#Windows startup initializing

[geosabor]

Dominion of Hate Page 25

Archive <-Prev Next->

[mariacallous]

The Ocean Sciences Building at the University of Washington in Seattle is a brightly modern, four-story structure, with large glass windows reflecting the bay across the street.

On the afternoon of July 7, 2016, it was being slowly locked down.

Red lights began flashing at the entrances as students and faculty filed out under overcast skies. Eventually, just a handful of people remained inside, preparing to unleash one of the most destructive forces in the natural world: the crushing weight of about 2½ miles of ocean water.

In the building’s high-pressure testing facility, a black, pill-shaped capsule hung from a hoist on the ceiling. About 3 feet long, it was a scale model of a submersible called Cyclops 2, developed by a local startup called OceanGate. The company’s CEO, Stockton Rush, had cofounded the company in 2009 as a sort of submarine charter service, anticipating a growing need for commercial and research trips to the ocean floor. At first, Rush acquired older, steel-hulled subs for expeditions, but in 2013 OceanGate had begun designing what the company called “a revolutionary new manned submersible.” Among the sub’s innovations were its lightweight hull, which was built from carbon fiber and could accommodate more passengers than the spherical cabins traditionally used in deep-sea diving. By 2016, Rush’s dream was to take paying customers down to the most famous shipwreck of them all: the Titanic, 3,800 meters below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Engineers carefully lowered the Cyclops 2 model into the testing tank nose-first, like a bomb being loaded into a silo, and then screwed on the tank’s 3,600-pound lid. Then they began pumping in water, increasing the pressure to mimic a submersible’s dive. If you’re hanging out at sea level, the weight of the atmosphere above you exerts 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi). The deeper you go, the stronger that pressure; at the Titanic’s depth, the pressure is about 6,500 psi. Soon, the pressure gauge on UW’s test tank read 1,000 psi, and it kept ticking up—2,000 psi, 5,000 psi. At about the 73-minute mark, as the pressure in the tank reached 6,500 psi, there was a sudden roar and the tank shuddered violently.

“I felt it in my body,” an OceanGate employee wrote in an email later that night. “The building rocked, and my ears rang for a long time.”

“Scared the shit out of everyone,” he added.

The model had imploded thousands of meters short of the safety margin OceanGate had designed for.

In the high-stakes, high-cost world of crewed submersibles, most engineering teams would have gone back to the drawing board, or at least ordered more models to test. Rush’s company didn’t do either of those things. Instead, within months, OceanGate began building a full-scale Cyclops 2 based on the imploded model. This submersible design, later renamed Titan, eventually made it down to the Titanic in 2021. It even returned to the site for expeditions the next two years. But nearly one year ago, on June 18, 2023, Titan dove to the infamous wreck and imploded, instantly killing all five people onboard, including Rush himself.

The disaster captivated and horrified the world. Deep-sea experts criticized OceanGate’s choices, from Titan’s carbon-fiber construction to Rush’s public disdain for industry regulations, which he believed stifled innovation. Organizations that had worked with OceanGate, including the University of Washington as well as the Boeing Company, released statements denying that they contributed to Titan.

A trove of tens of thousands of internal OceanGate emails, documents, and photographs provided exclusively to WIRED by anonymous sources sheds new light on Titan’s development, from its initial design and manufacture through its first deep-sea operations. The documents, validated by interviews with two third-party suppliers and several former OceanGate employees with intimate knowledge of Titan, reveal never-before-reported details about the design and testing of the submersible. They show that Boeing and the University of Washington were both involved in the early stages of OceanGate’s carbon-fiber sub project, although their work did not make it into the final Titan design. The trove also reveals a company culture in which employees who questioned their bosses’ high-speed approach and decisions were dismissed as overly cautious or even fired. (The former employees who spoke to WIRED have asked not to be named for fear of being sued by the families of those who died aboard the vessel.) Most of all, the documents show how Rush, blinkered by his own ambition to be the Elon Musk of the deep seas, repeatedly overstated OceanGate’s progress and, on at least one occasion, outright lied about significant problems with Titan’s hull, which has not been previously reported.

A representative for OceanGate, which ceased all operations last summer, declined to comment on WIRED’s findings.

[idkfitememate]

Furina Encounter

૮꒰˶ᵔ ᗜ ᵔ˶꒱ა Pairings : GN! Meka Reader x Furina

૮꒰ྀི∩´ ᵕ `∩꒱ྀིა W.K. : 1.1k

໒꒰ྀིᵔ ᵕ ᵔ ꒱ྀི১ Tags/CW&TW : Reader is implied to (technically) be a murderer, Furina gets scared, Reader is also implied to know original Hydro Archon

Imagine Furina exploring the deeper parts of the Opera Epiclese, only to find tunnels between the walls.

These tunnels led to crawl spaces beside vents, they lead to small doorways and openings to different rooms and spaces, some places even she’d never seen before.

After wondering for a while, she came across one more room she’d never seen.

Surrounding her on all sides was broken down and shattered Meka. Meka of all kinds. Dancing, protecting, alarming… and some she couldn’t tell off the bat.

Some that looked like perfect replicas of birds and one that looked like an opera singer. Eel like Meka and others.

It was a room of abandoned Meka.

Old and rusted, decaying and ruined.

As she walked through, every now and then one would scream or twitch, causing her to jump and whimper.

She passed a window and was shocked when she saw she was beneath the surface. Fish swam by the window, and an otter even passed by, knocking on the glass.

What really scared her was when a Meka turned on for a second, music blaring from its mouth before it broke down again.

The only light was from the windows the pointed out into the water around her, giving off an eerie deep blue glow throughout the room.

And then she finally made it to the end of the room.

There sat a thin and spindly Meka. It was tall, dressing in clothes that were a mixture between a circus ringmaster and a jester. Under its top hat wearing head as a face that was halfway between the comedy mask and the tragedy mask. It’s legs ended on needle points, small almost invisible holes on the end.

The most terrifying part, however, was that on its chest was an open window, and the inside was entirely filled with water from the Primordial Sea.

To be clear, its midsection was thin, it was made in a way where it mimicked a starving person, seeing its ‘ribs’ through its skin. On its back you could see its ‘spine’ poking through its clothes.

It was rusted and its once brilliant blue, white and gold clothes were worn and washed out with tears in the fabric. Small chips and cracks riddled its metallic skin, but beyond that, it was in perfect condition.

No missing limbs, no missing clothes - as far as she could see anyway - and over all it just looked a little worn. That’s all.

But as she crept closer, something seemed to flip on inside the odd Meka.

“Gnosis Found. Start Up Sequence Initiated…”

The Primordial Water inside your chest glowed a bright blue as it began to flow through your body.

What the God thought was cracks were actually intricate flowing lines to show the Water flowing through your metal bones. Your mask creaked as the joints in your face warmed back up after years of neglect. The mask spun to the comedy side and pressed down into your head, hiding the tragedy behind it. Your eyes lit up in blue as the water filled your skull.

Your joints moaned as you slowly stood. Furina summoned her sword and pointed towards you, though her hands shook terribly.

As you stood, you easily towered at a height of over ten feet. The smaller could hear the liquid sloshing inside you.

“Startup Sequence Complete. Running Diagnostics… Running All Systems…”

She could now hear mechanical whirling inside you. Then, your head turned a full 360°. Furina yelped and fell the to floor, still clutching her sword.

Then your face did a 360°, the face turning upside down then back. Then it flipped, revealing the tragedy mask, then back to comedy. Your chest did a 360°, your midsection did a 360°, and your arms did a 360° at each joint.

The Water in your chest drained and your chest transformed, metal claps coming out from your back and creating a holding place on your entire midsection. The girl could hear multiple things going on inside, going from flames to something metal.

After a few moments, the cage slipped away back inside you. You raised a hand and watched are your already think fingers somehow became thinner. Then they slipped into your thin hand, and flames burst out causing the girl in front of you to scream. Sharp scissor-like appendages came out and snipped at the air. Finally, a few syringes came out and filled with some kind of glowing substance. Five syringes and five colors. After, your thinned fingers came out before thickening again, not that it made much difference.

You did the same to your other hand, and Furina just watched. While she was scared, at the same time she was slightly intrigued. Though, she kept her sword close to her person.

When you reached your legs, you did practically the same thing with your hands. Thinning, fire, needles- though there were only two - and then back to the needles.

Your body shuddered and small metal sheets pulled away on different parts of your body. Long metal tentacles slithered out. Thin and grey they moved in circles. A few had small claps that opened and closed, and some that suddenly flashed with Electro energy. The metal tubes slid back into your body, but a few more with needles slid out. They filled with the same liquids then slid back in, the metal plates going back into place.

“All Systems Functional. Scanning… Archon Located. Persona Downloading…”

You stood still for a moment and let the Primordial Water flow through you, then stood up straight as you were leaning before.

“Persona Downloaded. One Moment Please…!”

Your eyes lit up brighter.

You jumped, making Furina scooted back.

