I feel like this is possibly one of those things where Dune was responsible for a lot of the things you’re seeing in it that you might call derivative. Dune was written in 1965 and while I don’t mean to imply that Frank Herbert’s work was wholly original and that he didn’t take great influence from a number of things himself, it was also highly influential at the time and provided a lot of themes and tropes that would be taken up by sci-fi in the coming decades as well.

Hasn’t it been said that Star Wars was admittedly pretty influenced by Dune? Lemme see if I can source that …

EDIT: Yes, apparently Herbert himself even noticed and directly complained about it, https://nerdist.com/article/everything-star-wars-borrowed-from-dune/

To be clear, I don’t think this is a bad thing. I don’t think Lucas was wrong to wear his influence on his sleeve and I don’t think Herbert was wrong to take some offense at it. This is just art, this is how things work. Was it too much? I think it’s debatable. Whatever. I’m too old to be arguing about Star Wars on internet forums at this point.

For me a lot of it depends on the perspective.

• For an FPS, I think non-inverted feels more comfortable. I generally just want the view window to move in the indicated direction, but I understand people that like it inverted.
• If it’s third person, I actually prefer completely inverted (including horizontal). Especially with something like Dark Souls where one stick controls the player and the other stick controls the camera. It’s more clear that the camera is an external entity and I’m controlling the angle, not the view window. It feels unpleasant and unnatural to me to push left and then also have the camera bend to the left.
• If it’s a rail shooter like Panzer Dragoon or something, we’re back to non-inverted. I’m controlling the absolute position of a targeting reticle and I just want it to move to where I want it to move.

Alright, chilling out for a second, I understand your point better. Thank you for the additional information.

I do still feel we may fundamentally disagree though.

It’s honestly been a good long while since I read 1984, but I think my interpretation was different. You use the word “collapsing” but Newspeak was a more intentional reinforcing through rigid structure. They purposefully reduced the language to good and ungood as a direct means to smooth out the nuance.

In essence I’m contesting that strict language standards are necessary to be understood. I mean, of course some standards are still required, just not strict enough to be all uptight about it when people start to bend them. The fluid nature of language is what allows it to evolve and I think stifling that evolution is both foolish and downright impossible in the long run. The advent of the internet and social media speeds things up.

Let’s set aside the stupid TikTok censorship stuff for the moment because that has it’s its (ah fuck, don’t crucify me) own unique motivation. Slop as a noun has existed for a long while with its set definition. The modern use of it has evolved this new connotation to specifically imply something is rushed, derivative, or overabundant. As people start to apply it in more situations, it shows an understanding of those new connotations even when they haven’t been directly communicated. I think that’s cool. I think that shows a deeper understanding of how language moves and is shaped than strict adherence to definitions. True, eventually its overuse may dull the meaning a bit, but by allowing language to be continually fluid we leave the door open for other new wordly innovations.

But again, I aim’t not linguist.

Lol, wut?

Burying the lede here.

I don’t think this is the expression you intended to use, or if it was, you used it poorly.

In my post I:

1. Open by indicating that I think it is foolish to enforce strict language standards
2. Affirm this point by saying that the primary purpose is to simply be understood
3. Expand on this point by saying I think it’s cool that language evolves

Where did you even pull that “good” and “ungood” dichotomy from?! Don’t be smarmy and quote high school literature reading lists at me. But if that’s the extent of your repertoire, perhaps I have some recommendations for you 🫤

I do not understand people who get uptight about English. French? Sure (I’m still gonna laugh at them, but I get it).

English has always been a joke of a language and I have nothing but respect and sympathy for people who pick it up as a second+. So long as you’re understood, it’s fine. Brutalizing it is half the fun. See how far you can bend it and still get your point across.

The speed at which it mutates is also interesting just to watch, and I say that as someone who isn’t even a linguist. How quickly a term catches on, gets overused, and migrates to ironic is culturally fascinating. I type like this and use proper spelling because it’s a stylistic choice for how I represent myself on the internet, but I couldn’t give a damn if you use the wrong you’re/your when half of you buffoons are spelling it “ur” anyways. I’m not ur English teacher, do what you want.

No, look at this, it’s fundamentally awful! It’s a stylistic decision to omit the mouths of the characters that leads to more expression through the eyes and overall design. The AI is incapable of understanding that and FORCES mouths onto them because things need mouths. Especially the one on the right where like, ugh, what the fuck is going on there. It’s gross, I hate it.

It’s like those high-res texture packs that just upscale everything for the sake of upscaling it and loses all artistic merit or cohesive aesthetic in the process. Fuck this.

At OpenAI, we can’t eliminate that disruption.

… oh yes you can …

Please, Don’t Create the Torment Nexus was written in the 70’s. The author only had a vague idea of the concept. We can make it better. Tormentier.

