LongLeftFlank

Folks,
I am not here for a debate.  I have seen computers from the very first degree programs and NYC having 3 IBM 360s with RJEs, punched cards, and assembly through today.  For those who are in the CS field, then you are the first to know that AI ~ 2015 and beyond is not CS.  It is an entirely a new field.  Only, the general public erroneously conflates CS and AI.  AI is modern alchemy where emergent properties has truly shown that the reductionist top down engineering thinking that many of us were trained in is but a single way to approach things.  Alchemists they may be; short on the formalism of Shannon, Turing, and Goddel long on guess work, but they are getting results.  And these results are having a huge impact.  * Mathematicians kindly call them "experimentalists".
CMBO was breaking new ground.  Taking our once BG hobby (I never was one) from the early isometric maps in SMG by Sid Meier and the early psychological states of CC by Atomic to break new ground.
CM has largely been CPU bound and single threaded.  Thus, in 2024, most of us are seeing CM hit the single threaded clock speed/RAM speed wall while other cores sit idle.  With regards to videos cards ... GPU/VRAM is largely idle.  Getting CM and many games to multi-threading load balanced is a hard problem.  But post processing using the AI abilities of graphic cards is mainly another step on the rendering pipeline which is quite doable without tearing apart the existing game engine.
How is AI fundamentally changing our world?  Productivity is sky rocketing.  There is a race to leverage it.  This is just one of many tech cycles I have lived through.  We are in the frontier gold rush phase.  The other day I counted more than 100 ventures doing RAG and TALK WITH YOUR DOCS using variants of LangChain, Semantic Embeddings, and Vector databases.  In 3-5 years, like any tech cycle, only handful of those 100+ firms will exist and be among the standardized recognized solutions.
The console/PC game industry is going to be pulled along into the same cycle.  Those with IP and a market position are ideally suited to be the survivors.  Or if they let momentum and sloth make them feel secure, then be among the shake out victims.
I like CM and the innovation that BTS/BFC brought.  I would like to see it weather the AI storm.
Well, I am going to drop off the discussion now.  Time is limited and I retired to play games and not debate on forums.  Implied here is that I might be old.  Yes, I am old.  The view that age is a handicap is not a global view among all cultures.  Some cultures actual recognize that seniors bring something to the conversation.  Tik-Tok on, folks!  I am going to play myself some CM!

Oh, oh I'm sorry, this is Abuse....
Ah, don't let these grumpy old cranks put you off! 
Exploring possibility space is just fine IMHO, so long as the substantial gaps to meaningful implementation are also appreciated.
****
https://openai.com/sora
(LinkedIn commentary): If you think OpenAI Sora is a creative toy like DALLE, ... think again. Sora is a data-driven physics engine. It is a simulation of many worlds, real or fantastical. The simulator learns intricate rendering, "intuitive" physics, and long-horizon consistency, all by some denoising and gradient maths.
I won't be surprised if Sora is trained on lots of synthetic data using Unreal Engine 5. It has to be!
Let's breakdown the following video. Prompt: "Photorealistic closeup video of two pirate ships battling each other as they sail inside a cup of coffee."
https://cdn.openai.com/sora/videos/ships-in-coffee.mp4
- The simulator instantiates two exquisite 3D assets: pirate ships with different decorations. Sora has to solve text-to-3D implicitly in its latent space.
- The 3D objects are consistently animated as they sail and avoid each other's paths.
- Fluid dynamics of the coffee, even the foams that form around the ships. Fluid simulation is an entire sub-field of computer graphics, which traditionally requires very complex algorithms and equations. 
- Photorealism, almost like rendering with raytracing.
- The simulator takes into account the small size of the cup compared to oceans, and applies tilt-shift photography to give a "minuscule" vibe.
- The semantics of the scene does not exist in the real world, but the engine still implements the correct physical rules that we expect.
Next up: add more modalities and conditioning, then we have a full data-driven UE that will replace all the hand-engineered graphics pipelines.

