too. The story is pretty linear, and the characters not hugely memorable (despite some voice acting from George Takei, John Rhys-Davies, and Jennifer Hale), but it's just fun to play. It can be challenging if you want to venture into areas less travelled, but because progress through the game is largely dependent on the money you earn (in-game), if you just want a chill evening, you can just trade goods.

And like... this is a game I've been playing on and off for 20 years, and occasionally I still find something new. I played it a couple of months ago, committing to docking with every planet and station... and discovered a new trade route that was both shorter and more profitable than the one I had been using. It probably only cut 10 minutes off my three stage trade run around the entire map, but it was still kind of exciting to go "oooh, I never realised this was an option!" All because I visited a station I don't usually visit.

Yeah, I think you could be right there, actually. My instinct on this from the start is that it would prevent the grieving process from completing properly. There's a thing called the gestalt cycle of experience where there's a normal, natural mechanism for a person going through a new experience, whether it's good and bad, and a lot of unhealthy behaviour patterns stem from a part of that cycle being interrupted - you need to go through the cycle for everything that happens in your life, reaching closure so that you're ready for the next experience to begin (most basic explanation), and when that doesn't happen properly, it creates unhealthy patterns that influence everything that happens after that.

Now I suppose, theoretically, there's a possibility that being able to talk to an AI replication of a loved one might give someone a chance to say things they couldn't say before the person died, which could aid in gaining closure... but we already have methods for doing that, like talking to a photo of them or to their grave, or writing them a letter, etc. Because the AI still creates the sense of the person still being "there", it seems more likely to prevent closure - because that concrete ending is blurred.

Also, your username seems really fitting for this conversation. :)

It is pretty exciting, isn't it? I'm actually in Canada the week of the election, so in the event of a Conservative wipeout, I reckon the Canadian news coverage of that would be pretty epic, since it would repeat their 1993 election.

Assuming Penny decided against using the sword on Nutella.

I'm not sure they would even start with a bad plan. Starmer seems like the kind of person who would look at whether a plan is good or bad before even starting it.

I would anticipate a massive amount of both offshore and onshore wind farms - we know those work, and with onshore wind farms in particular, we know they're pretty quick and cheap to get up and running (I recall reading a while back that it's possible to get an onshore wind farm built and producing electricity in less than 12 months), and the main barrier to them has been all the old people being all NIMBY about it. Just having a blanket ban on "but it spoils my view!" as a valid objection to planning permission would do so much good.

Well I reckon Ed Davey could take Rishi Sunak, but if Sunak quits as leader and Suella Braverman takes over, I reckon she probably bites, so I'm not sure I'd like Davey's chances in that fight. Now if it was making both parties fight, the Lib Dems would win that because the Tories wouldn't have each other's backs, so superior teamwork and a lack of compulsive backstabbing in the Lib Dems would give them the tactical advantage.

Nope, I'm just not giving the benefit of the doubt to the techbro who responded to a dying man's farewell posts online with "hey, come use my untested AI tool!"

The Electoral Calculus prediction based on this poll:

Labour: 462

Tories: 68

Lib Dems: 68

Reform: 4 (Clacton, Ashfield (Lee Anderthal's seat), Boston & Skegness, Wellingborough & Rushden (Peter Bone's old seat))

Green: 2 (Brighton Pavilion, Bristol Central)

SNP: 21

Plaid: 4

Independents: 3 (Birmingham Ladywood, Islington North, Rochdale)

Which begs an important question: if the Tories and Lib Dems tie for the second largest party, who gets to be the opposition?

It won't make a huge difference to how many seats Reform get (though with the way they've been polling, Electoral Calculus suggests they might get 4-5), but what it does is cuts into votes for the Conservatives, which ends up helping Labour and the Lib Dems. Most of the predictions I've put into Electoral Calculus based on the latest polls have had Reform taking enough votes from the Tories that the Lib Dems end up being the second largest party. That's a pretty big change, despite FPTP!

The one thing that makes me optimistic that they wouldn't persist in wasting money on things that won't work is Starmer doesn't strike me as a man that would do that. He's just not that ideological. My sense of him as a person is that he's someone that will look at a problem, listen to all the evidence, and then reach a conclusion upon which he bases his course of action. Any idea that can't be proven to work will be jettisoned. I also strongly suspect that he hasn't 100% decided what he's going to do as prime minister, because he hasn't got all the information yet.

So I'm reading the manifesto primarily as a statement of intent that outlines the general direction Labour would like to take the country, with specifics to be worked out later once Starmer has had a couple of weeks to stare at the problem in more detail.

There is no way this Labour government is going to be revolutionary, because that's not who Starmer is. But a slow and steady, evidence-driven amble in the right direction seems likely.

I would be happier with the requirement for a medical diagnosis if getting one took 18 weeks rather than 5-10 years, and didn't involve making adults jump through hoops to prove they're "trans enough" to be diagnosed. Like I get the need to be cautious when it comes to diagnosing children, but for adults, especially those over 30, there is zero need to spend so much time making sure they definitely know what they want.

I absolutely, 100% agree with you. Nothing I have seen about the development of AI so far has suggested that the vast majority of its uses are grotesque. The few edge cases where it is useful and helpful don't outweigh the massive harm it's doing.

Given the husband is likely going to die in a few weeks, and the wife is likely already grieving for the man she is shortly going to lose, I think that still places both of them into the "vulnerable" category, and the owner of this technology approached them while they were in this vulnerable state. So yes, I have concerns, and the fact that the owner is allegedly a friend of the family (which just means they were the first vulnerable couple he had easy access to, in order to experiment on) doesn't change the fact that there are valid concerns about the exploitation of grief.

With the way AI techbros have been behaving so far, I'm not willing to give any of them the benefit of the doubt about claims of wanting to help rather than make money - such as using a vulnerable couple to experiment on while making a "proof of concept" that can be used to sell this to other vulnerable people.

I also suspect, based on the accuracy of AIs we have seen so far, that their interpretation of the deceased's personality would not be very accurate, and would likely hallucinate memories or facts about the person, or make them "say" things they never would have said when they were alive. At best it would be very Uncanny Valley, and at worst would be very, very upsetting for the bereaved person.

Think of how many family recipes could be preserved. Think of the stories that you can be retold in 10 years. Think of the little things that you’d easily forget as time passes.

An AI isn't going to magically know these things, because these aren't AIs based on brain scans preserving the person's entire mind and memories. They can learn only the data they're told. And fortunately, there's a much cheaper way for someone to preserve family recipies and other memories that their loved ones would like to hold onto: they could write it down, or record a video. No AI needed.

Sure, you should be free to make one. But when you die and an AI company contacts all your grieving friends and family to offer them access to an AI based on you (for a low, low fee!), there are valid questions about whether that will cause them harm rather than help - and grieving people do not always make the most rational decisions. They can very easily be convinced that interacting with AI-you would be good for them, but it actually prolongs their grief and makes them feel worse. Grieving people are vulnerable, and I don't think AI companies should be free to prey on the vulnerable, which is a very, very realistic outcome of this technology. Because that is what companies do.

So I think you need to ask yourself not whether you should have the right to make an AI version of yourself for those who survive your death... but whether you're comfortable with the very likely outcome that an abusive company will use their memories of you to exploit their grief and prolong their suffering. Do you want to do that to people you care about?

While I can see Reform performing a coup of the Tory party, they would only successfully do so if the Tories had lost so many MPs that they were already the third largest party. Or so close to it that it would only take a few One Nation types going "nope, I'm defecting to the Lib Dems rather than join Reform" to make them the third largest party.