link roundup : accidental tech/LLM theme edition

* neat gamedev writeup on LoZ: Ocarina of Time talking about some meta-gameplay difficulties the devs had to work through in regards to designing the first 3D action game. Fascinating to see how most modern games like Elden Ring today still operate off of similar spatial principles.

* i was talking to a friend on bsky about LLM's and reducing friction of delusions; bellingcat's founder Elliot H. posted a really good thread a while back that I keep thinking about. (I have my reservations about bellingcat in general and where they get their funding but this feels insightful.)

copy/pasted thread text below: 

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* Bart Ehrman's last lecture - "The Most Significant Discovery in the History of Biblical Studies”.  haven't been in these circles for a while, this was a refreshingly thoughtful lecture/sermon of sorts.

* one of the latest pieces of news this week is firefox has a new CEO who apparently is commited to driving a perfectly decent product off a cliff; they're forcing AI upgrades and there's rumors of disabling extensions in the future, but that's less concrete. While there is a follow-up clarification  that the devs are trying hard to keep AI explicitly opt in / have a kill switch for it, i'm less certian that they'll be able to keep that from CEO pressure.

if you feel strongly about this, i've given feedback at https://connect.mozilla.org/ and suggest you do as well. For immediate AI-free alternatives, waterfox and vivaldi are the two strongest ones I consistently see in rec lists.

* thin desires vs thick desires - thoughtful articulation on a concept i've been seeing a lot lately. (though i have my reservations that quote unquote pornography in its entirety is a thin desire since to me sexual desire in media is pretty nuanced; i see where the thought line comes from, but that's a side tangent.) 

* escape clause - a blogger decides to move away from the apple ecosystem after seeing another dev elsewhere get locked out of mission critical email accounts.  (i really liked the empathy to apple devs at the same time of concretely outlining why he's moving away)

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might as well give updates here -

after a third 10+ hour overnighter in the big-city-fancy-ER for mom (she was there with somebody else, i had to trade off), and a zillion of tests they basically ruled out the heart/anything life-threatening in its entirety. we're now thinking potential non-life-threatening gastric issues since sometimes it can refer pain elsewhere, for example in the upper chest. another theory is literally, just bad anxiety attacks (potentially combo'd with the above) but she's um...... (a) very stubborn and (b) the type of person to legitimately throw her shoe at you if you mention that or "relax". love her to pieces but there's a reason why dad and i have called her the world's worst patient all my life lol.

that said said random chest pains have been very.... very slowly decreasing in intensity? it's one of those weeks where it's like, bad day, good day, BAD day, good, ok day, good day.... so real hesitant to say that too loudly, but ideally simply Knowing in her brain she's not gonna die of a heart attack helps with some of that by itself.

(i also got that cold/virus that's going around and basically am at the tail end of speedrunning through That in 48 hours by sleeping like 15 hours each day so yeah that's also been going on.) in good news: did do a decent amount of drawing today along with family-ing since it was the first day in a ..... week i felt normal, lol.

so. tl;dr getting there.

anyway y'all have been, sincerely, lovely. <3 love you all.
comments disabled more for brainwidth than anything but, mwah. wishing you a fuckin better year than you all have had. may we thrive into the next one.