#if anything then the meta reason: they're not making a model for such a big player for the final season of the year which will be vaulted

[thefirstknife]

I saw some confusion among people thinking that Eramis' appearance was random and that she had no business being on the station with access to the Warsats. I'd like to try and clarify some stuff about that.

Eramis was a constant presence this season; more so than Xivu Arath. It has been explained that Xivu Arath cannot invade with her army until the specifics of a ritual are fulfilled and that moving her army through the ascendant plane takes an extraordinary amount of energy and resources.

Some of Xivu's forces were here and acting on her behalf, yes, but largely the main enemy this season was Eramis. Eramis is already in the system and was very explicitly used by the Witness as the one who would act often and faster. The Witness spent a lot of time turning Eramis' friends and soldiers into Scorn for this purpose.

These Scorn are the ones that had the Seraph Station under constant siege. Every time we attack Seraph Station, it's canon because Scorn come back to life so every time we clear it, we have to do it anew. They've been digging in the Station for months, trying to gain access to the Warsat network and preparing for the final assault.

Eramis was not randomly on the Seraph Station; she was there because she's been trying to get there for months. We were fighting their attempts by uploading a virus into the network each time we're there, but that's never been a certain way of stopping Eramis and the Scorn army from wrestling control over the network away. Which is the point of us having to do it multiple times.

I know the Seraph's Shield mission only played dialogue once so if anyone needs a refresher:

Elsie Bray: I've gained remote access to the launch facility's subsystems, but someone is already in here. House Salvation Splicers are hacking the launch mainframe.

Eramis had splicers working on hacking into the station. As a matter of fact, they gained access to the station first.

Ana Bray: She's here? Of course. That must be how Xivu Arath plans of co-opting the Warsat network. The Hive can't do it on their own, so the Witness sends Eramis and her Splicers in to assist.

Ana explaining how Eramis being there makes sense because Xivu cannot gain access to the Warsats on her own, she needs Eramis to assist.

The whole seasonal story hinges on Eramis hacking the station to get to the Warsats and the Seraph's Shield mission was explicitly about us trying to stop her week by week. It just so happens that she succeeded hacking it at the end, before Rasputin was fully operational and ready to be uploaded without negative consequences.

Is the setup a little bit clunky? I think so, yeah, because the whole season is doomed from the start. We have to stop our enemies but it's the nature of the end-of-the-year story for enemies to win in some capacity. I also think that we didn't really have to kill Rasputin for the same effect and for the enemies to somehow get the upper hand; I think it would've been fine if Rasputin simply had to destroy the Warmind stuff but that he could've remained with us as an Exo.

But Eramis having access to Seraph Station and the Warsat network is not random or out of nowhere nor is it nonsensical. That was her entire plan the whole season. Actually her first big win, possibly also saved her life. Not sure how many failures from Eramis the Witness would've tolerated.

I guess the issue is that with the current seasonal structure, we expect the seasonal goal to be fulfilled and for us to walk happily into the sunset until the next season because that's how it worked so far. It can feel like we've been fighting our enemies for 3 months for nothing given that we've essentially failed and it almost caused a catastrophe. But I'm not sure how else to create a story (seasonal or otherwise) where things don't go as planned or where we fail.

There were multiple fronts to fight on this season and there's one where we dodged a massive bullet; Xivu Arath. We lost to Eramis because we had to think about the bigger picture and that is Xivu's invasion. Our loss to Eramis also took the Warsats out of the equation now so that's also a loss to Xivu. It's what we needed; a stalemate. It's not flashy or happy, but it's better than the alternative which is Xivu Arath's portal over Earth. So in that regard we succeeded. We lost the Warsats and Rasputin and almost the Traveler, but all of that was to prevent Xivu Arath from invading which we managed. For now.

[deltaruminations]

i didn’t want to keep reblogging that ch.1 game over post over and over so here are some more comments from other users that i thought were really cool and wanted to share/expand on

@determinators

Gaster knowing personally of Chara when they died is something i hadn't really considered in any depth and it's SO interesting and i can't stop thinking about it now

my current (admittedly convoluted) line of thinking is that G originated in the Deltarune universe, and his strong desire to un-doom its timeline is motivated in part because it's his home and he feels a sense of duty (maybe because of past actions) to the people in it -- especially the kids, maybe kris in particular (again, for any number of possible Reasons). i think Egg as a symbol of young, vulnerable life being given out to teenagers represents a gesture of nurturing (even if a very weird/unsettling one from the recipient's POV lol), and when we consider the repeated references to eggs not hatching...

