I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I’m not going to be having a switch 2 any time soon but I do really like Nintendo games, so I’m glad I’ll be able to get some of the excitement through you :).

I’m a bit sad about the free roaming part being a bit bare bones. When they first announced it I was hoping for the creativity of a Mario Odyssey crossed with Breath of the Wild in a Kart, discovering secrets and fun places everywhere.

Also with respect to pricing: I think it depends on the game to decide what an honest price is. I would gladly give 100 or more for the joy that Slay the Spire has given me over the years. I think that a big and polished Mario game is not immediately the worst offender for being this expensive. It’s when the less polished and more cash grabbing AAA games start to follow this example that it becomes a problem. I do like how some games decide their price points differently, like Clair Obscur for example.

Is Warframe still nice to start out with in 2025? I remember installing it a while back and being overwhelmed by the amount of info and options and not really knowing how to simply progress the story in the original way.

This is the one, playing through 1 for the second time right now and it’s just so good. It’s my first time as female Shepard and I think I like her more than male Shepard!

I agree that this mostly makes sense, but the mouse part of the new joy cons does feel like a new console feature that they wouldn’t have added for a switch pro.

If I were to ask my Magic 8 Ball “Is the word ‘difinitely’ misspelled?” 100 times, it’s going to reply in the affirmative over 16% of the time.

This comparison makes no sense. Your example has a binary question. In that case, any system that replies correctly at even a rate of around 50% would be useless. However, the problem space in this scenario is way larger than 2 options and still way larger than 100 options. Being correct in even a small number of 100 attempts is still statistically significant.

The fact that an LLM is unable to reason and that it is based on statistics doesn’t change anything about this behavior. At the end of the day you get a tool that is able to point you to actual new information that you by yourself did not arrive at.

Imagine that you put a lot of effort in a better model specifically for vulnerability research and you get it up to a correctness rate of a mere 10%. I would gladly hire some programmers to sift through these reports and possibly find overlooked vulnerabilities.

This is literally the very first experiment in this use case, done by a single person on a model that wasn’t specifically designed for this. The fact that it is able to formulate a correct response at all in this situation impresses me.

It would be easy to criticize this if it were the endpoint and this was being advertised as a tool for vulnerability research, but as discussed at the end of the post, this “quick little test” shows both initial promising results and had the fortunate byproduct of actually revealing a new vulnerability. By no means is it implied that it is now ready for use in this field.

The issue with hallucinations is one that in my opinion is never going to be totally fixed. That is why I hate the use of AI as a final arbiter of truth, which is sadly how a lot of people use it (I’ll quickly ask ChatGPT) and companies advertise it. What it is good at however, is coming up with plausible ideas, and in this case having an indication for things to check in code can be a great tool to discover new stuff, as is literally the case for this security researcher finding a new vulnerability after auditing the module themselves.

I hate AI. Why?

• Because of its extreme energy consumption compared to what it achieves
• Because it is all in the hands of the worst companies on this planet
• Because capitalists are foaming at the mouth to use it to fuck over workers
• Because it is devaluing art and reducing it to another commodity to “produce”

However

I also took the time to read the original blog post, and it is a fascinating story.

The author starts out with using an existing vulnerability as a benchmark for ChatGPT testing. They describe how they took the code specific to the vulnerability and packaged it for ChatGPT, how they formatted the query and what their results were. In 100 runs only 8 correctly identify the targeted vulnerability, the rest are false positives or claim that there are no vulnerabilities in the given code.

Then they take their test a step further and increase the amount of code shared with ChatGPT so that it also includes stuff of the module that had nothing to do with the original vulnerability. As expected, this larger input decreases performance and also reduces the vulnerability detection rate for the targeted vulnerability. However, in those 100 runs, another vulnerability was described that wasn’t a false positive. An actual new vulnerability that the author didn’t know about was discovered. Again, the signal to noise ratio is very low, and one has to sift through a lot of wrong reports to get a realistic one, but this proved that it could be used as a useful tool for helping to detect vulnerabilities.

I highly recommend reading the blog post.

As much as I like to be critical about AI, it doesn’t help if we put our heads in the sand and act as if it never does something cool.