You did a spin, small wheels sprouting from your feet. Your hat spun off your head. You preformed a few hat tricks, before spinning the hat back onto your head. A cane launched from somewhere on your body and into your hand. You even did a little dance as you wheeled forwards towards the now extremely shocked Furina.

“Hello Mon Archon lumineux, lustré, d'une beauté aveuglante et décoré avec amour! It is I, your Exécution Entièrement Automatisée et Divertissement Meka! At your service!~♡”

Furina stared at you before your hand suddenly disconnected from your wrist, a metal wire connecting the two. It flew to her hand, careful of the sharp points and pulled her up. A soft tune played from your body as you twirled her around before falling to your knees before her.

You pressed your cold, metal lips to her palm, a comedic kissing noise playing out as you lifted your head.

“Happy to be of service once more, Madame la mer étoilée. ~♡”

Furina swore she could hear the crying of a child coming from your Primordial Water Filled Chest.

໒꒰ྀི˶˙Ⱉ˙˶꒱ྀིა Author’s note : I had the idea a long time ago for an Execution Meka, and finally finished it! There’s inspo from everywhere in here. A little of Spinel from SU, some Mommy-Long-Legs from PP, a little murder drone (I don’t watch it but know a little), also some Pearl from SU, and a little FNAF in there as well (if I write anymore/if any gets requested you’ll know why!) ໒꒰ྀི´ ˘ ` ꒱ྀིა

I don’t know, just thought it’d be interesting, plus I feel like if any Nation had something that was made/born specifically for some type of execution directive, then it’d be Fontaine.

Again, I don’t know why, it just feels right. Also I feel like the laws are almost like the Queens Rules like from TWST, a few that make sense, and many more that are absolutely bullshit, so mixing entertainment and execution seems right up that alley! ☆૮꒰ˊᗜˋ* ꒱ა

* My luminous, lustrous, blindingly beautiful and lovingly decorated Archon - You to Furina

* Fully Automated and Entertainment Execution Meka - You to Furina

* Madam star-studded sea - You to Furina

(If any of this is off, blame the translator, same goes for all fics I write that have something other than English!)

[milkplusvn]

The Soundless art update is now available for Windows, Linux, and Mac!

This update permits players to choose between the original artwork and new, updated artwork. It also contains a small collection of quality-of-life features, such as security updates and the ability to use auto-forward and self-voicing at the same time.

You can get it now on Itch.io:

Complete Changelog

Updated versions of all main story artwork (sprites, CGs, original backgrounds) have been added to the game, along with an updated version of the opening cutscene. Players can switch between old and new versions of the artwork as they like.

The gallery has been split into three sections: Old, New, and Adiaphoron. The Adiaphoron gallery is only unlocked after completing Adiaphoron.

A new Controls screen has been added to the game menu so players can quickly view game controls.

Ren'Py has been updated to version 8.1. This update adds security features and permits players to use auto-forward and self-voicing at the same time.

Important Information

Players who have already installed a previous version of Soundless: Final Verse (NOT pre-Final Verse versions of the program) will have their persistent data reset upon launching the latest version. This is due to an engine update that increases the security features of persistent/save data, thus making old, unsigned persistent data files flagged as untrustworthy by Ren'Py. As such, you will find that you will be prompted with the initial startup screen again. Please answer accordingly and then readjust your settings before continuing play.

Saves are not affected. Players mid-save will find gallery progress also reset, but upon completing the main story of Soundless the entirety of the main story gallery will be force-unlocked out of consideration for players with in-progress games. (This is also applied to Adiaphoron for players with mid-Adiaphoron saves.)

[fruitless-vain]

Oooooookay here comes the rant post

What happened: jacks old coworker had a series of unfortunate events happen that resulted in them being homeless and jobless. We offered a place to stay first month rent free while they get a job, $200 a month after the fact just to cover absolutely bare bones basics so they can save up and move out quickly. Started out with him putting on a great people pleasing act and quickly turned in to a nightmare.

Ye animal related rant list:

Given explicit instructions not to do xyz with Yoshis because she is a service dog that cannot get in to these bad habits. One moment I see him telling her to eat something off the floor, I pick up the item and politely tell him she’s not allowed to do that since scavenging while she’s on the job at a restaurant would get us kicked out. I reward her for not eating the thing, turn my back for two minutes just to hear him whispering “eat it, take it, you can have it” once again encouraging her to eat off the floor

Initially I was letting her follow him downstairs, whatever, dudes going through a bad time and a happy dog makes anyone better. Until I learned he had been feeding her HUGE doses of food off his plate I’m talking larger than her entire meal and was feeding things that are outright toxic for dogs. I only found that out because Yoshi would throw up in the middle of the night for seemingly no reason. Asked him and sure as shit feeding her toxic things.

Repeatedly got in the way of Yoshi retrieving medications as well as actively trying to distract her while she was doing DPT for a medical episode.

On the first day I told him it’s hormone season for the parrots they are aggressive and sensitive right now please just ignore them, don’t interact with them at all, it will make things so much worse and someone will get bit. A couple days later he taunts Newt by wagging his fingers in front of him deliberately trying to set him off, I immediately tell him to stop in a very stern sharp tone, he blatantly ignores me, I have to raise my voice to get this grown ass man to stop harassing Newt. This disregard resulted in Newt flipping so bad he is now totally unhandleable I have to wear bulky headphones a loose sweater and a hood because he will launch to bite anyone to moves right now. Thanks for that genius.

Explained how scents will kill the birds, please smoke outside away from any open windows, wash your hands// air off before going near the bird room so the smoke residual doesn’t kill my pets. Does a mostly okay job at smoking away from windows, for whatever reason thinks smoking outside open doors is fine though? No attempt to ensure he doesn’t reek of cigarette before going down near the bird room. No effort not to kill my animals.

All my animals are clean and well maintained to the best extent an animal can be. He will pet sham then immediately make a snarky statement about him being gross or having to wash his hands now bc gross, smell his hands and huff away to wash his hands before resuming something dramatically. Just don’t pet him then? He’s a dog.

Finances:

We paid for everything for the first chunk with 0 need for payback because we wanted to help him out. Get some new clothes, the basic hygiene stuff, cover one tank of gas so he can hand out resumes. A startup base to get back on your feet with. Anything past that point that he asks for from us was agreed upon to be paid back whenever possible. He owes us over $1000 currently and has paid us $10 to take off of that debt. It’s been two months, he got a job within the first week. The only other payment has been the $200 rent agreed upon for the second month. Anything else he has ever “attempted” to pay us back with he would ask for it back within 8 hours.

Which wouldn’t be the biggest issue if not for the fact that: he has gone out drinking at bars every weekend, got a new girlfriend and has been buying her stuff/ giving her gas money/ paying her bills just for funsies, he started eating out and refusing to make food with the Free Stuff We Supply. He has the money to spend and pay us back. He just won’t.

Wasting, Everything. He showers twice a day every day. Our water bill has gone up $150 on his water usage alone. He will make a huge plate of food then just leave it sitting out all night and throw it away. He will cook 6 eggs at a time for himself then not finish it consistently. Make Less Next Time or USE THE FRIDGE.

He leaves every single light on and I don’t mean oops I left it on when I came upstairs and forgot. I mean he will leave at night to go to the bar and leave four lights on, the computer running and everything on high to go out for 4-6 hours. I am now acting like the parent of a child having to listen for his car driving away to go down the stairs and shut everything off god forbid my hydro bill pay the price and the birds be stuck with lights blaring keeping them awake.

We are flat broke right now, we have run ourselves dry, we made it very clear that past the first batch of purchases we got for him his expenses were his responsibility. He has asked for gas money every week since the start. He will make up some story about his car just burning through gas “it must be broke !” “Just filled it now sure how this happened???” For the first bit we went along with it adding it to list he owes us for but it quickly became a clear habit so we stopped. IMMEDIATELY started guilt tripped and being manipulative about it. Sending pictures of a car on E on the road after we said no, going “well where’d that 10$ I gave you go?????” Being super pushy and not taking No I don’t have money to give You as an answer.

Keeps wanting to do the grocery shop with this undertone of “I want to do the shop without you there so I can over buy things we don’t need and you’ll have to foot the bill for it” constantly mentioning things like expensive meats he wants to eat, buying excess of things we already have in the house, brands and things we cannot afford. Initially I interpreted his offers as kind like oh this is a hard task for me he wants to help! But this one day he was supposed to do it but we were out of pizza sauce and I was literally in the middle of prepping the dough so I just ran out and did it. He was So Mad that he didn’t get to do it like sir? Wtf was so important about groceries that I’ve foiled your plans here? What the HELL were you going to do?

Jack also smokes, if you buy x amount of cartons you get them cheaper so they were going to buy x amount and split the bill together. Dude smoked like 5/6 cartons all by himself. To add to this I have found his cigarettes all over my front yard from him smoking in his car and throwing it in to the grass, also some left at the side door instead of the ashtray that’s right the fuck there. On top of that half of these are still like full cigarettes? Just completely wasting shit that’s already a chaotic price for a habit he certainly can’t afford.