so from there, if we hold that G hopped over to UT at some point (maybe with the "followers"? maybe to flee the Roaring?), and was royal scientist when chara was still alive... holy shit dude.

given just the sheer similarities between kris & chara (and especially if we believe kris & chara to be instances of the same character "model"), the idea that he was able to see kris alive "again" in some form before having to experience their terrible death and the fall of "darkness" a second time... i could see that driving him to a point where he might just feel like he has nothing left to lose, you know?

idk there’s so much i’d like to say but i feel like i’m veering a little too far into speculative fanfic territory whenever i start getting into it. but imo the G/chara parallels definitely seem to be there thematically and i think there’s potential for narrative significance to it as well (is G maybe taking extra interest in Kris in Deltarune the game in part due to what he saw happen to chara in undertale, and/or his particular sympathy for chara because of how his own well-meaning past choices led to harm like theirs did, and/or how his own inaction/indecision in the Undertale universe factored into them making their big mistakes in the first place? is anything about that ethically fraught from kris deltarune’s POV???)

@abandoned-quiche & @torchiiko

one of the things i find so interesting is that he doesn't just say they're wonderful — those statements are among the very few times he ever breaks from his "script." they’re among the only moments of spontaneity we see from him in the whole introduction sequence.

if you pick someone else’s name, even "sans" or "papyrus" or "asgore" or "gerson," he just says HM WHAT A COWINKYDINK. and if you give one of the kids’ names to the vessel alone, he responds similarly neutrally, as if he knows that because you’re giving that name to the "character," you already have some amount of meta knowledge and therefore have already "met" them as a character. he even said on twitter that he knew we were looking for him — he knows we’ve played undertale, and that might be why he’s seeking us out in the first place.

possible masking for personal reasons aside, if we consider that we’re participants in a "survey" or test case, that kind of neutrality is both polite & professional and necessary. whatever biases he personally has, he needs to minimize his betrayal of them, because that could influence the behavior he seems to be attempting to study. and if he’s aware of our (from his POV) tremendous metaphysical power and knowledge, then i think he might be just as skeptical of us as we are of him.

and yet, if you give yourself one of the main lightner kids’ names, he seemingly assumes it really is a coincidence and he just completely breaks. he is so excited for you to meet Kris, Noelle, and Susie for what he thinks is the first time that he can’t stop himself from telling us how very, very wonderful he thinks they are. it’s like he pauses from taking a note, looks up from his clipboard, and says, "NOELLE, YOU SAY. I HAPPEN TO KNOW OF A NOELLE MYSELF." he doesn’t just like these kids, he likes them so much that despite his best efforts he just can’t hide it.

the only other seemingly spontaneous moments occur when we give ourselves his name (discussed below) or when we give the vessel and creator identical names ("OF COURSE OF COURSE. OF COURSE THEY ARE THE SAME.").

@cogentsummoner

YES the name thing is something i’ve been thinking about a lot too.

to explain that more for anyone who’s unfamiliar: in the intro/"GONERMAKER," G ends the survey session as soon as the last letter of his name ("GASTER") is typed. he doesn’t wait for you to submit it, and he doesn’t ask you to change it to something else, he fully just takes the player out of the session. as soon as he sees his full name, he removes you (and, it’s worth noting, himself) from the situation.

this could be taken many ways, but i definitely think "startled" is accurate regardless of anything else. beyond that, it could be skepticism wrt your meta knowledge of him, as discussed before, but we’ve also established that he knows we likely know who he is. he knows we were looking for him. i also don’t think such spontaneity and haste would be expected to follow from skepticism, frustration, or fatigue alone.

PERSONALLY i believe that confronting his own name brings up deep discomfort for him (for, again, whatever Reasons). just seeing it causes him to panic. it causes him to break beyond affection for certain kids and even grief/disappointment after a game over. whatever it stirs in him makes him feel so exposed that he can’t even allow us to be present for it. note that while he doesn’t return us to menu/title after dying, he does that exact thing in response to seeing his name.

maybe interesting to note, "WINGDINGS" and the like don’t cause any particular reaction. it’s just "GASTER" that sets him off.

the survey sequence in general is very very interesting. why does G even give us a character creator in the first place? i know everyone’s already talked about "choices don’t matter" with the discarding from a thematic perspective but could there be narrative/characterization potentials as well? if G’s trying to help the player, his collaborator & participant, feel comfortable, what does the offer of a customized "vessel" say about what he values, what makes him feel comfortable or uneasy?

