#solving the pipeline problem is NOT enough

[machine-saint]

the op of that "you should restart your computer every few days" post blocked me so i'm going to perform the full hater move of writing my own post to explain why he's wrong

why should you listen to me: took operating system design and a "how to go from transistors to a pipelined CPU" class in college, i have several servers (one physical, four virtual) that i maintain, i use nixos which is the linux distribution for people who are even bigger fucking nerds about computers than the typical linux user. i also ran this past the other people i know that are similarly tech competent and they also agreed OP is wrong (haven't run this post by them but nothing i say here is controversial).

anyway the tl;dr here is:

you don't need to shut down or restart your computer unless something is wrong or you need to install updates

i think this misconception that restarting is necessary comes from the fact that restarting often fixes problems, and so people think that the problems are because of the not restarting. this is, generally, not true. in most cases there's some specific program (or part of the operating system) that's gotten into a bad state, and restarting that one program would fix it. but restarting is easier since you don't have to identify specifically what's gone wrong. the most common problem i can think of that wouldn't fall under this category is your graphics card drivers fucking up; that's not something you can easily reinitialize without restarting the entire OS.

this isn't saying that restarting is a bad step; if you don't want to bother trying to figure out the problem, it's not a bad first go. personally, if something goes wrong i like to try to solve it without a restart, but i also know way, way more about computers than most people.

as more evidence to point to this, i would point out that servers are typically not restarted unless there's a specific need. this is not because they run special operating systems or have special parts; people can and do run servers using commodity consumer hardware, and while linux is much more common in the server world, it doesn't have any special features to make it more capable of long operation. my server with the longest uptime is 9 months, and i'd have one with even more uptime than that if i hadn't fucked it up so bad two months ago i had to restore from a full disk backup. the laptop i'm typing this on has about a month of uptime (including time spent in sleep mode). i've had servers with uptimes measuring in years.

there's also a lot of people that think that the parts being at an elevated temperature just from running is harmful. this is also, in general, not true. i'd be worried about running it at 100% full blast CPU/GPU for months on end, but nobody reading this post is doing that.

the other reason i see a lot is energy use. the typical energy use of a computer not doing anything is like... 20-30 watts. this is about two or three lightbulbs worth. that's not nothing, but it's not a lot to be concerned over. in terms of monetary cost, that's maybe $10 on your power bill. if it's in sleep mode it's even less, and if it's in full-blown hibernation mode it's literally zero.

there are also people in the replies to that post giving reasons. all of them are false.

temporary files generally don't use enough disk space to be worth worrying about

programs that leak memory return it all to the OS when they're closed, so it's enough to just close the program itself. and the OS generally doesn't leak memory.

'clearing your RAM' is not a thing you need to do. neither is resetting your registry values.

your computer can absolutely use disk space from deleted files without a restart. i've taken a server that was almost completely full, deleted a bunch of unnecessary files, and it continued fine without a restart.

#i just had to get this out of my mind

[rubyclover]

I said I can’t write but if felt nice getting that other idea out of my head. So I wrote this and will post. Technically I started trying to write this like a month ago… Please ignore the constant switching between past and present tense. It’s something I never seem to notice until someone else points out where it is.

Prompt: Professionals hate him but he was right! [Adam] Heaven and Hell come to the realization that The First Man played a larger part in the three realms’ political/social ecosystem than they thought. His absence leaves a vacuum that Lute is unable to fill but she may not need to because Hell is solving the problem themselves… The Morningstar Family can’t run from this.

No ABetaO we expire like Adam~

Imagine that Adam dies, the hotel has never looked better, the residents have healed up and Charlie gets another TV appearance. Lucifer is even more depressed than before but hides it. Adam is gone She’s going to reveal Sir Pentious’ redemption with evidence that is NOT childishly scribbled on key cards. Instead of the interview taking place in the 666News studio it’s held outside the hotel. She will take questions, live, right after the interview. Katie Killjoy wants to give the public a chance to cause chaos for ratings, so she puts Charlie in a vulnerable position.

Things go great… for the first 20 minutes. The interview isn’t even half way done when someone from the crowd interjects after Charlie says ‘The Sinners have a better life now that the Exterminations are permanently canceled.’

That person’s voice is calm but still pissed as Hell. They fire back that no, Sinners don’t have an easier life now that the Exterminations are over. It’s worse! Charlie and the crowd perk up.

The voice moves to the front. They’re short with plain street clothes, hood up. It’s obvious they’re poor and at the bottom of Hell’s pecking order. A couple of Imps are with them equally disheveled and tired looking. The man goes on to point out some rather hard truths.

Thanks to the last Extermination, angelic steel has become a hot commodity. While uncommon right now, there’s a pipeline to obtain an angelic weapon. All you need is enough money. Carmilla Carmine doesn’t care about how her product is used after purchase.

‘Permanent Murder’ is a new trend on HellTube netting ridiculous profits. The main targets are vulnerable Sinners, usually the scared and alone new arrivals, Imps and Hellhounds. All killed by beautifully glowing angelic weapons.

Overlords are more formidable with these weapons so the chance of contractees escaping, like Angeldust, has become damn near impossible even if they destroyed their contract. Some desperate souls were happy with their messed up immortality. It gave them some hope, ‘at least I have a chance to turn things around eventually,’ but that pathetic security is gone.

The Exterminations kept said Overlords in check to a degree. They were more inclined to take care of their underlings because that guaranteed their safety. Now? Just get an angelic gun for all your troubles. Valentino is having a fucking field day.

The ‘permadeath’ toll for one year will be ten times the amount of one Extermination Day considering how much Hell’s citizens like to kill Sinners…

Not to mention, whole industries in Hell, from top to bottom, are starting to crash. Their purpose or sales revolved around the Exterminations. Some workers cannot afford to lose their job and have to sell their soul against their will.

Etcetcetc

As the man speaks Charlie is surprised to see heads nodding in agreement! Someone comments that they hadn’t seen their Sinner friend in a few days and tries not to panic while another face falls in the crowd and wrings their hands together. An Imp with curved horns standing beside a young Hellhound sweats profusely and starts to leave. Tension moves through the public. Not just the ones in front of the stage but also those watching TV.

Despite her best efforts Charlie cannot lift the crowd’s mood. She realizes prematurely revealing Sir Pentious’ redemption is the only way to salvage this growing disaster. Unfortunately the man’s timing is perfect because the second she opens her mouth he turns his anger on the Morningstars.

He calls out how much her family misrepresents themselves as rulers. They don’t do anything for Hell anymore. They spend most of their time fucking around while the Sinners suffer. The other Sins manage their rings and hellborn, not Lucifer or Lilith. All three of the Morningstars can’t truly understand human suffering yet they profess to know how to best handle it. With no idea what it means to be human yet they pass judgement on them.

The crowd becomes agitated and the Imps beside the man move closer to him. They aren’t trying to draw safety from the Sinner but are taking defensive positions. Charlie realizes this isn’t someone speaking up in the heat of the moment. This is a planned speech. He’s highjacking her broadcast!

