1) aesthetic is more novel than polygons, which are currently much more widespread (note: novel does not necessarily equate to "better" looking).
2) The finite limitations "leave more to the imagination" - in the same way that low resolution pixel art might, vs a high resolution vector image.
3) A very minor factor, but worth noting: not only are voxels visually novel, but they are technologically novel - in order to make a competitive voxel engine, you typically are not using an off-the-shelf engine like Unreal or Unity (though you can, and there are many voxel pluggins for these engines). Thus programmers are drawn to them (IMO) - they are an easy way to visually show off your technical know-how, just as you might many other effects in the demo scene.
4) A false sense of nostalgia - voxel engines never were very widespread, and the closest thing in the early days tended to be height-map driven rather than volumetric (the earliest notable exception being Voxlap). But the "nostalgia" exists, just as it does with synthwave (most of which does not fully mirror any music of the 80s/90s).
5) Voxels are point-based volumetric representation and thus are much easier to use for procedural generation (vs describing a surface, which is much harder). Though voxels are often wrapped on the surface with polygons, this is trivial (vs, say, describing the polygonization of a metaball without using voxels).
I enabled screentime/parental controls on my iPhone and gave control of the passcode to my wife.
At first I could not wrangle it to block the things I wanted (was this an intentional move by Apple or just poor design?). What I ultimately settled for was disabling downloads of new apps, then deleting every single social media app, game, web browser, and other distraction from my phone.
Yes, that is right, my iPhone has no web browser capability (why not just buy a dumb phone? Because I often use services like maps, music, etc).
Is the problem me? Do I just not have self control? No - I decided its not. These products were carefully designed around the metric of "engagement" - whereas I had no choice over my design.
I also blocked other distractions in my desktop / work area via the hosts file. I would like to do it at the router level but use of VPN makes this impossible, unfortunately.
This is what it has come to, which...is ridiculous, in my opinion.
September 1992 - Origin Systems acquired by EA for $35m
March 15, 1994 - Ultima 8 released
...
I will credit Garriott and Molyneux as being some of the most [overly] ambitious game designers, and this is not at all a bad thing in my opinion. Not everything they did worked, but when it did, they created history. And even when it did not work, at least they attempted to break new ground.
I should correct that slightly because no one ever cites facts or quotes in isolation - usually they are in the context of a broader argument or hypothesis. But there have been a few cases, here Google will probably serve you better than my feeble memory. One (rather controversial) example I can think of is James Damore. His hypothesis may have been wrong (I will leave that up to the reader), but he at least did seem to earnestly back it up with data and research papers (and even though there is some debate there, at least a few experts have publicly agreed that the science he cited was well-established).
Note: I am not defending Damore's position, only stating that it was a great example of the "yellow/blue dress" when it comes to orthodox speech. People seemed to be pretty fiercely divided on whether or not his memo warranted being fired.
You are absolutely correct - perceiving censorship does not equate to being censored.
That said (IMO), there is a lot of abusive behavior on all sides - so the question becomes, is the treatment equal? It may just serve as a litmus test, at worst a false positive, to consider which side thinks they are being censored more. :)
Someone else on HN (I cannot recall who), stated something along the lines of (paraphrasing):
"Centralized power can be abused in the hands of the government or the private sector [via monopolies]"
Whether or not you agree, I thought this was an elegant way of phrasing it. The cure, IMO, is to ensure that both ultimately answer to the people, although I have no idea how that is practically enforced.
I would not say it is "unfounded" - but rather that censorship is ill-defined, at least in the public eye.
We have come up with words that are easier to swallow like "deplatforming" and "fact checking." Censorship occurs in many forms, and not all of it is directly blocking access to speech (IMO).
There is a common misconception that censorship can only occur at the public (government) level, but not the private level. As per Wikipedia:
"Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies."
There is also the issue of orthodox views and orthodox privilege (as per Paul Graham's explanation). Many conservative views are not orthodox to the point where you can be canceled for merely quoting someone else or citing facts (yes, both have happened in the past). So there is some form of self-censorship (this is related to "social cooling" IIRC).
I think it all boils down to this: which side supports censorship and which side condemns it? There you will find your answer on who is more adversely affected by censorship.
Note: this is not a left or right issue, historically speaking. For example, look back to McCarthyism.
This is really great work. :)
On a slightly tangential note, I understand why they chose an audio representation over symbolic, but I think that training the latter is more useful (commercially speaking). Would love to be able to get a track rolling quickly just selecting an instrument set and tweaking some AI parameters and then hand-tune it from there (yes, this greatly detracts from the "art" of it but sometimes I just want to see results quickly). Of course, to do this effectively, you would also have to analyze on an audio level (at least per instrument) so that the usage and timing of instruments could be better understood.