I distinctly remember Donkey Kong Country as my first gaming experience. When my parents needed a babysit, they would often let me sleep at my aunts place. My older niece and nephew also lived their, but the age gap was quite big making it not ideal for us to play with toys together. One day however, my nephew had a SNES from his friend there and he was playing Donkey Kong Country on their TV. I remember being completely entranced by it and being unable to put it down (even though it was very difficult for me at the time). From then on I was always hoping that the “Gaming Machine” would be present if I stayed over, which was often the case as they figured out that this was a very easy way to keep me occupied. I later got a green Game Boy Color, and of course this was my first game for the system. I played it countless of hours, and even though I later got a Game Boy Advance SP, this game would remain in my rotation until I got a DS many years later.

I’ve barely played any of the later installments. I got Donkey Kong Country 2 for the Game Boy Advance when I was young, but found it to difficult and didn’t really like the new protagonist as much. After my DS I became a playstation fanboy for the rest of my childhood and teens.

Now that I have bought a 3DS I’ve started playing Donkey Kong Country Returns. It’s really nice, but I found it a bit overwhelming and haven’t really touched it since.

Also a shout out to the Game Boy game called Donkey Kong, in which you actually play Mario with some incredibly varied platforming for the time. An all time classic!

Outer wilds ending is GOAT gaming moment for me.

How long is a run? I’ve been looking for a fun roguelike as an alternative to my slay the spire runs, this seems right up my alley!

Thanks, I’m always happy to see you too, you’re really doing wonders in the gaming community :). I think games is probably what I’m most passionate about and the space you helped create really emphasizes that passion!

Thanks, this really hit home and was genuinely uplifting. You’re a nice person.

True, that same “I wonder what I’m going to discover today?” feeling. Just had an insane run in BP with lots of new stuff an an absolute abondance of all resources. Sadly no antechamber, but I’m getting closer. Also starting to unravel the story, this too seems way more interesting than at first glance.

I totally agree and am currently in the same spot as you, less and less interested in the antechamber and more in the puzzle as a whole!

I too had this at the start. My hint is to indeed make sure you visit all rooms at least once, even if they are bad for your layout for that specific day. Make sure you read the notes you find and make us of the items too. Some items have a clear purpose for the basic runs (just helping out with money or steps) but some seen less useful. It is these items that actually often help you unlock new things though, just think logically where you would be able to make use of them.

Also, there is actually quite a bit of permanent progression / unlocks. This only started happening for me after that long initial phase of just mocking about, but once it starts happening you are better equiped for further discoveries.

My final tip is to actually not see it as a roguelite. You don’t need to just have luck / better insight for a winning run, every run is a new moment to investigate new stuff and attempt new things, not to get better at doing the same stuff like other roguelikes. I hope I’ve explained this well.

I’m also starting to lose myself in Blue prince. I was a bit hesitant in the starting hours, feeling like progress was limited, the puzzle element rather basic and the whole game too RNG based.

But now that I’m further in, I’m really starting to unravel the hidden depth of a lot of its mechanics and secrets. I’m keeping notes on my netbook and it’s starting to become more of a wiki. I’m currently unlocking and discovering new stuff at a very satisfying pace, and my opinion of the game is growing immensely.

If I remember correctly you were also a huge fan of Outer Wilds. While I do understand the comparisons, this does feel like a whole other thing to me. More mysterious and strange, but also a bit more sterile. Outer Wilds is just so filled with love and beauty on top of its mystery, that I cannot fathom any game ever pushing it from the top spot in my favorite games of all time.

Any portable console is amazing for this, as you can literally change the whole context on a whim. A steam deck is nice, but even a used older console like a PSP / Vita or 3DS is amazing for a reasonable amount of money. As most of these systems no longer have legal ways to buy new games, I see no harm in pirating the games. I am doing this with a 3DS right now and going through the systems hit games is just an amazing ride. Currently enjoying Super Mario 3D Land and Bravely Default.

Aged like the best of wines! 🤌

I think 4 runs decently now though? I have it installed on Steam Deck and that seems to handle 60fps well. I have only played around an hour of it, as I didn’t feel in the mood for that type of game then.

I 100% see that it is satire and respect almost all of its narrative choices, even the torture scene. But that doesn’t mean that it is fun to play. It just felt really draining to have to inhabit these characters for dozens of hours, rather than watching a film about them. Something about playing a game forces you to empathize more closely with “your” character, and it is so draining for me when that character is a dick.

I think it gets 10s because of the attention to detail and vast amount of stuff in it, but I agree that underneath all the polish and glamour it is just an average game with some very dated mechanics.

Weirdly enough, it is the story that makes it worthwhile, even though it was not relaxing to me it did have some amazing moments of both satire and just hilarious situations. I also really enjoyed Franklin as a character and the contrast with Michael (who you could argue is actually a worse person than Franklin).