DrEvilBrain

Relevant news post from DBG I'm not sure what you guys would think of this, but I've played Planetside 2 since the beta and picked up the first game when it first went free to play. It's a far cry from what PS2 became with way more variety of vehicles and cool factional differences. Hopefully the game spikes in activity before it officially dies off. PlanetsideForever is trying to at least preserve the game and they seem to be able to do account creation and character creation so far.

Crazy beats status quo any day... It'll either shock people into action, or fix the massive problems we already have. Of course if we really want a shitstorm we can bring out the CLASS CONSCIOUS WORKERS into FULL REVOLUTION.

Keep in mind the United States has not actually declared war through Congress since WWII.

Arch Linux is fun, but hard to get into for most people. Stuff like Debian and Linux Mint work well for people trying to learn, but most of the time its hard to teach someone how to adjust to the terminal. Most people are just too use to simple GUIs that do pretty much everything for them, but with some practice things are way easier and faster with commands. The Linux community recognizes this so they're perpetually stuck in a position where they just make software reliant on the terminal. It makes it harder for people to get into. The two hardest steps into transitioning to Linux is picking a distro and then learning terminal commands.

While this is important, I think making movies out of games takes a step in the wrong direction rather than pushing out things like esports or streaming. Games are great because there is no real set narrative because play interaction changes experiences. Games as a social gathering deliver different, unique narratives to many people. The issue with movies is that its a static experience. Of course the obvious argument would be that walking simulators would also give a fairly static experience, but I would argue that the experience is still altered by having player control whereas a movie is guided by some director.

I went and saw Iron Maiden live recently and have been listening to a lot of Book of Souls because of that. Empire of the Clouds is like a spiritual journey.

Personal boycotts are important for ideological reasons like any other boycott, but they won't make any impact on changing the issue, which is also kinda the point of a boycott. It doesn't mean we should not have personal boycotts, but at the same time we can't completely rely them for effective protest.

The best kind of distraction squads are a mix of Light Assault C4 fairies, suicide tank mine Engineers, and Wraith cloaked SMG Infiltrators. Add in a bit of coordination via VOIP and you get a deadly combo capable of stopping any attack.

Application is for defensive and recreational (fire range) purposes, and the specific firearm is a Beretta M9 vs a Glock 17. Basically comparing the handguns of Half-Life against one another (Glock without HD pack, Beretta with HD pack). This stuff is almost always just personal preference. Though I would much prefer a 92FS over a Glock 17, there's nothing wrong with preferring a Glock even if they look like dumb plastic squares.

Perhaps there is a limit as to where we should be augmenting ourselves, but I think that's more of an individual personal issue than anything else. Its your body and only you have the responsibility to take care for it. With something as controversial as implants I'm sure many politicians and the media will be scrutinizing it as evil and dangerous, citing books and movies that foresaw this kind of thing. Most people will probably have to agree since this fear of robots and AI have been so prevalent in pop culture. Most likely, legislation is going to try to limit these kinds of things if possible, citing it as a public danger. Regardless, I still think that implants and at the very least wearables are going to be prevalent within the next 20 years. Some transhumanists are already implanting LED lights, neodymium magnets, and RFID chips into themselves. In many ways you could argue that we're using smartphones to augment ourselves already, they just aren't attached to our bodies necessarily. One thing that is almost certain is that there will be, at least early on, a division between people who can afford implants and those who can't. Deus Ex Human Revolution dealt with this and Mankind Divided is probably going to be entirely rotated around this idea. Its hypocritical of me to be citing a fictional work, but its definitely something that makes sense. Implants can make you intrinsically better than a normal human at the cost of money. Of course early implants would be costly, similar to early adopter computer parts. The difference is that instead of giving our computers better processing power or more efficiency, we're giving ourselves more power and efficiency. There's a clear difference between someone who is augmented and who is not, though it doesn't have to be through appearance early on.

Maybe its because of how much I'm influenced by cyberpunk, but wearables are becoming adopted now and soon implants are going to be common. I think saying that augmenting ourselves with technology would make ourselves less human is silly and is propagated mainly by fiction. Of course, we don't have any concrete proof that implants would make us act strangely. In the same way, we don't have any evidence that AI would act any differently. Think of it like a wild animal. AI and animals have inherent behaviors that are ingrained into them whether it be by a programmer or genetics. They both can grow and expand and learn over time and they can be domesticated. Right now, animals are starting to gain rights, human rights. Once AI is gets to the point of being lifelike, they'll probably gain human rights too, most likely encouraged by corporations that don't want to be responsible for any end user experiences from their products. Perhaps they will be integrated and live within society and you can take that to whatever Blade Runner scenario you want. Alternatively machines could be out to get us, but what's the difference between that and a living being? Having no conscience? Being more efficient? But couldn't I just make a machine that will pull the trigger on a gun whenever it detects any motion? It all comes down to the programming and perhaps the real scare is having the ability to create life. I love talking about this kind of stuff and would like to hear different opinions. Obviously I'm quite biased towards futurism, but hey maybe we have some primitivist advocates here or something.

Uplink is a pretty solid game. I would also check out Hacknet if you haven't already.

Tape

I listen to this music so much. Its a real shame that the game is dead though.

I'm DrEvilBrain, the idiot that plays video games, talks about cyberpunk, and watches anime. I'm bad at programming and math but I like doing it anyways. Feel free to talk to me about everything and anything.