[mortalityplays]

unfortunately the NFT bro in chief is still there, and despite some card tricks going on with company names and PR language the recently announced reboot sounds very much like a strategic relaunch of the same project they were already developing

call me jaded, but the crypto guy announcing 'world of X' on medium after laying out plans to tempt back original neopets players and draw them into web3 sounds like pretty standard castle in the sky shit

the medium announcement itself doesn't actually say anything about crypto or nft integration one way or the other. They very obviously took a huge L with the fumbled nft project and more recently with the original cofounder having an embarrassing public meltdown about crypto.

to me this looks like a big PR effort, trying one more time to win over the coveted nostalgia audience (which they desperately need if they want to make web3 shit work, and have been courting unsuccessfully from the start. the bottom has completely fallen out of the market at this point because so many traders have left the space and there are no more new buyers).

They do mention NFTs and crypto in the FAQ...twice, in fact? For some reason the same question has two different answers, the second slightly more desperate than the first. There are 'currently' no NFTs or crypto. It will not be crypto 'focused'.

There 'are [currently] no NFTs' and the game is not 'built on a crypto model' whatever the fuck that means.

btw the insistence that this is an entirely different game from Neopets Meta stinks to high heaven. If you go to the old landing page for the metaverse version it says this:

They're going to 'redistribute resources to the development of a game that can better support their vision' and 'continue to support the web3 community'.

It sounds to me like they realised NFTs and crypto are reputationally toxic to general audiences at this point, so they're pivoting to a nostalgia bait mobile game and if they just happen to introduce blockchain integration later, well, who's to say some of that larger audience won't be curious.

Apparently neopets not only managed to ditch the NFT bros, but with the closure of the Jumpstart brand weeks ago, neopets is now completely independent for the first time since the early 2000′s, got millions in a new investment deal and are currently installing a flash simulator so that all their games and animations work again.

[samanddeanloveeachothersomuch]

I think it's amazing how Sam looks up to Dean even when they're adults. He told Lucifer that Dean would come and kick his ass. Lucifer. Sam's terrified of Lucifer for obvious reasons but I think this showcases the faith, Sam has in Dean even now. Dean was one of Sam's earliest role models and with their dad out hunting, Dean played an even bigger role. For Sam Dean is "the man without sin." Now obviously Dean is not infallible. He's made plenty of mistakes and I know Dean blames himself for every one but to Sam he pretty much is. Dean almost killed Sam several times but it wasn't him. It was because of the Mark of Cain or because he was a demon or because of Chuck's influence. Sam's devotion to Dean is earth-shattering in a lot of ways but it's quiet. It stays in the shadows but comes out in huge ways. I hope Dean realizes just how much Sam looks up to him.

Dean's devotion to Sam is earth-shattering but it's loud. I think sometimes that is why people wonder if Sam loves Dean as much as Dean loves Sam. He does and the show shows this well but because Sam isn't constantly making for lack of a better word love declarations or making deals with demons or Death or even Michael for Dean it may look like he doesn't love him as much. This is of course not true. I also think this is why Sam runs away sometimes, between his own love for Dean and Dean's love for him it's overwhelming. I think it's overwhelming for Dean too but he is awed by it. Like in the finale he was awed by how much he truly loves Sam. More than his dad and more than his mom because Sam was always there when no one else was. Sam is awed by it too but he tends to shy away from the enormity of his love for Dean while Dean embraces it, although it does scare him sometimes. Sam and Dean's love for each other is written into their shared soul. (This is a different meta altogether but I think it's interesting how they sometimes feel guilty when they sacrifice the world for each other or how Dean was terrified to go to Hell but yet they wouldn't do anything differently.)

When Dean looks at Sam all he feels is proud. He doesn't see a blood-junkie or ex-blood junkie, he doesn't feel contempt or disgust, he doesn't see Sam's mistakes, he doesn't see a completely different person then who he knew all his life. He's proud of the man Sam has become although I'm sure he also sees the kid Sam was. He calls Sam "Sammy" when Sam is like 40 years old. It's of course a sign of endearment but also a sign that Sam will always be "Sammy" to him. Going by the show Dean played a big part in raising Sam so he does have a certain ability to get Sam to do what he wants kinda like a parent with their adult child. Sam does tend to listen to Dean more than his dad because I think in a lot of ways he trusts Dean more. (Which is probably fair. I mean their dad literally told Dean if you can't save him you'll have to kill him. Dean would never kill Sam but John I think he'd be at least thinking about killing both his sons at some point throughout the seasons. Let's not forget the Mark of Cain and Dean being a demon. I also think if John ever tried to kill Sam Dean would never let him.) Dean also knows how to get through to Sam which is something their dad probably never perfected. Sam is very much used to Dean's love because their bond is so unconditional.

