• 23 Posts
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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: October 21st, 2025

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  • Ah, gotcha. It definitely takes awhile to get a hang of.

    If you are intested in some tips, one method I use is to to find all the 1-space paths and block them. From there I can kind of see where the best areas to fence off are.

    Another method I use, is to make the smallest fenced area to start and then expand from there to the best looking areas (see method one).

    Combining those methods will usually get me at least silver, usually gold or perfect, though.




  • Apparently I like War, Mystery, and Comedy. List:

    • Andor: Is great, even if you aren’t a Star Wars fan. Each 3 episode arc is better than the last. Only planned as 1 season, but did so well they made a Season 2 and Season 2 is better. You can use Rogue One as a cap to the series.

    • Veronica Mars: watched all of it for the first time this year. It holds up 20+ years later.

    • Ted Lasso: Comedy about a college American Football coach coaching English Football/soccer.

    • The Good Place: Strangely a philosophy heavy comedy. It slows in places, but is absolutely worth watching.

    • Schmitt’s Creek: Comedy about unlikeable rich people becoming poor. It takes a bit to start, but each season is better than the last and nails the landing.

    Possibles:

    • Altered Carbon (Season 1): Great murder mystery set in a cyberpunk, dystopian future.

    • Shogun: Medieval Japan samurai “game of thrones”-esk show. Only planned as 1 season, but did so well they are making a Season 2.

    • Band of Brothers: War show about American rangers in WW2.





  • I really enjoyed it when it was airing. I don’t know if I’d enjoy a rewatch today, because the writing is rough in several places.

    I feel its kind of similar to agents of shield where they outlived their original plan and had to adapt and come up with new plot arcs (and I think it shows, in both series). Though, I think their forced adaptions created some of the best new and interesting sci-fi concept explorations to come to TV for a while.

    I’m also a sucker for “then it got worse” type shows, where the characters are struggling and doing their best to improve their situation, but every step forward is followed by being pushed a couple steps back through no fault of their own.

    All that being said, I like S2 of The 100 best. S1 of the show is probably up there, starting after

    Tap for spoiler

    Wells is murdered

    . I think once that happens, its clear this is not a typical CW show.



  • Yes, but I’m not sure it will be to the same extent.

    I think gamifying the setup leads to internal competition that will push them harder to make sure there is evidence of their results. That may have them make questionable decisions that they wouldn’t otherwise, if they didn’t need the evidence dog their efforts.

    Additionally, I suspect the public points system cuts back on disgruntled-ness, as units can easily see how they compare to others. It also allows them to see who to talk to, to see how to improve their results.

    So, pros and cons to the gamification, but I think the pros are going to win out. I doubt that’s a good thing though…


  • I really don’t like the idea of game-ifying war and I agree with your critiques and think you bring up a good point about non-pointed aspects of the military could potentially become ignored.

    That being said, I think the system is here to stay and will be implemented worldwide. I think the system reduces/prevents/solves a couple major issues.

    The first being: pics or it didn’t happen, prevents false reporting up the chain of command. Allows for actually well performing soldiers being promoted (with a paper trail) rather than those who only claim to be. Also allows higher ups to make war plans based on real, not falsified Intel. My understanding is Russia has a massive issue with this, but all/most former Soviet-bloc countries struggle with this more than average.

    Another aspect is quick feedback/iteration on weapons and systems by users is a major improvement in my eyes. Instead of a soldier having to blindly use whatever they are given, they can make the choice that’s best for them. This allows real end users to talk amongst themselves to find the best options.

    A third point kind of overlaps with the others, analytics. With all the accurate information going into the system and getting real feedback from soldiers, better analysis of situations and events can be achieved. This can allow for better future planning and strategizing, as they have more accurate data to work from and the data doesn’t lose accuracy playing ‘telephone’ up the chain of command.

    Something I just thought of is its potential effect on morale. I can imagine there are many situations where soldiers may feel they are being overlooked by higher ups. With a point system they have direct feedback on how they are doing and how it relates to other units (potentially reduce disgruntled-ness). Also, maybe it could expand to nonmilitary “luxury” items. For example, unit is defending a bunker for months, it sucks, but they almost have enough “points” to get their unit a console to play in their downtime (improving morale).

    I feel like you are definitely right about losing non-measured aspects. I think there will definitely be many iterations on this system and they will eventually, at least partially, be able to get those aspects into the ‘analysis’.

    To your question about units not getting enough support, my understanding was the rewards system is on top a base level of support. Which I’m sure still allows for “winners” (more effective units) to keep winning and “losers” (less effective units) to still struggle much more, but I think the system is going to be better than the previous system.




  • I can verify that I’ve read about Ukraine developing and using “AI vision” for UAVs for a while.

    You may recall articles mentioning operators selecting targets outside of electronic warfare (EW) and then triggering the “AI”, which would head for the target. Once the UAV hits the EW, the “AI vision” (mission learning) takes it all the way, making EW generally ineffective.

    I agree with you that LLM are slop and garbage. I don’t think that is the “AI” Ukraine is using. I think it is more akin to video game AI, which is just well designed logic (“AI”) that controls non-player allies/enemies/environment/economy/etc.

    If tasks are well defined and repeatable they can be logiced away (“AI-ed”). A not particularly related example of what this could look like is weekly posts I make about fediverse software.

    I gather the data from sources and then do analysis on them to get insights/takeaways from the data. I could do this by hand/spreadsheet, but that would be annoying and time consuming. I didn’t use LLMs, but I could/am arguing that the code I developed is artificial intelligence (AI, in the vein of video game AI) that automates a well defined and repetitive task.

    I hope/expect this is the “AI” Ukraine is developing. If you want to check out what I mean about my post examples, you can head to !fedilytics@piefed.zip / https://piefed.zip/c/fedilytics.

    Edit: fixed spelling.