There was a subset of us “old” 90s nerds who failed to take certain elements among us who would be: 1. Enriched an empowered by having the right skillset at the right place and time to achieve fortunes (and by direct purchase) political power unrivaled since the Gilded Age and 2. Still traumatized by not being at the cool kids table in middle school, never emotionally progress past being 12 year old boys

We didn’t need the bullies and autocrats to discover technology. They were among us the whole time. We just didn’t take them seriously.

Lots of finance people from an earlier era ended up there from the movie Wall Street which is hilarious since it was not intended as something glorifying the sector

To be fair, Jurassic Park also doesn’t present cloning dinosaurs as a safe career path.

Nothing gave me an intuition for assembly like TIS-100

I have a nice print copy of the Shenzhen IO manual. I love those games so much, and agree that they're actually not a half bad way to get started with assembly!

After trying the Vision Pro at an Apple Store I’m more convinced than ever that immersive VR entertainment is the future. I have no doubt we will need high end graphics arms races for a while more.

I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3. I remember being very proud of winning BG1 without looking up hints. Now I find myself on the wiki. Why? I’m almost 50. I’ve got kids, businesses, life, etc… I can’t play a game for hours on end of immersion every night. I get to game in an hour here hour there slices through the week. If I spent 8 of those slices looking for some random nugget instead of moving the story forward there is no way I’d keep playing. I have no illusions that I’m “beating” the game organically but I’m having fun immersed in a fantasy world and having fun is the only point here.

PS - if you aren’t playing BG3 - this game is fantastic and a worthy heir to the BG 1/2 standard

The thing is, I'd be glad of this sort of thing in-game which could be sought out at need (go to Elminster) or turned on/off (map guide arrow).

I'm about 3 personal projects and 2 side jobs and 1 computer generation too far behind to play BG3 --- positive reports such as yours make me regret that, but I also worry about disturbing my pleasant memories of resolving a crisis and ensuring the best endings for my various companions....

I've been playing BG3 for over a year now and it breaks pretty much all the rules in the accepted answer. There are puzzles that are only skippable with non-obvious cheesing. In-game knowledge is heavily relied upon. The quest journal is overly vague (and buggy sometimes). Item and spell descriptions are good at least, but many of those come from D&D anyway.

The absolute worst offender is "Don't give choices with unexpected or unclear outcomes". Almost every decision has unclear outcomes, some with devastating consequences on later phases of the game.

It's an impressive game with a great story and great combat, but only the most hardcore players are exempt from the mandatory save-scumming and wiki-reading IMO.

> Almost every decision has unclear outcomes

And to make matters worse, many of the outcomes are identical. It's disheartening to save scum through an exchange only to find that the exact same thing happens no matter which option you choose.

And then you'll see that you get some bonus effect for one choice for a d20 roll, which makes it seem more likely to succeed than the others, but then the number to beat is also higher, making it actually a worse option.

> Item and spell descriptions are good at least

I don't agree with this. Most item descriptions make no distinction between items you should definitely hold onto and ones that are just garbage to sell for gold, which you don't even need because there just isn't that much to buy relative to the amount of incense flooding the world. And finding out what it means for something to add e.g. "momentum" can be non-obvious. And dyes don't describe their use. And a potion/elixir might say that you can get the same effect from throw/splash vs drinking but not say that if you do then the effect goes from "until next long rest" to "for three turns".

But the absolute worst here is the character selection and leveling. You have zero guidance whatsoever on what it means to pick a bard vs a druid etc, both short term and long term. It just assumes that have a D&D character guide. Turns out that bards are actually really good at combat magic after a few levels. Who knew.

The choices thing is interesting. I go both ways on this. Some of the story choices lead to places you don't want and didn't foresee. Part of me wants the story to go where I want it to go and thus I will wiki the conversational choices. Part of me loves that this is a story and stories can take your characters where the story takes them. In life we make all sorts of "conversational choices" where the ramifications long in the future are hard/impossible to foresee but profound.

Overall though I love the game. Nothing is perfect but this game is a blast and kudos to the developers more making something so deep, interesting, and fun.

Some tech bros gonna stop reading at the “more likely to be alpha” part and start snaking on kitty litter.

I want this mostly so I can invoke an output function as GTF(Lisp)-Out

"gtfl-out &rest expressions => no values"

There are sadly no easy fixes here. Approaching 50 with a life of ADHD here. I’ve managed to build a great life but always against that burden. Thankful that when I was younger I didn’t have the universe of constant connectivity at my fingertips or I don’t know that I would have had the strength to nail things back then.

A few comments: - Most people start meds and feel like a superhero getting their powers. Like “wow now I can actually do all those things I dreamt of”. Be careful. The surge doesn’t last. Medication will always help but that initial WOW will fade. Don’t get so attached to it that you feel like crap when it does.

- It sounds trite but nothing has helped me so much as trying to make serious meditation a habit. That and exercise/diet/regular sleep. I know - it’s boilerplate. That doesn’t make it untrue.

- Give yourself a break. You are who you are. Try as much as you can to succeed within the grain. That doesn’t mean don’t try to be disciplined and ambitious etc… But dreaming what another you without ADHD might have been … well it just isn’t all that productive. We get the hand we get and it’s up to us to maximize our happiness within those constraints. Try to focus on (hopefully) all the good cards you did get.

The heck do I do with an M4 in an iPad? Scroll hacker news really really fast?

Apple needs to reinvest in software innovation on the iPad. I don't think my use case for it has evolved in 5 years.

There’s no way Apple would announce major new OS features outside of WWDC.

So, perhaps it’s no coincidence that a new iPadOS will be announced in exactly one month.

Here’s hoping anyway!

My grandfather somehow assisted Hemingway in setting up New Atlantis and the documents declaring him and my grandmother Sir and Lady hang proudly in my living room. As far as I know my family is the sole remaining royal line of New Atlantis. Hilarious that this keeps coming up.

Say if you wanted to issue passports for New Atlantis, how do you go about doing that, is there some passport production machine that is purchasable off the shelf?

I can't say this has topic has come up in any recent New Atlantean Royal Council meetings but we would welcome you to make a presentation on the matter.

I literally lol'd... part of me wishes you'd go all in and claim the throne, create a website, issue royal decrees, etc. while you're at it

you could print a passport however you like, but that doesn't mean any other country will recognize it and allow you entry.