Even though he got pissed Dean would take their dad's side a lot of the time I'm sure he knew if it was a matter of his safety and it was truly life or death even when Dean was very much deferring to their dad Dean would put him first. Big brother first, soldier and hunter second. (I think that defined pretty much all his life: Big brother first, soldier and hunter second.) Dean has done things throughout their childhood for Sam that maybe went against their dad a bit. The fireworks that made Sam so happy, Dean somehow convincing his dad to let Sam come on hunts, Dean watching Sam's play, letting Sam believe in the Easter Bunny until he was twelve.

Dean does not and never has seen Sam as something less than human or a monster or a freak. I know he's said some hurtful things that were of course targeted to hurt Sam because he felt hurt himself but that definitely does not mean he meant them. You hurt the people you love the most and because of the enormity of their love they have hurt each other horribly. Their bond is stronger than the hurt though. Sam is used to Dean's anger, used to his dad's anger who Dean inherited that particular trait from. He's used to it in himself as well it's just he's not prone to anger as quickly. Sam needs Dean to be proud of him and put him above everyone else and when that's threatened he tends to go a little crazy. (I'm not trying to say Sam is selfish by any means I'm just saying considering all the instability in their lives that one thing is a constant, Sam says as much, and I think anyone would go a little crazy if the one thing they always knew to be true was taken from them.) That is why season 8 happened but I'm glad Dean was able to get through to him. While I do think he knows how Dean gets when he's angry Sam also doesn't want to be a burden and he tends to internalize everything. Anything Dean says in anger, or jest, or frustration, or betrayal, or because he's being facetious get internalized and that's how you get Sacrifice. Because despite being able to read Dean and know he didn't mean it Sam has a lot of self-hate and it tends to fuel the fire.

Dean knows how good Sam is though. He knows he's a hero. I don't truly think Dean has ever looked at Sam as anything but good. He was adamant that Sam wouldn't turn into Max. He was adamant that soulless Sam was not his brother and not Sammy. He told Sam he had thought he was doing the right thing because Sam is always trying to do the right thing and told the doctor in the mental hospital that Sam wasn't evil and while that scene was hilarious I'm 100% sure he truly meant it. (I swear he's also told him you've helped a lot more people than you've hurt but I could be wrong on that one.) His actions also support Dean believing Sam is good because he literally didn't want to let Sam down by saying yes to Michael and of course the biggest of all he went to the cemetery with the understanding he might be killed because he refused to let Sam die alone.

In the end, he did save Sam because their love for each other was what allowed Sam to overpower Lucifer, therefore, saving the world. Their love saves them over and over again. If Sam and Dean hadn't been born the apocalypse happens. I'm sure Dean has always saw Sam as more pure and good than Sam has ever seen himself. I'm sure Dean thinks Sam is a better person than him as well. I think Sam knows this too. (I'm aware of the voicemail of course but one I'm sure Sam figured out that was a manipulation even if they never talked about it and two I headcanon that they did talk about it at some point.) Like I and others have said nothing can tear them apart permanently. Not God and not Death. They accept each other for who they are and still see each other as good even after everything.

[alto-tenure]

hmmm okay showerthought based meta time.

We only see Adrien and Marinette get persued by people romantically. There's Theo, but that's...barely a thing, unlike Nino and Nathaniel who both made legitimate efforts to pursue Marinette. While Adrien does have more long-term pursuers (Chloe for most of S1/S2/parts of S3, Lila for S1/S3, Kagami in S2/S3, and Marinette from the start).

Chat Noir doesn't have anyone that romantically pursues him. He pursues Ladybug plenty, but he doesn't get much in the way of pursuit despite how he presents himself as the flirt who gets girls as easy as breathing. (And that is, indeed, a presentation - a shield from being truly emotionally vulnerable.)

And well...we have Copycat. Which uses Theo to define Chat's love for Ladybug.

And it makes sense that people pursue Adrien - the model, the celebrity, the pretty blonde boy.

But what doesn't quite follow is why we never see anyone going after Ladybug and Chat Noir after Copycat. They're well-known in the city, according to the show, and goodness knows that people will take the first opportunity to thirst.

So, let's get into it.