Of course they’d never just outright admit to it, but it’s kinda like who farted in an elevator. Somebody is doing the jamming. Jamming is happening. I wonder who it could be? Who could it be?

I’m old enough to have bought a boxed copy of Hexen off a shelf at Babbage’s. I have always wanted to be excited about that game but it has never clicked for me.

I just recently waded my way through From’s old Shadow Tower Abyss (quite good actually!) and am craving some dark dungeon crawling, so I’m hoping maybe this time I can come at it with the right approach and finally appreciate it …

Newsom is a wet sack of political ambitions with no stance or principles.

“We’re about to put a memecoin out. And you know what? Donald Trump, we’ll see how well your coin does versus our coin,” Newsom said.

Seriously, what the fuck??? Memecoins are scams through and through. You don’t release a competing scam to troll Trump. It’s asinine.

All of this is a PR team backing him up anyways. He’s had some short term success with a few hits that landed with milquetoast liberals, but he can’t sustain that “momentum” because none of it is genuine. That fake, toothy smile makes my skin crawl. The mask will slip, but even with all that said, I’m still afraid it’ll be sufficient to fool enough of the people. I hate it.

Some sites have started sending them to you before you’ve even done anything!

Never been to this site before? Don’t worry, chat bubble in the upper corner already displaying a little red dot with a 5 in it. There’s already an AI chatbot trying to offer help and discounts off on things and … AUGH!

I see your point but there is one major difference between adults and children: adults are by default fully responsible for themselves z children are not.

I think you miss my point. I’m saying that adults, who should be capable of more mature thought and analysis, still fall victim to the manipulative thinking and dark patterns of AI. Meaning that children and teens obviously stand less of a chance.

Independent of technology, what a parent can do is learn behavior and communication patterns that can be signs of mental illness.

This is of course true for all parents in all situations. What I’m saying is that it is woefully inadequate to deal with the type and pervasiveness of the threat presented by AI in this situation.

I definitely do not agree.

While they may not be entirely blameless, we have adults falling into this AI psychosis like the prominent OpenAI investor.

What regulations are in place to help with this? What tools for parents? Isn’t this being shoved into literally every product in everything everwhere? Actually pushed on them in schools?

How does a parent monitor this? What exactly does a parent do? There could have been signs they could have seen in his behavior, but could they have STOPPED this situation from happening as it was?

This technology is still not well understood. I hope lawsuits like this shine some light on things and kick some asses. Get some regulation in place.

This is not the parent’s fault and seeing so many people declare it just feels like apoligist AI hype.

I do concede, I am … old. Things may well have changed and it depends on the part of Jersey. States around Jersey just like ripping on them to feel better about themselves, but PA is no treat either which is why I got the hell out of there =P

I’ll never forget driving home from college with some friends for the holidays one year. I was from PA, he was from Ohio and had never been more east. We were headed to NY with another friend and our route took us briefly through Jersey.

“How will we know we’re there?” he asked as the car suddenly lurched and felt like we hit a gravel road despite ostensibly being a paved highway …

Surprised to see this one here, but this is also my answer. Been awhile since I read the book, but I seem to remember the other big point being the whole blood transfusions thing from the movie wasn’t there, that was all made up bullshit. In fact, “Rita” had not lost her power, they were going through overlapping loops which is so much cooler, but I guess was deemed too confusing for audiences so we got that schlocky Hollywood ending instead.

No. From the most base concepts, some authority still needs to recognize and enforce the contents of the blockchain (ownership, currency, whatever). If an authority is already trusted to act on this data, they might as well be the secure custodian of it. Or, if not entirely trusted, a third party trustee. At very best the blockchain offers complete transparency and auditability, but this is the trust you place into any given system on your end. If you do not place trust in a system, what are you doing engaging with it?

Supporters of blockchain generally don’t accept these arguments because they are anti-authority, and without passing further comment on that, fair enough. But that means it will only ever be relegated to buying drugs on the internet and scams.

Shadow Tower Abyss (PS2 - FromSoftware 2003)

EDIT: Forgot to say, this game never released in English but there is a fan translation patch available that should be easy enough to find if you’re interested.

There’s a growing trend in indie games for the King’s Field-likes; Lunacid, Dread Delusion, etc. I’m a huge fan and if anyone has any other good ones to recommend, please let me know! EDIT: Just found Caput Mortem which looks like it might fit the bill near enough and also features music by Ockeroid of Crow Country notably …

But for this I thought I’d return to the roots. I’ve picked at King’s Field I (JP) and II a bit before and while I enjoy them, they’re overall still very clunky and I usually get distracted. I wasn’t sure how long I’d stick with Shadow Tower Abyss, but I feel like this one I may very well see through, I’m enjoying it quite a bit so far. That’s not to say it’s not still a clunky slog, and it’s certainly not for everyone, but there is real charm there.