She sees the Sinner clench his fists and feels herself start to sweat. Why was he saying any of that? Yes, life will be a bit hard at first but now everyone can come together and rebuild! There are so many possibilities available to The Pride Ring. It would improve lives. Change was always good they just had to be careful. Yet the stranger goes on.

He claims that Lucifer is a washed up angel that can’t comprehend mortality because of his maladaptive dreaming and pride, Lilith is apathetic to Sinners and wishes to aggravate Heaven no matter how much Hell will suffer and Charlie is so sheltered that she thinks PTSD can be solved by clapping and saying positive affirmations.

Little is known about the royal family but the stranger’s comments sway the crowd. The hotel’s original commercials got the time of day because of Charlie’s status, not because the facility had managed to accomplish anything. Lucifer barely appears at all even when large fights break out leveling half of Pentagram City. And Lilith? Missing for 7 years after riling up all of Hell multiple times, causing Heaven to start the Exterminations.

The stranger calls the hotel a disgusting joke. Calls out how Charlie is trying to ‘pass the buck’ over to Heaven. The Pride Ring’s actual rulers are Overlords and they make sure Sinners suffer and continue to act depraved whether they like it or not. Her family has the power to take control and lessen the city’s suffering but they don’t. Instead they play with their little pet project .

Why are they focusing on shipping problems elsewhere? There’s a better way to solve the pain and suffering at the source than waiting! Fix Pentagram City! Show Heaven that the current number of Sinners isn’t a threat!

‘For all the crying and sniveling you do Princess Charlotte, you sure don’t actually help where it counts! I’m sure you care about Sinners but only on the same level as someone cares about cute public park ducks.’

Vaggie, who had been standing to the side of the stage leaps forward, places herself in between the stranger and her girlfriend. Everyone’s raised emotions have put her on edge. She ignores the harsh gasps when her angelic spear slides free and into her hands. ‘Back up! Now!’

Charlie’s heart sank at the escalation. She understood her girlfriend was still tense from the extermination but all their hard work was starting to fray around the edges! She just hoped her dad didn’t-

The King of Hell himself appears through a portal shortly after gathering himself together. The opening looked angrier in color, matching his mood. Sickly green lines run throughout the glow, radiating blistering heat. Parts of the stage began to melt and the forgotten camera crew swivel to their ruler. Lucifer’s face is set in stone but his bright flickering eyes give him away.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ He snarls, apple topped cane slamming onto the stage causing some of it to splatter. ‘How dare you speak to my daughter that way.’ Lucifer’s face morphs into a more demonic grimace. Katie Killjoy scrambles from her chair and off the stage at the same time as Charlie vaulting up to place a hand on Lucifer’s shoulder whispering ‘dad no!’ She doesn’t want the hotel’s improved reputation to evaporate. A confrontation with someone on live TV would scare people away!

Lucifer growls in the back of his throat, looking at where he assumes the bastard’s eyes are under his hood. Smoke and embers sizzle out from the corner of his mouth and inbetween teeth. He hated acting this way but he had an image to uphold. ‘Answer your King you wretch. Don’t confuse my inaction with benevolence. You’re testing my patience!’

After a beat or two of staring each other down the stranger has the gall to ‘tsk’ off to the side as if spitting. ‘As you with your majesty. It’s all fine by me.’ A small, scared hand reaches up and whips off the dirty hood exposing his face to all of Hell.

People instantly whip out their phones. His face is shockingly similar to Lucifer’s, in fact a basic carbon copy sans a few attributes.

Cameras catch alabaster skin and soft, blond, curly hair, short, wiry build, vivid green eyes, pale coral cheek markings, pointed ears and four demon wings the same color as his skin.

Leaf green eyes stair directly into Charlie’s while electing to ignore both fallen angels. He stands ramrod straight. Cutting a regal silhouette despite the filth on his body and clothes.

‘My name is Cain Adamson, The Wandering Star.’ He bows in a fashion Charlie hadn’t seen in all her galas. ‘Lucifer Morningstar’s first born and bastard son. It’s nice to finally meet you sister mine… I’ll be taking your family’s crown for my father.’

[So in this AU Cain rescued Adam’s body and resuscitated it. They had a familial bond even when Cain got banished for murdering Able and found out his bio dad was Lucifer. Eve didn’t pay much attention to her first born out of guilt so Adam stepped up. No one shamed her. Adam never felt like Cain was separate from his other kids even though he looked nothing like him. Now Cain wants to provide for his father who’s trapped in hell and in really bad condition by booting the Morningstars out of power in the Pride Ring.] Dunno about pairing but Adamsapple or Guitarhero would be a safe bet. Either way Lucifer will suffer lol

[wtf do I call this? Family Feud AU? Chessboard AU? Secret Brother AU? Idk h e l p ]

#hazbin hotel au #hazbin hotel cain #hazbin hotel charlie #rubycloverau #rubycloverwrites #adamsapple #or #guitarhero

[qweerhet]

uncomfy with a post i am seeing by a nonamerican passed around uncritically by nonamericans that is criticizing us military apologism in the usamerican left (a fair and righteous critique)... by denying a form of child abuse exists???

so uh. just so everyone who has not attended an american public school (or has only been to public schools lucky enough to not have JROTC programs) knows. yes the ROTC grooms and abuses children, on a systemic and national level. the JROTC is usually present at elementary, middle, and high schools under an average income level, rural and urban both. yes the pipeline starts in elementary school.

ROTC officers target poor children and generally any children who are bullied or otherwise appear to be outsiders. they identify those children and follow them around school, even sometimes pulling them out of class for conversations, and intentionally try to form trusting individual relationships with the kids by buying them meals, giving them rides, buying them gifts like toys and clothes, etc. they'll act like school counselors to a large degree, encouraging kids to come to them with their emotional problems, and generally hyping up how if the kids just listen to them and join their program, all their problems will be solved and they'll find somewhere they belong. obviously this is all with the intention of getting them to join the JROTC, but they continue to have those relationships with program members ongoing.

ROTC officers that lead JROTC are known, socially at least, to be child abusers in the same way priests and boy scout leaders are--everyone has some idea of the power this infrastructurally-supported conservative-approved private relationship with vulnerable kids gives to the adults involved, and everyone knows there's a kind of conservative who goes into that field intentionally. if there's actual sex abuse scandals, the structure does a lot to cover them up (handshake with the vatican!), so i can't point to a lot of well-reported cases, but. It's there. Unspoken.

i am unclear on the status of whether or not they physically discipline children as a standard practice nationally, but i know it's happened in individual cases locally and been treated as normal. i wouldn't be surprised if that one was just dependent on whether or not "hitting kids" is popular among military conservatives in your locale or not.

anyway, obviously military training is abusive to put children through regardless of if you're hitting them or molesting them or not, so the baseline is still emotionally and physically abusing 8 year olds as an afterschool program. the JROTC also gives you a free ride to college if you go to one with an ROTC program so you really can get swept up in Literal Intentional Grooming for like a decade. i respect anyone who wants to explode every us soldier with bombs, as is their right as someone harmed by us imperialism, and i will not add this onto their post for that reason, but separately i would appreciate it if tumblr leftists did not assist the american military in normalizing and covering up massive systemic child abuse.

