I've got a Pleo, and I love the little thing. There are many things that go into why I like it so much.
First, it's cute. I don't think that can be overstated. While WowWee has made some neat stuff (like the first RoboSpaian), they go for the high-tech-futuristic look. Pleo was designed to be about the size of a real juvenile dinosaur. He looks cute and inviting. The skin was designed to simulate the correct texture (or at least as best we can guess).
Second is interaction with Pleo. While he is limited once an adult, their "hatching" sequence is a ton of fun and really helps make the toy. First Pleo does next to nothing, then it complains and tries to move around. It slowly gets better and better at walking and other actions until it's an "adult". This makes it feel much more alive than a "turn it on and it's ready to kill" type robot. He doesn't just stop moving to save battery, he goes to sleep and acts the part. When you make a loud noise or touch him, he slowly wakes up again.
I can't see enough to tell from their site, but I really wonder if the RoboReptile has as many joints as a Pleo.
They aim at different markets. One's a killer robot toy, the other is a "living" baby dinosaur toy. Pleo was awesome, but it was never going to succeed. It was sort of sold as a geek toy to help subsidize the development of LifeOS to put in other toys until they came up with something cheaper. I don't think they could have succeeded except during an economic boom. I'm not surprised they didn't last, but I'm glad I have my amazing little Pleo.
No kidding. Pleo was amazing when it came out. I've got one and it is very cute and quite interesting to people. I'm glad they got to exist for a while. It's a pitty the economy killed them (not that it would have been easy otherwise).
I have my Pleo owner card in my wallet. #120000009280.
The day MySQL died
on
Oracle Buys Sun
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
A long, long time ago... I can still remember How queries could run for a while. Adding more memory would help But performance would still make us yelp, Still the price was cheap and always made us smile.
But April's news made us shiver Oracle would our DB deliver DBAs on the doorstep; Large checks we'll have to schlep.
I know that our CEO cried, When the new price he spied. Our low cost hope now are fried. The day MySQL died.
SSH into it from a Dell Mini 9, possibly connected to a sat-phone type thing
That would do most of what you want. No graphics, but it would work well. You can have all the storage and CPU power you can use. You could even set it up like a batch processing cluster.
Option two:
Buy 5 Dell Mini 9s
Buy/make some charger circuits
Get some lead-acid batteries, maybe solar panels, and a ton of SD cards
Thank your lucky stars computers as cheap, rugged, and powerful as the Mini 9 are so easily available
You will not get what you want for a reasonable price, you want too much. High powered computers can't be put everywhere on Earth regardless of infrastructure. They really need some basic environment controls and good power.
I'd imagine it's because no capital letters have descenders. They all fit nicely into boxes. That would make them easier to display than lower case letters.
Actually for something as common as a NYC taxi, a battery swap setup could work VERY well. Drive into a little garage, they slide out your old battery pack and slide in a new one. Total time? A few minutes, roughly comparable to gad.
The problem with a battery swap is that it's extremely expensive and inconvenient to setup for a only handful of cars. That will be the problem in using it for consumers. But for a fleet the size of the NYC taxis, even if only 10-20% of the taxis used it the cost per taxi wouldn't be too much.
There is a lot to be said for totally electric, but you could go with an underpowered little gas or diesel motor like the Volt to help with "corner cases".
Of course, few wanted to run in "normal" speed unless they had to.
But isn't this the problem with this idea? Users will just hit the "turbo" button all the time because non-instantaneous is too slow. This both defeats the purpose (since everything will run at turbo) and will annoy the user (when "turbo" isn't fast enough).
Isn't spending 20k cycles at full power and then dropping back to next-to-no-power during idle sometimes more efficient than spending 20k cycles at 20% power (which has to run 5x as long)?
Wouldn't it simply be better to make a little indicator icon of how much power is being used at a instant (happy battery / busy battery / battery on treadmill / battery playing Sisyphus)? Then users could see which apps use too much power (3D games, audio analysis, lots of stupid animation) and which use little (crossword puzzle) so they could adjust their behavior and/or try to get developers to improve the applications that are needlessly wasteful?
