The Stochastic Game

Here’s the nice story of ID’s “Quake Shareware” CD-ROM, which contained encrypted versions of all of ID’s games, easily unlockable with a phone call and a credit card number. Of course, a crack was available about a month later to unlock everything…

THE ORB TREE WAXES AND WANES ACROSS SEASONS

More on this “uni-context”: it’s interesting that Callard notes its rise not in recent time, but in the early 1900s. Still, I can’t help feeling that the “silo’ed” Internet of 25 years ago (forums, mailing lists, webrings, etc.) was better because it gave context. And why kids prefer Discord now.

“A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird”: Agnes Callard takes the concept of “context collapse” further and gets the “uni-context”. More and more I think maybe the Internet is a net negative for the human race (yes, me saying this here is ironic)

Slugs and snails cross trails as part of the Sacred Ordeal of the Great Dry. Making it to the other side is a mark of heroism. Being picked by the Terror Giants and carried across is a mark of divine destiny.

Good morning, from the fluffy good boy.

There are a couple days left on the European Commission’s public consultation on genAI for the “cultural and creative sectors”. You can provide feedback even if you’re not a EU citizen.

Google refuses to play embedded YouTube videos because I didn’t consent to targeted advertisement cookies. Fine. But give me a link to the video, then, you fucking ghouls. This is such an obvious dark pattern it’s quite pathetic.

“Aardman Is Selling Its Original Movie Puppets This Month”: the prices are petty high, so only look at the auction website if you (A) have a whole lot of money to spare or (B) are ready to be sad.

The UN has voted for phasing out the Mercator projection in favour of the Equal-Earth projection. The resolution passed 164 to 1 with 6 abstentions. I’ll let you guess which country voted against.