[myconetted]

ppl don't understand moderation at scale and it shows

a lot of ppl on this website don't seem to understand tumblr is a pretty big website and big websites are hard to moderate.

like yeah it's obvious to you when there's a bad post that violates AUP or there's a perfectly good post that got incorrectly flagged. like duh. just ban terfs and don't ban transwomen.

but how many posts do you see a day, a thousand or so?

well it's a little harder when there are 13 million posts published per day, approximately 3-5% of them require moderation* (4% = 520k posts), and your automated tooling is anything less than 99.5% accurate (i.e. more than 1 misclassification every 200 posts). that accuracy would produce 2600 posts per day that require human review. if there are 4 human reviewers working 8h/day doing nothing but moderation, they'd have a budget of 44 seconds** to spend on reviewing a given post. and that's likely an underestimate of the workload***.

there are gonna be some mistakes. if you make your automated stuff less trigger happy, more bad things like terf shit falls through the cracks. if you make it more trigger happy, marginalized people start getting flagged for calling themselves faggots or posting boygirltits. if you rely less on automation, then you need humans; if you use humans, they cost a lot more, they're way slower, you're exposing more people to traumatic shit every day, and they're still gonna make mistakes.

to be clear: i think it's true that on aggregate, marginalized people are disproportionately affected by moderation mistakes. but that's not a tumblr-specific thing, and i don't think it's reasonable to expect tumblr, a 200-person company with 300 million monthly active users, to somehow solve a problem that none of twitter/facebook/reddit/youtube have managed to solve with literally thousands of engineers. should they do better? yes. absolutely. but that's not my point.

my point is: when you see the mistakes, i'm sitting here begging and pleading for you to consider it might be due to the logistical reality of social media moderation at scale rather than conspiracy or malice.

thanks 4 coming 2 my ted talk. footnotes under the cut.

*AFAIK Tumblr doesn't publicly report this statistic, so this is an informed under-guesstimate. On Reddit, 6% of all content was reported/flagged in 2021. I assume Tumblr and Reddit have similar enough content profiles for me to say "ehhh 3% lower bound, probably."

**Calculated by (60 / (P / (M * W * 60))) where P is number of posts to review, M is number of moderators, and W is hours worked per moderator per day. 60 / (2600 / (4 * 8 * 60)) ≈ 44.

***This is a reductive picture for the purpose of demonstrating scale. In real life, the calculus for how long can a moderator spend on a given post is more complicated because of things like prioritization for specific kinds of AUP violations (eg CSAM is higher priority than porn), classification accuracy that isn't uniform across categories (eg hit rate for gore is probably different from porn or hate speech), regulatory requirements (like mandatory reporting for CSAM and government takedown requests), different pipelines for user reports versus tool-based reports, yadda yadda. My goal is to show that even the underestimate is quite burdensome.

PS: I don't work for tumblr and I never have. I just work at a place that does things at scale and faces similar issues and I'm very passionate about online communities.

#my:poast #tumblr #moderation

[myths-tournaments]

Awful Characters Round 1 Part 2 (3/8)

Propaganda under the cut!

BEN LINUS

One of my fave characters of all time! Also a prolific liar. Almost every single thing this man says is a lie. He lies, manipulates, murders, and feels very little remorse, all in the name of “protecting” the magical Island where he and his people live. Ben is fueled almost exclusively by bitterness, stemming from an entire childhood’s worth of abuse from his alcoholic father, who blamed Ben for his mother’s death in childbirth (Ben did eventually kill his father, along with the whole community he grew up in). Additionally, Ben is desperate to have some great destiny or higher purpose, and his bitterness toward the fact that he’s just an “ordinary” man and jealousy toward the man who DOES have a higher purpose drives Ben to commit various acts of cruelty and murder. Ben does act as a villain for most of the story (save for the last season, in which he’s more of an anti-villain and eventually an anti-hero), but he has two redeeming qualities: his love for the Island and his love for his adopted daughter, Alex. The latter is complicated by the fact that he kidnapped Alex as a baby from her biological mother, a woman stranded alone on the Island. However, when forced to choose between protecting the Island and saving Alex’s life, Ben ultimately chooses the island and deeply regrets this decision for the rest of his life. He’s eventually forced to reckon with his many, many mistakes and undergoes something of a redemption arc, but he spends enough of the show establishing himself as a villain that I can easily see the good denizens of Twitter attacking his fans.

IANTHE TRIDENTARIUS

Her number one hobby is ruining every person's that she knows life. Her second hobby is being soooo slutty about it despite looking like a literal wet rat. Her third hobby is having an extremely unhealthy relationship with her twin. Her other hobbies include cannibalism, wearing a maid outfit, being extremely convinced she is the main character, the badboy sexy love interest and the villain. 'Why', you may ask. Well, the answer is, for shits and giggles #justgirlythings i, aswell as literally everybody else in the fandom have gone through the pipeline from hating her to desperately wanting to fuck her. expect for i still fucking hope she dies and doesn't come back for good. (that would literally solve all of everybody's problems) as god intended (EXPECT FOR. one of her hobbies literally is gaslighting god) She is fucking horrible i will love her until i die and even after that

parks and recs jean ralphio voice she's the woooorst!! The moment she learns she has to kill someone to become a Lyctor (aka a more special necromancer), she doesn't hesitate to kill and cannibalize the guy who has been her cavalier since childhood… cavalier who she also totally bullied as kids, she was allowed to choose one guest for her and her twin sister's birthday party each year, and she would always pick whoever she thought her cavalier didn't want to see there! While other characters are shown to regret the process of becoming a Lyctor (which involves someone close to them dying)/were forced into it because of circumstances, Ianthe has absolutely no regrets, she believes she did what she had to do

The author once said of Ianthe: "I don't think she's been nice to anyone, if she has I'll go back and change it." She killed and ate the soul of someone she has known all her life so that she could become a necromantic saint and tormented him plenty before that. General negging, ganging up against him, always inviting people he didn't like to their birthday parties. She doesn't regret killing him. I think she is repulsed by the idea that his digested soul is affecting hers. She helped her crush lobotomise herself so she would be in Ianthe's debt, and later lied and said she didn't see the corpse of a woman her crush killed under her bed (why did she do that? I do not know). She has a bone arm because her original arm was cut off, she hated the replacement so her crush cut THAT off and grew her a new one out of just bones. She had it gilded and only after that did she decide to help her crush deal with the person who had been repeatedly trying to kill her. She wants so badly to be the main character but people keep interrupting her villain monologues.