This particular quote: Casualty ratios tend to equalize in urban areas is highly suspicious. It is an exact quote from a less well-known RU military reporter aka propagandist. The RU military reporter used the phrase to cheer up his viewers after admitting that prior fighting outside of urban areas resulted in a 1:10 loss ratio in favor of UKR. So, basically, Tatarigami simply repeats somebody else opinion without sufficient diligence.
Now, could it be true? Well, it depends. "Residential areas" that RU used to breach UKR lines are not urban areas. They are all village-type areas. Look at the map

They breached the village-type area. But they were significantly slowed down in semi-urban areas, so they preferred to advance on to an open area instead. They have not reached real urban area and they failed miserable attacking Koksohim. 
So, proper way would be - in terrain not favorable for infantry infiltration (be it open fields or any terrain sufficiently prepared and manned against infiltration for a prolonged period of time) RU tactics of meat assaults mostly fail. In terrain favorable for infantry infiltration, they mostly succeed given enough time, bodies and glide bombs. 
Since Avdiivka is Putin order the local RU command gets priority in receiving bodies and glide bombs. Hence the success after several months of miserable failures.

On the topic of rotation and casulties, situation in Zenit and Avdiivka overall. 

Today's Perun has a good high-level overview of the Chinese military that is worth a listen for anyone interested in the China  / Taiwan / US situation.
Also has the wry observation that China is modernising its navy partly to be able to protect its international trade, which it is very dependent on economically. Particularly with the US, Japan and Korea. But the main geopolitcal threats it sees  to its international trade are from the US, Japan and Korea. So it is trying to build a navy to compete with those countries in order to be able to protect its trade with the same countries....
 

Yes, there's a fundamental category error here in the utter failure to distinguish Ukrainians, who are overwhelmingly fighting for their nation and elected government, from Iraqis or Afghans who overwhelmingly defer to their local tribal or religious leaders, who in turn decide which flag to salute, or not.

Yes, there's a fundamental category error here in the utter failure to distinguish Ukrainians, who are overwhelmingly fighting for their nation and elected government, from Iraqis or Afghans who overwhelmingly defer to their local tribal or religious leaders, who in turn decide which flag to salute, or not.

Yes, there's a fundamental category error here in the utter failure to distinguish Ukrainians, who are overwhelmingly fighting for their nation and elected government, from Iraqis or Afghans who overwhelmingly defer to their local tribal or religious leaders, who in turn decide which flag to salute, or not.

Yes, there's a fundamental category error here in the utter failure to distinguish Ukrainians, who are overwhelmingly fighting for their nation and elected government, from Iraqis or Afghans who overwhelmingly defer to their local tribal or religious leaders, who in turn decide which flag to salute, or not.

Yes, there's a fundamental category error here in the utter failure to distinguish Ukrainians, who are overwhelmingly fighting for their nation and elected government, from Iraqis or Afghans who overwhelmingly defer to their local tribal or religious leaders, who in turn decide which flag to salute, or not.

An' I said, “Litterin'.”
An' they all moved away from me on the bench there, an' the hairy eyeball an' all kinds of mean nasty things.
...Til I said, “*And* creating a nuisance.”
An' they all came back, shook my hand, an' we had a great time on the bench, talkin' about crime, mother stabbin', father rapin', all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench, an' everything was fine.

Yes, the smell of hair on fire is getting a little thick in here, innit?
I mean, if the thread regulars want to agonise over the fall of the Republic in the context of Ukraine, maybe look at something more directly relevant than microplaning DJT's latest excretion?
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/what-happened-to-the-us-machine-tool

Yes, the smell of hair on fire is getting a little thick in here, innit?
I mean, if the thread regulars want to agonise over the fall of the Republic in the context of Ukraine, maybe look at something more directly relevant than microplaning DJT's latest excretion?
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/what-happened-to-the-us-machine-tool