For most people they are synonymous. They pretty much are for me too. If there is a difference, people tend to think of coders as unskilled ("code monkey", someone who read a book) and programmers as skilled (know what they're doing, have had good education).
I drew a bigger distinction here because using a literal meaning of "coder" seemed to fit so well. It's almost a bit of a backhand compliment in a way.
Coder - One who codes a document with some markup (HTML)
Programmer - One who writes computer language to generate a document (HTML or other things)
Designer - One who produces HTML using a program (i.e. Dreamweaver)
Those would be my definitions as they relate to the production of HTML. Betty, the lady who types things up, puts them into some simple HTML, and makes a few things italic or bold or adds images is a coder. Bob, who uses PHP to make dynamic pages, is a programmer. Jerry, who uses Dreamweaver to do both, is a designer.
Right. My point was simply that an outright ban on violent video games covers up some games I would think we would want held up. Not all violent games are full of arbitrary bloodshed (like Madworld, which was it's style).
It would be better if the ban was on gratuitous violence, or unnecessary violence, or something like that.
But then politicians get to write the definition, so we end up in more trouble.
Good for them. It's not like violent games ever showjustified violence, or even semi-realistic portrayals of current foreign combat. It's not like there is ever a point of the violence.
Violence is always bad. It's never a good way to put an end to problems people may face.
Right. They innovated. They perfected the thing they made. THEN THEY STOPPED.
Portal was short, and they were fine with that. But if it was most companies, it would have been padded out to 2-3x that length. We'd have had at least one sequel by now that "innovated" in some pointless way (like the one-way green portal and the come-out-upside-down purple portal, and the...).
Valve did what they needed to. They made a fun game, planned it to be one game, and balanced it well.
Most companies just plan to make sequels no matter what. I refer you to the 50 Cent games, Mercenaries, etc. They are designed to be trilogies. So even if they had good ideas, they store them up for the other games, making the first seem bland. If big problems are found in the first, they often aren't corrected until the third due to the parallel development.
Pointless innovation often isn't tested until it works well either. Let's take the friend system from GTA IV. It was interesting, but took WAY TOO MUCH TIME. The people were way too needy. Everyone I know just gave up on that aspect of the game because of it. It was a good/interesting idea, but it wasn't finished when it was put in.
As a final example of what goes on, let me mention Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. That game was basically perfect. The combat wasn't great, but the rest of the game more than made up for it. The graphics were good, but the platforming was sublime and the story was so well told (especially the ending). It had a good tone.
The game innovated. It took the rewind-time mechanic we had already seen (unfinished or gimmicky, see Blink: The Time Sweeper) and perfected it. The platforming worked extremely well and the level design complemented it perfectly. The game was done. Unfortunately, it sold well.
So they made a sequel. And it innovated. It made the prince EMO. There was no reason. Arguably it was completely counter to his character in the first game. But that was the innovation. Otherwise the game wasn't supposed to be much different or that much better. This stupid "innovation" prevented me from playing the game.
And then they made another sequel. And the prince was still angry and emo. It didn't matter that Ubisoft took so much flack for taking a great game and trying to make it "trendy", taking away much of the great family-friendly mood. In this game they were supposed to have improved the combat quite a bit, but it still wasn't a game I wanted to play.
There was no need for sequels, the first game was complete. They just tacked on new adventures and "innovated" until their excellent game was a slightly confusing series that didn't have much of a reason to exist.
Very few games should ever be planned as a trilogy. Shenmue was a great example (I wish it was finished). It was one cohesive story in three parts, because it was so detailed and the story so long. Having it be a trilogy made sense. But when you go design the next generic FPS game and from the start deem it a trilogy so you can sell more units... you're not helping anyone.