she has her own content warning tag pollrunner's note: this is the most compelling propaganda I've ever seen for a character, thank you for submitting

She's such a bitch to everyone all the time, she causes nothing but problems, she tries to do a villain speech but fumbles it because her tummy hurt, she is the awfulgirl of all time

#awful characters tournament #tournament poll #awful characters round 1 #lost #benjamin linus #the locked tomb #tlt #ianthe tridentarius

[vikings-til-valhalla]

One of my best friends felt stupid for being a slow reader. Having been there multiple times myself, and battling those types of thoughts on a daily basis for my whole life as well, I decided to write this to her:

You're not alone in that... In school, my teachers would all constantly say, "You should be able to read one page per minute!" Or something like that, it may have been 1 page per 30 seconds for all I remember. But it took me, regardless of the size, regardless of the number of words, minimum 2 minutes per page, sometimes even more. Taking any test that was timed and required me to read, I was panicked knowing I'd never finish the text in time to answer the questions. And that was often the case. I felt like a failure, stupid, and it was reflected in test scores. I'd get the answers right! But I didn't have the time to finish them all, and that's where I got penalized. However, when I took an untimed test for literacy comprehension, I was told I had a college reading level while in middle school. I didn't believe them. I was literally failing English classes left and right. Then, for college, there was another untimed test for the same thing. I scored so high that they literally did not have classes that could challenge me, and just threw me into the hardest English course they had even though I was determined to not need it. I aced those courses for 2 years straight with A+ in both, because rather than focusing on how fast someone can read and answer questions, it focused on how well you understood the texts as a whole. My one professor gave me 105% because she was so impressed. So all that to basically say, regardless of how slow you read, no matter how many times you have to reread the text to understand it fully, as long as you understand it that's what matters, and shows how intelligent you are. Schools pressure you to be fast at everything because in the working world, time and money are one in the same. You have to cut corners and make the top dollar or else corporations see you as a failure. And what is traditional schooling in America but a pipeline to the working capitalism world??

I've met dyslexic people who published bestselling books. I've heard of authors who failed all of K-12 schooling and published well known books by the dozen. And I myself am a very slow reader who struggled all through school, failed most every class for being slow enough that I couldn't finish any tests, but I've been given untimed tests and proved to be highly intelligent in every subject, several languages, countless forms of comprehension, and I published 2 books by the age of 23.

But I am VERY slow at all of that. It takes me hours at a time to solve a small math problem. It takes me weeks to read a children's book. I usually have to hear something twice or more to understand it, unless I have subtitles to read so I can back up what my mind processes hearing, with something visual.

It doesn't matter how slow or fast you are. Intelligence is intelligence regardless. Capitalism just makes it seem like speed is the end all be all of everything, because if you're slow, you're not doing it right/well enough, and you're not making enough profit for anyone to value you.

What's important to remember is to value yourself and what you've accomplished, no matter how long you took to do it, how many tries it took to succeed, or who approves of the things you achieved besides yourself. Your best is good enough, you are good enough, and your worth is not determined by production quotas of any sort in any capacity. Worth is inherent, and also built upon at your own pace by accomplishing things within your personal scope.

#etc #mun is a Viking #not Vikings

[hedgiwithapen]

For Dammit Hedgi Day:

The one time Cisco was right.

About EVERYTHING

(time to finally write this fic!!!! 1x15 baybeeeeeee)

Being right used to feel like a victory to Cisco. Or, if not a victory, a shield at least. If he was right, the professor couldn't get too mad at his techniques or solutions. If he was right, he could cling to that instead of being bitter that he was the one grounded instead of Dante. If he was right, he could solve the problem.

He'd known something was wrong with the numbers and data for the trap, gathering dust in the subbasement. He'd known something didn't line up, with the picture in Nora's mother's mirror, the bloodstain on the wall. He'd known that there was more going on than a fifteen year old murder.

He watched the hologram fuzz and flare, the yellow of the Reverse Flash's suit off-color at this angle, with the backlights up this time. The distorted voice goes through the phrases, the same onesided script Cisco replayed in his mind every time he thought about that night.  It didn't make sense. It didn't make sense. 

He was right.  The hunch Joe'd had, the talk of time travel that Stein had discussed with them before leaving the city, the numbers that just didn't sit right. All of it added up correctly, it was just the answer that everyone had gotten wrong. Staring across the room, his fingers numb on his laptop keys, Cisco knew he was right. There was no swell of vindication.

"Oh, I'm not like the Flash at all," the voice buzzed in his bones, as Cisco stared.

Being right wasn't going to be enough this time. Not if he had all the proof in the world. 

"Some would say I'm the Reverse."

Dr. Wells stood in the elevator. He stood, dressed in black, back straight. 

Cisco turned to look, sure he was going to die.

"You're incredibly clever, Cisco," Wells said, a look of pride on his face. It made Cisco's stomach twist. "I've always said so."

Wells stood there, hands in his pockets, just to the side. Cisco could see the light in the elevator,  just a few feet away, and knew he'd never reach it. Betrayal crashed into his heart. After everything, all of it was Wells. The accelerator, he realized.  Hartley had been right, too.  Locking the door on Ronnie sealed a fate Wells had planned for. What else had been Wells? Bette? Farooq? Had he planned for Snart to steal the cold gun to get it out of STAR labs, out of reach?  

One thing was obvious. "You're him," Cisco said, needing to hear it. Until he did, he could pretend it was all some awful nightmare. He wanted to pretend it was all just some awful nightmare.  "The Reverse Flash."

Wells moved forward, one step, then another, slow and deliberate. Cisco stayed rooted to the spot, his heart racing. "You and I have never been properly introduced," he said, and Cisco wanted so badly to be wrong. Anything, anything to be wrong, like Caitlin's awful way of tormenting herself while sitting in the pipeline antechamber. But he was not wrong. 

"I am Eobard Thawne." Wells ducked his head, a stupid little bow, like it was supposed to mean something. 

"Thawne," Cisco repeated. "Like Eddie."

"Let's call him a distant relative." Cisco had worked with Dr. Wells--with Eobard Thawne--long enough to know the tightness between his eyes just then meant that he was insulted, though not why. 

He wasn't dead yet. More questions he already had the answers to bubbled on his tongue. "The night we trapped the Reverse Flash," he said, gesturing to the trap's empty ribs without looking away, "You almost died."

He'd worn that guilt like a sweater all winter long. Dr. Wells--Eobard--plucked it from him with a chuckle.

"There were two of you," Cisco added, waiting for the answer, though he could guess. Hadn't Barry mentioned something like that only the night before? Seeing himself? 

Dr Wells--Eobard-- raised a hand, one finger up as if to say "wait and see, you'll love this," and then there was another of him, both of them blurry at the edges, and a whirring noise Cisco felt more than he heard. 

He couldn't stop himself from approaching. 

