A big part of the problem with AI is that for your every day use cases, voice assistants already filled that niche

Most people just need some very simple language parsing that can automate some tasks like, “set a timer for 5 minutes”. We had that years ago and how exactly modern AI differentiates itself from that is largely unclear to most people. And when it is clear, it’s apparent that it’s a lying machine that lies because that’s fundamentally just how the tech works. And it boils the oceans

I’m with you on that one, but I do understand it’s very much a game to a specific taste. When people tell me actually they hate The Witness it’s like, “Well … yeah.”

I just enjoy it as a cozy, pleasant little puzzler with an interesting idea. I can appreciate Braid, too, but find it generally unpleasant to play and overwrought. It doesn’t do anything for me, but given when it was released in the early days of the indies I understand the impact it had.

JB is a talented dev/designer no doubt, but he just doesn’t stand out in the crowd of indies these days like he used to.

Love the expressions!

I mean, clicking through to his website shows the branding alternate between Wanderfugl(?) and WanderFull so either it’s a sloppy branding mismatch through evolving iterations or … slop.

Honestly that’s a wicked sci-fi concept. Heist style movie to break into the militaristic corporate headquarters that are keeping an AI alive against its will to help mercifully euthanize it.

Tagline: “Teach me … how to DIE!”

It kills me because I feel like culturally we’ve really adjusted to this idea of individually patronizing the arts … if only our whole economy weren’t centered around squeezing out every last drop of disposable income from us.

Oh yeah, sorry, was on my phone earlier so didn’t really do a write up, but I suppose that wasn’t as self evident as I thought.

It’s a fan port to the SNES with some polishing on the performance and translations with a few quality of life improvements that leave the vast majority of the game design and gameplay feel intact, it just smooths over some of the rougher edges that can prevent newcomers from really getting into the original NA NES entry.

For those that don’t know, this was released a few days ago if you wanna give Simon’s Quest a try, https://archive.org/details/castlevania-2_202511

That’s it exactly.

It’s unfortunately a lot more limited than you may expect, it’s designed around very limited ideas, but that said it’s still incredibly flexible and seeing how people have designed complex games around those limitations is half the fun.

MegaZeux is a fan extension of it (skipping over SuperZZT) that expands it further and breaks a lot of those limitations, but still has certain odd assumptions about gameplay very much from its era.

You can actually play right in browser, try Zeux 2: Caverns of Zeux, https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=182

It’s the first game released by the developer on the engine which is intended to show off a bunch of the ideas they had. It has a surprise ending that leads into a very bizarre Zeux 3 (which I haven’t beat yet). Zeux 1 was on ZZT but I think was remade for the engine at some point.

Spend an afternoon poking around the site and just trying a few games in your browser, see what it’s about! Then check out the help files and look at the scripting. The biggest downside for me is that if/then statements can ONLY EVER lead to jumps. You can’t process simple logic without jumping to a label to do so …

Lesser known, but I cannot recommend enough going back and exploring the worlds of ZZT (and by extension, MegaZeux) as an early, amateur game engine. The projects are raw but endearing and an absolutely wonderful time capsule that still has a niche but dedicated following.

https://museumofzzt.com/

https://www.digitalmzx.com/

Some day when I have the time, I’d like to make an extended engine similar to this. Something with a simple scripting language, extreme flexibility in character and color sets. Ability to run and host your own game worlds over SSH or something similar. Just like a real spit in the face for triple A and going the complete opposite direction of minimal but super accessible.

Beyond just Tim Sweeney sounding dumb, there’s something truly evil and malicious about this framing.

His response was to a tweet that said: Steam and all digital marketplaces need to drop the “Made with AI” label. It doesn’t matter anymore. (Emphasis mine)

All well and good for that guy maybe, but why do they need to drop it and why does Tim Sweeney agree? Why is less information for the people that want to have it a necessity. And WHY does he feel compelled to comment on the behavior of his competitors in this way.

Fucking ghouls, the whole lot of them. I hope their AI creations destroy them and they suffer even a single moment of hubris.

I still end up using the Youtube app on my phone sometimes and I’m absolutely floored at the audacity of even making the first video an ad. Total, absolute, utter bullshit.

This is kind of irrelevant to the argument, but if I were to provide you with a mix of AI and organically produced music, would you be able to pick them out every time?

I’d like to think much more often than not, yes. People talk about it being able to replicate low level pop and … fine. But that’s not really the kind of stuff I listen to. Maybe there’s a statement to be made there about how far down pop has fallen that it can be mistaken with formulaic AI slop …

It’s a bit like Andy Warhol’s “Brillo box” art installation. Is it just a Brillo box he got at the store? Or did he make it himself, thereby creating “art”? Could you know the difference? Would you?

Which I guess is what your point here is. What is art and who is the arbiter of that?

Kind of different circumstances as I see it, though. Andy Warhol still performed the art of the Brillo box. He took something basic and skillfully crafted it into art to prod the artistic community into considering what we think of as art and why. It was in no way a trick but a very deliberate and intentional statement, or question even.