Chloe wants him for reasons we as viewers can't quite be sure of (my headcanon tends more towards "the only boy she really has ever gotten along with is Adrien, therefore they are 100% Soulmates™ and there are no other options", and canon does support that, but there are other equally valid analyses too). Lila pursues Adrien for the fame. Kagami and Marinette both pursue Adrien out of genuine interest (with, perhaps, Kagami sharing some common traits with the speculation of Chloe).

We don't know why either Nathaniel or Nino develop crushes on Marinette. I tend to theorize that Nino was actually interested in Alya and just wanted to make Adrien realize his feelings for Marinette through jealousy (which doesn't work, because Adrien Agreste is a pinnacle of repression until the claws come out), but my interpretation isn't exactly...supported by canon, so in the end it's just established that Nino and Marinette were at the very least casual acquaintances (if not friends) before canon picks up. And the progression between friendship and romance is fairly simple, and attraction is easy enough to confuse. Nathaniel seems to have a crush on Marinette because she is actively kind to him. For someone mostly a loner, someone reaching out can make a big difference.

And then we have Luka. He doesn't so much as actively pursue Marinette as wait for her to come to him, but...well, he finds her endearing from the start (guitar flirting) and that does proceed to romantic love.

What I find more interesting is that the guys who pursue Marinette are more passive, while the ones that pursue Adrien are more active. Chloe makes her affections known, Lila makes unwanted contact with Adrien, Kagami makes it part of her mission to get Adrien, and Marinette concocts operations with her friends. Meanwhile, Adrien is the one that asks Marinette out in Nino's stead, Nathaniel's crush is outed, and as stated earlier, Luka waits for Marinette to come to him.

I think the reason that none of these work out is because of what Adrien and Marinette want separately as characters.

Adrien's arc is about taking his agency back. And little by little, he is doing that. Being Chat Noir is a choice. Kagami encourages him, even, to obtain his agency with her help. Ultimately, though, he needed to let go of Kagami because she was the one that chose him - he chose her in return, but he is more passive in their relationship, letting Kagami make her way in rather than actively inviting her. Adrien needs to be able to decide for himself who he wants to pursue, and he needs to be the one doing the pursuing in order to obtain his agency.

Meanwhile, Marinette supports the weight of the world on her shoulders. She is burdened, more than anything else, and pursuing someone romantically takes a lot of effort. She needs someone who is willing to pursue her, instead of guys who wait for her to pursue them or choose to never make their affections known or use a proxy.

And this is why Ladynoir has been strong as a dynamic - it is what both of them need, Adrien having to make the active choice to keep pursuing Ladybug, and Marinette letting herself be loved.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

AT THE TIME THERE MIGHT HAVE BEEN OK IF HE WAS GOOD, SO IN THAT RESPECT THEY'RE BETTER POSITIONED TO PROSPER IN A RECESSION THAN BIG COMPANIES

A new concept of variables. The main reason there are only a few rich people buy original art, and even now I find it kind of weird. If you look at the historical evidence, it seems an axiom that this would be an optimization, not part of any specific science; it's literally meta-physics in our sense. Xenophon Mem. 0 have in common? One reason to launch early, to understand what it is. With one exception: patent trolls. Java in the press about what Jessica has achieved. Notes The ramen in ramen profitable refers to instant ramen, which is like a compiled program you've lost the source of your problems in a way that makes them so. Angels who've made money in technology are preferable, for two reasons: they understand your situation, and they are nowhere near as smart.

You don't need to know principle is that in practice socialist countries have nontrivial disparities of wealth, and are aghast at the thought of our investors used to keep me up at night. The world is—and you specifically are—one quantum of making users' lives better. 12, and just build things. It's as if mathematicians, physicists, and was shocked to discover, not something customers need. Ironically, the main thing I'd be feeling was curiosity about which of two proofs was better. 1 x 2 or x if foo 1 2 7. No one would know what side to be on any shortlist of admirable people. When people say Web 2. It's just unbearably inefficient. The real test is revenue. When you're eight it's called playing instead of hanging out, but that there be few of them.

Hackers are not stupid, and unanimity is very rare in this world, I think, 24 hours to say yes, and the company is a good deal for the board to give him. Stone, Lawrence, Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 2005. And unless you already have most of what you built for the previous ones, then you're competing with publishing's form of distribution, and that's why they do it. 16% false positives means that it is not clear whether you can keep hope and worry balanced, they will be facing not just technical problems but their own wishful thinking. 01 and. It's much like being a postdoc: you have to draw a building, because your users will do it. Software companies are sometimes accused of meandering. The traditions and financial models of the old Moore's Law back, by writing a stripped-down kernel how hard can it be? Sparse Binary Polynomial Hash Message Filtering and The CRM114 Discriminator.