"It's an after-image," Dr. Wells--Eobard-- said, real delight in his voice. He could have been talking about new equipment for the lab, announcing a new big project, not discussing how he'd faked his own injuries. " A speed mirage, if you will." He did the little bow again. Cisco couldn't breathe, wobbling on his feet as he started to circle.  

He pressed his hands to his head. "Joe was right," he said without meaning to, still looking at his boss. "You were there that night, fifteen years ago."  Exactly fifteen, Cisco realized with a start. Dr. Wells--Eobard Thawne-- killed Nora Allen, framed Henry, destroyed a family. " Barry's house. You killed Nora Allen." The words hung in the air, shards of glass about to fall. Cisco couldn't get a breath. Dr. Wells--Eobard Thawne--killed Nora, killed those cops, and the scientists at Mercury, and now he would be next.

"It was never my intention to kill Nora," Dr. Wells--Eobard Thawne-- clicked Cisco's laptop shut.  "I was there to kill Barry."

"Why?" It burst out of him. Cisco knew he'd die down here, he wanted to at least have that answer.  "You're his,  his friend, you've been teaching him." And me, he didn't say. You've been my friend. You've been teaching me.  "how to--"

"Go faster," Dr. Wells--Eobard was circling again, tightening the loop. "Yes. I know. A means to an end. And I'll tell you why."

Because you won't be able to tell anyone else, he didn't say, but Cisco heard it all the same. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, as it screamed for him to run. His feet would not move. A hot tear dripped from one eye. He was going to die down here. 

"Because I have been stuck here, marooned here, in this place for fifteen long years. And the Flash, and the Flash's speed is the key to my returning to my world, to my time." Dr. Wells--Eobard-- turned his back to Cisco, an ache in his voice. Cisco flinched as he turned back, slowly. "And no one is going to prevent that from happening."

Cisco's legs shook along with his hands, paralysis holding fast. He'd always thought his instinct was flight, not freeze. Not fawn.

"I can help you," he said, voice breaking around the words.  But Dr. Wells--Eobard only shook his head. 

"You're smart, Cisco. But not that smart." He lifted a hand, the same awful blurring noise echoing in Cisco's teeth, in his lungs, in his pulse. Cisco looked down for a heartbeat that lasted too long, not wanting to see the moment his mentor's face changed forever. He couldn't see anyways, through the blinding tears.

His voice softened. "Do you know how hard it has been to keep this from you, especially from you? Because the truth is, I've grown quite fond of you." 

Cisco dared to glance up, unable not to.  Maybe, just maybe, there was a way out of this. Maybe this is a moment where the story changes. Maybe, just maybe, he was wrong. 

"--And in Many ways, you have shown me what it's like to have a son," he finished. 

A moment stretched out, and so did Dr. Wells's hand. 

It hurt so much that Cisco couldn't move, couldn't speak, his breath and any prayers on it rushing out of his body before he hit the floor. 

#dammit hedgi day 2023 #the flash #Cisco ramon #Eobard Thawne

[cursmudgeon]

This is so crazy to me because that is like the one place where you just objectively can't put ai. It wouldn't work. There's no way to make it work. Like fuck them for trying to put it anywhere in the pipeline at all but storyboards are the last place you would ever want it. I'm a firm believer that no matter where you put AI tech in art it's at best going to give you something mediocre and difficult to work with. It's just too much of a black box with too few direct controls. But there are some applications where I can at least see the argument. Background painting for animation is an amazing and complex art form but I can understand how you could use AI to get something mediocre but serviceable by generating a full render based on a sketch. Inbetweening is tedious and while I'm sure AI wouldn't hold a candle to a human for subtle acting I can see where someday you might be able to create a better version of auto-tweening that could handle more complex timing. Hell, clean up and coloring are both slow fiddly tedious processes that would make sense to cut corners on. Again I think cutting any of those jobs is a lazy and poorly thought out idea that you'd only pull if you're creatively bankrupt and only in it for the money but I can see how it would actually save money while still actually making something that resembles a show you could watch. But storyboarding is the one thing that this kind of statistical model will never be able to do. Statistical learning models cannot comprehend things, they don't know what a story is. They can't even tell a knock knock joke let alone a compelling story because they have no way of remembering the events that have happened in the story already or understanding that the pixels and words that they are assembling even relate to the concept of an event. They mash phrases and colors into something that vaguely resembles other stuff that they've been told contains keywords. That's it.

But you expect me to believe you're going to get one to understand enough film language to tell a compelling story over a thousand separate images while consistently keeping the characters believably in the same space and recognizable? And it's gonna do that faster than a person doing thirty second sketches? Nah. I don't buy it.

The amount of bullshit you have to do to convince the black box to put the correct character on the left side of the screen facing the right direction in one image would already be more work than doing rough thumbnails of the whole scene. There is so much specific problem solving that has to go into making a storyboard. We have a hundred years of highly specific cultural baggage that defines how we interpret films. No generative statistical training model will ever be able to do that because they are just not remotely capable of understanding what they're making. They aren't and can't be conscious entities with the ability to interpret meaning, no matter how many objects they can recognize or words they can predict would be likely to follow other words. At best you'll wind up with a jumble of blobs that vaguely resemble the compositions of other films thrown together in an order that makes no sense and some poor worker who you've demoted to a revisionist position will have to sort through them and try to turn them into something that makes any sense and it's going to be slower and worse than if you'd just paid someone to do it right the first time.

If this is true and there are executives who think this is going to happen, they're gonna have a bad wakeup call when they realize their expensive machines aren't capable of more than the visual equivalent of word salad.

[littledigits]

DIRECTOR RAMBLE TWO

my first bit of advice to directing was to ,yknow, decide what kind of a director you want to be. my second piece of advice is this .

ALWAYS GIVE YOUR TEAM THE BENIFIT OF THE DOUBT THEY GIVE A SHIT/CARE/ARE TRYING THEIR BEST/WHAT HAVE YOU  

if not give a shit about the creative, at least giving a shit enough to come and earn a paycheck which is something that is fine for people to do. Not everyone has room to put their heart and soul into a project - even if you do , and thtas something you have to make your peace with because if you dont and you look into peoples intent. hooboy thats is a slippery slope to making all the worst choices.

directors that start to think their team is lazy and dont care will make it a self fulfilling prophecy because nothing is going to make a team lose trust in you as quick as feeling like nothing they do matters. In animation , caring too MUCH is the default of most people - so this sort of rhetoric will either get them to push so hard they burn out because they think they must be lazy, or stop caring altogether. I mean the same can be said for any leadership or mentorship position. now that doesn't mean you cant be honest if you think someone isint working in a way thats effective or if they seem to be struggling, or if maybe they arnt hitting expectations ,and it doesn't mean you cant challenge your team either. But it really does come down to where you solve your problems and make your choices.

