Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG8XKamuP4Y

If you suspect staring at art has not provided the required intellectual sustenance, reflect briefly on this classical music.

[MUSIC INTERRUPTED BY BUZZER]

I managed to get through it on my old 1050ti. Laggy at some parts, but still mostly playable.

Here’s the article: https://www.science.org/content/article/ants-stilts

And here’s what I think is the official scientific paper (says free with login): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16809544/

From an article I found online:

A team led by Matthias Wittlinger, a biologist at the University of Ulm, Germany, made modifications to desert ants […]. After setting up an ant home outside the lab, the researchers let 25 ants take a 10-meter trip from their nest, then collected them. For one group, the team glued tiny stilts to the insects’ legs. For another, they clipped the legs down to stumps. And for a control group they left the legs alone. Then the researchers gave each ant a piece of food and set it free. With morsels of food in their jaws, the ants immediately headed home. If desert ants do indeed use an internal pedometer, then the modifications should mess up their calculations.

Not only did the stilted and stumpy ants not make it home, but they also misjudged their distances exactly as the researchers predicted. The ants on stilts went about 5 meters too far before stopping to search for the nest, whereas the stumpy ants stopped about 5 meters too short […] (Control ants got back home just fine.) After the modified ants were returned to the nest, they were able to go out and get back home just as accurately as normal ants, which should be the case if they’re keeping track of the number of steps.

He says what everyone’s thinking!

I would use it for like 1 game on the quest store and more portable/wireless VR on PC. Even though my Index, is superior in almost every way, an easy headset to give to a visitor would be nice.

I probably wouldn’t pay $200 for one, but if a friend was getting rid of one for $50-100 I would likely snatch it up.

Pasting the first section of the article because of the stupid anti-adblocker on Mobile:

• Shinobi Warfare’s developer is rewarding players for positive reviews, violating Steam’s terms of service agreement.
• The controversial practice was revealed by a Reddit user, leading to concerns about inauthentic reviews flooding the game.
• Despite reports to Steam support, Shinobi Warfare continues to face backlash for questionable tactics and content appropriation.

Shinobi Warfare, a 2D turn-based RPG multiplayer game, is being called out by Steam users after it was discovered that the developer has been rewarding players with in-game currency for leaving a positive review. The lucrative reward has led to the game receiving an ‘overwhelmingly positive’ review badge, but goes against the platform’s terms of service agreement.

The discovery was made by Reddit user Glavurdan, who took to the Steam subreddit yesterday to reveal their findings. The post has multiple images of the questionable practice, with the most notable being on the Shinobi Warfare Discord server, where an admin on the server offered players 1,000 in-game gems to leave a positive review.

Was hoping for more about the game takedowns, but not much of anything was said:

LP: […] how does The Pokémon Company handle Cease & Desist letters with regards to fan projects? How did you find them, and where did you draw the line on what’s allowed and what the company thinks needs to be shut down?

DM: Short answer: […] someone from the company would send me a link to a news article, or I would stumble across it myself. […] I say this to my students: the worst thing on earth is when your “fan” project gets press, because now I know about you.

LP: Oh. Oh no.

DM: But that’s not the end of the equation. You don’t send a takedown right away. You wait to see if they get funded (for a Kickstarter or similar); if they get funded then that’s when you engage. No one likes suing fans.

Anyone here remember the old flash game Junkbot?

Apparently, this is the code for a Hello World program in Malbolge:

(=<#9]~6ZY327Uv4-QsqpMn&+Ij"'E%e{Ab~w=_:]Kw%o44Uqp0/Q?xNvL:H%c#DD2^WV>gY;dts76qKJImZkj

A scrap/repair shop could probably get a few useful parts out of it. Not for $800 of course.

Don’t know much about the internals of that Mac book, but I imagine you could salvage some keyboard key parts, internal cables, ports on the side, or maybe even the ram or hard drive if it’s out of the way.

It’s a mushroom:

Mycena subcyanocephala is a species of fungus,[1] which has its habitat in the tropical parts of Taiwan. It has been spotted eight times. Mycena subcyanocephala is one of the smallest mushrooms in the world, with buttons about 1 mm tall. The species belongs to the Mycenaceae family, with Mycena interrupta being its closest relative.

From Wikipedia

Exactly. Like, how hard would it be to reverse engineer the poison and create a reversal tool that applies the exact opposite modifications. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if it could be defeated by something as simple as a little image compression or noise.

Here’s my variant of the quote:

Many of the most talented engineers of our time don’t do anything important — instead, they work on making our entertainment more immersive.

They work on better 3D renderers, more appealing shaders, faster VR hardware, better spatial sound, more powerful game engines, more immersive games, more colorful phone screens, more eye-catching app animations, etc.

The point he’s failing to understand is that all of these “useless” innovations are a part of what is pushing the edge of technological innovation. Sure, while the direct goal of each one is often entertainment, indirectly they all push the limits of a technology.

• 3D renders - I would venture to saw that there are a lot of parallels between rendering and scientific computer simulations. Especially light simulations.
• VR hardware - Ultra low latency innovations for displays, motion tracking, and wireless communications, to name a few things. All in one headsets are pushing miniaturization too.
• Game engines - This one made me laugh. Game engines affect more than just games. They push physics engines, rendering, scripting languages, 3D modeling, etc. so forward.
• Phone screens - Another knee slapper. Phones have arguably been the leading technology in the miniaturization of technology. Those better screens have influenced every device with a screen smaller than a TV.