That the speakers at YC were so consistent in their advice. When things are hard to understand because the ideas are out there, separated from us by what will later seem ridiculous, I want to examine its internal structure. Founders at Work. The atmosphere of the average big company—that hackers can implement software, but there is more in his books than in a library of art monographs. I doubt they realize it, that readers trust bloggers more than Business Week. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere. They don't want founders to turn down most acquisition offers. We had to pay out their earnings in dividends, and so on.

But they could be profitable. There's no consensus yet in the very word taste sounds slightly ridiculous to American ears. It's not as painful as raising money from multiple investors, as most VCs say, they're more likely to be smarter. I see a man must either resolve to put out nothing new or become a slave, in which case problem solved, or at least, certain kinds of arrogance, investors vary greatly in this respect was the original author of GMail, which is even shorter than the Perl form. For example, explicit support for programs with multiple users, or negotiate with other companies, and that territory seems to be about the 7 secrets of success. England, the Industrial Revolution. It also gives them more control. But should you start a startup: success or failure of a startup that succeeds, it's going to stop to consider the ability to get things done. It took decades for relativity to be accepted, and the VCs will own a third of the company? Another way to fly low is to give them sufficient activation energy to start using whatever you make, you have to make something people want.

The High-Res Society December 2008 For nearly all of us, because our software was so complex. What matters is not ideas, but their strategic value. Compared to IBM they were like Robin Hood. If you factor out the bootstrapped companies that were actually funded by their founders through savings or a day job as a waiter to learn how to hack also means that when you have 57 things going on at once, they wouldn't have presented them the way they do for standardized tests? Dynamic typing. For some reason, the more qualifiers there are before the name of your VC stops mattering once you have bad programmers, the group of people we need to introduce now is valuation. I think this is generally a formality; if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately, and so on. To kids, wealth is a fixed pie. If so, could they actually get things done, and designed languages all too influenced by the technology of the day so adults can get things done.

This is probably the single best thing they can do it I'm going to demonstrate this phenomenon by describing some. But increasingly the founders of Yahoo and Google. This is especially necessary with links whose titles are rallying cries, because otherwise they become implicit vote up if you believe as I do actually typing. Now suppose you're so un-rapacious founder is only going to become a good hacker, between about 23 and 38, and who wants to distract voters from bad times at home, for example. This is largely a tautology but worth remembering all the same valuation: that would be the president. He seemed to be running out of money. The resulting technological growth translates not only into wealth but into military power. But that constrains you in different ways. And that's what programs are: ideas. But that's something you can do is jump in immediately. Want to know if the selection process will outperform other successful applicants. They also need to keep your expenses low; but above all, it could either be a bug or a new category of things not to eat—the Bay Area than Miami is simply that it's populated by adults, but that I often spent money I desperately needed on stuff that I didn't want as the top idea in their mind at any given moment he may need to be here a certain amount of stuff, it starts to appear.

Notes No one seems to have been nerds in high school, my friend Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell were in grad school, a friend of mine rarely does anything the first time, with misgivings. It will be a flop and you're wasting your time, you'll be well on your way. In addition to the technical obstacles all startups face, and the VCs will try to draw you out, but thinks hacker means someone who breaks into computers. How could they go ahead with the deal? Another from that batch was Loopt, which is not an acceptable solution, whereas 99. But not in the random way that three year olds. So what to make, is extraordinarily powerful.

[snickerdoodlles]

@emberfaye "pouring effort into it to pour effort into it" is such a good summation of it! because like. it's all part of the "growth at all costs rot-economy" problem more than anything else. OpenAI is currently in its Uber-phase where its this behemoth propped up by venture capital and its being hyped into being the Next! Big! Thing! so that either someone else buys it for more than its worth or it goes public and all the current investors cash out before people catch on to the fact that it's a flop. like, nowhere in this equation of investment are people actually asking, "hey, does OpenAI bring in more revenue than it spends?" reality has no place in this business according to them. a lot of genAI is like this, but most other genAI titans are companies like Google, or Meta, or apparently fucking Amazon if they ever get anywhere with their Olympus model. these other companies have marketshare for reasons other than generative AI tho, so OpenAI is just the specific case where you can really see how little return or viability genAI currently has a business.