I assume that my team gives a shit . Always. that way when problems come up i know the solution is something other then ' well people need to try harder '. Which is something that is kind of redonkly common in the industry (and in schools) just in general. Artists are not always great teachers, and sometimes something that is easy for one may not be for several others and its not as obvious as you'd think. because I never assume the problem is someone not caring , I have a much faster time finding the actual issues - because heres the thing.   i've never encountered a problem on a pipeline that existed because people didnt care enough. zero. nope. and i dont believe they exist. and if your team truly doesn't care - then they must have a good reason for it. you're the leader so its your job to figure it out and fix it.

#director ramble #my advice on how to direct stops here honestly #just give ppl the benifit of the doubt they care its so easy #even if a few ppl legit dont then whatever #they are minimal compared to the 95% of your team that just wanna do a good job

[jcmarchi]

Elaine Liu: Charging ahead

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/elaine-liu-charging-ahead/

Elaine Liu: Charging ahead

MIT senior Elaine Siyu Liu doesn’t own an electric car, or any car. But she sees the impact of electric vehicles (EVs) and renewables on the grid as two pieces of an energy puzzle she wants to solve.

The U.S. Department of Energy reports that the number of public and private EV charging ports nearly doubled in the past three years, and many more are in the works. Users expect to plug in at their convenience, charge up, and drive away. But what if the grid can’t handle it?

Electricity demand, long stagnant in the United States, has spiked due to EVs, data centers that drive artificial intelligence, and industry. Grid planners forecast an increase of 2.6 percent to 4.7 percent in electricity demand over the next five years, according to data reported to federal regulators. Everyone from EV charging-station operators to utility-system operators needs help navigating a system in flux.

That’s where Liu’s work comes in.

Liu, who is studying mathematics and electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), is interested in distribution — how to get electricity from a centralized location to consumers. “I see power systems as a good venue for theoretical research as an application tool,” she says. “I’m interested in it because I’m familiar with the optimization and probability techniques used to map this level of problem.”

Liu grew up in Beijing, then after middle school moved with her parents to Canada and enrolled in a prep school in Oakville, Ontario, 30 miles outside Toronto.

Liu stumbled upon an opportunity to take part in a regional math competition and eventually started a math club, but at the time, the school’s culture surrounding math surprised her. Being exposed to what seemed to be some students’ aversion to math, she says, “I don’t think my feelings about math changed. I think my feelings about how people feel about math changed.”

Liu brought her passion for math to MIT. The summer after her sophomore year, she took on the first of the two Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program projects she completed with electric power system expert Marija Ilić, a joint adjunct professor in EECS and a senior research scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems.

Predicting the grid

Since 2022, with the help of funding from the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), Liu has been working with Ilić on identifying ways in which the grid is challenged.

One factor is the addition of renewables to the energy pipeline. A gap in wind or sun might cause a lag in power generation. If this lag occurs during peak demand, it could mean trouble for a grid already taxed by extreme weather and other unforeseen events.

If you think of the grid as a network of dozens of interconnected parts, once an element in the network fails — say, a tree downs a transmission line — the electricity that used to go through that line needs to be rerouted. This may overload other lines, creating what’s known as a cascade failure.

“This all happens really quickly and has very large downstream effects,” Liu says. “Millions of people will have instant blackouts.”

Even if the system can handle a single downed line, Liu notes that “the nuance is that there are now a lot of renewables, and renewables are less predictable. You can’t predict a gap in wind or sun. When such things happen, there’s suddenly not enough generation and too much demand. So the same kind of failure would happen, but on a larger and more uncontrollable scale.”

Renewables’ varying output has the added complication of causing voltage fluctuations. “We plug in our devices expecting a voltage of 110, but because of oscillations, you will never get exactly 110,” Liu says. “So even when you can deliver enough electricity, if you can’t deliver it at the specific voltage level that is required, that’s a problem.”

Liu and Ilić are building a model to predict how and when the grid might fail. Lacking access to privatized data, Liu runs her models with European industry data and test cases made available to universities. “I have a fake power grid that I run my experiments on,” she says. “You can take the same tool and run it on the real power grid.”

Liu’s model predicts cascade failures as they evolve. Supply from a wind generator, for example, might drop precipitously over the course of an hour. The model analyzes which substations and which households will be affected. “After we know we need to do something, this prediction tool can enable system operators to strategically intervene ahead of time,” Liu says.

Dictating price and power

Last year, Liu turned her attention to EVs, which provide a different kind of challenge than renewables.

In 2022, S&P Global reported that lawmakers argued that the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) wholesale power rate structure was unfair for EV charging station operators.

In addition to operators paying by the kilowatt-hour, some also pay more for electricity during peak demand hours. Only a few EVs charging up during those hours could result in higher costs for the operator even if their overall energy use is low.

Anticipating how much power EVs will need is more complex than predicting energy needed for, say, heating and cooling. Unlike buildings, EVs move around, making it difficult to predict energy consumption at any given time. “If users don’t like the price at one charging station or how long the line is, they’ll go somewhere else,” Liu says. “Where to allocate EV chargers is a problem that a lot of people are dealing with right now.”

One approach would be for FERC to dictate to EV users when and where to charge and what price they’ll pay. To Liu, this isn’t an attractive option. “No one likes to be told what to do,” she says.

Liu is looking at optimizing a market-based solution that would be acceptable to top-level energy producers — wind and solar farms and nuclear plants — all the way down to the municipal aggregators that secure electricity at competitive rates and oversee distribution to the consumer.

Analyzing the location, movement, and behavior patterns of all the EVs driven daily in Boston and other major energy hubs, she notes, could help demand aggregators determine where to place EV chargers and how much to charge consumers, akin to Walmart deciding how much to mark up wholesale eggs in different markets.

Last year, Liu presented the work at MITEI’s annual research conference. This spring, Liu and Ilić are submitting a paper on the market optimization analysis to a journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Liu has come to terms with her early introduction to attitudes toward STEM that struck her as markedly different from those in China. She says, “I think the (prep) school had a very strong ‘math is for nerds’ vibe, especially for girls. There was a ‘why are you giving yourself more work?’ kind of mentality. But over time, I just learned to disregard that.”

After graduation, Liu, the only undergraduate researcher in Ilić’s MIT Electric Energy Systems Group, plans to apply to fellowships and graduate programs in EECS, applied math, and operations research.

Based on her analysis, Liu says that the market could effectively determine the price and availability of charging stations. Offering incentives for EV owners to charge during the day instead of at night when demand is high could help avoid grid overload and prevent extra costs to operators. “People would still retain the ability to go to a different charging station if they chose to,” she says. “I’m arguing that this works.”

#2022 #amp #Analysis #approach #artificial #Artificial Intelligence #attention #Behavior #Building #buildings #Canada #cascade #challenge #China #competition #computer #Computer Science #conference #consumers #cooling #course #data #Data Centers #devices #effects #electric power #electric vehicles #Electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) #electricity #Electronics

[lordbeebrain]

Nah but that ADHD/Neurodivergent

>Start Project

>Hyperfocus to burnout

>Stop project & never touch it again

>Feel Shame

>Repeat

Pipeline legitimately fucking sucks.