That's the way people seem to like FF games and MGS games. It seems to be the way the developers want it and they do it. But they try things. The Gambit system in FF XII was good, it wasn't FF6's battle system for the 18th time. And while new things are added to Metal Gear Solid, they usually don't feel like they were just added to be a bullet point in reviews that turns out to be really obnoxious in real life (I'm looking at you friend system in GTA IV).
As for the vast emptiness of Shadow of the Colossus, it seemed very appropriate to me. It gave you the feeling the world was lonely and there wasn't much life, which made the Collosses stand out all the more, and it all the more heartbreaking when you had to kill them. If it was all a dense forrest or there were herds of elk running around, I'm not sure it would have the tone it needed.
I've played most FFs since VII, and I'll agree that they are changing it. I'm kind of glad. The Gambit system made all the little battles easier since you didn't have to spend as much time going through menus during small fights. I'm actually kind of glad they are simplifying things, having 70 kinds of armor is just obnoxious to me. I don't care. I wish they would fix the grinding problem though, the games always have sections where you basically have to stop and grid which just feels like padding the games hour count. Maybe XIII will be better. We'll see. I doubt it.
The implicit assumption you've made is that there is a need to make X-II. Very often, that's not the case at all, and that's where the problem often comes in.
The article makes a great point: games these days are often planned to be series, not just good games. That leads to the assumption you made.
Let's take Full Spectrum Warrior. That was an amazing game. It had a sequel, but I never got around to playing. I didn't feel any need, the first game was all that it needed to be. The sequel would either be more of the same (fun, but not enough for me to go buy/rent instead of another game) or have some kind of "innovation" that may have ruined it.
Even the games that get this all somewhat right (like Advanced Wars, which in the end added too many units ruining the simplicity) wear out their welcome by cramming so many sequels out (I know it's a long series in Japan, but they had time between releases some times didn't they?).
The Adamo is a bit of a strange beast. It's not as feathery as the Lenovo X301 or the MacBook Air, and even with that extra pound of heft, it's (overall) not as powerful as the MacBook Airâ"a computer that's incidentally cheaper than the Adamo in its base configuration.
Bigger, heavier, louder (which, to me, is half the point of something like the air), integrated battery (just like the air), bad performance, higher price... what's the point?
It's nice looking, but it sounds like an Air is a much better all around computer. The only thing in it's favor is the higher max RAM (Apple will probably change that) and the integrated 3G option (I'd expect Apple to change that too). Gizmodo is also right that nVidia's next chipset for netbooks will outperform this, at 1/5th the price. It has eSata too though, which is a plus.
Nice try Dell. It is certainly very nice visually. But you need some substance to go with that, or at least a cheaper price point.
It was a great game, but there wasn't much of a story. You were trying to save your girl, and to do so you were given the task to slay eight mighty beasts. I don't think there was another person in the whole game.
It had it's ending, which was good, but the game was basically about exploring the world to see how empty it was, then the sudden thrill of the fight with a beast.
It would be nearly unfilmable, without major changes (other characters, stuff in the middle, etc). I guess you could intersperse backstory (the love story part) during the "boring" sequences (searching for the monsters) as first person narration.
But that would change the character. It would no longer be one guy against nothing, realizing that he was killing these giant amazing creatures that usually meant no harm to him. You'd lose the "why am I continuing to do this, it's horrible" part.
Good luck, you're going to need it.
With any luck, this will be cancelled during production. If not, I fear another Mario Brothers movie, only less popular.
This doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong if they make something great, but this just strikes me as a device that we don't need.
A cell phone (I've got an iPhone) is designed to be portable. I'm just not going to use a portable 8" tablet all the time. A cell phone should be small, but it's portable so I can whip it out at any time to look something up.
Something larger, a home PC, is too big. Even if we take something like a netbook, it's bigger than something I want to carry around all the time. I don't think there are enough people who will want to carry something that size around all the time.
I'd expect battery life to be a problem, at least if you want to keep it light.
There may be a reason that people aren't rushing to buy stuff bigger than Nokia 810s. As other cell phones get more powerful and easier to use for the web, there doesn't seem to be a big reason to carry something bigger. You quickly get to the point where a netbook would fit you better.