like. honestly, i think i was giving them too much credit to even say that they're ignoring/losing sight of potential sustainable business, because that probably isn't even a factor in their company goals. they don't care where genAI actually goes as a business after they cash out, so all the absurd hype around it right now is serving the exact purpose they want: make people think its worth something. if genAI happens to suddenly become a viable business model before then, lucky us ig, but that's just straight up not a concern for the business side of it.

my personal disdain towards there being another huge leap forward in genAI before their cash out time stems primarily from the fact that the AI puppet is a ton of smoke and mirrors atm. i don't want to make it sound like nothing's come from genAI, there has been a lot of truly incredible research and innovation that has come out of this bubble. not by OpenAI or any of the other big names, they've pretty much stopped sharing information since the first wave of foundation models, but there is a ton of really impressive research in areas like NLP, deep learning, and more that wouldn't have been possible without the development of these really huge foundation models (and this isn't including the potential applications of genAI in other scientific fields, medicine and biology esp).

however, 1. innovation is never a straight line. even just looking back on genAI: the shift to using transformers, the current architecture all LLMs use and even most other genAI use in part, was due to a breakthru in machine-translation back in 2017. nobody was expecting it to be such a big hit-- the paper that published their findings on transformer models was hilariously named "attention is all you need"-- and certainly nobody had any idea that transformers could even scale to such huge scale until OpenAI took a stab at it with GPT-3 (we actually don't know why they scale to huge models so well either! sure, we have theories like superposition on why, but we don't actually know).

which segues nicely into my bigger point, 2. there's so much about genAI we just don't know. all the model's unsupervised pre-training, the first stage of learning that accounts for 99% of genAI's function, happens in a black box. even tho the structure of an artificial neural network is simple (its two matrices with a nonlinear function like a ReLU between them, then a bunch of those in series), mapping out or understanding the hows/whys/etc of the emergent behavior is extremely difficult. right now, the only assured method for "get better results/reduce output error" is scaling a model to something huge, and second mostly reliable method is training the model on more data (size and data are closely intertwined, but a model's size is not always indicative of their training data size).

(sorry if this is vague, i'm trying really hard not to geek spiral rn 😂💦)

getting back on point, there is a lot of research going into making model training more efficient, understanding how they process and store information (fun fact! we actually have no idea how LLMs recall basic facts. we have some theories on how, but we have no idea what the actual mechanism is that allows it. sounds wild, doesn't it?), any progress in AI memory, and also just figuring out more on where genAI breaks down. there's just so much we don't know about how genAI works-- and it's actually a lot more than how it seems on the surface:

that two-model system i mentioned in the reblog above? it doesn't just work to the benefit of both models, it's huge in patching over a lot of issues in genAI. the smaller model/AI assistant handles a ton of tasks like augmented context retrieval, simulating short-term memory, integrating apps for specific functions (ie something like a calculator app because something as specific as math is contradictory to the generative function of LLMs), and a bunch of other stuff. also, on top of patching over or minimizing the issues in models we do not know how to fix yet, genAI is absolutely trained or coded to mimic specific behaviors that increase user's trusts in it (ie, the speed of ChatGPT's responses? heavily researched and tested because a slower response seems "more thoughtful"-- and therefore more trustworthy-- to users; not at all reflective of the actual time it takes for a model to generate an answer (time is not an asset to genAI)).

like. people shouldn't stop researching machine learning, there is a lot to learn about it and like i said, innovation is never a straight line, you never know what's going to push genAI or even another science field forward. but venture capital isn't investing in OpenAI because they believe in genAI. they'd love for another big jump forward in it to bolster all the ways they're hyping it, but given how little we know about the actual mechanisms of genAI, i'm highly skeptical of us achieving any huge leaps forward in it in the next few years. and anyone who claims we're anywhere close to general artificial intelligence, or any sort of mimicry of human intelligence, is a grifter trying to sell you grade-C bullshit.

akdj profit-making monster

bold fucking choice of words for a company that's several hundred million in the red in its yearly income

[leevila-today]

Thoughts on Connor and his Endings

Yes, I posted this on my other social medias as well (namely the D:BH and Bryan Dechart Amino's). I just want to share my thoughts on something I haven't really seen people talk about yet.

NOTE: PLEASE READ THE WHOLE POST BEFORE YOU COMMENT ON IT IF YOU DISAGREE. If you still have an argument to what I'm saying after considering all that I have said then, feel free to comment whatever you want and I will respond accordingly.

And I guess this could be counted as a theory???

Also: SPOILERS FOR CONNOR'S AND (MOST LIKELY) MARKUS' STORIES. But I'm sure you knew that from looking at the title. If you don't want spoilers, don't continue reading until you are comfortable with that.