IMO most important parts:
"This has led to significant increases in production output. For example, Russia is delivering approximately 1,500 tanks to its forces per year along with approximately 3,000 armoured fighting vehicles of various types. Russian missile production has similarly increased. At the beginning of 2023, for instance, Russian production of Iskandr 9M723 ballistic missiles was six per month, with available missile stocks of 50 munitions."
"Of the tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, for example, approximately 80% are not new production but are instead refurbished and modernised from Russian war stocks. The number of systems held in storage means that while Russia can maintain a consistent output through 2024, it will begin to find that vehicles require deeper refurbishment through 2025, and by 2026 it will have exhausted most of the available stocks."
"Perhaps the most serious limitation for Russia, however, is ammunition manufacture. In order to achieve its aspiration to make significant territorial gains in 2025, the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has assessed an industrial requirement to manufacture or source approximately 4 million 152mm and 1.6 million 122mm artillery shells in 2024. Russian industry has reported to the MoD that it expects to increase 152mm production from around 1 million rounds in 2023 to 1.3 million rounds over the course of 2024, and to only produce 800,000 122mm rounds over the same period. Moreover, the Russian MoD does not believe it can significantly raise production in subsequent years,"
"This means that to properly resource the armed forces, Russia must – in the short term – further draw down its remaining 3 million rounds of stored ammunition, though much of this is in poor condition. To further compensate for shortages, Russia has signed supply and production contracts with Belarus, Iran, North Korea and Syria, with the latter only able to provide forged shell casings rather than complete shells. Although the injection of around 2 million 122mm rounds from North Korea will help Russia in 2024, it will not compensate for a significant shortfall in available 152mm"
"The Russian theory of victory is plausible if Ukraine's international partners fail to properly resource the AFU. However, if Ukraine's partners continue to provide sufficient ammunition and training support to the AFU to enable the blunting of Russian attacks in 2024, then Russia is unlikely to achieve significant gains in 2025. If Russia lacks the prospect of gains in 2025, given its inability to improve force quality for offensive operations, then it follows that it will struggle to force Kyiv to capitulate by 2026. Beyond 2026, attrition of systems will begin to materially degrade Russian combat power, while Russian industry could be disrupted sufficiently by that point, making Russia's prospects decline over time."

An' I said, “Litterin'.”
An' they all moved away from me on the bench there, an' the hairy eyeball an' all kinds of mean nasty things.
...Til I said, “*And* creating a nuisance.”
An' they all came back, shook my hand, an' we had a great time on the bench, talkin' about crime, mother stabbin', father rapin', all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench, an' everything was fine.

So this thread is now called, "How Hot is The American General Election Gonna Get?"... 
Just so I'm clear. For myself. 
 

An' I said, “Litterin'.”
An' they all moved away from me on the bench there, an' the hairy eyeball an' all kinds of mean nasty things.
...Til I said, “*And* creating a nuisance.”
An' they all came back, shook my hand, an' we had a great time on the bench, talkin' about crime, mother stabbin', father rapin', all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench, an' everything was fine.

Dude, ok it is getting weird now.  This is like being on a bus and the guy next to you asks “Do you know about Jesus?”  I am not asking what Trump says he will do?  I am not asking what he wants to do?  I am asking that all things being equal and he winds up in some sort of inverse version of where Biden is right now…what can Trump actually do?
Given his absurd declarations last time compared to what actually got done, we have precedent here.  I think I can safely say that your position is pretty clear and duly noted.  Now I am going to go find another place to sit - and maybe find someone a bit more pragmatic about the whole thing.

Sigh.

 

Sigh.

 

Well first off you may be surprised to learn that we hear all sorts of opinions on the trajectory of the Defender of the Free World - your personal spin is but one of them.  I am still not sure what has changed here.  We already had a Trump admin and what I saw was a lot of his worst impulses blocked, delayed and generally smothered by legal action and good old bureaucratic friction.  Trump still has to deal with the state level governments etc as well.  So in his first incredibly chaotic admin we saw a whole lot of noise and light but little actual substance - kind of the brand.  Jan 6th and COVID were about as close to the cliff face as we saw and then the machine defended itself.
So ok we got your spin on all this - Trump = bad idea.  But what has fundamentally changed in 4 short years that would give Trump supreme dictator powers that he lacked last time?  His own party is just as weak at holding him in check as last time.  Security and armed forces are not entirely onboard.  So what is the big shift that would allow these nightmare scenarios to unfold?
I mean as an outsider “hey look the sky is falling, again…”. I am still not seeing how Trumps political opponents could not conspire to check and pushback any less than his supporters have during the last few years.  We already lived through one Trump-pocolypse.  Finally despite a lot of predictions Ukrainian aid continued to flow - held up in the gears now but also looks like it might get through eventually.  NATO held together and the US appears to agree on China as the threat.  So now Trump gets in and all that goes away?
So it is not “listening to what I want to hear”. It is listening to a lot of voices saying something other than you.  You know, like good balanced critical thinking should be doing?  I do get that it could be bad, very bad.  But you are basically taking about an inevitable slide into another US Civil War and I have to believe that there are some off-ramps and relief valves here.