Habits:

We’ve had alcohol sitting in our house since our wedding. We don’t drink much but every now and then we celebrate something and have a nice night together. It’s nice having the booze sitting there for those random times we can have some fun without spending any money cause it’s already here. He drank a full bottle of vodka, rum, gin, kahlua, and wine within the second week of being here. It was all gone in a night.

He is incapable of flushing his own toilet. Every morning after he leaves for work I have to do the round shutting off the lights and discovered that he just leaves his shit to ferment all day long. There is piss splash all along the seat and surrounding floor. It reeks like a porta potty. It’s fucking disgusting.

Lies about it every tiny little thing, pretended I just didn’t buy two chocolate bars I mustve only gotten one and that’s why only one is in the pantry now. I found the wrapper on the floor of his room for that bar. Says he’s staying in this weekend doesn’t want to go out drinking can’t afford it then immediately goes out. Says he has no money for gas he can’t be doing anything then goes to drive to a fro around town for no reason other than to just drive.

Gotta love the casual bragging about all the “chores” he’s done so we should be grateful (he washed his own frying pan he used and the whole house needed to know about it)

Weaponized incompetence. Ohh I didn’t know the dishwasher was clean! There’s a giant sign on the front that says clean. Deliberately messing up cookies he wanted to make four times for his coworkers so that I would have to do it for him (that didn’t work, enjoy bringing gross cookies in, magically he made them perfectly the next time)

My all time favourite of “I think I’ll do X!” And then standing in the kitchen staring at me waiting for me to get up and do it for him. Boy does he every huff and puff when I do not move and just go “enjoy” when he starts asking 20 questions back to back to trigger me to just do it myself it’ll be easier I instead just go “idk” “try asking google”. Suddenly he’s capable of doing the thing with no further questions.

Claims to be a neat freak, will make an underhanded comment about dog fur or a bird poop on the couch or some other very small not a big deal thing then fails to even keep his bedroom clean. I have had to clean up sticky coffee spills from the hallway, deep clean the stair he covered in mud and clay, his room has no visible floor, need I mention the state of that bathroom again? Neat freak my ass you just want to complain and talk shit without sounding rude?

Dramatic gagging sounds whenever he sees a bird poop. Pretended to “help” by picking up a dog poop (which we didn’t ask him to do it’s our dog we’ll clean it) and then dramatically fake vomiting the entire time until one of us walked over took the bag from him and did it. Our dogs are on raw, the poops are small and have very minimal smell. No one asked him to do this if you were truly this bothered by poop you would just not. You just wanted to make a scene. About how Gross our animals are cause that seems to be all you do in a day.

Keeps going out the side door to smoke in the middle of the night then not locking the door when he comes back in.

Goes out every night drinking then spends all day bitching about not getting enough sleep

OH MY GOD I can only take Advil for my migraines bc of my heart medication. We have Tylenol for everyone else. HE TOOK THE ENTIRE BOTTLE OF ADVIL IN ONE FUCKING NIGHT. So I’ve been stuck with debilitating pain and no pain relief because it’s expensive as fuck. The bottle of Tylenol was also half chugged down by the next weekend. We will not be buying more.

Any and all leftovers I have from cooking for myself and Jack (I cook meals for all of us if he’s home but if he’s not I won’t bc who knows what time he’ll show up) he just eats without even asking. Most of the time the leftovers are for my flare up days so I can eat when I’m in pain. He’s been told this. He doesn’t care. If there is food pre made he will consume all of it it doesn’t matter if it’s way too much for one person to eat. He’ll just leave it out all night for a week to rot in the basement. Otherwise the only thing he will cook for himself is eggs. Expensive. We no longer buy eggs he can buy his own to feed that expensive diet choice.

Common sense not to use metal on things like frying pans and baking sheets. I inform him of this anyways, do not cut directly on my pizza pans. It will make them rust and no longer be non stick. These are new. Don’t damage them. He was supposed to be home for home made pizza, didn’t show until like 2am. I left cooking instructions with the dough pre set up for him just need to put on toppings bake and serve. I left a note saying “do NOT cut on tray” he cut on the tray. This was the second time. Both trays are permanently damaged. My notes were found in the oven burnt. Thanks for the fire hazard.

Complains about there being insects in the basement (there’s the occasional spider and we’ve had some rain so the occasional little wood bug is piping up the escape the rain) it just needs to dry and they’ll be gone. It’s a basement. There’s gonna be some spiders n shit. Bitched about there being ants. I’ve never had ants in this house anywhere, lo and behold leaving his food out all over the damn room attracted them. Told him this fact. He goes no it couldn’t possibly be that and demands to use chemicals (bird death so NO). Eventually got him to bring up his dishes and BEHOLD the ants are all gone.

Bitched about it being cold in the basement, (it’s warm enough for my tropical parrots?) we bought a second space heater for him. Yet he doesn’t use the spare blankets down there at all, still complains about it being cold. It’s the pit of summer. I’m not turning the central heating on??? Use the damn blankets????? Move the space heater closer to you????? Close your bedroom door??????????? This space heater has been left too close to flammable objects on no less than four occasions so far. It’s like he wants my house to burn down.

He kept wanting to be involved and help the house so we were having a bbq and asked him to pick up some small things we needed like a case of beer and some buns. He left and never showed back up. He then ate the leftovers of five burger patties and seven hotdogs which we were hoping to eat after pride all in one sitting for breakfast.

Ah yes, continuously eating the last of something and informing no one that it’s gone. Had no pickles for the bbq cause he ate them without telling anyone, numerous times I’ve been ready to do something just to find out there’s no cheese in the fridge bc he failed to notice it used the last of it and replace it with one we have in the freezer, eating all the prepped ingredients and putting empty containers in the fridge. It’s not hard to tell someone something is getting low, add it to the list, write it down, or literally anything other than eat the last of it and make it someone else’s problem later

Anywho this whole setup is shit, if we don’t get money by his next check we’ll be cutting ties and telling him to find a new place by the end of the month. This is getting ridiculous. Every day he’s asking for money while talking down to us and talking shit about our pets or our home all the while making no effort to pay what’s owed.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I WOULD HAVE BEEN DELIGHTED IF I'D REALIZED IN COLLEGE THAT THERE WERE PARTS OF THE WORLD THAT DIDN'T CORRESPOND TO REALITY, AND WORKED FROM THAT

So were the early Lisps. We're Jeff and Bob and we've built an easy to use web-based database as a system to allow people to collaboratively leverage the value of whatever solution you've got so far. This probably indicates room for improvement.1 What would you pay for right now?2 If you'd proposed at the time.3 I've read that the same is true in the military—that the swaggering recruits are no more likely to know they're being stupid. And yet by far the biggest problem.4

If you want to keep out more than bad people. I am self-indulgent in the sense of being very short, and also on topic. Another way to figure out how to describe your startup in one compelling phrase. Most people have learned to do a mysterious, undifferentiated thing we called business. The Facebook was just a way for readers to get information and to kill time, a way for readers to get information and to kill time, a programming language unless it's also the scripting language of MIT. Committees yield bad design. When you demo, don't run through a catalog of features. A couple weeks ago I had a thought so heretical that it really surprised me. If we want to fix the bad aspects of it—the things to remember if you want to start startups, they'll start startups.5

Cobol and hype Ada, Java also play a role—but I think it is the worry that made the broken windows theory famous, and the larger the organization, the more extroverted of the two paths should you take?6 And a safe bet is enough.7 Though in a sense attacking you. They didn't become art dealers after a difficult choice between that and a career in the hard sciences.8 You can, however, which makes me think I was wrong to emphasize demos so much before. Kids help. But the short version is that if you trust your instincts about people. That's becoming the test of mattering to hackers. One of the most successful startups almost all begin this way.9

But something is missing: individual initiative. He got away with it, but unless you're a captivating speaker, which most hackers aren't, it's better to play it safe. But if you want to avoid writing them. What you should learn as an intellectual exercise, even though you won't actually use it: Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you think What did I do before x? If you had a handful of users who love you, and merely to call it an improved version of Python.10 The political correctness of Common Lisp probably expected users to have text editors that would type these long names for them. Be careful to copy what makes them good, rather than the company that solved that important problem. Since a successful startup founder, but that has not stood in the way of redesign.11 I would have been the starting point for their reputation. Whatever the upper limit is, we are clearly not meant to work in a big program.

I know because I've seen it burn off.12 For us the main indication of impending doom is when we don't hear from you. Maxim magazine publishes an annual volume of photographs, containing a mix of pin-ups and grisly accidents. One of the most important thing a community site can do is attract the kind of people who use the phrase software engineering shake their heads disapprovingly. We've barely given a thought to how to live with it. The usual way to avoid being taken by surprise by something is to be consciously aware of it.13 It took us a few iterations to learn to trust our senses. Gmail was one of the founders are just out of college, or even make sounds that tell what's happening.

