sbv @ sbv @sh.itjust.works

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Every device should sing its own song. Maybe if you start them together they can form a chorus? Like some sort of appliance band.

Being able to plug in a notification device would be awesome.

Yes

I'm not sure where whimsy fits into that list, but my dishwasher plays a little victory tune when it finishes washing. It sounds like something from an early 90s jrpg. It makes me smile every time I hear it.

"I did mention to [investigators] that I was very happy to see them and glad that they were canvassing a little further and looking at trail cam footage," Scott told CBC News in an interview Wednesday outside her home.

"They did respond saying they probably should have been around earlier."

Ugh.

if you put the exact same person in the exact same situation (a perfect to the molecular level) they will behave differently.

I don't consider that relevant to sentience. Structurally, biological systems change based on inputs. LLMs cannot. I consider that plasticity to be a prerequisite to sentience. Others may not.

We will undoubtedly see systems that can incorporate some kind of learning and mutability into LLMs. Re-evaluating after that would make sense.

An LLM is a deterministic function that produces the same output for a given input - I'm using "deterministic" in the computer science sense. In practice, there is some output variability due to race conditions in pipelined processing and floating point arithmetic, that are allowable because they speed up computation. End users see variability because of pre-processing of the prompt and extra information LLM vendors inject when running the function, as well as how the outputs are selected.

I have a hard time considering something that has an immutable state as sentient, but since there's no real definition of sentience, that's a personal decision.

Does that mean desktop mode will be available by default? Some of the earlier reporting said it was hidden behind flags and may never see general release.

I use a stationary bike in front of a TV. My brain is off anyway, so I might as well put my body to work.

Another alternative is to find a sport that you enjoy, or a social group that makes the activity enjoyable.

It was no accident.

"Recent legal developments in Canada have introduced, kind of, new considerations around how net-zero commitments are interpreted, so that's caused us to change a little bit how we talk about it, but nothing's changed on what we're actually doing."

I wonder if buddy intended his statement to have that double meaning.

The comments by Graham came as the fund reported a net return of 9.3 per cent for its latest fiscal year, falling short of its benchmark portfolios' return of 10.9 per cent.

clearly the net zero commitment was the cause /s

Thanks for the response.

I think we're talking about a few different things. My grumpiness about the meme is that it equates the rule of cool with good GMing. GMs do a lot of stuff to try and make their games more fun - I listed a few of them above. The rule of cool has its place, but using it doesn't make a GM good or a game fun.

Now, I think we're talking about different things for the rule of cool:

Best example I can think of is of a friend playing a game where the party was descending down a long pipe. It was low enough that you couldn’t stand up tall but tall enough that you had to crouch only to an extent. Most people slid down on their ass. My friend asked if he could slide down on his shield and the DM said no. There was no reason for saying no other than to stick to an incredibly strict set of rules that were pre-built.

From what you described, I disagree with the DM's call. D&D's rules don't disallow sliding down pipes on shields. Shield sliding is allowed by the rules. We play TTRPGs for this kind of wackiness. What I consider the rule of cool doesn't come into play here, since there are no rules bent or broken. From what you said, it just seems to be an unfun restrictive call.

When I think of the rule of cool, I'm thinking of allowing actions that significantly depart from the rules of game, balanced against how significantly it changes an outcome. Sliding down a pipe on a shield is not that - shield sliding is totally within the rules, and yes, it should lead to the complications you describe because that's where the fun is. I haven't read the DM manual in a while, but I think it's the first place that I read PC actions should generally be allowed and they should trigger consequences.

So yeah, if I were you, I'd be annoyed with the DM, because they disallowed an action that is totally allowed by the rules. In my mind, rule of cool doesn't come into it.

Totally reasonable rule of cool actions would be stuff like

• a player saying they want to use more than the allowed number of actions per turn to kill the BBEG. If the enemy is basically dead anyway, or combat has turned into a slog (and the PCs are winning), then it doesn't really change the outcome, so the PC should totally be allowed to do it. I'd be less likely to say yes at the start of combat with a BBEG unless the player has a mechanical reason (which means it isn't rule of cool, it's a well prepared PC).
• a player changing an NPC's mind about an issue by doing something awesome or ridiculous. A barbarian can convince a hostile lordling/ladying to sleep with them by using a feat of strength? Sure, that bends how D&D5e suggests aggression/friendliness works, but if it doesn't alter the plot, go for it. If it would make a story arc less fun, then no.

IMO unreasonable rule of cool actions change outcomes for the worse. Stuff like a player wants a one-off at the start of a fight where they use more than the allotted number of actions, and one-shot the BBEG - the same situation above, but with a significant consequence of preventing a dramatic fight. I'd say that changes the rules that the players (including the DM) have agreed upon when they started playing, and it doesn't add any fun. I'd be happy to homebrew a similar effect with balanced consequences out of that moment in the game, but that kind of one off is a bad use of the rule of cool.

Have their vaccination rates fallen, or were they never all that well-vaccinated but were guarded by herd immunity amongst local non-Mennonites

IIRC, previous CBC reporting indicated that the current Ontario outbreak is due to a bunch of people who travelled to NB for a wedding, which included guests from outside Canada, who had measles. It sounds like Mennonites are maintaining their longstanding anti-vax behaviour, but, in this case, they mixed with a population who had measles.

Canada has an anti-vaccination problem. It’s wiiiiiild how quickly the alt-right in the US (and the big money, mainstream media, and social media amplifying them) have normalized unintelligent, selfish, anti-civilization behaviour like being anti-vaccination.

The implication from the podcast is that the specific measles outbreak in southern Ontario is not due to new anti-vax behaviour, but previous anti-vax behaviour that has been around for decades. I generally agree with your statement, but it sounds like that wasn't the cause for this outbreak.

Doh! Thanks! I'll update the link.

FWIW the link you provided has text for me on desktop.

Those are reasonable points, but I'd prefer not to be told what I think ("You seem to think rule of cool is perpetual and nonstop"), how I feel ("you ... being upset by it"), or understand ("things you don't understand").

It's possible to have a fun discussion about a hobby we share without being unpleasant, so I'm going to assume you just want a friendly chat, and respond as if that comment was respectful.

The original meme tied the rule of cool to being a good GM. I don't think that's sensible. There are lots of ways for everyone at the table to have fun contributing to the story - one of them is the rule of cool.

But there are many other ways for players to contribute, I enjoy using them as a player and a GM, so I listed some. They can be used in lots of scenarios where the rule of cool isn't applicable, and they contribute to fun.

Yeah, no.

Giving players carte blanche to warp the world whenever the GM feels like it is lame. If it's part of the system, great. If not, you're playing favourites.

I'd prefer using the system to involve players in the narrative. Stuff I've done:

• When creating ambushes, the players draw the battlemap.
• In Cyberpunk RED, a Rockerboy can use their influence to convince followers to do stuff. I ask my Rockerboy to describe their followers.
• I ask my players to create locations and NPCs that aren't part of my planned sessions (or integral to the current arc).
• I use player backstories and interactions with NPCs to create or add story arcs.
• I've ported flashbacks from Blades in the Dark into other systems.

Bending the rules when it doesn't change the world is fine. A constant stream of "meh, why not? Fine by me." seems kind of lame.

C'MON YOU FUCKERS! YOU CAN DO IT! BLOW AWAY WAR!

always with the metagaming...