DB: “At least we’re not National Rail.”

National Rail: “At least we’re not Amtrak.”

Do NOT, I repeat NOT do this. Someone very close to me did something similar and got irreversible brain damage that still shows itself years later in the form of epilepsy. Our brains are not made for that little sleep over long periods of time.

Absolutely and it has done so for over a decade. Not LLMs of course, those are not suitable for the job but there are lots of specialized AI models for medical applications.

My day job is software development for ophthalmology (eye medicine) and people are developing models that can, for example, detect cataracts in an OCT scan long before they become a problem. Grading those by hand is usually pretty hard.

I only found out about E.V.O. way later, probably around 2005 when a friend made a web game that combined its evolution theme with gameplay similar to Legend of the Green Dragon. I still wonder why E.V.O. wasn’t more popular. It’s an amazing game, I still occasionally play it on my Analogue Pocket.

I would say Age of Empires 2 which was where I first used the name that I still have on here, over 25 years later. Its amazing editor also resonated with my urge to create my own games without requiring programming knowledge that I just didn’t have at 11 years old. I went on to create custom content for Warcraft III, Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind, eventually studied computer science and joined some indie gamedev communities where I made a lot of friends, some of whom I still meet in person once or twice a year. I never became a full time game developer but I worked on some stuff part time in the mid 2000s and still do it as a hobby.

My question was specifically about “the general non-technical population”. Do you expect my mom to even remotely understand what different servers are and why talking to me is securely encrypted but talking to her friends group isn’t? The point about secure software is that it needs to be secure by default or else, entry level users will manage to accidentally send their stuff in plain text and not even notice.

For nerds like us, I agree that Matrix is probably a good choice. For someone who needed to be told that “the internet” isn’t the blue “e” on their desktop… not so much. I’d rather send carrier pigeons than explain Matrix to my family.

What would you recommend as an alternative for the general non-technical population?

Interesting take and totally understandable though that’s not quite what happens in the plot:

• The battle for the Citadel at the end of ME1 wasn’t the entire known universe banding together by far. What we see is a couple of ships that happened to be nearby because at that point, most of the universe still doesn’t believe the reapers even exist.
• After the battle, the reapers don’t show up at the Citadel but at the edge of the galaxy. They are still months to years away from eradicating the Alliance. Yes, they have a whole lot of firepower but taking down thousands of planets full of enemies who now know what’s coming takes a lot longer than an attack on a single space station where nobody was prepared for an attack.
• At the beginning of ME2, Shepard doesn’t just wake up at the hospital after the battle you saw in ME1. During a later battle/patrol (?), the Normandy gets ambushed and completely destroyed. Shepard dies and their corpse drifts through space. Cerberus (who were only briefly mentioned in a side quest in ME1) manage to retieve the body and use an experimental technology to bring them back to life (it’s implied that they basically built a Shepard-shaped cyborg who has access to at least some of ME1 Shepard’s memories). The goal is to have a well-respected figurehead who can assemble a squad to take down some critical Reaper infrastructure.

I know your question is worded for movies and shows but I have one example from the world of video games that still makes me sad. Final Fantasy died shortly after X, maybe X-2. XII if you really want to stretch things. After that, they were too focused on “modernizing” gameplay. I just want something with a colorful world, quirky characters and turn-based combat that’s more about finding the right strategy for a boss than reflexes.

I guess XIV is nice in its own way but as an MMORPG I see it more as a spin-off than as a part of the main series. The VII remakes tickle some nostalgia neurons but would have been better without their real-time combat. XIII, XV and XVI were just meh. If you really want to make me happy, make a faithful remake of VIII with modern graphics, rebalanced but otherwise faithful gameplay and a few more scenes in the last act that answer a few questions that the community has been trying to answer for 25 years.

I really liked the Acolyte. Not necessarily for its acting but it leaned into the idea that dark side and light side are not so different and the Jedi can cause a lot of suffering by sticking their noses where they don’t belong. Also, there are force users that don’t fit neatly into those two categories and just want to do their own thing.

Sadly, we won’t see a second season, because some “fans” on the internet got mad that women, people of color and - very shocking - queer people exist in the Star Wars universe.

There were a few things that it eventually got but lacked for way too long like support for UNIX line endings.

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Shush, let an old man dream.

Retired, so I finally have time to finish the dozens of personal projects that I’ve started in my first 36 years.

And at the same time, you rephrase it to imply something that was nowhere in the original sentence.

“Don’t make me ban you” doesn’t necessarily mean “Don’t say anything I don’t like” but maybe just “Don’t post anything illegal” or “Don’t make the experience worse for everyone else”. I fully agree that the original phrasing is too vague which is why I’ve provided a whole list of more specific suggestions.

You are the one who brought up censoring. The person you replied to just said “consequences”. Others not liking you and not wanting to talk to you anymore is a consequence.

Your comments in this thread sound a lot like you not wanting us to say anything you dislike. I respect your opinions and I would fight for you being allowed to share them. I just think they’re wrong and disingenuous.

Someone who disagrees with you and calls out your hate is not a censor.

As an abstract concept and a logical conclusion, I would say it’s neither good or bad.

What is bad is when people interpret free speech as being allowed to hurt others without consequences. And in my personal opinion, most people who criticize a lack of free speech fall directly into that category.

If you’re allowed to say everything, then as a logical consequence I’m also allowed to say everything. Including “You are wrong, you are rude, I don’t like you and I never want to talk to you again. Please leave.”

Note, this is just an example. I don’t really want you to leave. Yet.