There are a lot of concepts in mathematics which do not have good real world analogues.

i, the _imaginary number_for figuring out roots, as one example.

I am fairly certain you cannot actually do the mathematics to predict or approximate the size of an atom or subatomic particle without using complex algebra involving i.

It’s been a while since I watched the entire series Leonard Susskind has up on youtube explaining the basics of the actual math for quantum mechanics, but yeah I am fairly sure it involves complex numbers.

The explanation I’ve seen is that … is notation for something that can be otherwise represented as sums of infinite series.

In the case of 0.999…, it can be shown to converge toward 1 with the convergence rule for geometric series.

If |r| < 1, then:

ar + ar² + ar³ + … = ar / (1 - r)

Thus:

0.999… = 9(1/10) + 9(1/10)² + 9(1/10)³ + …

= 9(1/10) / (1 - 1/10)

= (9/10) / (9/10)

= 1

Just for fun, let’s try 0.424242…

0.424242… = 42(1/100) + 42(1/100)² + 42(1/100)³

= 42(1/100) / (1 - 1/100)

= (42/100) / (99/100)

= 42/99

= 0.424242…

So there you go, nothing gained from that other than seeing that 0.999… is distinct from other known patterns of repeating numbers after the decimal point.

I am not quite that old, but I learned digital media creation in the Macromedia Suite… Dreamweaver, Flash… before Adobe bought them out.

I’ve found Krita to be a less clumsy way to edit images than GIMP, been using it that way for years.

Yes, GIMP is powerful when used correctly, but Krita is far closer to Photoshop in terms of UI and out of the box features.

Obligatory: Do people not know that Krita exists?

Hold on , I’ll edit this when I find a link.

Edit:

Ok, so here is OpenAI wanting to make… well basically it seems to want to have not only an AI agent in a text support chatbox telling you how to fix a problem…

…but give it the ability to completely take over your computer and just do it for you, presumably via Remote Assistance and whatever the Mac equivalent is.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/openai-plans-chatgpt-supersmart-assistant-135029243.html?guccounter=1

No way this could go wrong and lead to fake support sites just fucking writing a batch file and executing it in the blink of an eye.

Then we’ve got both Zoom and Otter who yes, straight up, want to build AI powered avatars, based on each employee/user and replace the human entirely in meetings.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/zoom-s-ceo-wants-a-manipulatable-ai-avatar-of-you-to-attend-meetings-instead/ar-BB1nGO5m

https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/could-ai-personas-attend-your-work-meetings-for-you-one-tech-ceo-says-yes-and-by-the-end-of-the-year/articleshow/107797330.cms

Fuck the infinite paper clip making machine, we are intentionally trying to make the infinite meeting machine.

Dear sweet christ, I’ve been the manager of a medium sized non profits databases (everything other than finance because they’re special, as in using an overpriced wacky proprietary tool because they are used to it, oh and probably commiting fraud) and, as the author references, I have actually had one of the members of the board get a bunch of other people with 0 technical competence to try to get me to ‘implement blockchain technology’ on postgres.

Non of those fucking morons could ever provide an actual project outline. None of these fucking morons even knew their own teams processes, and they would all change depending on team member asked and date.

Not relevant to this story, but basically I am now disabled and living off of SSDI after being assaulted and seriously injured.

I am 99% sure, after years of working with completely technically incompetent managers, I am never going to work in tech again.

I would literally rather be poor, do uber eats delivery when I feel like it, and slowly build a video game, by myself, not even to make money, just to give my tech brain something to sate it.

I am too autistic to be able to handle the constant stream of bullshit and social manipulation/pressure from everywhere I have ever worked.

Ive been calling this the reverse turing test:

Can you tell that a known human being is not an ‘AI’ chatbot, based on text correspondence?

Apparently we are now just going to have AI simulacra of ourselves date each other on dating apps and meet with each other on zoom.

The meeting thing in particular is so fucking insane.

Problem: Meetings waste time and accomplish nothing!

Solution: Don’t hire or train competent people, instead, automate meetings, the transcripts of which will presumably still have to be read, and will likely not make any sense, thus necessitating more meetings.

The goal of technological civilization apparently truly is to create maximum misery via maximizing meetings.

Does this imply that in Star Wars X, we will have a fight or convo with a contact in an arcade?

I think it was ABC that just showed a poll saying 15% of independents would be more likely to vote for Trump if he’s a convicted felon, 8% less likely, and 74% indifferent.

So uh, at least amongst independent voters, no, apparently being a felon does not matter that much.

Yes, blend trees are the very first step of how one would implement motion matching.

Problem is that fine tuning the algorithms that govern all that is pretty darned complex and time consuming.

Also, afaik, blend trees alone are not sufficient to allow godot to do motion matching, as there are outstanding requests for it on godot’s git.

Nope.

See my other comment for more detail.

Again, summarized, motion matching is a system that builds off of an animation tree with procedurally generated transitions and blends which create a far, far more realistic fidelity of animation quality then standard anim trees allow.

Nah, this is far more simplistic, and really only works convincingly in 2d, with a… lets call it either minimalistic or simplistic art style.

