Today I heard two negative cases from a friend interacting her clients. The first client replied to her emails by sending ChatGPT logs, apparently unable to communicate on his own. The second believed a ChatGPT hallucination that he was entitled to a special Amazon business account. She had to explain to him that ChatGPT will tell him convincing bullshit, which was news to him. One can only wonder what terrible choices and wrong beliefs he had made up until the moment of enlightenment.
MUDs taught about the real world from the confines of my bedroom. As a teenager I was giving responsibility through my guild and had to negotiate with adults from all around the world.
My main MUD was Discworld MUD which was started in 1991. I can't describe the excitement I felt on finding a game where the world continued when I was offline. Where I could go to make friends with the thrill of also making enemies.
It was the perfect place to escape to, which taught me about addiction and many aspects of myself.
My character is still alive after 20 something years and if I feel like logging in I'm sure there will be friendly faces who remember me.
Oh, no, it was highly addictive. Socialization and safety at the same time? Interacting with grownups but nobody knows you're a dog? You can actually be good at something and get recognition for it without being judged by your physical age? Massively, massively powerful.
I managed to keep my IRL grades above failing, but as far as I was concerned they were no longer relevant, the people in the MUD were what mattered.
similar story although I can't remember the name of the MUD anymore. Nor much of the game for that fact. I do remember flee was an important concept and action early on when you started out. What did matter and stay was exactly what you said - there's this living and breathing world even when I'm not in it, live people and what's today knows as NPCs.. you could do something with people online interactively together and it wasn't talk/ytalk or IRC.
You should login and have a wander again. I've done the same recently, and it still has the same community / tone, a small relic of what the internet used to be!
I think I visited Grimne maybe 10 years ago? Some players were connected but all of them were running on automation scripts, i.e. no actual humans to talk to. There was an occasional admin popping in.
The feeling was eerie, like walking around an empty museum of your own past :)
It is eye opening remaining friends with people who's views and actions are completely opposed to ones own. There's no point attempting to educate them (often it makes them go harder against you). But by finding out about their lives and understanding where fear has replaced love one can learn a lot. And hopefully use that knowledge to find ways to speak out and create a society that aligns with ones ethics.
It’s incredible to see what can be achieved with very few lines of code to produce visuals and sound. It’s often pretty easy to know who the demoscene is made by because of the artistic style. Similar to more traditional art forms.
For several years I struggled to learn GIMP and other FOSS creative tools. That was until I finally stopped my Adobe subscription and had no choice to learn. AI has made the process much easier too, no need to read documentation or look at a video to find the tool or technique.
Thanks for sharing that insight. When I read the original comment I felt like I was an outlier for thinking how beneficial I’ve found social media on a personal level. If used with intention then there’s a wealth of learning and knowledge that the algorithms help deliver.
Of course there are many people who use social media purely for distraction. Which if used chronically is going to have an overwhelming negative impact.
In social media’s current for profit model it benefits from negatively impacting people. Which is a shame given if it wanted to, it could focus on the wellbeing of all its users.
An example I can give is the Reddit app that used to give a warning if a user used it for over a certain amount of time. These days it encourages it’s users to stay engaged with badges.
I get your dislike of Brexit (and such sentiments get votes on HN) but this isn’t ‘friction because of Brexit’ - a post Brexit government could choose to not do this at all, or choose to implement something better.
It’s just an implementation of a crappy idea by a crappy government.
Setting aside Brexit itself, the government currently in power were elected partly on promises to cut such friction, not increase it.
But yeah, it's a crappy, incompetent government who are currently announcing all kinds of badly thought out populist ideas to distract attention from the trouble their leader is in.
I admire you diligence with cutting down features to hit the self imposed deadline.
I've been ferociously learning game dev and have allowed myself unlimited time to jump down rabbit holes. Now that I'm actually building a game I need to remind myself to just build it with what I know.
It's an interesting switch in mind set. Still learning obviously, only now I'm pulling together knowledge buried deep within rather than from tutorials.
I'll keep in mind scope and remember your inspiring diligence next time I'm tempted to peek in a rabbit hole.
