V17's recent activity
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Comment on US Democrats win enough seats nationwide to (potentially) end Electoral College via the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in ~society
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Comment on RIP Cybertruck. You were unloved, unwanted, and utterly absurd. in ~transport
V17 Link ParentI think that's to a large degree because the other Tesla cars mostly look and function normal, whereas the Cybertruck screams "look at me!" and is less practical, so it naturally gets more hate....I think that's to a large degree because the other Tesla cars mostly look and function normal, whereas the Cybertruck screams "look at me!" and is less practical, so it naturally gets more hate. The majority of online hate towards how the Cybertruck looks that I've seen is Elon-related.
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Comment on RIP Cybertruck. You were unloved, unwanted, and utterly absurd. in ~transport
V17 Link ParentNormally my personal values say that since the car is not sold anymore and you're not giving any money to Musk, anybody who has an ethical problem with it can suck a bag of dicks. But imo for the...Normally my personal values say that since the car is not sold anymore and you're not giving any money to Musk, anybody who has an ethical problem with it can suck a bag of dicks. But imo for the foreseeable future you're going to be perceived as a Musk fan by anybody who doesn't know you, and that would be really annoying, plus the non-existent third party maintenance issue is a good point. EVs generally require way less maintenance than ICE vehicles, but surely they require some at some point.
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Comment on RIP Cybertruck. You were unloved, unwanted, and utterly absurd. in ~transport
V17 Link ParentI think that was already after the weird "calling a diver a pedophile" incident, and in any case right next year he became very unpopular on the left due to his reaction to various covid related...I think that was already after the weird "calling a diver a pedophile" incident, and in any case right next year he became very unpopular on the left due to his reaction to various covid related restrictions etc.
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Comment on US Democrats win enough seats nationwide to (potentially) end Electoral College via the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in ~society
V17 Link ParentNot really. "Blue states have slightly more people due to immigration (or whatever) and ending electoral college would ultimately give them more power over red states, reducing our state rights as...The NavPoInterCo is ultimately an expression of the freedom that the US constitution gives to states. If the republicans want to argue against it, the party of states rights will need to argue that states should have less rights.
Not really. "Blue states have slightly more people due to immigration (or whatever) and ending electoral college would ultimately give them more power over red states, reducing our state rights as a consequence". The second part of the sentence is not even wrong exactly, and the fact that the immigration part is made up doesn't matter. And I'm sure they could come up with something more sophisticated than I could.
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Comment on US Democrats win enough seats nationwide to (potentially) end Electoral College via the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in ~society
V17 (edited )Link ParentI agree with this and the amount of delusional black and white thinking here like "republicans always lie about and spin anything democrats do anyway, so it doesn't matter what they actually do"...I agree with this and the amount of delusional black and white thinking here like "republicans always lie about and spin anything democrats do anyway, so it doesn't matter what they actually do" is insane. It's like people think that everyone who votes republican is an idiot whose opinion doesn't matter and that they don't all have to live in the same country. Attitudes like this are what got Trump elected twice.
But.
At the same time, even though the immediate consequences would almost certainly be bad, maybe it's the only way to push it through and force Republicans to slightly reform in order to stay competitive, which could be good for everyone. That, or it would create a new Trump, I think it's about 50:50.
In any case the consequences would be far reaching and almost impossible to predict. So yeah, likely a terrible idea and I think most democrats know this.
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Comment on RIP Cybertruck. You were unloved, unwanted, and utterly absurd. in ~transport
V17 (edited )Link ParentI never post or comment but as someone who just follows people Twitter is one of the better platforms. Many non-political or even leftist (Benn Jordan for example) people still post there, some of...I never post or comment but as someone who just follows people Twitter is one of the better platforms. Many non-political or even leftist (Benn Jordan for example) people still post there, some of them do not post anywhere else, and as opposed to almost any other platform it easily allows you to set up feeds with content only from selected people, chronologically, and not encounter The Algorithm anywhere. Plus community notes actually work pretty well too. I assume Bluesky is similar, feature-wise, but some of the people I follow aren't there and I'm not thrilled about having western leftist politics everywhere either.
edit: also it's crazy that Musks insane cost-cutting treatment that happened right after the purchase seemingly just worked. I'd love to see some unbiased analysis done today.