I have a graveyard filled to the brim with side projects, and just ONE project that I keep coming back to (I have been working on it for 20 years). Its getting to the point where I do fewer side projects because I understand there is only one that is worth working on. In the past decade, I only had two smaller side projects.
The secret for me is to work on the hardest, most interesting problems. This is not good business advice - mind that. But you are probably doing side projects to get away from the boredom of the thing that actually earns you money.
Master of Orion was notable in that it was the first game I remember with "meaningful" NPC interactions. Even though interactions were quite limited (make/break alliances, espionage, trade, etc), early alliances could determine the final outcome of the game. But more importantly, it felt emotionally compelling. I found myself getting angry at certain factions when they spied/voted/etc against me. They also took the time to illustrate dispositions IIRC, so you could see when a race was happy or angry with you.
A bit of self-promo, but for those interested I also am using a variation of this algorithm powered by compute shaders. See https://twitter.com/voxelquest. If you scroll down a bit, you can even see versions using the maps from Comanche shown in this demo. :)
(Also, thank you @s-macke, your github page taught me the fundamentals of the algorithm - previously I had only seen Ken Silverman's post on wave surfing, which was not nearly as clear).
I respectfully disagree -- something that is 10 times more efficient costs 10 times less energy (theoretically). When the end user suffers a server outage due to load, when they run out of battery ten times quicker, all of these things matter. When you have to pay for ten servers to run your product instead of one, this cost gets passed on to the end user.
I was forced to use a monitor at 30 fps for a few days due to a bad display setup. It made me realize how important 60 fps is. Even worse, try using an OS running in a VM for an extended period of time...
There are plenty of things that are 'good enough', but once users get used to something better they will never go back (if they have the choice, at least).
I immediately recognized the headline even though its been 15 years since I last read up on Cyc.
I still think the potential of lambda calculus in knowledge representation and logical deduction is high and under-represented in research.
Just theorizing, but I think a large part of the problem is the difficulty in interfacing this knowledge base with manual, human entry. Another pitfall is the difficulty in determining strange or unanticipated logical outcomes, and developing a framework to catch or validate these.
The author has done a really good overview here, however (perhaps by virtue of the example being too simple), the resulting code looks much less readable than the original code. Which I guess goes to say, there are probably situations where it is appropriate to use stuff like this and situations where it could be easily abused?
I'm an even bigger fan of the slightly larger and more detailed bitmap fonts used in the early 90s, popularized on Amiga, arcade machines, and in particular the demoscene. These fonts were the inspiration for the Voxel Quest logo [1].
I have tried almost every form of exercise, but the only thing that has truly hooked me so far is circuit/interval training (for both cardio and resistance). I have done almost 400 sessions so far, almost without fail at 5 days per week (which is the real testament to how addicting it is).
Actually I find the cardio classes to be more interesting and challenging than the resistance / weight lifting classes. Although the focus is cardio, they do not neglect training your muscles, they just tend to rely more on body weight than barbells (burpees, jump squats, sprawls, etc) with the occasionally machine thrown in (rowers, bikes).
I have not lost much weight (that requires a better diet) or gained a huge amount of muscle but my body feels way more tuned. The classes are pretty intense and burning 1000 calories/hour is common. My heart rate used to max out at 180 and my resting heart rate was 80-90. Now my max heart rate is 160 and my resting gets as low as 50. I used to struggle to do 50 push-ups now I can do 100 without much struggle.
The real benefit though is that I feel healthy and less afraid of things like heart disease.
Competition is generally good, but competing standards are bad, especially when they have no real advantages over each other. Imagine if every platform had its own incompatible version of C (ok, yes there are incompatibilities but they are not there by intention).
If you want to win me over as a developer, do it the right way. Provider superior tooling and win a customer base with superior implementation.
2) The finite limitations "leave more to the imagination" - in the same way that low resolution pixel art might, vs a high resolution vector image.
3) A very minor factor, but worth noting: not only are voxels visually novel, but they are technologically novel - in order to make a competitive voxel engine, you typically are not using an off-the-shelf engine like Unreal or Unity (though you can, and there are many voxel pluggins for these engines). Thus programmers are drawn to them (IMO) - they are an easy way to visually show off your technical know-how, just as you might many other effects in the demo scene.
4) A false sense of nostalgia - voxel engines never were very widespread, and the closest thing in the early days tended to be height-map driven rather than volumetric (the earliest notable exception being Voxlap). But the "nostalgia" exists, just as it does with synthwave (most of which does not fully mirror any music of the 80s/90s).
5) Voxels are point-based volumetric representation and thus are much easier to use for procedural generation (vs describing a surface, which is much harder). Though voxels are often wrapped on the surface with polygons, this is trivial (vs, say, describing the polygonization of a metaball without using voxels).