(Scoring system: 1-5 being bad, OK, good, great, excellent with decimals being vibe based to push it closer to one rather than the other. For example 3.2 is meant to indicate a bit better than just good, but still not great. 3.8 might indicate close to great, but missing a few aspects that prevent it)

Sound: 3.2/5, Good. Like a lot of FromSoft games, there’s not really much music aside from the occasional musical sting which provides effective ambience. The sound design is minimal as well, but there are some very good moments of creepy thrumming, droning, and distant screeching that make it an intense environment to inhabit.

Graphics: 3.5/5, Good. What’s on display is generally competent and atmospheric, each new area has its own theme which is interesting to explore, but still, I feel like they could’ve done a lot more with the PS2 graphics. It’s certainly an improvement over King’s Field '94, but exactly how much is debatable …

The monster design is pretty good, everything has this kind of alien/abyssal feel to it. The overall theming is on point. Areas of the game have simple descriptions (i.e. Blue Light Area) that give the impression the player character is a foreign explorer rather than anyone with innate knowledge of this weird world. It’s a small aspect of world-building I appreciate.

Gameplay: 3.8/5, Good. Overall control still feels dated, but much less clunky than previous entries. The player moves at a brisk enough pace, but still slowly enough that you soak in the environment and progress feels meaningful. Being an older game you can’t really rebind the controls, but there are a variety of schemes including Type 4 which allow for the expected, modern dual analog stick looking/movement.

Combat can still be a little boxy and clunky but each weapon offers a left and right slash as well as an overhead bashing and frontal thrusting attack. Each weapon also has related stats for these types of attacks and enemies will have weaknesses or possible points of dismemberment making them vulnerable to particular attacks. Unlike some of the earlier King’s Field games, connecting attacks always feels good and has satisfying feedback.

The stats system is definitely very obtuse, even if you are familiar with From’s games and I recommend consulting a guide quickly before your first time playing. Again, as is very typical in From’s fashion, there isn’t an abundance of items but what exists is very deliberate. Money consists of these single large coins which you usually only find 1 or occasionally 2 at a time. Most things will only cost a handful of coins with healing potions being 2, boxes of ammo (for your gun!) being 1(?), and weapons and armor ranging anywhere from ~4-15. You’ll also find a plethora of items scattered throughout the game so there’s no shortage.

There is a unique balancing though as in order to heal yourself from the rare healing stations you have to sacrifice items for their value, although I’m early enough in the game that a basic Hat still seems to fully heal me from low health. In order to repair durability on your items from the rare purple repairing stations, you must sacrifice health with items like magic rings requiring sometimes more health than you currently have! This creates a tense and balanced management situation that feels like you might possibly softlock yourself by eating through too many resources, but so far hasn’t proved an issue for me. As a personal aside, I’m a big fan of playing games as they were designed so I’m doing my best to only save at the rare save points and not save state my way through the game, although this is of course up to your own tastes and discretion.

But is there a poison area with forced damage, I hear you ask? Yes, you fool, YES! Why would you even doubt it? Don’t let this discourage you though as understanding the stats system and equipping proper armor allows you to minimize the damage per poison tick such that it creates urgency as a pressure point more than a pain point. Definitely sacrificed a few lives just scouting the area out, though. Game Over means reload a save.

Summary/TL;DR Shadow Tower Abyss is a very competent dungeon crawler with a unique theme and atmosphere that’s worth exploring if you’d like to see historic FromSoft (it’s 20+ years old, as an ancient gamer I can use “historic” if I want). Miyazaki gets a lot of credit for modern From games and while a lot of that is certainly due, it’s fascinating to see how many of these deliberate design concepts have always been in their DNA.

As an aside, one day I’m going to write an entire essay on what makes a Soulslike a Soulsike. I missed the boat on the original hype and only got into them during COVID lockdown in 2020. I didn’t think I’d be a fan of the grueling, “git gud” experience but I’ve come to realize that’s not what makes those games interesting. It’s one concept and some people may find it unsatisfyingly vague, but it’s not the bonfires, or the losing souls on death, or the dodge rolling. It’s the stone-cold deliberateness. A lot of the difficulty from these games arises out of that deliberateness; what items you choose to equip and how you observe and approach unique situations. The games aren’t good because they’re hard, the specific design elements that make them hard are also the things that make them good.

3. What is the main focus of the One UI 8 update?

Based on current rumors and industry trends, the main focus of One UI 8 appears to be a significant leap in on-device AI capabilities (“Galaxy AI 2.0”) and a major overhaul of home and lock screen customization options.

Cool. Let’s shoehorn some AI in there and just fuck up my home screen again. I hate stability. I love it when my phone constantly shifts in my hands and never settles. I love waking up one morning to find that my device has updated itself and now nothings behaves as it did before.

I haven’t felt a significant advancement in years. It’s just shuffling UI elements for the sake of claiming you’re improving things.

I am less than enthused for this update. I dread it.