Know someone 9-18 who loves stories? Week starting 23rd February is the next round of "Coding Games with a Story", a five week introduction to creating #visualnovels using our very own VisualInk. We're also hoping to host a writing club for under 18s who have decided to build a full game now that two cohorts have already gone through and enjoyed the course (writers using other #interactivefiction tools are also welcome to join the writing club).

Read more about the person leading the courses and their content at thinkersmeetup.com/scholars/...

@[email protected] To be fair, it's not like the banks don't take an interest as well. And... I even have some sympathy for why, given that fraud and money laundering are a thing. I've known some people who worked in fraud protection in banks and they were both horrified by how much information they had access to and rightfully proud of how much theft they had managed to prevent/people's savings they'd been able to return. But yeah... you're not wrong.

I had the misfortune to be reminded today that in the US it is still common to pay fees on domestic bank transfers. Not actually the biggest current issue in the US, but... seriously?

(context for those of you in the US: while cross currency transfers or 'instant' transfers can incur fees in the UK/EU, in general you can make a free transfer to anyone with a bank account in the same currency if you're willing to wait 1-3 working days)

@[email protected] Small heads up for somebody in the web content team; it looks like in some software links to specific articles under the 'presscorner' url get shown with a preview from the press corner index page rather than from the article linked. I think this is because the canonical link set in the head of the individual article pages is set to the url of the index page.

For example, in the post I'm replying to I see a link in the text which takes me to the article you're referring to, but a preview "box" from ec.europa.eu/commission/pres... (which is listed as the canonical source of the content on the article page)

@[email protected] @[email protected] My wife just steals my 'male' razors. I've never quite worked out how "women's" razors are still a product given the insane mark up for something functionally identical sold on the next shelf over.​

@[email protected] @[email protected] Crow Road also manages to open with the line "It was the day my grandmother exploded." ​Which wins it a fair number of points in my book...

@[email protected] Started tracking again yesterday, as it is waaaaaay to easy to gain weight while dealing with chronic fatigue (my only normal defense is that I walk a lot). You're not alone...​

Yeap, this could be fun.

var getOverHere: Array[Spell.Rune] =
[ Spell.Rune.FindNearest,
Spell.Rune.Move,
Spell.Rune.FindCaster,
Spell.Rune.Reverse,
Spell.Rune.Push
]

Actually... this #gamedev idea is working out well enough I'm going to build a mini-prototype at least. The idea is that you build spells from runes, and each rune adds a memory of intent (an engram) to your mana. So this one directs intent towards the nearest enemy; then the intent to 'move' checks if we have an intended target (we do) and consumes that intent from the mana and moves the spell. When we reach the target, we direct intent towards the caster, reverse that intent, and then push whatever we're attached to (the enemy) in away from that direction (turning push into a pull in this case).

@[email protected] @[email protected] @Federation_Bot I must admit that while all cultures have their blind spots (I have enough white British blood that the shadow of 'the Empire' makes a rather fragile ​glass house), the American habit of connecting morality with wealth has always been... problematic looking from the outside.

@[email protected] @Federation_Bot @[email protected] "and they shared everything together, except their money, and health insurance, and..." ​

@[email protected] but... but... it's being incorrect about such recent events! That's progress, right?​

@[email protected] @[email protected] As a Christian myself, I'm still amazed at how many Christians seem to be surprised by the idea of Jesus being Jewish...​

An old friend tried to head hunt me for a team at Salesforce a few years back and I'm now so very glad I turned them down.

404media.co/.ghost/activityp...

Thinking about an #indie #gamedev idea which would have two different elevator pitches for two different audiences:

• "a deep and mysterious runic magic system with a strong enough internal logic you can experiment and build your own spells"
• "blow things up in real time with a stack based programming language!"

Now that's the kind of content it's heart warming to see as a developer!

I’ve become sidetracked by the Visualink system. It’s very promising for students to edit and offers just enough asset options to give choice without overwhelming.

@[email protected] you have two wolves inside - sorry - beside you... ​

@[email protected] ​I agree with everything you've said except for a caveat on the final point, which is that using LLMs to directly plagerize something interesting will produce interesting (and potentially human sounding) output. Which is just one more reason why I'm not keen on them when it leads to false accusations of plagerism towards people who are writing for themselves. But it sounds like I'm not really managing to explain myself, and I fundamentally agree with where you're coming from so I'll bow out of the conversation now.

@[email protected] It feels like I spend half my life arguing either "if we don't keep saying this is wrong it will never change" or "this isn't going to change any time soon so we need to..."

This includes the arguing with myself. It's so hard some days to have the serenity to keep on believing things can and should change and doing what's possible, while also dealing with the reality of what's here right now. But it is also the only way to live life where I can both survive now and live with myself later.​

@[email protected] ​I agree in the sense that if you don't find an written AI book strange there's something wrong - generated writing has nothing much in the way of actual content. But 'LLM, rewrite the points in this article for my precious SEO juice' versus 'I'm going to try and write my first technical blog post and I come from somewhere that isn't the US/UK" is something that needs to be assessed on context not denegrating the people who 'have LLM writing tells.'

Although I suppose some of that comes down to GenAI created (almost certainly meaning free) versus GenAI ripping off (almost impossible to tell from human written because a human supplied all of the meaning that is now being ripped off)