gavanwoolery

1) aesthetic is more novel than polygons, which are currently much more widespread (note: novel does not necessarily equate to "better" looking).

2) The finite limitations "leave more to the imagination" - in the same way that low resolution pixel art might, vs a high resolution vector image.

3) A very minor factor, but worth noting: not only are voxels visually novel, but they are technologically novel - in order to make a competitive voxel engine, you typically are not using an off-the-shelf engine like Unreal or Unity (though you can, and there are many voxel pluggins for these engines). Thus programmers are drawn to them (IMO) - they are an easy way to visually show off your technical know-how, just as you might many other effects in the demo scene.

4) A false sense of nostalgia - voxel engines never were very widespread, and the closest thing in the early days tended to be height-map driven rather than volumetric (the earliest notable exception being Voxlap). But the "nostalgia" exists, just as it does with synthwave (most of which does not fully mirror any music of the 80s/90s).

5) Voxels are point-based volumetric representation and thus are much easier to use for procedural generation (vs describing a surface, which is much harder). Though voxels are often wrapped on the surface with polygons, this is trivial (vs, say, describing the polygonization of a metaball without using voxels).

I enabled screentime/parental controls on my iPhone and gave control of the passcode to my wife.

At first I could not wrangle it to block the things I wanted (was this an intentional move by Apple or just poor design?). What I ultimately settled for was disabling downloads of new apps, then deleting every single social media app, game, web browser, and other distraction from my phone.

Yes, that is right, my iPhone has no web browser capability (why not just buy a dumb phone? Because I often use services like maps, music, etc).

Is the problem me? Do I just not have self control? No - I decided its not. These products were carefully designed around the metric of "engagement" - whereas I had no choice over my design.

I also blocked other distractions in my desktop / work area via the hosts file. I would like to do it at the router level but use of VPN makes this impossible, unfortunately.

This is what it has come to, which...is ridiculous, in my opinion.

April 16, 1992 - Ultima 7 is released

September 1992 - Origin Systems acquired by EA for $35m

March 15, 1994 - Ultima 8 released

...

I will credit Garriott and Molyneux as being some of the most [overly] ambitious game designers, and this is not at all a bad thing in my opinion. Not everything they did worked, but when it did, they created history. And even when it did not work, at least they attempted to break new ground.

I should correct that slightly because no one ever cites facts or quotes in isolation - usually they are in the context of a broader argument or hypothesis. But there have been a few cases, here Google will probably serve you better than my feeble memory. One (rather controversial) example I can think of is James Damore. His hypothesis may have been wrong (I will leave that up to the reader), but he at least did seem to earnestly back it up with data and research papers (and even though there is some debate there, at least a few experts have publicly agreed that the science he cited was well-established).

Note: I am not defending Damore's position, only stating that it was a great example of the "yellow/blue dress" when it comes to orthodox speech. People seemed to be pretty fiercely divided on whether or not his memo warranted being fired.

You are absolutely correct - perceiving censorship does not equate to being censored.

That said (IMO), there is a lot of abusive behavior on all sides - so the question becomes, is the treatment equal? It may just serve as a litmus test, at worst a false positive, to consider which side thinks they are being censored more. :)

Someone else on HN (I cannot recall who), stated something along the lines of (paraphrasing):

"Centralized power can be abused in the hands of the government or the private sector [via monopolies]"

Whether or not you agree, I thought this was an elegant way of phrasing it. The cure, IMO, is to ensure that both ultimately answer to the people, although I have no idea how that is practically enforced.

I would not say it is "unfounded" - but rather that censorship is ill-defined, at least in the public eye.

We have come up with words that are easier to swallow like "deplatforming" and "fact checking." Censorship occurs in many forms, and not all of it is directly blocking access to speech (IMO).

There is a common misconception that censorship can only occur at the public (government) level, but not the private level. As per Wikipedia:

"Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies."

There is also the issue of orthodox views and orthodox privilege (as per Paul Graham's explanation). Many conservative views are not orthodox to the point where you can be canceled for merely quoting someone else or citing facts (yes, both have happened in the past). So there is some form of self-censorship (this is related to "social cooling" IIRC).

I think it all boils down to this: which side supports censorship and which side condemns it? There you will find your answer on who is more adversely affected by censorship.

Note: this is not a left or right issue, historically speaking. For example, look back to McCarthyism.

In the absence of hard, irrefutable and all-encompassing proof, everything is just religion.

I gotta say, rowing had zero appeal for me until I got into HIIT (F45).

Even though I have been using it for three years, I would still say it is the most punishing/rewarding piece of equipment at my gym, and probably the only one that is still capable of leaving me (literally) breathless.

I've been thinking about getting a rowing machine for home just for some quick two-minute bursts of cardio to break up my sitting, so this might be a worthwhile purchase when I can budget it in. Also my wife has been looking to buy a Peloton so maybe I can convince her to get this instead. :)

This is really great work. :) On a slightly tangential note, I understand why they chose an audio representation over symbolic, but I think that training the latter is more useful (commercially speaking). Would love to be able to get a track rolling quickly just selecting an instrument set and tweaking some AI parameters and then hand-tune it from there (yes, this greatly detracts from the "art" of it but sometimes I just want to see results quickly). Of course, to do this effectively, you would also have to analyze on an audio level (at least per instrument) so that the usage and timing of instruments could be better understood.

I have a graveyard filled to the brim with side projects, and just ONE project that I keep coming back to (I have been working on it for 20 years). Its getting to the point where I do fewer side projects because I understand there is only one that is worth working on. In the past decade, I only had two smaller side projects.

The secret for me is to work on the hardest, most interesting problems. This is not good business advice - mind that. But you are probably doing side projects to get away from the boredom of the thing that actually earns you money.

Master of Orion was notable in that it was the first game I remember with "meaningful" NPC interactions. Even though interactions were quite limited (make/break alliances, espionage, trade, etc), early alliances could determine the final outcome of the game. But more importantly, it felt emotionally compelling. I found myself getting angry at certain factions when they spied/voted/etc against me. They also took the time to illustrate dispositions IIRC, so you could see when a race was happy or angry with you.

Haha, yep, because this account retweets gavanw and not the other way around. But the links are cleverly "hidden" in my profile. :)

I respectfully disagree -- something that is 10 times more efficient costs 10 times less energy (theoretically). When the end user suffers a server outage due to load, when they run out of battery ten times quicker, all of these things matter. When you have to pay for ten servers to run your product instead of one, this cost gets passed on to the end user.

I was forced to use a monitor at 30 fps for a few days due to a bad display setup. It made me realize how important 60 fps is. Even worse, try using an OS running in a VM for an extended period of time...

There are plenty of things that are 'good enough', but once users get used to something better they will never go back (if they have the choice, at least).