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Comment on RIP Cybertruck. You were unloved, unwanted, and utterly absurd. in ~transport
V17 LinkI'm going to go against the grain here and say that I actually like how it looks. Yes, it's childish, it's like a young boy's idea of what a cool and futuristic car would look like, without...I'm going to go against the grain here and say that I actually like how it looks.
Yes, it's childish, it's like a young boy's idea of what a cool and futuristic car would look like, without considering practicality. And that is precisely what I like about it. I'd bet that if the author wasn't Elon, it would be much more popular in some online circles. It is also supposedly quite comfortable and fun to drive.
Ultimately as a product it is kind of stupid, especially because they failed to do the basics, like making it actually tough and durable, that's relevant even for people who don't care about safety. So I'm hardly sad about this, but I do think that the hate is overblown due to Elon's personality and not the actual car.
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Comment on Could El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele be Haiti’s savior? in ~society
V17 LinkI don't trust Bukele and the issues of his system are obvious - CECOT can be and likely is abused, corruption still surely happens, there's evidence of him collaborating with some of the gangs,...I don't trust Bukele and the issues of his system are obvious - CECOT can be and likely is abused, corruption still surely happens, there's evidence of him collaborating with some of the gangs, the question of when if ever the restrictions to freedom are going to be lifted...
...But at the same time I think some of his ideas are brilliant and are currently the best and possibly only practically tested ways to deal with a failed state like El Salvador. I don't know enough about El Salvador and Haiti to tell if it could translate, but it was designed specifically for situations like these.
Everybody heard about CECOT, whose purpose is to separate the most dangerous gang leaders from society so that they cannot escape or run their organizations from the prison as they usually do, and to minimize the probability of corruption within the prison to ensure those things. This is understandable and logical, but it comes at the cost of borderline inhumane conditions and possibly serving as a way to just hide politically inconvenient people from society.
But the other half is prisons for the rest of the population. In a failed state with extreme criminality the issue is that nearly everyone is a criminal, you have to punish them in some way if you want to send a society-wide signal that crime is no longer acceptable and things are going to change from now on, but also you need to actually rehabilitate them and give them a way to integrate into society.
So the "normal people prisons" are completely different and are based on the "zero leisure" concept - do not give the prisoners any time for normal prison shit and instead fill all of their time with mandatory education and labor that iirc is not technically mandatory, but every day worked reduces your sentence by another day, cutting your sentence in half if you work every day.
This can only work in a failed state like El Salvador where the prison population does not consist of criminals as we see them in the western world, but to a large degree normal people - all of the education, job organizing and training are done by other inmates because enough of them are qualified in various fields. The labor is used to rebuild the state: maintaining vehicles for the emergency services and the army, building furniture for schools, sewing uniforms, inmates with good behavior and low escape risk can even work outside in agriculture etc. They get trained in jobs that they can generally do after they get out.
The problems here are also obvious when you think about it - the absolutely massive numbers of criminals mean the due process is questionable, some of these experimental prisons work worse than others, so there are issues with overcrowding, bad conditions, and the whole "not technically forced labor" is ethically questionable at best.
But I think many of these criticisms are also written from a narrow minded view of people living in the comfort of reasonably safe and functional societies. Even with their issues the prisons generally offer much better conditions than before. And more importantly, I just don't see a better way to transform the country and rebuild its society from such an extreme state it was in than this.
And so if any recipe was going to work in Haiti, it would be something similar. The issue is that it would be expensive and it would require active participation from the inside, not just force from the outside. Coming from an ex-failed state in central America could help here, as Haitians understandably have a dislike and distrust towards foreign interventions, but it's aimed primarily towards the west. However, even if they decided to implement a similar plan, Haiti seems a level more screwed than El Salvador and I'm not sure if they have enough competent people to do it.
So I guess I too am skeptical, but for different reasons. I dislike Bukele and his methods should be scrutinized, but many of the arguments against him don't hold up if you consider how unimaginably terrible the situation was before him and for how long, how everyone else failed.
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Comment on Timasomo 2026: The Showcase in ~creative.timasomo
V17 LinkUntitled Golf Game I did not openly participate and share progress since my project was already started in September, but I have now noticed that actually this year's Timasomo is called...Untitled Golf Game
I did not openly participate and share progress since my project was already started in September, but I have now noticed that actually this year's Timasomo is called TIMASOORCOANOLPRTHYOALSTMO and allows this, and therefore I will now happily share. The majority of the work was done in October.