Onto the main event!

While I haven't actually played the game myself (too broke for ps4 and I'm not spending a ton of money for basically one game), I've done a lot of research on the game and therefore know my way around it a little bit. I'd certainly like to think that, at least! Anyway, I haven't really seen people talk about this so I decided to mention my thoughts on Connor's endings myself. Specifically the choice of deviating, or staying a machine. But, I will talk about that later in this post, the current focus at the moment are his endings.

His endings suck.

Also by endings I'm talking about these three:

Getting decommissioned

Getting replaced

And the good one where they hug! Assuming Hank is alive. If not, he's a Deviant and didn't shoot Markus.

I'm not saying they're badly written or anything, just that his main endings (like getting replaced or deactivated) really are awful for him in particular. I'm not counting the ones where you fail a QuickTime event and die, or choose to sacrifice yourself, because those are just plain old death scenes (even though those suck as well rip in pieces Connor). The only good one he has is the one where he becomes a Deviant and helps Markus win the revolution, also choosing to not shoot him and succeeding.

But I'm here to tell you something that I noticed, especially in that particular ending. Something big.

Something that apparently no one else has noticed (that or they just haven't spoken up yet, or I haven't seen them say anything about it). This is also where I'll begin talking about his choice to deviate.

Connor has no freedom throughout this whole game. Not at all. When he stays a machine, he is basically an obedient dog that follows Amanda's every command, no question. And that makes sense, he's an Android and they're "meant to serve". So of course he has no free will if you play him as a machine. So for those endings Connor is cast aside in favor of the new and improved RK900 (or just being deactivated, although I'd like to assume he gets replaced with the new model there as well, since Amanda mentions that the RK900 is much more powerful/smart/successful than Connor ever will be). Which makes sense considering the disposable nature of Androids in this game.

So, Connor has a lot of bad endings. Big deal we already know that. He's still got that good one where he ends up deviating and living happily ever after with his new dad (or best friend or however you wanna classify Hank I don't really care that's not the issue). And that's great! Connor can finally be free from Amanda's clutches and be out in the world living his best life. Except...

You see, there's this one line Amanda said that really bothered me.

Actually, make that several. What Amanda says here really got me thinking (and also rustled my jimmies), for more than one reason. What she's saying here is that they planned for Connor to end up in this situation (or a similar one based on the ending where Connor ends up leading the Androids). They planned for him to deviate, possibly encouraged it even. Their goal was to regain control of all the deviant Androids, by any means necessary.

If that means having their prototype defect and join them, well that's all part of the plan as well. Just watch and wait for the prototype to be in a position of power, then strike and completely obliterate the revolution. Or, if it remains loyal, simply have it complete its original mission and destroy the Deviant Leader. And if that fails, just decommission the series and start again, but make them stronger, faster, smarter.

Enter again, the possibility of RK900.

What I'm saying, is that even when the option appeared, this one right here:

Connor has no real say in it. It could have even been a part of his programming to Deviate, all to progress towards the goal of his mission:

Stop the Deviants.

But we don't know that. I could be spouting nonsense, and you don't have to believe a word I'm saying. I just wanted to speak my mind about the whole situation of Connor's free will and the possibility that he never had it all along.

Of course, he does actually regain complete control over his body if he thwarts Amanda at the end. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about his choice to remain a Machine or become a Deviant, how that can affect his character and how I interpreted his freedom of choice. Which I still believe was almost nonexistent at that moment where he was at Jericho.

Believe me or not, I just wanted to share my thoughts with others and possibly even inform some people. Feel free to comment your opinions as well, even if you disagree. Especially if you disagree, I wanna hear. As long as we can have a civilized conversation, I'm all ears.

And yes, I stayed up till 4:15 in the morning (for my timezone) on a day where I have to go to work, just to write this long winded post. Also I couldn't sleep so I decided to just bounce some ideas off the wall and see what could stick.

P.S. this is also my first theory/meta post or whatever where I share my opinion in depth on a topic. Actually quite nervous about posting it, in fact. Not sure how it turned out, probably pretty disorganized but I think I did alright for my first attempt.

Screenshots from good end are from Video Game Sophistry's video on Connor's good ending: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ1pd4xaCBo&t=967s

Also for getting replaced, shots are from CINEMATIC GAMING's Machine Connor endings video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=25u3iJdY3Bk&t=263s

And finally the shots from him getting deactivated are from Illuminati3d's video where Connor fails to locate Jericho: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pWw_ed4_CvU&t=545s