And odds are that is in fact normal in a startup. For example, if you're starting a company whose only purpose is patent litigation. You're just looking for something to spark a thought.14 Wireless connectivity of various types can now be taken for granted.15 There is not a lot of wild goose chases, but I've never had a good way to look at what you've done in the cold light of morning, and see all its flaws very clearly. What sort of company might cause people in the future, and the classics.16 001 and understood it, for example. One trick is to ask yourself whether you'll care about it in the future. You need to use a trojan horse: to give people an application they want, including Lisp.

Notes

So it may be that some of the economy. Angels and super-angels will snap up stars that VCs miss.

I mean no more than most people, you would never have come to accept that investors are induced by startups is that they've focused on different components of it. I thought there wasn't, because people would do fairly well as down.

Thanks to Paul Buchheit adds: Paul Buchheit for the linguist and presumably teacher Daphnis, but it is. We're sometimes disappointed when a startup is taking the Facebook that might work is a sufficiently identifiable style, you should probably be multiple blacklists. I'm compressing the story.

Good and bad luck. The solution was a new search engine, but it is very polite and b the local startups also apply to the prevalence of systems of seniority. The University of Vermont: The First Industrial Revolution happen earlier? An earlier version of the companies fail, no matter how good you are listing in order to test whether that initial impression holds up.

So what ends up happening is that the lack of transparency. Letter to Ottoline Morrell, December 1912. Loosely speaking.

On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 2005. Ashgate, 1998. No big deal.

Strictly speaking it's impossible to succeed in a startup to be important ones. The earnings turn out to be significantly pickier.

Many famous works of anthropology. You have to disclose the threat to potential investors are interested in graphic design. Japanese are only arrows on parts with unexpectedly sharp curves. Peter, Why Are We Getting a Divorce?

Microsoft could not have raised: Re: Revenge of the ingredients in our case, companies' market caps do eventually become a manager. I took so long.

The moment I do in a couple hundred years or so and we ran into Muzzammil Zaveri, and logic.

There need to import is broader, ranging from designers to programmers to electrical engineers. Parker, op.

We don't use Oracle. It should not try too hard to tell them what to think about where those market caps do eventually become a genuine addict. Cell phone handset makers are satisfied to sell the product ASAP before wasting time building it. One YC founder who used to build their sites.

In fact the secret weapon of the web and enables a new airport.

An Operational Definition. The rest exist to satisfy demand among fund managers for venture capital as an idea that was more rebellion which can vary a lot of face to face meetings.

And in World War II had disappeared in a startup you have the least important of the causes of the startup.

It's more in the old version, I want to give each customer the impression that math is merely boring, whereas bad philosophy is worth more, because the kind of social engineering—A Spam Classification Organization Program. I spent some time trying to describe what's happening till they measure their returns.

Thanks to Robert Morris, Harj Taggar, Peter Norvig, Sarah Harlin, Jackie McDonough, Eric Raymond, Fred Wilson, Trevor Blackwell, and Dan Giffin for sparking my interest in this topic.

[fallowhearth]

Review - Dan McCrum, Money Men: A Hot Startup, A Billion Dollar Fraud, A Fight for the Truth, 2022

Yeah, I was always going to love this one. I've watched the docu, listened to the interviews, integrated poodle-shaving into my vocabulary when discussing economics. This was more of the same, just with more detail. For anyone who isn't interested in reading a whole book, I do suggest giving the documentary a go. It's a good watch. I made two friends watch it with me and they also enjoyed. (one of them repeatedly tried to get the concept of short selling through my thick skull, as did the doc, but I still don't really understand how it works)

In short, Wirecard was Germany's hottest rising tech giant. It had expanded from its initial business model of processing risky transactions (from porn, gambling, etc) to processing payments for mainstream businesses all over the world, earning a hefty fee from each transaction. The money was rolling in, the share price could only go up, and it was even in talks to merge with Deutsche Bank. And for six years some annoying British journalist kept publishing hit pieces in the Financial Times accusing it of being a bunch of scams, cooking the books, lying about its business model!

Each chapter in this book goes something like this: Dan gets a lead -> a whistle-blower provides incriminating and/or bizarre documents at great personal risk -> Dan does legwork in some part of the world Wirecard allegedly operates -> Dan writes up a story and sends the incriminating facts to the German regulator (BaFin), Ernst & Young (Wirecard's accountants), German prosecutors, literally anyone who could do anything -> all those responsible institutions take a long hard look at the evidence of crime, and decide that Corrupt Foreign Journalists are trying to undermine our Beautiful German Company and sue the FT.

Meanwhile we also get a narrativised account of the goings on at Wirecard during that point in time (obviously using evidence and interviews that came up later after the trials). The book strikes a pretty good balance between revealing the mysteries as Dan discovered them, and providing enough context of what was actually happening so that you can understand the significance. It's a sometimes terrifying window into the lives of extremely rich people.

It also really humanises the whistleblowers, who are the true heroes of the story. In a story that is so often about powerful people circling the wagons, it was nice to get to know the ordinary people with integrity who brought the whole thing down. Special shoutout for the Indian-Singaporean lawyer and his ex-banker Mum, who were the first major ones. (His Mum emailed out the info for him because she got sick of his dithering, lol)

If I have any criticisms, it's that sometimes the structure of the book encourages emotions too akin to those experienced by McCrum over his years of obsession with Wirecard. It becomes a real slog as year after year BaFin does nothing, Ernst & Young give out another rubber stamp apparently based on firm handshakes and vibes, Wirecard's lawyers send threatening letters, and the German prosecutors pursue criminal proceedings against Dan. Like come on. It's darkly funny how much the entire German state fumbled this one.

On the upside, Wirecard's fall is incredibly satisfying. It ultimately took Dan revealing that 1/3 of their business was entirely falsified, for a different accounting firm to be called in to settle the doubts forever. Surprise! Not only was 1.9 billion euros missing, it never existed at all! The book was entirely cooked! This whole saga had an incredible amount of fallout. BaFin cleared house (turns out a bunch of BaFin employees owned Wirecard stock! How was that not disallowed already!?). Ernst & Young is splitting in half and several responsible persons might be criminally liable. Jan Marsalek is hiding out in Russia, unclear whether in an oligarch's house or in several oil barrels.

There's still some mystery around how much the CEO, Markus Braun, actually knew. Bellenhaus, one of the top guys, who flipped to the prosecution during the trial, of 'my grandfather was a Nazi and it's good enough for me' infamy, claims Braun was the architect of the whole scam. Braun maintains his innocence and claims he's a victim of Marsalek's conspiracy. He's either a great actor or an absolute credulous moron. Could go either way.

[spacenutspod]

A Falcon 9 stands ready for a Starlink mission at Cape Canaveral’s pad 40. File photo: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now. SpaceX is preparing to launch its first Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in more than two weeks. The last time the company attempted to launch the Starlink 10-2 mission, it encountered a rare scrub as the Falcon 9’s first stage Merlin engines began firing. Liftoff of the rescheduled flight is set for 1:15 p.m. EDT (1715 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40. Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff. Activity in the tropics creates some uncertainty for the launch from a meteorological perspective. On Saturday, June 22, the 45th Weather Squadron issued a launch weather forecast that suggests just 50 percent odds of favorable launch weather at the opening of the launch window. That deteriorates to just 20 percent by the close of the window. Meteorologists are tracking cumulus clouds, anvil clouds and lightning probability as primary concerns. “Deep tropical moisture will remain entrenched across the Florida peninsula into early next week, and as a result, scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms can be expected each day, largely favoring the afternoon and evening hours,” the forecast stated. “While atmospheric flow will remain weak enough to allow daily seabreeze development, an incoming trough will likely result in delayed formation and westward progression by Monday and Tuesday, with initial storm development closer to the coast on those days.” The 24-hour back-up launch opportunity is generally the same, but the opening of the launch window is 60 percent favorable for liftoff. The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, B1078, will be launching for an 11th time. It previously launched the astronauts and cosmonaut of the Crew-6 mission, the USSF-124 mission and seven previous Starlink flights. A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1078 will land on the SpaceX droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ This will be the 75th booster landing for ASOG and the 321st booster landing to date. However, B1078 wasn’t always the intended booster for this mission though. The original flight plan had B1073 as the first stage booster. However, the booster was swapped out following a last-second scrub on June 14. SpaceX hasn’t elaborated on the issue or issues that caused the scrub during engine ignition, but in a June 15 post on X (formerly Twitter), Kiko Dontchev, the vice president of Launch at SpaceX said: “Tough week dealing with production challenges and then a rare scrub at engine startup yesterday on 10-2. “Unfortunately there is a real issue so we need to go inspect the hardware in detail on this vehicle… Painful, but safety and reliability are the priority.” Here are moments leading up to engine ignition and the ultimate abort of the Starlink 10-2 at the moment of T-0. Watch: pic.twitter.com/a8wVmKFr9x — Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) June 14, 2024 This will be the 45th launch of Starlink satellites so far in 2024 with another planned for Sunday evening, which is set to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 8:45 p.m. PDT (11:45 p.m. EDT, 0345 UTC). Starlink 10-2 will add another 22 satellites to the growing megaconstellation. Following the launch, SpaceX will have launched 1,007 Starlink satellites this year alone. According to expert orbital tracker and astronomer, Jonathan McDowell, there are more than 6,000 active Starlink satellites on orbit. Falcon Heavy prepares to fly again While SpaceX is preparing to launch a pair of Falcon 9 rockets on both sides of the country, in Florida, it’s also working with NASA and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to launch a new weather satellite on June 25 at 5:16 p.m. EDT (2116 UTC). NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP) contracted SpaceX to launch the final satellite in the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites-R (GOES-R) series. NOAA describes these as “the Western Hemisphere’s most sophisticated weather-observing and environmental-monitoring system.” Crews transport NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-U) from the Astrotech Space Operations facility to the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida beginning on Friday, June 14, 2024, with the operation finishing early Saturday, June 15, 2024. Image: NASA In an interview with Spaceflight Now on Friday NASA’s launch director, Dr. Denton Gibson, said the launch team will be monitoring the weather over the next few days. “We have some planning to do or decisions to make in terms of when we roll the vehicle out and before we do all of our final preps for launch,” Gibson said. He said they would make a determination on whether a rollout of the Falcon Heavy rocket from the hangar to the pad would make more sense on Sunday or Monday. The Falcon Heavy has a backup launch date of June 26, but if it slips beyond that, Gibson said there would need to be discussions with the Eastern Range before a new date could be booked. Watch live views of the Falcon Heavy launch pad.

