Rudism's recent activity

  1. Comment on Big balk: On Big Walk, Independent Games Festival, and the present unpleasantness in ~games

    Rudism
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    By LLM I assume you mean Bob. But sure... in my scenario that would still be perfectly valid grounds for disqualification on the basis that those aspects of your plot and narrative were not your...

    By LLM I assume you mean Bob. But sure... in my scenario that would still be perfectly valid grounds for disqualification on the basis that those aspects of your plot and narrative were not your own work.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Big balk: On Big Walk, Independent Games Festival, and the present unpleasantness in ~games

    Rudism
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    It would certainly change the dynamic a bit, and allow you to create rules that allowed LLMs on a more level playing field. Whether it's acceptable or not would still come down to what aspects of...

    It would certainly change the dynamic a bit, and allow you to create rules that allowed LLMs on a more level playing field. Whether it's acceptable or not would still come down to what aspects of game development the contest runners are actually interested in judging and awarding.

  3. Comment on Big balk: On Big Walk, Independent Games Festival, and the present unpleasantness in ~games

    Rudism
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    Imagine two hypothetical authors A and B entering their novels into a literary contest. Author A wrote a novel, and then asked his friend Bob to look it over and point out spelling mistakes....

    Imagine two hypothetical authors A and B entering their novels into a literary contest.

    • Author A wrote a novel, and then asked his friend Bob to look it over and point out spelling mistakes.
    • Author B is also friends with Bob, and asked Bob to write a whole novel, then put his own name on the novel that Bob wrote and submitted it as his own.

    Clearly there is a difference between these two things, despite the fact that Bob was the "tool" being used in both cases. To me that is the same difference between using a spell check and using LLMs to write stuff for you. If the rules of the contest were "you're allowed to ask outside parties to correct spelling and grammar, but the work you submit must be entirely your own," then that would intuitively allow Author A's book, but Author B's book should be disqualified. Two different outcomes despite relying to differing degrees on the exact same "technology."

    Now let's say there's another hypothetical Author C who also got Bob to write the entire book for him, but did not disclose this information and pretended he wrote it himself. Does the fact that hypothetical Author C may exist mean that the whole premise of the contest rules should now be declared null and void and every contestant should just be allowed to get Bob to write their books for them because Bob loves writing books and can do it really fast? My answer to that is no, that's absurd. If you're interested in judging some aspect of someone's talent and abilities you just gotta do the best you can to set rules that narrow the scope of what you're interested in judging as best you can, and trust that contestants are going to abide by the spirit of those rules without lying about it. If House House entered that contest and said "we wrote most of the book, Bob only wrote a small percentage of really hard-to-write passages," I guess you can praise them for disclosing that, but the act of disclosing it doesn't somehow negate the disqualification rules that have been set by the judges.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on Big balk: On Big Walk, Independent Games Festival, and the present unpleasantness in ~games

    Rudism
    Link Parent
    I guess that is where we fundamentally disagree. I see no difference between looking to award indie devs for a game they created and musicians creating music, or photographers taking photos, or...

    I guess that is where we fundamentally disagree. I see no difference between looking to award indie devs for a game they created and musicians creating music, or photographers taking photos, or artists painting pictures, or authors writing short stories and novels. All of those things could be accomplished more easily with less talent and effort through the use of AI, and could probably (with enough resources) produce something that a lot of people even thought was good, but entering a contest and trying to win an award with AI-generated entries against real humans who put time and effort and talent into their entries is just embarrassing. And since there's no way to effectively measure and limit "how much" AI was used in the creation of a thing, the only sane rule if you're interested in judging actual human talent is to forbid it entirely.

    AI isn't being singled out, it's just being ruled out by the same criteria that a game made by a triple-A studio would be disqualified for. You're not making an indie game, you're generating a game off the backs of uncountable developers whose work has been used to train the models that are generating the code for you. You can try to argue that it's the same as using any other tool like high level languages, or a compiler, or autocomplete, but there's a huge difference between using deterministic aides like that to save you time writing code that you're coming up with yourself, and using LLMs to non-deterministically remove the need to program anything at all, and if you can't see that then you're going to bump up against this wall time and time again because the distinction is real for a lot of people and that isn't likely to change any time soon.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Big balk: On Big Walk, Independent Games Festival, and the present unpleasantness in ~games

    Rudism
    Link Parent
    Sure, if they had accomplished what they did without LLMs I'd think they're even more talented. If someone won an art contest with a painting that they created entirely by themselves I'd think...