What is it
My project is an in-browser golf videogame - name not decided yet. I have never played golf or made a videogame, but I have played several golf videogames, so I guess I'm good. Golf games have been done countless times and aren't super popular these days, so what makes mine special?
I love the look of late 90s/early 00s golf games, which had a weird contrast of abstract and photorealistic graphics, because they were low-poly and low-res, but at the same time used photo cutouts for all the plants and other objects that make a golf course. For me they're cozy, relaxing games while avoiding all the cozy clichés of pastel colors, pixel art, anthropomorphic animals etc. The downside is that the traditional photo cutouts are not exactly universal - their lighting is baked in, so they work in one type of weather, one time of the day and one sun orientation. It doesn't scale.
My goal is to make a game that can be constantly supplied with a metric fuckton of courses, some quite realistic, some fictional, and some slightly weird or whimsical. I really want to make a golf course with a crashed UFO and a golf course with several dug holes and police tape plus a patrol car nearby, implying we're playing around buried bodies. I will also make a golf course that's a huge scaled version of some standard miniature golf course.
The physics is reasonably complex and hopefully realistic, but that's not interesting.
The interesting part
So the main part of the game, which stays completely hidden from the player, is a relatively complex and branching system for creating golf courses, or at this moment (and perhaps it'll stay that way) only individual holes. The goal is to use a combination of procedural generation, real public data, visual-language model AI agents plus a normal, human-driven level editor to reduce the time and effort needed to create a course by at the very least an order of magnitude, while still creating interesting holes and scenery.
This involves various interesting things, like using a semantic level format that is understandable by an AI agent (so it cannot require working with huge arrays of numbers like height maps or item coordinates directly, which agents are bad at), generating easily readable top-down minimaps or annotated screenshots. So we procedurally generate the most likely ball locations on a course, the agent looks at the screenshots that represent what the user will see from those places and say "this tree covers an important sand bunker next to the green, let's move it, and let's add some interesting terrain feature and scattered bushes over there because the area is empty and boring". The changes are made and the agent looks at it again, etc. until it looks good. I can then edit whatever I want of course.
Things like that have a proof of concept implementation and are being refined. I don't know how well it's going to work, but I know it's going to work. Currently I'm working on a basic level editor, which would allow me to edit the courses by hand, but also mark specific spots, areas and features, and create jobs for the agent to do to fix or improve them. I can also create rough facsimiles of real golf courses in Czechia (and hopefully later elsewhere) from publicly available orthophotography and lidar terrain data largely automatically. That works and looks pretty great. And it turns out that an image to image model, in this case GPT Image, is an excellent segmentation tool for the aerial photos.
Graphics: the other interesting part
One struggle that I have is graphics. I deliberately chose the oldschool-inspired style not just because I like it but also because it's cheap to produce, of course. I never wanted to copy the old games, that's not good enough these days, but I sort of wanted to recreate how they look in our memory - improve, but keep it simple.
So instead of using actual tree photo cutouts, I still used 2D tree bilboards, but in the form of tree textures with removed shadows, and created a way to shade them dynamically as if they were 3D (it's a fake of course, but it looks really good). In the process I accidentally approached photorealism, which made everything else in the game look kind of bad in comparison.
So now (like literally this evening) I'm recreating the very basic ground textures, testing effects like ambient occlusion that I can add in the game thanks to it being almost entirely static (therefore many things can be precomputed and don't make the game more demanding to run), and consulting various techniques with a senior engine developer at an AA gamedev company, who happens to be my friend. The issue is that the whole thing is made in javascript and should run on phones as well, so I'm heavily computationally limited and most of the obvious optimizations are already done.
The state of the game
I wanted to release an alpha by the end of October, which didn't happen, but it will almost certainly happen by the end of November.
The graphics work is the most important one now. I need to create/redo a couple tree sprites, maybe add some more grass/flowers, plus improve a couple materials. Possibly create some actual horizon strips instead of the unedited HDRI skyboxes I use now. Then I need to redo the HUD, but that doesn't need to be final, it just needs to fix some current annoying UX nonsense, so that should be relatively quick. Oh, yeah, and a good enough tutorial page, well, hopefully I can make it by the end of November anyway. The course creation tools at least are already good enough to create a few decent testing holes.