[jcmarchi]

ChatGPT Meets Its Match: The Rise of Anthropic Claude Language Model

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/chatgpt-meets-its-match-the-rise-of-anthropic-claude-language-model/

ChatGPT Meets Its Match: The Rise of Anthropic Claude Language Model

Over the past year, generative AI has exploded in popularity, thanks largely to OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in November 2022. ChatGPT is an impressively capable conversational AI system that can understand natural language prompts and generate thoughtful, human-like responses on a wide range of topics.

However, ChatGPT is not without competition. One of the most promising new contenders aiming to surpass ChatGPT is Claude, created by AI research company Anthropic. Claude was released for limited testing in December 2022, just weeks after ChatGPT. Although Claude has not yet seen as widespread adoption as ChatGPT, it demonstrates some key advantages that may make it the biggest threat to ChatGPT’s dominance in the generative AI space.

Background on Anthropic

Before diving into Claude, it is helpful to understand Anthropic, the company behind this AI system. Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, Anthropic is a startup focused on developing safe artificial general intelligence (AGI).

The company takes a research-driven approach with a mission to create AI that is harmless, honest, and helpful. Anthropic leverages constitutional AI techniques, which involve setting clear constraints on an AI system’s objectives and capabilities during development. This contrasts with OpenAI’s preference for scaling up systems rapidly and dealing with safety issues reactively.

Anthropic raised $300 million in funding in 2022. Backers include high-profile tech leaders like Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and Asana. With this financial runway and a team of leading AI safety researchers, Anthropic is well-positioned to compete directly with large organizations like OpenAI.

Overview of Claude

Claude powered by Claude 2 & Claude 2.1 model, is an AI chatbot designed to collaborate, write, and answer questions, much like ChatGPT and Google Bard.

Claude stands out with its advanced technical features. While mirroring the transformer architecture common in other models, it’s the training process where Claude diverges, employing methodologies that prioritize ethical guidelines and contextual understanding. This approach has resulted in Claude performing impressively on standardized tests, even surpassing many AI models.

Claude shows an impressive ability to understand context, maintain consistent personalities, and admit mistakes. In many cases, its responses are articulate, nuanced, and human-like. Anthropic credits constitutional AI approaches for allowing Claude to conduct conversations safely, without harmful or unethical content.

Some key capabilities demonstrated in initial Claude tests include:

Conversational intelligence – Claude listens to user prompts and asks clarifying questions. It adjusts responses based on the evolving context.

Reasoning – Claude can apply logic to answer questions thoughtfully without reciting memorized information.

Creativity – Claude can generate novel content like poems, stories, and intellectual perspectives when prompted.

Harm avoidance – Claude abstains from harmful, unethical, dangerous, or illegal content, in line with its constitutional AI design.

Correction of mistakes – If Claude realizes it has made a factual error, it will retract the mistake graciously when users point it out.

Claude 2.1

In November 2023, Anthropic released an upgraded version called Claude 2.1. One major feature is the expansion of its context window to 200,000 tokens, enabling approximately 150,000 words or over 500 pages of text.

This massive contextual capacity allows Claude 2.1 to handle much larger bodies of data. Users can provide intricate codebases, detailed financial reports, or extensive literary works as prompts. Claude can then summarize long texts coherently, conduct thorough Q&A based on the documents, and extrapolate trends from massive datasets. This huge contextual understanding is a significant advancement, empowering more sophisticated reasoning and document comprehension compared to previous versions.

Enhanced Honesty and Accuracy

Claude 2.1: Significantly more likely to demur

Significant Reduction in Model Hallucinations

A key improvement in Claude 2.1 is its enhanced honesty, demonstrated by a remarkable 50% reduction in the rates of false statements compared to the previous model, Claude 2.0. This enhancement ensures that Claude 2.1 provides more reliable and accurate information, essential for enterprises looking to integrate AI into their critical operations.

Improved Comprehension and Summarization

Claude 2.1 shows significant advancements in understanding and summarizing complex, long-form documents. These improvements are crucial for tasks that demand high accuracy, such as analyzing legal documents, financial reports, and technical specifications. The model has shown a 30% reduction in incorrect answers and a significantly lower rate of misinterpreting documents, affirming its reliability in critical thinking and analysis.

Access and Pricing

Claude 2.1 is now accessible via Anthropic’s API and is powering the chat interface at claude.ai for both free and Pro users. The use of the 200K token context window, a feature particularly beneficial for handling large-scale data, is reserved for Pro users. This tiered access ensures that different user groups can leverage Claude 2.1’s capabilities according to their specific needs.

With the recent introduction of Claude 2.1, Anthropic has updated its pricing model to enhance cost efficiency across different user segments. The new pricing structure is designed to cater to various use cases, from low latency, high throughput scenarios to tasks requiring complex reasoning and significant reduction in model hallucination rates.

AI Safety and Ethical Considerations

At the heart of Claude’s development is a rigorous focus on AI safety and ethics. Anthropic employs a ‘Constitutional AI’ model, incorporating principles from the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights and Apple’s terms of service, alongside unique rules to discourage biased or unethical responses. This innovative approach is complemented by extensive ‘red teaming’ to identify and mitigate potential safety issues.

Claude’s integration into platforms like Notion AI, Quora’s Poe, and DuckDuckGo’s DuckAssist demonstrates its versatility and market appeal. Available through an open beta in the U.S. and U.K., with plans for global expansion, Claude is becoming increasingly accessible to a wider audience.

Advantages of Claude over ChatGPT

While ChatGPT launched first and gained immense popularity right away, Claude demonstrates some key advantages:

More accurate information

One common complaint about ChatGPT is that it sometimes generates plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical information. This is because it is trained primarily to sound human-like, not to be factually correct. In contrast, Claude places a high priority on truthfulness. Although not perfect, it avoids logically contradicting itself or generating blatantly false content.

Increased safety

Given no constraints, large language models like ChatGPT will naturally produce harmful, biased, or unethical content in certain cases. However, Claude’s constitutional AI architecture compels it to abstain from dangerous responses. This protects users and limits societal harm from Claude’s widespread use.

Can admit ignorance

While ChatGPT aims to always provide a response to user prompts, Claude will politely decline to answer questions when it does not have sufficient knowledge. This honesty helps build user trust and prevent propagation of misinformation.

Ongoing feedback and corrections

The Claude team takes user feedback seriously to continually refine Claude’s performance. When Claude makes a mistake, users can point this out so it recalibrates its responses. This training loop of feedback and correction enables rapid improvement.

Focus on coherence

ChatGPT sometimes exhibits logical inconsistencies or contradictions, especially when users attempt to trick it. Claude’s responses display greater coherence, as it tracks context and fine-tunes generations to align with previous statements.

Investment and Future Outlook

Recent investments in Anthropic, including significant funding rounds led by Menlo Ventures and contributions from major players like Google and Amazon, underscore the industry’s confidence in Claude’s potential. These investments are expected to propel Claude’s development further, solidifying its position as a major contender in the AI market.

Conclusion

Anthropic’s Claude is more than just another AI model; it’s a symbol of a new direction in AI development. With its emphasis on safety, ethics, and user experience, Claude stands as a significant competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, heralding a new era in AI where safety and ethics are not just afterthoughts but integral to the design and functionality of AI systems.

[trialbymagicks]

Revisiting Hidden Expedition: Titanic (2006) [PC, Steam]

Valentine's Day is about self-love too, so I'm treating myself by revisiting the beloved Hidden Expedition series of hidden object games from my childhood, starting with Hidden Expedition: Titanic! 💘

Plot

The Hidden Expedition Adventure League (H.E.A.L.) has received word that the Queen’s crown rests in the wreckage of the RMS Titanic and they are enlisting the help of the most daring treasure hunter they know to retrieve it. So, it’s up to you to dive into the remains of the sunken ship and salvage as many antique artifacts as you can for the Titanic Museum Foundation during your search. How nice of them to pay you for your trouble with as many gems as you can carry!