True, ditching NATO is way above Trump level of competence, and reshaping it somehow for Pacific interests is impossible. But this time it can indeed be different. Note absence of any kingmakers in his entourage...guys like Bannon or Pompeo were hardly likeable, but they were not dumb and were thinking in terms of raison d'etre, in their own ways. This time it seems he will build on his nucleus family as chief advisors.
Something like 2 months ago I happened to watch one political show in Russian TV dedicated solely to Trump's family. On surface they were just telling the story of filthy rich oligarchs familiar to their audience (like Moscow ones, with appropriate scandalous stories about gold and luxury- read: "he is similar to ours"), but the level of attention directed to Donald Jr. was quite outstanding- and this was pure political stuff about his future career, clearly something that makers of this piece were puting hopes for. They treated him as sovereign, concious politician on his own rather than son of his father, and this sentiment (or rather: assessment) seem to be shared by people close to Kremlin.
I think Russians know perfectly well where political nerves of future power may be. Trump did burned his fingers on various politcal advisors and occassionally even played Caesar betrayed by people he trusted, so he will now likely be more distrustful to guys from "outer ring", further loosening influence of system on his decisions. This can make a noticable difference for this term compared to previous one, especially in foreign policy.

Russian TG rejected yesterday claims of other Russian TGs about capturing of transport depo in northern part of Avdiivka and approaching to railway station. Westren OSINTers give next sitaution for yesterday
General Tarnasvskiy claimed about reserve units invilved in the battle. Unknown is this 3rd assault brigade or not.  Commander of 47th mech.brigade Dmytro Riumshyn told Russians now assault with small groups, sometimes applying armored vehicles. 

You know we North Americans are often told that "we don't get Russia", or most of Europe for that matter.  What is clear from this fiasco is that cluelessness cuts both ways.  So the best PR guys Putin had all settled on the idea that the best way to shift US public sentiment was a detailed history lesson on Eastern (fine, Central) Europe?  Oh ya, all of our modern culture speaks to our deep reverence for European history minutia, claims and counter claims.
Here is what the US (and Canada to a large extent) really think. 
"We won and some Europeans tagged along - Tom Hanks really won WW2.  We have English/French/Some 'Old Country' grandparents, so there is that.  The world is - 'Us, Them and The Rest.'  We really do not care about King Uteslav or whatever, unless someone makes a cool movie about it.  Why are White people killing each other in Ukraine?  We are used to Brown people killing each other, or us killing brown people...but this is weird.  We are spending how much on all this?!  Have you seen how much bananas cost these days?!  It is sad when kids die...now I feel bad.  They are still shooting each other...now I am getting bored.  Oh dear election time again and my XYZ is now the most important thing in the entire history of our species - if that guy is for/against it, he is worse than Hitler (who we all know was really bad...see Tom Hanks)."
I am not sure what Putin's best play here was, but it sure as hell wasn't what happened.  As to Carlson...welcome to your legacy...
 

In 2008, the doors of NATO were opened for Ukraine. In 2014, there was a coup. They started persecuting those who did not accept the coup, and it was indeed a coup. They created a threat to Crimea, which we had to take under our protection. They launched a war in Donbas in 2014 with the use of aircraft and artillery against civilians. This is when it all started. There's a video of aircraft attacking Donetsk from above. They launched a large-scale military operation, then another one. When they failed, they started to prepare the next one. All this against the background of military development of this territory and opening of NATO's.  -- V.V. Putin
*****
It was Gimli the dwarf who broke in suddenly. 'The words of this wizard stand on their heads,' he growled, gripping the handle of his axe. 'In the language of Orthanc help means ruin and saving means slaying, that is plain. But we do not come here to beg.'