Here are some screenshots, fresh off the press - so fresh in fact that this comment has been waiting here for the last two hours till I finish everything I wanted to do:
A very similar golf hole actually exists in Prague, not in the Alps
This one is just outside of Prague
Very happy with the sand, less so with the rough grass
This was the first, completely procedurally-agentic made hole
Same screenshot as below, for comparisonFor comparison these are the first and last screenshots above, only with yesterdays engine version, at the "well now that the trees look realistic, the rest of the game looks bad" stage: https://imgur.com/a/untitled-golf-game-engine-test-EiLzcuI
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
V17 Link ParentYeah, the collision mesh is different from the rendered mesh, so this should be easy and I was already considering it. I'll test it.Yeah, the collision mesh is different from the rendered mesh, so this should be easy and I was already considering it. I'll test it.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
V17 Link ParentThanks, yeah, that makes sense. I'm currently exploring how more modern golf games do it, and it seems like they too mostly use simple textures, though sometimes supplemented with things like...Thanks, yeah, that makes sense. I'm currently exploring how more modern golf games do it, and it seems like they too mostly use simple textures, though sometimes supplemented with things like grass particles.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
V17 Link ParentI see imgur seems to be broken at the moment, so I reuploaded the screens here: https://postimg.cc/gallery/LJ8hbFgI see imgur seems to be broken at the moment, so I reuploaded the screens here: https://postimg.cc/gallery/LJ8hbFg
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
V17 LinkI've been working on my so far unnamed golf game and I'd love it if you could look at a screenshot or two and criticize my graphics! First take a look and then below I say what I'm struggling...I've been working on my so far unnamed golf game and I'd love it if you could look at a screenshot or two and criticize my graphics!
First take a look and then below I say what I'm struggling with: https://imgur.com/a/EiLzcuI
This was originally supposed to be variation on Links LS 2000 or something like that. Not a copy, but something like "the way old golf games from that era look in our memory". So I wanted to use some modern updates to the same concept - simple textures, 2D billboarded plants.
But now that I have implemented pseudo-3D shading to the 2D trees I feel like I've accidentally made the plants almost realistic, while the ground materials still look like they're from cca 2000. And aside from changing the grass colors, which will be done, I don't really know what to do, because making grass materials semi-realistic is a pretty difficult task that usually involves techniques too advanced for an in-browser javascript game that should run on a phone.
I could just go the other way and make all the textures (including the plants) pixelated, but I'm not sure I want to do that. I really like how the damn trees look now and they're so cheap to render, plus I'm not sure I want to follow the retro trend so literally.
The skybox is a placeholder and so is the HUD and partially the map (it has ugly colors/textures now). Feel free to spit on those, but they will likely not last.
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Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
V17 LinkI went to see Huun Huur Tu for the third time. The reason why I like Huun Huur Tu, aside from just throat singing sounding cool, is that while they play interpretations of music that's centuries...I went to see Huun Huur Tu for the third time.
The reason why I like Huun Huur Tu, aside from just throat singing sounding cool, is that while they play interpretations of music that's centuries old, mostly on traditional instruments that one of them builds, some parts of their music sound completely contemporary in different ways.
Yesterday one of them played what could only be described as a short avantgarde jazz solo. And the drums in some of their songs have a lot in common with some more experimental techno music for example. Not just in the rhythm, but sometimes in the sound too - I first saw them around a time when I was regularly going to raves organized by a local synth company, and maybe a third of the people who played there used a cheap analogue kick module that sounded similar to this goat (?) skin drum. It was a very unexpected feeling of dejá vu.
So the first concert brought me great enjoyment and I wanted to see them again, but the second time was in a church, which fucking sucked because the acoustics completely killed it for me. This time they were playing in a theater and the sound was pretty good, at least for us - they were less happy with the stage monitors, but played well regardless and were rewarded with a sold out show and a standing ovation.
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Comment on Anyone here listen to NPR Tiny Desk concerts? in ~music
V17 LinkThe Foo Fighters Tiny Desk sound contains a pet peeve of mine: drummers who use bamboo rods to play quieter but do not adjust their cymbal selection - thick rock cymbals make almost no sound that...The Foo Fighters Tiny Desk sound contains a pet peeve of mine: drummers who use bamboo rods to play quieter but do not adjust their cymbal selection - thick rock cymbals make almost no sound that way. Kinda sucks for rock music especially.