Introduction

On July 19, 2006, Big Fish Games launched Hidden Expedition: Titanic for Windows and this charming hidden object game quickly found a resting place in the hearts of its players.

I have very fond memories of playing it on an old secondhand laptop late at night, fascinated by the chilling atmosphere and the concept of unraveling mysteries from a long-lost past. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to finish it, so for over a decade my mind was filled with burning questions about what treasure awaited me at the end. It wasn’t until the hidden object bug bit me again back in 2019, bringing that memory back into the forefront of my mind, that I learned that this simple game about a famous sunken ship had become the flagship for an entire series. So, I scoured the internet for this beloved relic of my past and, when I finally realized that Titanic was on Steam alongside a handful of other games from the series, it felt like the catharsis I’d been waiting for.

Some reviews on the store page addressed a concern about the game not opening to full screen, which initially worried me. Would I have to manually adjust my screen resolution in order to play it or would I simply not be able to play it at all due to the objects being too small to see? As it turned out, I never encountered either problem – even running it on a Windows 10 system – so it’s possible that that aspect of the Steam port was fixed.

Fair warning: Upon first startup, you are required to grant the program permission to make changes to your computer. This appears to be what allows it to change its resolution and open to full screen, but if that makes you uncomfortable, you may want to pass on picking it up because the game will not run if you don’t give it permission. You can, of course, choose to play the game in windowed mode later on if that is a more comfortable fit for you.

Whatever the case, I am grateful that my experience playing Titanic now was just as I remembered back when it first came out. Having sparked a love of hidden object games within me, this is the game that instantly comes to mind as the primary example whenever I think of the genre.

Review

As the first game in the series, Hidden Expedition: Titanic may not possess the larger than life cast of characters, grand sweeping story arcs, arsenal of brain-teasing puzzles, and fully voiced cutscenes of later installments, but it is a charming example of what a hidden object game is at its heart.

The gameplay is intuitive and the rules are simple to grasp:

Complete all scenes (plus bonus round) in each dive to move on to the next dive.

Each dive is timed, allotting a certain number of minutes to complete.

Find all hidden objects in each scene before the timer or oxygen level runs out.

Clicking on the wrong object uses up oxygen.

A small amount of oxygen can be replenished by finding the hidden oxygen tank in each dive.

Bonus: Challenge yourself to find all 5 gems in each scene.

The nonintrusive plot offers a humble explanation for the underwater Titanic theme and a reason to play as an explorer embarking on this dive – the promise of a secret treasure at the end and the reward of knowing you found it – which it gracefully follows through on.

The simple melody that greets the player on the opening menu sounds like a promise of adventure and the eerie repeating tune that plays during dives provides a mysterious atmosphere of wonder as well as urgency the lower the oxygen level gets. Of course, there is also a collection of Titanic facts to discover for anyone who may find themselves hungry for knowledge about the topic.

What really tripped me up as a kid was the fact that I had never seen nor heard of a lot of the antique objects on the item lists, so I wasn’t sure what to look for and usually ended up clicking around aimlessly and running out of oxygen once I had found everything I recognized. Even the hint system, which will show you where a random object is, uses up oxygen per hint!

Replaying the game as an adult was remarkably less stressful. I’m sure this is because I have learned more since then and am also much better at guessing what an object’s purpose is by its name, which makes them infinitely easier to spot in the scene. There are also plenty of occasions where it helps to know that a word could represent multiple images (for example: bat, pipe, fork, spade, plane, note, and compass), so don’t be afraid to utilize that pause button and a thesaurus if you need to!

At the end of each dive, there is a bonus puzzle to solve. The player will have to either restore an old photograph by putting its pieces together in the right order or locate a collection of silhouetted items based on a fictional passenger’s profile, no more no less.

Be aware that the final mini game before the game’s conclusion takes a surprisingly different approach!

For me, it was a little confusing at first. I failed a few times and was forced to redo the final dive after every failure in order to try again.

But that’s what I get for not paying attention! If I had taken my time, I might have realized that I wasn’t supposed to guess the numbers by clicking on random items and hoping for a clue. Instead, the numbers that appear on the combination are the hints for each object I was supposed to find. This experience did teach me that the numbers are completely random for each attempt, just like how the item lists for each scene are randomized.

Note that, to complete a dive, you must fully explore all 2 or 3 scenes labeled on the blueprint of the ship and the bonus puzzle at the end. There is no way to save your progress in the middle of a dive, so if you return to the menu or exit the game before completing it, the game will require you to complete all scenes of that dive again when you re-enter.

But this does also mean you will get new item lists when you replay the scenes, so the replay value of the game in general is pretty solid! If you were interested in farming gems this way to increase the number displayed on your certificate when you complete the game (since there appears to be no other purpose for them), you could choose to take advantage of that feature rather than rushing through the game.

Overall, this game is great for anyone looking for a simple (and lightheartedly gimmicky) hidden object experience!

The Story So Far...

While Hidden Expedition: Titanic provides little establishing lore for what would become a series set in an alternate timeline version of reality and begs us not to throw our suspension of disbelief out the window, there is still a tasty chunk of information to read into. So, let me gently take you by the hand and guide you on this journey into the great unknown…

The player character, henceforth referred to as Eris for reasons that will soon become clear, starts out as a (morally questionable) treasure-hunter-for-hire who comes highly recommended by the Hidden Expedition Adventure League (H.E.A.L.) as someone who would “appreciate embarking on [the] grand, yet perilous adventure” into the wreckage of the RMS Titanic on behalf of the Titanic Museum Foundation. Does Eris work for H.E.A.L. as an agent or just a contact? We have yet to know!

Regardless, Eris’ goal is to retrieve an unspecified number of artifacts – namely the Queen’s crown, which had been on its way to a New York exhibition at the time of the ship’s tragic first voyage – and how do you suppose the museum plans to pay for this life-threatening mission? Not with a guaranteed lump sum of money, but rather with as many gems as Eris can salvage from the wreckage themself! Of course, these gems aren’t the priority of this mission, but they’re Eris’ to keep if they can find any before running out of oxygen.

That’s not even addressing the fact that the Titanic Museum Foundation somehow expects its hired hand to swim into the wreck with nothing but scuba gear for protection against implosion-inducing pressure at 12,600 feet below sea level. Either H.E.A.L. is leaps and bounds ahead of society’s technological advancements in underwater exploration or this character is indestructible.

Oh, and another little detail that Director J. Narl Spurdly doesn’t share with Eris before sending them into the depths is that, if they happen to run out of oxygen before finding all of the artifacts on the museum’s list… the Foundation isn’t reeling them back in. Totally not morbid at all! Game mechanics aside, it’s more likely implied that they do let the player character return to safety with whatever had been salvaged in the given amount of time, but they are inevitably sent back out with a new list and renewed oxygen for another attempt.

Evidently, the chance to see the wreck up close must have been too tempting for the immortal Eris to refuse because they agree. It is at this point that I must wonder if the random Titanic facts that appear on screen during dives are meant to represent 1) the Titanic Museum representatives sharing information with them or 2) the notion that the player character is a trivia lover who is reflecting on their knowledge as a distraction from the very likely possibility of a nightmarish death before drowning. Either way, the crown is recovered, Eris is presumably a hefty pile of gems richer, and the Titanic Museum Foundation has bragging rights.

But of course staring down the face of imminent death beneath the sea for the hubris of a vain humanity wouldn’t be enough to satisfy this adrenaline junkie – because the next time the H.E. challenge comes calling, Eris is ready to set their sights on a much grander prize at Mt. Everest’s summit.

Resources

Screenshots are a mix of my own and from Neoseeker’s gallery.

For more information on the series, check out the Hidden Expedition Wikipedia page, the Big Fish Games Hidden Expedition Website, and the Hidden Expedition TV Tropes page.

Note: This article was originally posted on WordPress on February 14, 2023.

[iviarellereads]

All Systems Red, Chapter 7

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index and a primer on The Murderbot Diaries, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

In which there's a fun switcheroo.

The next day, only Mensah and Murderbot fly to the rendezvous. MB expects that by now, GrayCris know approximately the makeup of the PresAux team, and just hopes they don't know how messed up this SecUnit is.

Mensah opens a comm channel and announces arrival. A voice responds that a deal can be made. Mensah says she'll send her SecUnit out. The camp is set up on high platforms over the uneven trees. It's required by the company if you want your camp anywhere there's not open terrain, and it's why MB thinks its plan will work.

As they land and put the controls on standby, Mensah looks like she wants to say something, but is resisting the urge. She simply wishes MB good luck, and MB is unsure how to respond, so it stares awkwardly for a few seconds, then seals its helmet and goes.

It stops several meters from the figures awaiting, four SecUnits and three humans, leaving one SecUnit unaccounted for, as well as at least 27 more humans. It greets them formally, and feels a ping from their equipment, trying to get it to auto-install the update to immobilize. The meeting is so close to their hub because they probably needed equipment that can't be moved from here.