Motion Matching is what makes a lot of Triple A games stand out for their extremely realistic animations.

Think Assassins Creed after I think 2017, or GTA 4, 5 and RDR2, though the rockstar games also include procedural animations reacting to physics. Basically, many high production value third person games use motion matching, though there are still many that dont.

MGS5 and I think Death Stranding do not use motion matching, its all a complex but ultimately static animation tree.

Motion matching starts with a library of anims that you set up in an anim tree, including transitions if you have them, but it procedurally generates transitions based on input, predicted character path, speed, etc.

Heres a vid showcasing motion matching… describing it in text does not really do it justice.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Zwh6dpA6U&pp=ygUYbW90aW9uIG1hdGNoaW5nIHNob3djYXNl

The best way I can describe it in text was that the feet never glide. The feet, and thus legs, to the root pelvis, all actually take all the steps they’d need to say turn 5 degrees, 35 degrees, or 225 degrees.

This is done procedurally, instead of trying to make transition animations for all possible variants of all possible transitions.

Watching this vid and then comparing it to say Counter Strike, you can see that this means that many minor animations of short strides, pivots, sort of trotting to a stop, or turning… all of these things are basically semi procedurally generated so that a character moves much more realistically and far less… video gameily, lol.

If standard animations are a small or large trees of switching from one anim to another depending on input, or things that happen to the character, motion matching is taking that tree and procedurally generating transitions between those anim states.

Thats still oversimplified but Im trying here.

Motion matching works better with more anims in your tree. Theres also tons of very poorly done tutorials showing off motion matching implemented so poorly you can barely tell, but this upcoming korean game does it extremely well such that you can really see the difference.

PS:

I have actually found examples in Godot of bending elements of an animated character to react to physical objects… like being hit by a moving object causing a flinch specific to exactly where and what part of the character was struck.

But it is far more rudimentary than the totality of the Euphoria system.

Remember when Arnold threw a fit and took off his helmet on fucking Pluto, his head immediately froze solid, and basically they just thawed him out and he was fine?

Wild thing is I am white, cis and basically hetero…

…and I don’t see how anyone can not take this all seriously.

Lots of non white, non hetero talking heads on major channels that don’t seem to care either.

A lot of it is just the lucky few that made the right connection, or were born into wealth, who never had any life destroying tragedy ruin their career, who had reserve finances or other contacts or safety nets to rely on…

Ive met loads if people like that. They’ll give you all the emotional support in the world, until either disagree with them about nearly anything somewhat serious, or if you ask for help that might actually cost them some time or money.

There’s programs for that! I donate to a charity that… yeah, its all underfunded, extremely difficult to apply to and pass.

Then they get angry because in their head theyre a good person, but this grates upon their fundamental belief in a meritocratic society, causes cognitive dissonance.

Survivorship bias is deadly.

Most likely its a mix of cognitive dissonance (it can’t happen here) and not really caring as theyre mostly well off liberals (oh well, if it does, im wealthy so my life won’t seriously change that much!).

Don’t forget that the Moon also emits cold light, which makes things colder.

Seemingly 90%+ of Flat Earthers believe this.

Also sometimes the Moon is a hologram.

I heard your later years were really quite jaw-dropping, Mr Freud, I wonder if you could speak to that?

No?

I saw the prequel trilogy as basically a middle schooler and thought wow, is this a movie series for babies?

Then I went back to playing SWG and Rogue Squadron as I had already beaten the old X Wing and Tie Fighter MSDOS/early Windows games. I had many more experiences that to me felt like actual Star Wars in those games.

I still think the prequels largely suck, and good dear god the new trilogy.

I wish they had just taken some of the better stuff from the EU and made a new trilogy out of that. You know like a new non prequel trilogy based around taking on Thrawn, in a very fragmented, very politically complex environment? With complex, multi faceted characters?

I guess we have Thrawn now kind of but bleck.

I would say make a mini series around Boba Fett or Dash Rendar or Mara Jade. But seeing as how similar series have actually turned out, at this point I am just going back to 1998 and saying that nothing Star Wars since then is actually canon, in my mind fortress or whatever.

They even managed to fuck up Mando.

Christ, at least its not as embarrassing as the Master Cheeks show.

People tell me Andor is good but I am as used to a new Star Wars movie or show being bad as I am to a new Assassins Creed game being hokey, boring, time wasting and overpriced.

By this logic uh, you’d be crushed to death on Mercury or the Moon as they are both basically tidally locked, and also apparently helicopters don’t need blades, fence posts or pool noodles would negate gravity, because they spin really fast.

Perhaps she saw that one weird Russian experiment from the 80s that concluded that if you spin something really fast it gets lighter, and thus gravity has something to do with spinning? I have seen a whole lot of spin related anti gravity nonsense on the internet.

Many of the ‘electric universe’ people seem to think electromagnetism somehow plays a more important role in… what we typically think gravity does… than gravity.

Ask her if she thinks things get crushed on the North or South poles of Mars. Semi-comparable amount of mass, nearly identical rotation period, but basically no electromagnetics to speak of.