    Sure, if they had accomplished what they did without LLMs I'd think they're even more talented.

    If someone won an art contest with a painting that they created entirely by themselves I'd think they're talented. If someone else submitted a painting that would have won but it got disqualified because they can't draw horses so they got AI to generate a horse somewhere in the painting, that wouldn't negate the fact that they showed talent across the non-horse portions of their painting, but I also wouldn't feel bad or think it was wrong that they got disqualified for using AI.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Big balk: On Big Walk, Independent Games Festival, and the present unpleasantness in ~games

    Rudism
    Link Parent
    Just because something lets you get things done faster or cheaper doesn't automatically make that thing a foregone conclusion, or mean that we should lay down and accept its inevitability. Imagine...

    Just because something lets you get things done faster or cheaper doesn't automatically make that thing a foregone conclusion, or mean that we should lay down and accept its inevitability.

    Imagine if we took that stance on sweatshops or child labor or indentured servitude. Ethics and morality matter and no amount of hype or boosterism can negate that. You can certainly choose to ignore it and say that the only thing that matters is that the end product is good, regardless of how it was arrived at, but you shouldn't be surprised when others strongly disagree with that.

    7 votes

  7. Comment on Big balk: On Big Walk, Independent Games Festival, and the present unpleasantness in ~games

    Rudism
    Link Parent
    I guess you can look at it as a spectrum. The more you rely on LLMs in the production of anything, the less talent is required. That's one of the main selling points of LLMs—now anyone can code or...

    I guess you can look at it as a spectrum. The more you rely on LLMs in the production of anything, the less talent is required. That's one of the main selling points of LLMs—now anyone can code or make art or music or whatever where previously only people who had talent could do those things.

    If your goal is to award talent, it doesn't seem outrageous to me to exclude projects that used LLMs in any capacity, just for the sole reason that it's an easy line to draw in the sand. Otherwise you have to quantify AI usage and then assess each disclosed usage by each project to measure whether they exceed whatever threshold you've defined as "acceptable." It would be messy and annoying and subjective and cause even more controversy than we're seeing right now.

    4 votes

  8. Comment on Big balk: On Big Walk, Independent Games Festival, and the present unpleasantness in ~games

    Rudism
    Link Parent
    Firstly, people who are against LLM usage disagree that the effort is pointless (see recent stories about Humble Bundle's vibe coded redesign nightmare and the Proton CEO sabotaging his own...

    Firstly, people who are against LLM usage disagree that the effort is pointless (see recent stories about Humble Bundle's vibe coded redesign nightmare and the Proton CEO sabotaging his own company through AI psychosis for examples).

    Secondly, you're probably right that IGF awards are misaligned with whatever you thought they were. But that was already discoverable before any of this controversy. See this from their about page:

    This independent review, finalist, and winner voting process is reflective of our own independent spirit that drives us to find and honor the incredible talent at the forefront of redefining what video games can be.

    They're interested in awarding talent. Someone who codes an impressive game without LLMs is clearly demonstrating way more of that than a vibe coder who's just chatting with a bot to make theirs, no matter how the end products compare.

    7 votes

  9. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    Rudism
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    I watched the 2024 reboot of Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf. The original run was probably one of my favorite animes, and the remake is even better. It's my birthday tomorrow, so I...

    I watched the 2024 reboot of Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf. The original run was probably one of my favorite animes, and the remake is even better. It's my birthday tomorrow, so I splurged and picked up both season 1 blu-rays as a gift to myself, so I can rip it to plex and watch again whenever I want without having to worry about streaming services or trying to pirate it.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Humble Bundle redesign leaves out crucial security features in ~games

    Rudism
    Link Parent
    A lot of people push the narrative that LLMs are better than humans at coding now, and that human software engineers in the mix are a weak link. I think this is the kind of thing we're going to...

    A lot of people push the narrative that LLMs are better than humans at coding now, and that human software engineers in the mix are a weak link. I think this is the kind of thing we're going to see more and more as people high up in the food chain who don't actually know anything about software development start to believe it, and as more and more experienced developers who know better burn out under their thumbs.

    16 votes

  11. Comment on The New York Times reportedly in talks to buy Letterboxd for $330 million in ~tech

    Rudism
    Link Parent
    I used to be a huge NYT crosswords junkie, but I had to drop it when they stopped publishing their puzzles in across lite format and forced you to use their app (I was using a de-googled android...