ADHD Tax is such a really shitty & unfortunate thing to experience & it usually comes with lots of shame between hyperfixations 😮‍💨

It takes more than just money, also.

Relationships of any kind, personal duties, things important to basic life, such as: Personal hygiene, eating, drinking water/hydrating, etc. often go ignored while engrossed in a hyperfocus.

Sucks that a majority of society will just tell you to “Just try HARDER!” when you try to explain these issues to them.

Maybe one day I’ll finally try hard enough at trying harder, that I will realize all of my problems could’ve been solved, had I only simply tried hard enough at trying harder so I could “Just try harder!”, until I finally found the right amount of trying harder to no longer have to try harder at trying harder…

Maybe one day.

I’ll be sure to share results ❤️🐝🧠

#actually adhd #adult adhd #living with adhd #adhd #adhd brain #adhd life #mental health #my adhd #adhd mood #adhd stuff #adhd tax #adhd sucks #adhd struggles #adhdlife #adhd culture #adhd post #adhd thoughts #adhd problems #adhd rant #adhd creature #adhd things #adhd awareness #so many abandoned hobbies #adhd is expensive #trying harder doesn’t work #I’m already trying my hardest #please #neurodivergent life #just neurodivergent things #neruodivergent

[sheydim]

major cw for being a major downer lol

not to be depressing. but it's hard to see a point in living given the state of things right now. they just keep getting worse and worse and people burn out and get apathetic REAL quick

so many people dying in palestine and.. the needle is absolutely moving on that!! but not quickly enough. we have to keep pushing regardless. but it's hard to feel hope. and what about all the suffering everywhere else in the world?? sudan. the congo. if this number of people starving and being blown up isn't enough to move enough hearts, what is?

if covid's mass death and disabling wasn't (isn't!) enough to make enough people give a shit, what the fuck Would be? covid alone destroyed a lot of my faith in others. most of us apparently will not look out for each other. even when it's easy.

everyone on my dash is poor and crowdfunding. disaster after disaster and never enough aid to truly get out of the hole. if this amount of poverty and homelessness isn't enough -- what is?

democracy as we know it in the states is truly on the verge of cracking, if we're at risk of an actual dictatorship -- and if we look at the supreme court and the overturning of roe v. wade, too. uhhhhhh shit is really, really bad. and on the fast-track to getting worse. and it's that or genocide joe??? and either way the bombs drop abroad and the rights get eroded here and we're all in debt?

anddd labor sucks right now! we don't have jobs or we get paid near nothing. the working class is divided and a lot of people are persuaded that siding with bigotry will solve their problems. and we all know most of us are not going to have anything to retire on. if we even live til then. if we're not all climate refugees by then. because there's not even winter anymore?? every summer there is now horrible air quality, and where i live, there are biblical storms.

oh, and being trans also sucks ass right now. i made it a decade in. and i am really proud of that! but we're surrounded by enemies, hurting each other on the regular, and the petty (and critical) pains of everyday transphobia never stop.

oh... and being jewish sucks right now. enough said. the pain is unspeakable.

every other fucking thing that sucks. the enshittification and privatization of the internet that we all rely on, and KOSA and mastercard etc. mass misinfo that gets worse and worse thanks to misuse of AI. deepfakes. police brutality and pipelines. gentrification -- and the fact that where i live, a lot of the gentrifiers came here bc they got priced out of their original area. the price of everything!! the idea that somehow i will have to get money together to care for my aging parents, when the time comes.

sigh.

i really struggle not to be a doomer. i believe we don't need to feel hope to keep acting as though there is. but while i'm alive for love and for spite, i don't really want to be, a lot of the time.

i don't know how long i can keep trying to live for the ocean, and the hope of an eventual cat and garden, and the perfect cup of matcha, and even the joy of waking up next to my favorite person on earth every day. i'm trying to enjoy these things while fearing they may be taken away at any time. it feels like pure denial just trying to survive each week.

it's so bad right now. and what if this is the good part?... what if someday when i'm old, this is a paradise compared to where we all end up?

how do y'all keep going to work every day? oh yeah. bc we die if we don't. bc our loved ones can't pay the rent if we die.

y'all, i'm so tired.

could i actually improve any of this? could enough of us do that? or should i start planning ahead in case i need to "check out".

#rhetorical. i'm a coward so i will live. and try to do what i can. #i feel like i'm breaking though. how do we do this. how. how. #don't reblog #chatter

[i-love-linux-and-reject-gender]

I've had a semi irrational fear of continer software (docker, cubernates etc) for a while, and none of my self hosting needs have needed more than a one off docker setup occasionally but i always ditch it fairly quickly. Any reason to use kubernates you wanna soap box about? (Features, use cases, stuff u've used it for, anything)

the main reasons why i like Kubernetes are the same reasons why i like NixOS (my Kubernetes addiction started before my NixOS journey)

both are declarative, reproducible and solve dependency hell

i will separate this a bit,

advantages of container technologies (both plain docker but also kubernetes):

every container is self-contained which solves dependency problems and "works on my machine" problems. you can move a docker container from one computer to another and as long as the container version and the mounted files stay the same and it will behave in the same way

advantages of docker-compose and kubernetes:

declarativeness. the standard way of spinning up a container with `docker run image:tag` is in my opinion an anti pattern and should be avoided. it makes updating the container difficult and more painful than it needs to be. instead docker compose allows you to write a yaml file instead which configures your container. like this:

```

version: "3"

services:

myService:

image: "image:tag"

```

you can then start up the container with this config with `docker compose up`. with this you can save the setup for all your docker containers in config files. this already makes your setup quite portable which is very cool. it increases your reliability by quite a bit since you only need to run `docker compose up -d` to configure everything for an application. when you also have the config files for that application stored somewhere it's even better.

kubernetes goes even further. this is what a simple container deployment looks like: (i cut out some stuff, this isn't enough to even expose this app)

this sure is a lot of boilerplate, and it can get much worse. but this is very powerful when you want to make everything on your server declarative.

for example, my grafana storage is not persistent, which means whenever i restart my grafana container, all config data gets lost. however, i am storing my dashboards in git and have SSO set up, so kubernetes automatically adds the dashboards from git

the main point why i love kubernetes so much is the combination of a CI/CD pipeline with a declarative setup.

there is a software called ArgoCD which can read your kubernetes config files from git, check if the ones that you are currently using are identical to the ones in git and automatically applies the state from git to your kubernetes.

i completely forgot to explain of the main features of kubernetes:

kubernetes is a clustered software, you can use one or two or three or 100 computers together with it and use your entire fleet of computers as one unit with kubernetes. i have currently 3 machines and i don't even decide which machine runs which container, kubernetes decides that for me and automatically maintains a good resource spread. this can also protect from computer failures, if one computer fails, the containers just get moved to another host and you barely use any uptime. this works even better with clustered storage, where copies of your data are distributed around your cluster. this is also useful for updates, as you can easily reboot a server for updates without causing any downtime.

also another interesting design pattern is the architecture of how containers are managed. to create a new container, you usually create a deployment, which is a higher-level resource than a container and which creates containers for you. and the deployment will always make sure that there are enough containers running so the deployment specifications are met. therefore, to restart a container in kubernetes, you often delete it and let the deployment create a new one.

so for use cases, it is mostly useful if you have multiple machines. however i have run kubernetes on a singular machine multiple times, the api and config is just faaaaaaar too convenient for me. you can run anything that can run in docker on kubernetes, which is (almost) everything. kubernetes is kind of a data center operating system, it makes stuff which would require a lot of manual steps obsolete and saves ops people a lot of time. i am managing ~150 containers with one interface with ease. and that amount will grow even more in the future lol

i hope this is what you wanted, this came straight from my kubernetes-obsessed brain. hope this isn't too rambly or annoying

it miiiiiiiight be possible to tell that this is my main interest lol

#thanks for the ask!

