Interesting Links for 04-04-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Looks like nearly 60% of Scots no longer identify with any religion

(tags:religion scotland demographics )

2. Did you know that Edinburgh has a Board Game Library?

(tags:libraries boardgames edinburgh )

3. Traditional Chinese printing process

(tags:video china printing history )

4. Behind the lurid headlines: What the Scottish hate crime legislation actually says

(tags:scotland bigotry law )

5. 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing spree in Gaza (with a 10% error rate)

(tags:ai palestine israel war )

6. One third of Thames Water sewage sensors are faulty

(tags:water uk pollution OhForFucksSake )

7. 60% of time spent playing computer games in 2023 went to games at least 6 years old. Only 8% went on new, non-annual titles (like Baldurs Gate III)

(tags:games business )

Comments

[nancylebov]

3. Somehow, I'd failed to notice the moveable type part and just assumed it was single food blocks. Instead, it's actually individually wood letters which are used make ceramic type.

https://www.green-coursehub.com/research-blog/traditional-chinese-movable-type-printing

Clay type is the oldest, then wood, then metal.

[movingfinger]

7. I hope this doesn't inspire games companies to make older games inaccessible. Guess it's time to start buying those in some physical form, whenever possible... As a side point, though, when new games are released, do people play through predecessors, either to "mop up," to refresh their memory, or to start as a new player in the game's lineage?

[andrewducker]

I don't, but I know some people do.

And so far shutting down old versions of games to force people on to new versions has gone very badly indeed.

[helen_keeble]

If you look at the older games that are still being played, they're multiplayer subscription games (League of Legends) or games with optional-but-popular subscription/marketplace content (Minecraft, which makes vast amounts of money from skins, mods, realms etc). So there's absolutely no incentive for those companies to shut off those cash cows, and they aren't the sort of games where you can guarantee being able to play solo offline with a physical copy (except possibly Minecraft).

Regarding games in series, my anecdotal impression is that something like Call of Duty or FIFA, which puts out annual games in the same line, will sell a chunk to existing players looking for the new campaign/features/whatever, and a chunk to new players who've just bought a new console. Very few games these days require knowledge of previous instalments - even a game like Witcher 3 took care to be accessible to brand new players. With a lot of franchises now releasing across multiple platforms, frequently older instalments aren't even available to a sizeable chunk of the player base (eg Witcher 1 and 2 never released onto consoles, as I recall).

Assassins Creed or Far Cry would be good examples of long running franchises that put out a new game every couple of years, using essentially the same mechanics but in a new setting. Some people who start with later games in the series might go back to pick up the older ones, but when the new games offer 100+ hours of content to play through, I would guess that's a minority of players. I think the older games of that type sell more to players who are new to the franchise and don't want to drop £50+ on the latest and greatest instalment, when they can get the same gameplay and slightly worse graphics for £10 in a sale.

[hairyears]

Lavender... Not so much a precision targeting system, more a way of increasing the impact of indiscriminate bombardment.

Or, perhaps, applying a 'militarily necessary' gloss on crimes against humanity.

So we can now regard AI as useful, to regimes who see collateral damage and terror as inherently desirable outcomes; and I find myself wondering how this will work in civil society, with 'deviants', dissidents, and 'potential terrorists' being targeted for 'soft sanctions' of economic exclusion and social-network disruption.

Not that this will affect anyone you and I know.

Not overtly.

I wonder if it is possible to build in a statistical algorithm that obfuscates indirect discrimination.

'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing spree in Gaza (with a 10% error rate)

[anef]

I think it is obvious that it was genocide, but this explains how.