    I used to be a huge NYT crosswords junkie, but I had to drop it when they stopped publishing their puzzles in across lite format and forced you to use their app (I was using a de-googled android with no Play Store at the time). I did manage to scrape every single .puz from 1995 until they stopped in 2021 before my subscription ended though, so I've got a backlog big enough that I'll never finish in my lifetime.

    5 votes

  12. Comment on Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production in Texas next year in ~transport

    Rudism
    Link Parent
    I see a ton of them on the road around where I live near Nashville too.

    I see a ton of them on the road around where I live near Nashville too.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on The New York Times reportedly in talks to buy Letterboxd for $330 million in ~tech

    Rudism
    Link Parent
    I guess I would see Chrome as an example that fuels my worry... Google makes all kinds of anti-user/enshittifying decisions (killing uBlock, for example).

    I guess I would see Chrome as an example that fuels my worry... Google makes all kinds of anti-user/enshittifying decisions (killing uBlock, for example).

    6 votes

  14. Comment on The New York Times reportedly in talks to buy Letterboxd for $330 million in ~tech

    Rudism
    Link Parent
    Have there been a lot of acquisitions? The two I know of are Audm (they killed it entirely) and Wordle (I think they moved it behind their games subscription?). But beyond that, I've read that...

    Have there been a lot of acquisitions? The two I know of are Audm (they killed it entirely) and Wordle (I think they moved it behind their games subscription?).

    But beyond that, I've read that they're looking at spending a lot more than what Letterboxd should be worth, so they must have some kind of eye towards monetizing it in ways it's not currently being monetized.

    9 votes

  15. Comment on The New York Times reportedly in talks to buy Letterboxd for $330 million in ~tech

    Rudism
    Link
    There was an earlier thread talking about Letterboxd looking to sell, but it seems like they have entered formal negotiations with the New York Times now. Letterboxd is probably the only social...

    There was an earlier thread talking about Letterboxd looking to sell, but it seems like they have entered formal negotiations with the New York Times now.

    Letterboxd is probably the only social media site I use on a regular basis (and have even been a paying Pro member for a number of years), even though it's mostly just for posting one-liner reviews to keep track of which movies I've watched.

    I have no hope that it won't be enshittified beyond usability if NYT ends up buying it. Starting to look around for self-hosted alternatives once that happens.

    18 votes

  17. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Rudism
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    Hit a big milestone on the main project I'm involved with at work. Four years ago, all the devs were fed up with various aspects of our brittle and hard-to-maintain graphql-based API, so I...

    Hit a big milestone on the main project I'm involved with at work. Four years ago, all the devs were fed up with various aspects of our brittle and hard-to-maintain graphql-based API, so I proposed we create a new REST-based one built on a modern stack and put all new functionality into that one. This week we finally removed the final remaining calls to the old API and waved goodbye to that whole deployment for good. I've never seen so many emojis fly by as during the slack huddle where we announced that.

    4 votes

  18. Comment on Master Boot Record - Computer Metal (2026) in ~music

    Rudism
    Link Parent
    I double checked my old receipt when I read this because I didn't think I could be that crazy... Looks like it was only $20 for international shipping from Data Airlines when I got it 😅 A year...

    I double checked my old receipt when I read this because I didn't think I could be that crazy... Looks like it was only $20 for international shipping from Data Airlines when I got it 😅

    A year later I also have a receipt for the floppy disk CD box set (still in its shrink wrap, I just wanted physical copies after having already purchased a lot of the albums digitally). I guess the budget-conscious part of my brain just turns off when it comes to MBR.

    1 vote

  19. Comment on Master Boot Record - Computer Metal (2026) in ~music

    Rudism
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    Super hyped. I own every MBR (and KEYGEN CHURCH) album on CD, plus the INTERRUPT REQUEST vinyl that's stylized like a giant floppy disk. I already ordered this one through Bandcamp but haven't had...

    Super hyped. I own every MBR (and KEYGEN CHURCH) album on CD, plus the INTERRUPT REQUEST vinyl that's stylized like a giant floppy disk. I already ordered this one through Bandcamp but haven't had a chance to give it a listen yet.

    5 votes

  20. Comment on Heroic Games Launcher: an open source, cross-platform launcher for GOG and Epic Games Store in ~games

    Rudism
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    How does this compare to Lutris? I've been using that as a unified launcher/installer for Steam, GOG, Epic, Itch.io, and manually installed Windows games for a while and pretty happy with it......

    How does this compare to Lutris? I've been using that as a unified launcher/installer for Steam, GOG, Epic, Itch.io, and manually installed Windows games for a while and pretty happy with it... Wondering if there's a good reason to give this a look.

    3 votes