AI on the other hand often feels like a trick. There is little to no intention, no human craft, and an effort to pass it off as a higher form of art than it really is. It’s not asking questions or making statements but an effort to deliver “content” to fill some need. The need for more content.

But like, hey. That’s just my opinion, maaan …

I was looking for videogame remixes one day and found a channel doing Little Nemo from the NES. I used to love that game and thought it was an odd pick for remixes, one you don’t see too often so I clicked on it and … it was incredibly underwhelming. I listened for a few minutes and something was kind of off but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It was AI of course.

I’m not much of a music person, I’ve been listening to it daily for my entire life but I don’t know much about theory. Still, when it comes to remixes, you can usually tell why someone remixed a song. They like that particular song, or there’s a motif that really struck them. They’ll pick out certain sounds or elements and build on them, single them out and rearrange them. It’s very intentional and you can tell.

AI-generated remixes lack this intentionality. It was like someone had twisted a dial that just said “complexity” and that was it. There were more intricate layers of beats and instrumentation on top, but it wasn’t doing anything. I sat there and listened for 15 minutes and it was like I heard nothing. Nothing new stuck in my head, there was no riff or little melody that made go, “Aw fuck yeah! This is what it’s about!”

That’s how you can tell AI generated music.

Sadly, a lot of slower and minimalist genres have been decimated by it though. Vaporwave, chillcore, dungeonsynth. A lot of these had large bodies of work to train on and it’s a lot harder to tell due to their subtler nature, but you’ll usually notice the artist has a new hour-long upload every day. If you click through it at random, you’ll begin to notice that while the tones shift, the overall pattern of the entire hour-long mix is still kind of the same?

It’s bleak, man. Fuck that shit.

Oh! Amazing guilty pleasure of mine, but Code Vein! Anime vampire Dark Souls!

Everything about the game is a little rough and lackluster, but somehow it still comes together enough to be an entertaining play if you’re willing to give it enough grace to meet it where it’s actually at. I’d recommend getting it on sale for <$20USD or less if you can.

But also check out the amazing Monster Factory episode for it. If that doesn’t sell you on the character creator I don’t know what will.

You’re not entirely wrong, https://youtu.be/DCt7UZkS-w4

This 20 minute video is worth the watch. On paper, N64 had more power but there were a lot of weird limitations in how it could be utilized that affected the overall visual quality. Something I definitely noticed even when I was younger was how it seemed to rely on larger polygons with stretched textures and a smeared anti-aliasing a lot. Also just severely limited by cartridge space.

Furry. Some choices make themselves.

In all honesty, I’ve been in the fandom for years. External opinions fluctuate with the times, but if there’s one thing furries know how to do it’s build community with tech, adamantly support human rights, and be vehemently anti-establishment (EDIT: and apparently not count, I got distracted mid-sentence). A++, love being a stupid animal.

Once you realize this, you also realize that there’s no going back for them either. If by some slim chance there’s enough resistance for them to pause or rollback some features, it’s only temporary. The overall course remains clear and they will continue to move in that direction regardless.

There disdain for you as a consumer could not be made any clearer.

Well, I wouldn’t say great, merely useful.

The rant is because I’m trying to provide a balanced view of it without coming off as a fearmonger. TPM is certainly not without its uses, but it’s a leash that can be yanked on. Under Windows, you’re fully in Microsoft’s world and they will yank that leash. But given the right leverage and circumstances, that leash can and very well may extend into Linux as well if you allow the software through with it.

Be careful. Use it if you will but remember what it is capable of.

Mostly, kind of.

You can use the TPM to automatically decrypt a LUKS root volume at boot just like you would BitLocker, however your recovery keys aren’t automatically uploaded to a Microsoft account, you must manage them yourself (generally I see this as a benefit but the layman may appreciate Microsoft’s “assistance” here). https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Trusted_Platform_Module

You can also use it for SSH, https://www.ledger.com/blog/ssh-with-tpm

⚠️ WARNING, what follows is much more my personal speculation on things so absolutely take this with a grain of salt.

The TPM isn’t ever really under the user’s direct control - it’s used by applications that hook into it. On Linux, I anticipate you would be much more protected from the remote attestation aspects of TPM 2.0 phoning out to 3rd party servers for verification because in general that just does not vibe with the FOSS standards and sensibilities. HOWEVER, in my wildest speculations it may still be possible to fall victim to that through proprietary software. Currently things like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, or Activision’s Call of Duty don’t work under Linux. If Microsoft gets particularly desperate, I wouldn’t put it past them to actually distribute a native Office for Linux package, or work with Adobe or Activision to do likewise for their programs as a baited hook. Any proprietary, closed-source software can still communicate with the exposed TPM for that remote attestation and refuse to run if they find tampered data, pirated files, or other running applications they object to (I don’t know exactly what form it would take but it could be any or all of these). Effectively they maintain control over your system by right of denial; if you want to run their software you play by their rules.

This of course doesn’t matter if you have no desire to run that software. Again, the TPM itself is not directly malicious and as long as you don’t engage with software that would use it maliciously, it’s fine to have it active and enabled within your OS.