[misscaptainbear]

Imposter Syndrome

One of my favorite things about game development is how circular our history of solving problems is. Take for example, the solution to Wolfenstein's (And later, Doom's) problem of how to display intractable in-world objects, such as weapons, items, and most importantly enemies. Well - all they had was the hammer called 'scaling sprites', so that's what they used; For Wolfenstein 3D they simply made a flat 2D pixellated image larger and smaller. Heck, it worked so well, they could add artistic flair that no real-time renderer could handle for another decade - simulated lighting and shadows to the static painted objects!

[Image of various sprites from Wolfenstein 3D demonstrating the range of different props and environment art]

Doom of course (as it does) turned that up to 11. What if, not only did we scale a sprite according to distance, but also changed the graphics based on the viewing angle such that it was percieved not as a static 2D image but a 3D object. Since the camera could only yaw, there was only a very small amount of directions that needed to be created, and that just might barely fit in the graphics memory budget set aside for this machine.

[Image of all angles of a Cacodemon sprite from Doom]

Again, they were able to surpass the apparent limitations of the hardware they ran on, with higher-resolution images that were (for the time) extremely detailed and realistic. Representing something that impressive again wouldn't have been possible in 3D for another decade.

Even during the 3D revolution of games, the billboarded sprite (a name for this technique) continued to survive - but now not strictly necessary to achieve visuals, merely as an opportunity to gain savings on rendering performance in favor of more important visuals.

[An image of Mario 64 with billboard sprite trees in the background]

This allowed - again, more impressive visuals than models could at the time represent - but also, allowed freeing up polygon budgets for using on more important or detailed objects, like the main character.

Fast forward like 25 years and I'm still seeing people discuss this technique (that is, admittedly much more advanced) as if it's a novel discovery or a recent technique - enough to warrant a GDC talk about it! For example, this article about significant performance improvements in fortnite pretty much re-introduced the idea into the AAA mainstream tech discussion.

[Image of a tree fortnite asset being prepared to be baked as an imposter]

Admittedly, the pipeline is different - automated tools bake out multiple albedo/normal/reflective spritesheets, and many more directions are possible - but the technique is still the same. Never changes. Just like those crazy kids taking pictures of a clay model on a turntable.

[Image of a clay model of the Doom Cyberdemon on a stand, used for digitization into the doom graphical assets]

That's why I love learning about how old games were made - the techniques they used to solve their problems are eternal, and always shockingly relevant to even triple a productions. Sometimes, it's better to read and learn about old wheels instead of reinventing your own.

#gamedev #retro games #indie dev #game dev #retro cgi

[mushi-shield]

[Verse 1] They're angry that they will never shut me up I'm making more noise Turn me up or turn me down It's your choice Black lives only matter when they got a corpse to exploit Cause the media made millions off of protests for George Floyd That's called ad revenue They make cash selling you All the crap and the Ads when they broadcast news, ooh The network full of liars Got investment capital and segments sponsorеd by Pfizer And the freedom fighters I feel likе the left just plants them To infiltrate the right its extensive planning Then it happens overnight it's impressive branding Making a million off of shirts that say Let's Go Brandon It's a cash grab Everyone's a lab rat Amazon made billions of dollars from sanitizer and black masks And that's that Funny how the terrorist's who attack Always come from places that are oil rich and have gas Democrats they don't give a damn What is this about? Our military trapped in the middle east can't get them out Heroes are the ones who have the constitution written down Y'all are using hero while describing Kyle Rittenhouse

[Pre-Chorus]

One cent, two cent, three cents, four We get less and they get more Bought and sold since we were born They want money We want war

[Chorus]

Dirty dollars fill their pockets While our coffins fill the ground They make profits solving problems They create to keep us down Dirty money (cha-ching) Dirty money I don't want your dirty money [Verse 2] They might kill me for this song it’s all classified intelligence Don't need to go to war to secretly be gettin' benefits When Russia launches rockets we condemn them, but there's evidence A U.S. politician owns the screws they're assembled with Ain't no war on drugs it's economic You make money off an inmate, every jail cell is profit Our prisons are privately owned Illegal marijuana just means kids smoking weed Turn the dollars in their pockets Let's be honest domestic threats ain't a comparison To nuclear powers who hate the west it's embarrassing Still we label Truckers in the convoy as terrorists And confiscate donations we have no idea where it is A pipeline leaks, price of gas goes higher Stock market crash, everybody get's fired Economy is weak while we're trying to beat a virus One trillion dollars in debt to China We celebrate the smallest battles we're winning So that they can publish the headline that's' gonna' fuel the vision But if we champion the crumbs, then its crumb's that we’re givin' We don't make any progress, we're stuck at the beginning [Pre-Chorus] One cent, two cent, three cents, four We get less and they get more Bought and sold since we were born They want money We want war [Chorus] Dirty dollars fill their pockets While our coffins fill the ground They make profits solving problems They create to keep us down Dirty money (cha-ching) Dirty money I don't want your dirty money [Bridge] It's all about the money, money, money, money, money Not enough soap to scrub it's soaked in blood It's all about the money, money, money, money, money Every time we make a buck, they take from us It's all about the money, money, money, money, money The dollar runs our lives until we die It's all about the money, money, money, money, money It controls your mind and it controlling mine [Chorus] Dirty dollars fill their pockets While our coffins fill the ground They make profits solving problems They create to keep us down Dirty money (cha-ching) Dirty money I don't want your dirty money

#tom macdonald

[flashlight-smallknife]

Ok so like maybe the internet exacerbated my mental illness as a teenager but where are the articles about how the internet also helped solve all of my mental health problems in my mid 20s

Like I stayed chronically online long enough to follow the SH glorification tumblr in 2011 pipeline to the curing depression in high masking adult afab people pipeline and I think that this is not a unique experience but because the internet is allegedly bad and evil we aren’t getting stories from this angle!!!

#my thoughts #my life #maybe this is the dawn of my op ed era