Fortunately, all MB feels is a light tickle.

One of the SecUnits approaches, and MB says it recommends against trying to override it, opening its gun ports. The SecUnits go alert, and the humans are startled. MB says it has an alternate solution.

One of the humans, as skeptical as if the hopper started talking, repeats that back questioningly. MB offers that they weren't the first to hack PresAux's HubSystem. One of the humans says it must be a trick, but MB continues that it doesn't have a governor module, then goes back to lying and says PresAux don't know, and it's open to a compromise that benefits it and GrayCris.

The leader, in blue, asks if PresAux are telling the truth, about knowing why this planet is important. MB says if they want to find out if a real rogue SecUnit has to answer their questions, they're going to get an education.(1) The humans discuss a bit, then ask what MB's compromise is. It asks for them to take it off planet, listed as destroyed inventory, in exchange for very important information. The humans discuss, then the blue leader says they agree. MB knows they intend to install an override in it regardless.

MB asks them to delete it from the PresAux HubSystem inventory first, and then it will give them the information they need. They protest that the HubSystem is still down. MB says they can initiate startup and queue the command, once it sees that it's in queue it will cooperate.

Three minutes later, the comm channel opens, and MB has limited access to the GrayCris feed, to see that the command is in queue.

Since it's been watching the time, it knows the target window is reached, and tells GrayCris that PresAux have sent a group to set off GrayCris's distress beacon. Blue leader says that's impossible as the others look unsure, but MB says the team has an augmented human systems engineer who can do it. Blue asks Yellow if it's possible, and Yellow says, maybe. Blue says they have to go now, and tells MB to have its client come out. MB expected them to leave without asking for Mensah.

(Last night Gurathin had said this was a weak point, that this was where the plan would fall apart. It was irritating that he was right.)

MB can't open its comm without GrayCris knowing, so it tells them Mensah knows they mean to kill her, adding that she's a planetary admin and not stupid. Green asks what entity, and MB points to the name, Preservation.

Yellow says they can't kill her, and Green says they can hold her until the settlement agreement. Blue snaps that won't work, the investigation will be even more thorough if she's missing.

Blue suggests MB go get Mensah, and bring her here. Blue even sends one of the DeltFall units to help.

What I did next was predicated on the assumption that she had told the DeltFall SecUnit to kill me. If I was wrong, we were screwed, and Mensah and I would both die, and the plan to save the rest of the group would fail and PreservationAux would be back to where it started, except minus their leader, their SecUnit, and their little hopper.

MB attacks the DeltFall unit, and manages to overpower it.(2) It feels bad, though, because the DeltFall units did nothing wrong. Not that any SecUnit had a choice about involvement in this.

Mensah bursts out of the bush with the mining tool, and MB tells her she'll have to pretend to be its prisoner. It starts shedding its own indentifiable pieces of armour(3) and putting on the DeltFall unit's equivalents.

MB fake-drags Mensah back to the GrayCris compound, Mensah struggling convincingly the whole way. Blue tells Mensah they know someone's trying to trigger their beacon, and if Mensah goes with them, no one will come to harm. Mensah hesitates, not wanting to look like she's giving in too quickly, but needing GrayCris gone. She agrees.

MB has to ride in the cargo container, which would feel nostalgic, if it were its own cargo container. Still, as a company product, MB can access the hopper's feed, if it stays quiet. The GrayCris SecSystem is still recording. MB figures they plan to try to wipe it before they're picked up, but the company's analysts will be on guard for it, and GrayCris might be caught even if PresAux doesn't survive this, which isn't as comforting as it sounds.(4)

MB accesses the live recording, and hears Mensah talking to them about the alien remnants in the unmapped areas. Their properties are weird enough to glitch out the mapping software. They prove that the planet was inhabited in the distant past, which would make it forbidden to mine except by archaeological surveys. But, if you hid them and got the mining rights, you could make a fortune selling the remnants off.

MB is cautiously optimistic about the plan, even with the hitches. Pin-Lee and Gurathin just have to hack the perimeter, avoid the one unaccounted-for SecUnit, and get close enough to the GrayCris hub to access HubSystem to set off their beacon.

The GC hopper lands near the beacon, and MB plays along with the other three SecUnits, making a standard formation around it. One of the GC humans reports no sign of anyone nearby, as the GC units go closer to the beacon to investigate.

MB takes a moment to explain, in an aside, that the beacons are disposable and thus cheap, and their launch can cause quite a lot of damage, which is why they're stored kilos(5) away from the habitat. MB and Mensah shouldn't be this close, and potentially end up toast in the launch process, but there's little choice otherwise.

MB moves toward Mensah, and Yellow notices and says something to Blue. The DeltFall SecUnit attacks, and MB fights with it as Mensah ducks behind the hopper. MB feels a thump in the plateau, as the beacon launch begins. MB runs, taking a hit to the thigh, and tackles Mensah off the edge of the plateau, curling itself to protect her. Then the beacon launches and knocks it offline.

It comes back momentarily, and hear and see Mensah next to it. She's injured, and talking to Gurathin and Pin-Lee over comms about being careful in their haste. Then MB goes offline again and wakes to Gurathin and Pin-Lee standing over it.

Pin-Lee leaned over me and I said, “This unit is at minimal functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.” It’s an automatic reaction triggered by catastrophic malfunction. Also, I really didn’t want them to try to move me because it hurt bad enough the way it was. “Your contract allows—” “Shut up,” Mensah snapped. “You shut the fuck up. We’re not leaving you.”(6)

MB lingers just this side of a total systems failure, having flashes of consciousness, including Arada holding its hand, and being on the big hopper as the pick-up transport lifts it.

That was a relief. It meant they were all safe, and I let go.(7)

=====

(1) And by education it no doubt means whatever its arm weapons fire. (2) Any two SecUnits should theoretically be evenly matched, MB all but said so, but MB has advantages like the ability to look up its own tactics education in its spare time, though it's unlikely to have done much of that, and think like a person without fear of punishment by a governor module, which it is most definitely taking advantage of. (3) Remember when it said it would never leave its armour again? Alas, it was too good to be true. (4) "They'll avenge us if we die" never is much comfort. (5) So, I'm giving this some grace because it's a scifi setting, use whatever terms you want in whatever ways you want. But, I can almost always tell when an American writes in metric and doesn't work and think in metric every day, because of tells like this. In the rest of the English-speaking world, we don't use kilos for any kilo-units. Kilos is only kilograms, the weight measure. (Ok not weight but like basically weight don't nitpick me to death I do enough of it to myself.) Using kilos for kilometers is absolutely off limits unless you want to get a comedic double-take. (6) Murderbot's not the only one who formed an attachment. It's done nothing but protect and help Mensah and her team, and she strikes me as absolutely the kind of person who forms attachments and friendships easily. (7) A fake-out death like this hits a little less hard when you know this is the first in quite a long series. XD

[radiant-future]

THE GAME

Radiant Future's gameplay takes place on a traditional Fire Emblem map with your usual assortment of units, terrain types, obstacles, et cetera laid out on a grid. The player and enemy take turns moving all their units, choosing what to do with them, yadda yadda yadda.

HOWEVER. The roster of playable characters is quite small compared to the average Fire Emblem game, and furthermore each character has only a small number of different weapons they can use (usually 4). Inventory management only matters for consumable items, as weapons do not break, and when a weapon is purchased for a character it becomes permanently added to a special inventory slot. When I start talking about individual characters I'll include the weapons available to them.

Each character has a Map Action - an active ability they can spend their turn on, like Rally Spectrum or Dance.

A form of Biorhythm exists as a double-edged snowball effect. Instead of fluctuating based on the individual character as a chapter progresses, your Biorhythm improves every time you pull off a combo of 10 hits or more, and worsens when you whiff 10 moves in a row in a single engagement, representing the character's confidence and doubt. Since Hit and Avoid are gone, Biorhythm affects Attack and Defense.

Stats and levels still exist. As mentioned, Hit and Avoid are done away with. The Dexterity/Crit stat determines the rate at which the Skill Gauge fills relative to damage dealt, the Speed stat shaves frames off the startup of a character's moves, the Luck stat extends the character's window for a successful perfect block, and the Movement stat has the same effects on the map as always, but also determines in-battle walking and jumping speed. Range still affects how far away you can initiate combat from, but there is no instance where one unit can fight and the other can't, unless there's an item or Map Action that can force a unit to start combat in a stunned state.

Promotions and class changes are done away with entirely, even for the Avatar, as this is a fighting game and it wouldn't be as fun if you could deal with every single enemy by throwing a General with super armor and a guard crush super at them. However, characters do still have stated class names, which can give you some idea of what they're about.

Oh, right, the actual fighting game side of things. Should probably get into that. THAT begins when you use the Attack command - at the same point where a real, official FE game switches into an automated sequence that plays out entirely by comparing stats and calling RNG. Instead of that happening, the unit you use to attack and the unit you attacked are thrust into a 2D plane with health bars at the top of the screen, three-segmented Skill Gauges (super meters) at the bottom, and a 30-second timer in the middle. The fighting units do entrance animations, pausing for dialogue if they have a special interaction, and then the fight begins.

