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We are going to kill “unalive”
Just to recap for the olds: “unalive” is the word you use to represent concepts like dying, or death, or killing or being killed, on digital platforms where saying those words accurately will cause the algorithm to punish or censor you.
Algorithms are bleeding into the real world, dictating how people talk even offline. Terrible things happen sometimes, and using silly euphemisms like “grape” or “unalive” is so odd and obnoxious.
Bluesky is applying for a TLD:
A little scoop before Oct 7, when ICANN publishes 1,000+ applications for new top-level domains: one of them is .bsky! It’s a long road (18 to 24 months), but if it goes through, handles like alice.bsky become possible.
Casio’s Crystal G-Shock Is the Most Expensive Ever Made
The flagship model, and by far the most expensive, is the $80,000 MRG-D5000, the first-ever retail G-Shock with an outer case and bezel hewn entirely from blue sapphire crystal.
I like G-Shocks, but this is a little excessive 👀
We ported the original Doom to SQL
We ported the original 1993 Doom’s game logic and renderer to SQL and ran it inside a database. The game loop runs at the original 35 FPS, while the renderer produces the complete 320x200 frame buffer at up to 60 Hz on my Laptop.
Google Wants to Send Data Centers to Space
In space, these energy monsters can take full advantage of the sun. The near-constant sunlight there can provide up to eight times more solar power than on Earth, according to the statement.
Seems like a much better place than Earth.
Cobalt: I Put Bluesky on a Wii U
Cobalt didn’t start with a product brief or a market analysis. I wasn’t trying to solve an important problem. I looked at a Wii U and thought it would be funny if Bluesky ran on it, then I started building it.
Down for the cause. It’s like the more useful version of running Doom on an iPod or some other weird obscure tech.
In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others.
I’m not religious, so I don’t tend to care what the Pope has to say most of the time, but I agree with him here. At least when it comes to art. I might snap if I see another generic AI flyer for a company outing.
Coding, on the other hand…
Former Rockstar dev believes Grand Theft Auto VI on Switch 2 wouldn’t ‘even make sense’
Does it make sense for you to go out of your way to probably have the risk of delivering a subpar experience because it does not run exactly the same and so on while you know that anybody will buy a PS5 to get your game?”
As someone whose favorite console is the Switch, I agree. Nintendo has always been my favorite game company, but even Minecraft is virtually unplayable on Switch. I’m assuming it runs a little better on Switch 2, but GTA VI is a behemoth compared to anything Nintendo has ever put out.
ModRetro Partners With OpenAI To Help “You” Make… AI Retro Games?
Most people, especially retro gamers, do not want to buy or experience AI-generated games that steal from the very creatives that make retro gaming so damn good. We want to experience new, remarkable games, made by humans who have genuine passion for game development, and I am disappointed to see ModRetro put so much marketing and effort into promoting a tool/partnership that goes against their very core demographic’s values.
ModRetro founder/owner Palmer Luckey is pretty much the Alex Karp of retro gaming already, so this isn’t that surprising.
1996 chat room simulator connected to Win95 and System 7 web desktops
A zero-account browser chat room mimicking mid-90s online services. The state runs on Upstash Redis and is shared across three different frontends (React/Vite deployed on Vercel): * The standalone chat interface (https://lolchat.rip) * A Windows 95 simulator (https://56k.rip) * A Mac System 7 simulator (https://dialup.rip) Users dialing in from the Mac desktop and users on the Win95 machine end up in the exact same rooms talking to each other.
Hits all those nostalgic early web buttons, right down to the dial-up modem sound when you’re connecting.