glorioushubris

Professional writer who uses different writing apps for different occasions is me exactly. I’m also the (or at least a) guy who messaged you about inline comments. As soon as all the details of that feature are implemented, I’m buying it.

I met my wife on OKCupid (back when it was, according to this article, good). I'm 5'6".

Zooming in works on my iPad.

Yeah, but if you own something that’s in my brain, I can imagine you legally forcing me to pay you for it, but I can’t imagine any court in the world forcing me to let you cut my head open.

This is fascinating and harrowing, but I wish it contained more detail on why the devices were removed, particularly in Rita Leggett's case. The company that made her still-functioning device no longer existed, and trial participants were "advised to have their implants removed." But then she subsequently "tried to negotiate with the company?" And was then somehow compelled to have the device removed despite not wanting to--presumably due to some unarticulated consequence of not doing so; I don't think any surgeon would perform an operation like that without the patient consenting to it. I'd like to better understand how she was compelled to consent to the removal of something she "would have done anything" to keep. That seems like a relevant facet of the discussion of medical ethics.

Agreed. I spent a long time on 4, and then solved 5 with a single word.

Turing Complete is a fabulous game. I'd never done any processor design in school, and Turing Complete had me obsessed with it for a couple of weeks.

This is a fun example of how much difference a comma can make. "How ChatGPT was built, from the people who made it" is what this article should have been titled. "How ChatGPT was built from the people who made it" means something very different.

>Of course I wasn't the first to think of it but that didn't matter, the joy is the same.

Exactly right.

When I was in undergrad physics, I signed up for the intro comp-sci course (which is recommended back then but not yet required). First we learned the basic syntax of C, and in the second unit we learned about sorting algorithms. The Prof introduced us to bubble sort, selection sort, and insertion sort, and also the idea that the efficiency of a sorting algorithm was proportional to how many comparisons it required.

Being a physics student, I knew that there were physical process, like driven granular systems, that sorted objects by size without mathematically comparing anything at all. I wondered if I could beat the efficiency of all three of the algorithms by programming the computer to do something similar, treating integers like differently-sized grains of sand.

Over the weekend I first coded an algorithm I called jostle sort that sent the unsorted integers flying across a 2D array a distance equal to their magnitude, then picked them up again from left to right, top to bottom. This worked, but slowly because it had to look at every cell of the 2D array.

Thinking about it further, I imagined tipping the 2D array up from the bottom edge, so that all the integers in a column slid into a pile in the top row. I realized I only needed the count of how many integers ended up in each column, not the columns themselves. I could just initialize a 1D array of zeroes the size of the max value to be sorted, and increment the value in index n whenever I encountered n in the unsorted array. This worked really well, easily beating the other three algorithms in the criteria we'd been asked to test on our homework assignment.

I'd invented counting sort.

I would later learn that I wasn't the first, but that didn't lessen my pleasure. It's still my favorite sorting algorithm, because of that joy of discovery.

Maybe try it with an app on the phone instead? I've been using Synology's photos app to automatically upload everything in my photos library to my NAS for a couple of months now, and it's been seamless. Other apps, like PhotoSync, seem to offer similar functionality in a platform-independent way.

Sometimes games don't do this due to genre conventions/player expectation.

In 2006 Square-Enix shipped a simple programmable system for gameplay automation with the gambit system in Final Fantasy XII. It let you put together a hierarchical list of if->then statements for how characters behaved during battle. It essentially let players "equip" a battle strategy the same way they would equip weapons or armor. This seemed like something highly desirable, since Final Fantasy (and JRPGs in general) had lots of repetitive, grind-y encounters where the tactics didn't change from battle to battle.

People hated it. The popular dismissive criticism was, "Who wants to sit and watch a game play itself?" Players were used to picking and timing all their actions by hand during battles. Many Final Fantasy players back then resented the game "taking away" something they expected and wanted in the game. (It didn't; you could turn gambits off at any time and play the old way, but players got mad anyway because the gambit system seemed like how you were "supposed" to play it.)

In the years since there's been a much more positive re-evaluation. As of the 2017 release of the remastered Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, most of the retrospective reviews had come around to "actually, the gambit system is really clever." But the initial response was so strongly negative that we've never seen the like again in a Final Fantasy game.

There are some games where things not being automated is, for many players, the whole point.

I remember reading this when it was published, as I was living in a college dorm at the time and strongly considered using this method to produce a master key. I didn't, because I couldn't think of anything I'd want to do with the master key once I had it. But I enjoyed knowing that I could make one if I'd wanted to.

Professional author here. Personally, this wouldn't be for me, at least not right now. But it may be for others, and it's neat that you built it!

Why it's not for me:

These days, the choice between self publishing and traditional publishing is really a question of what I want my job to be. If I'm willing to be a writer/editor/publicist/graphic designer/etc., then modern digital distribution means self publishing makes a lot of sense. It potentially also makes a lot of sense for people who already have largish followings, as it increases profits per sale. (People with following can also monetize those followings directly via things like Patreon, or likely your "paid subscribers" feature.)

For me, though, all I really feel comfortable doing is writing. I don't want to publicize, or format books, or cultivate a following that I can turn into patrons and monetize. I'm a slow writer, so unlikely to produce a steady enough stream of content to make a serialization/patron model viable. I also strongly dislike being on social media, which would really limit my exposure.

Being in control of publicity is empowering for some authors, but for me it would make the work harder, not easier. So I prefer traditional publishing, where my only job is to write the stories and have professional interaction with agents and editors. Self-advocacy isn't a major part of my job as an author, and I'm an author who doesn't want it to be. I'm to have (and indirectly pay) agents and editors to let me have a writing career without needing to do work I find onerous.

Best of luck to you, though. And things change, so who knows? Maybe someday something like this will be exactly what I need. I know a brilliant author who was traditionally published for decades, but has now reclaimed her rights and is self publishing to much greater satisfaction.

Both parts of this are false.

I already replied to the parent question explaining how authors of short fiction do, in fact, make money when their work is adapted.

The WGA is a union whose members pay dues based on their writing income. The guild is incentivized to maximize their membership, and to maximize the earning of those members.

I'm an associate member of the WGAw--someone who's worked in the industry, but not done enough work yet to qualify for full membership--and I've never encountered any of the exclusionary attitude you suggest.

It can vary a lot.

If a short story is made into a movie, the first step is for the production company to secure the rights to the IP. This is usually done through an options contract, wherein the writer sells the production company the exclusive but time-limited write to make a film adaptation. When their option period expires, the production company has to either renew the option for more money, or give up on the project.

How much money an option sells for depends on the profiles of both the author and the producer/studio involved. My first option contract for short fiction was $2500 for a one year exclusive option--slightly more than I made when I published the story originally. My most recent option contract was $12,500 for an 18 month exclusivity period.

Authors with large backlists can have lots of option contracts always expiring and renewing, and often have this as a meaningful income stream even if nothing ever actually gets produced.