There are five main button inputs: Light, Medium, Heavy, Signature, and Skill. Skill is used sparingly, primarily for supers, while Signature can be compared to the Slash input from Guilty Gear, in that you tend to get a 100% character-specific move out of it.

Your objective in combat is not necessarily to defeat your opponent. Your average unit can take substantially more of a beating than even some bosses in official FE. When the 30-second timer runs out, the game returns to the map screen and each unit's HP is set to what it was at the end of the engagement. This also applies if you KO the opponent before time runs out—the engagement immediately ends, the victor's HP is adjusted if applicable, and the loser disappears from the map. It may be worth it not to overcommit to defeating an opponent in one round, and to instead deal risk-free chip damage to soften them up for later. All units have their own separate HP meter, but the Skill Gauge is shared between everyone on the same side.

The Weapon Triangle exists in a form. Instead of hard number superiority, lances have the longest reach, axe-wielding units tend to have a lot of armored moves that let them push through lance disjoints, and swords have a way to beat super armor, whether with counters, command grabs, or just hitboxes that ignore armor. The Anima Magic triangle does not share this property.

Weapon types are not as strict as in real FE games—the Avatar's fighting style is best described as "sword with some unarmed street brawling thrown in"—but represented weapons include the core weapon triangle; bows; knives; at least two spells from each of the Fire, Wind, Thunder, Dark, and Light groups; staffs; gauntlets/martial arts; Laguz transformations and weaponized Creatures mimicking them; and guns that shoot non-elemental magic bolts instead of bullets.

Last thing for now: If you start combat while adjacent to an ally, you can make use of a sixth in-battle input: Assist, which is shared with a quick-select for your Map Action on the map screen. The Assist input summons the adjacent ally into battle to perform one of their special moves, just like in a tag-team fighting game sans most of the tag mechanics. If you start combat while adjacent to multiple allies, you can only choose one to be your Assist for the engagement.

[rubiatinctorum]

i finally took the initiative to go find out how to make an mp3 into a custom ringtone for iphone so i could put the windows 7 startup noise for my text tone. my flip phone's process was as easy as loading the mp3 onto my phone, but not so for iphones. i had to download itunes to my PC, show file extensions on my file explorer, convert my mp3 to m4a, change the m4a name to m4r, sync my iphone, then drag the file into tones, and THEN i could set it as my text tone. the benefits of being so productive today include having my cute little windows 7 text tone back :3c

[ted-shif]

So, I looked into this and found the article

Recall isn’t spyware the way that the article describes it: everything is stored locally. However, it’s still collecting a lot of data. If that ever gets sent to Microsoft in any form, that’s spyware.

It seems like the misinterpretation by the top tweet was a combination of people finding out how much telemetry data windows 11 sends on initial startup and the announcement of recall. The article also says that Recall requires a brand-new high-power PC to work.

[news365timesindia]

[ad_1] In May this year, the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), an autonomous body under the Union Ministry of Ayush, launched 'Pragati-2024' (Pharma Research in AyurGyan and Techno Innovation). The primary goal of this initiative is to provide a collaborative platform for research in Ayurveda. This move also reflects the government's focus on Ayurveda and highlights the growth potential of the Ayurvedic industry. With the influx of innovations and startups, the sector is poised for significant expansion and technical integration.The pioneer of Poly Scientific Ayurveda, Dr. Ravishankar Polisetty"Effective Ayurvedic practices are rooted in rigorous research and can offer safe and effective health solutions by blending traditional practices with modern technological advancements," says Dr Ravishankar Polisetty, a former cardiac surgeon and the pioneering force behind Poly Scientific Ayurveda (PSA).Explaining what lies at the core of PSA practices, Dr Polisetty adds, "PSA sets a new standard for effective healthcare by going beyond diagnostic treatments to address the root causes of illnesses with preventive care consisting of lifestyle modifications and natural therapies." He says the integration of technology and Ayurveda makes it a more comprehensive approach to patient care. For instance, AI and Machine Learning can improve the accuracy of traditional Ayurvedic diagnostics, enabling personalised treatments that address both symptoms and underlying imbalances.One of Dr Polisetty's groundbreaking innovations is Docture-Poly™, a unique wearable device that merges Ayurveda with advanced AI and ML protocols. According to Ayurveda, an individual's health depends on maintaining a perfect balance between the three doshas-Vata, Pitta, and Kapha (VPK). Docture-Poly™ assesses these doshas by collecting biological signals from a person's fingerprint. The data is then transmitted via Bluetooth to an app on a smartphone and the file is sent to the server, where it is analysed using Python and AI algorithms, and the results are sent to the user's smartphone."Based on the provisional diagnosis using the VPK 42 fingerprint analysis, the device generates a personalized dietary regimen to balance the individual's doshas and promote optimal health. It also customises exercise plans according to the person's unique constitution. Further, it provides non-invasive estimates of blood biochemistry, including Random Blood Sugar, HbA1c, and Lipid Profile levels," explains Dr Polisetty.A member of the administrative panel of the ANGCC GLOBAL, a global organisation dedicated to building healthy cities worldwide, Dr. Polisetty says that 'Smart Health Cities' can benefit from data-driven, holistic healthcare as it can gather crucial information and offer comprehensive solutions by synergising traditional systems like Ayurveda with modern medicine.He also informs that PSA is now widely adopted in many European countries, opening new windows of opportunity for Ayurvedas global expansion. "Integrating PSA into existing healthcare systems in European nations will also strengthen trade relations between India and these countries. PSA is very effective for managing end-stage diseases. We have successfully demonstrated the revival of organs in end-of-life patients. Hence, integrating it can help EU nations reduce their high annual healthcare costs, particularly in geriatric care," concludes Dr Polisetty, who recently represented India and gave a detailed presentation at the UK Parliament's House of Commons on the expansive potential of traditional Ayurveda in global healthcare. [ad_2] Source link

[news365times]

[ad_1] In May this year, the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), an autonomous body under the Union Ministry of Ayush, launched 'Pragati-2024' (Pharma Research in AyurGyan and Techno Innovation). The primary goal of this initiative is to provide a collaborative platform for research in Ayurveda. This move also reflects the government's focus on Ayurveda and highlights the growth potential of the Ayurvedic industry. With the influx of innovations and startups, the sector is poised for significant expansion and technical integration.The pioneer of Poly Scientific Ayurveda, Dr. Ravishankar Polisetty"Effective Ayurvedic practices are rooted in rigorous research and can offer safe and effective health solutions by blending traditional practices with modern technological advancements," says Dr Ravishankar Polisetty, a former cardiac surgeon and the pioneering force behind Poly Scientific Ayurveda (PSA).Explaining what lies at the core of PSA practices, Dr Polisetty adds, "PSA sets a new standard for effective healthcare by going beyond diagnostic treatments to address the root causes of illnesses with preventive care consisting of lifestyle modifications and natural therapies." He says the integration of technology and Ayurveda makes it a more comprehensive approach to patient care. For instance, AI and Machine Learning can improve the accuracy of traditional Ayurvedic diagnostics, enabling personalised treatments that address both symptoms and underlying imbalances.One of Dr Polisetty's groundbreaking innovations is Docture-Poly™, a unique wearable device that merges Ayurveda with advanced AI and ML protocols. According to Ayurveda, an individual's health depends on maintaining a perfect balance between the three doshas-Vata, Pitta, and Kapha (VPK). Docture-Poly™ assesses these doshas by collecting biological signals from a person's fingerprint. The data is then transmitted via Bluetooth to an app on a smartphone and the file is sent to the server, where it is analysed using Python and AI algorithms, and the results are sent to the user's smartphone."Based on the provisional diagnosis using the VPK 42 fingerprint analysis, the device generates a personalized dietary regimen to balance the individual's doshas and promote optimal health. It also customises exercise plans according to the person's unique constitution. Further, it provides non-invasive estimates of blood biochemistry, including Random Blood Sugar, HbA1c, and Lipid Profile levels," explains Dr Polisetty.A member of the administrative panel of the ANGCC GLOBAL, a global organisation dedicated to building healthy cities worldwide, Dr. Polisetty says that 'Smart Health Cities' can benefit from data-driven, holistic healthcare as it can gather crucial information and offer comprehensive solutions by synergising traditional systems like Ayurveda with modern medicine.He also informs that PSA is now widely adopted in many European countries, opening new windows of opportunity for Ayurvedas global expansion. "Integrating PSA into existing healthcare systems in European nations will also strengthen trade relations between India and these countries. PSA is very effective for managing end-stage diseases. We have successfully demonstrated the revival of organs in end-of-life patients. Hence, integrating it can help EU nations reduce their high annual healthcare costs, particularly in geriatric care," concludes Dr Polisetty, who recently represented India and gave a detailed presentation at the UK Parliament's House of Commons on the expansive potential of traditional Ayurveda in global healthcare. [ad_2] Source link