Now you know this and you will keep noticing it in Tiny Desk concerts because nearly everyone uses them, it's the easiest way to make a drumkit quiet. But it works way more on cymbals than on drums, especially if you play with the tip and not the length of the stick. So you start a chorus, the drummer moves to the ride cymbal which normally increases the energy and instead the cymbals pretty much vanish.
My favorite episode is Napalm Death by far, and it definitely does not have this problem. I love Barney's voice and the ridiculousness of the setting.
If you're not into that kind of music, then my second would probably be SsingSsing - Koreans in drag singing popified traditional music. Together with ADG7 (not on Tiny Desk but there's a KEXP concert online) I have to wonder how much great non-kpop music there must be that we don't know about.
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Comment on Red light: Modern life has deprived us of it, which may be linked to diabetes, cancer, dementia in ~health
V17 Link ParentI don't think there is evidence that this is the case in general. Though personally for my chronic pain relief, yeah, the sunlight works equally well, it's just impractical as when I'm clothed in...which can generally all be duplicated by just going outside in the sun
I don't think there is evidence that this is the case in general. Though personally for my chronic pain relief, yeah, the sunlight works equally well, it's just impractical as when I'm clothed in the winter it takes at least 90 minutes in direct sunlight (if that's even available), whereas the panel does the same in 10 minutes and is available at any time.
I do not get more hair growth from sunlight though, I don't think, and I definitely do from RLT.
But the problem when it comes to red light is that it’s being sold as the solution to literally everything
Yeah, there's unfortunately a lot of money in selling overpriced RLT panels, and the main marketing tool is overvaluing the published science. I still think that you overreacted to the article, for example with the author not understanding the electromagnetic spectrum.
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Comment on Patrick Stewart dead: 'Star Trek' captain, 'X-Men' superhero was 86 in ~movies
V17 Link ParentShatner still looks barely 80 at 95, I suspect he's been draining Stewart's life energy. Maybe he'll be the one who lives to 120. Not what we wanted but what we deserve etc.Shatner still looks barely 80 at 95, I suspect he's been draining Stewart's life energy. Maybe he'll be the one who lives to 120. Not what we wanted but what we deserve etc.
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Comment on Red light: Modern life has deprived us of it, which may be linked to diabetes, cancer, dementia in ~health
V17 Link ParentI don't know about US or UK, but here (EU) they can still be legally and cheaply purchased, they're just sold as a heating element or something and few stores sell them. Regarding the...But if incandescent bulbs are starting to become a black market item...
I don't know about US or UK, but here (EU) they can still be legally and cheaply purchased, they're just sold as a heating element or something and few stores sell them.
Regarding the full-spectrum lights, grow lights tend to be expensive, if you want less blue light and more red (though not a lot of deep red and no IR), just buy high CRI bulbs. In the EU Ikea bulbs have CRI of 90, which should be just good enough and they're cheap, in the US some of the relatively cheap Philips high CRI bulbs should be easily available on Amazon.
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Comment on Red light: Modern life has deprived us of it, which may be linked to diabetes, cancer, dementia in ~health
V17 Link ParentI don't think calling them all very preliminary is warranted. RLT has been studied for quite some time now and many effects have multiple RCTs done on them, and sometimes the sample sizes even...But even if these studies were the best quality, they are all very preliminary. They aren’t established science until they have been independently replicated at the very least.
I don't think calling them all very preliminary is warranted. RLT has been studied for quite some time now and many effects have multiple RCTs done on them, and sometimes the sample sizes even aren't small, but the effects are usually modest with moderate certainty. The evidence on male pattern hair loss is pretty decent, slowing down or reducing myopia in children has multiple decent sized trials as well and is iirc indirectly supported by correlational studies done by different people with different goals, for example.
No, my argument is that they care about state rights if it affects red states, and getting rid of electoral college would plausibly affect red states negatively. That part is not a lie and it's a strong argument on its own, it's just that they will undoubtedly build a more effective argument than I can do in five minutes.
The problem with "republicans always lie about and spin anything democrats do anyway" is that it's a binary statement and reality is anything but. Republicans are not all idiots and their reaction to various "democrats are doing xxxx" is different not only based on how elaborate the spin is or other semi-random factors but also based on how bad and blatant the act is. Unilaterally ending electoral college would be quite high on that spectrum.
edit: another true argument that requires no hypocrisy from the republicans is simply that such a change would have far reaching consequences that are impossible to predict, and that it goes against the principles based on which the country was established.