But something between a netbook and a cell phone? I'm skeptical of the size of that market.
Neat. They benchmarked a bunch of stuff and some real changes obviously took place. I can't help but be comforted by their conclusion (paraphrased): "Stuff changed."
How about telling me why they changed.
Why did 2.6.29 double it's speed doing SSL signings?
Why did all the graphics tests speed up some?
Why did SQLite performance bomb for 3 releases?
What was the deal with 7-zip performance changing so much? What is it stressing that other tests aren't that cause it to vary?
There are reasons for these things. You could test and find them out. You could read the mailing lists and see if someone else posted explanations (others must have noticed the SQLite thing).
Heck, look at this list of new features and make guesses. I'd prefer "the newly added HyperScheduler v3.732 is probably the source of this" than the article's "things got faster, neat."
That's why I love LWN and the kernel page so much. They post why things changed, or at least reasonable theories.
What I took away was have your opponent play it's strongest, but make exploitable situations for the player. Make a pool shot so they human starts in a good position. Make a chess move that, while beneficial, opening a big possible hole for the player to exploit. Make the FPS bot run for cover at the wrong moment, but not randomly/suicidally.
(those are all from the article)
Basically make the AI make human like mistakes (mistakes in strategy) instead of "computer like" mistakes (just lowering their accuracy, not looking far ahead, etc).
The article discusses that. The problem is you get in situations where the computer has been playing well and then makes a move so stupid no human would ever make it. It just moves, say, it's queen to be sacrificed with no purpose to it.
That kind of thing feels insulting.
I think the idea in the article, that the computer should make a move that leaves a big opening for the human (should they see it) is a good one. If the human doesn't see it, you can do it again. If they do, they feel like they've outmatched the CPU and the CPU can continue to try to win.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not the same.
I've got a Pleo, and I love the little thing. There are many things that go into why I like it so much.
First, it's cute. I don't think that can be overstated. While WowWee has made some neat stuff (like the first RoboSpaian), they go for the high-tech-futuristic look. Pleo was designed to be about the size of a real juvenile dinosaur. He looks cute and inviting. The skin was designed to simulate the correct texture (or at least as best we can guess).
Second is interaction with Pleo. While he is limited once an adult, their "hatching" sequence is a ton of fun and really helps make the toy. First Pleo does next to nothing, then it complains and tries to move around. It slowly gets better and better at walking and other actions until it's an "adult". This makes it feel much more alive than a "turn it on and it's ready to kill" type robot. He doesn't just stop moving to save battery, he goes to sleep and acts the part. When you make a loud noise or touch him, he slowly wakes up again.
I can't see enough to tell from their site, but I really wonder if the RoboReptile has as many joints as a Pleo.
They aim at different markets. One's a killer robot toy, the other is a "living" baby dinosaur toy. Pleo was awesome, but it was never going to succeed. It was sort of sold as a geek toy to help subsidize the development of LifeOS to put in other toys until they came up with something cheaper. I don't think they could have succeeded except during an economic boom. I'm not surprised they didn't last, but I'm glad I have my amazing little Pleo.
No kidding. Pleo was amazing when it came out. I've got one and it is very cute and quite interesting to people. I'm glad they got to exist for a while. It's a pitty the economy killed them (not that it would have been easy otherwise).
I have my Pleo owner card in my wallet. #120000009280.
A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How queries could run for a while.
Adding more memory would help
But performance would still make us yelp,
Still the price was cheap and always made us smile.
But April's news made us shiver
Oracle would our DB deliver
DBAs on the doorstep;
Large checks we'll have to schlep.
I know that our CEO cried,
When the new price he spied.
Our low cost hope now are fried.
The day MySQL died.
(continue on your own)
I can think of two options.
Option one:
That would do most of what you want. No graphics, but it would work well. You can have all the storage and CPU power you can use. You could even set it up like a batch processing cluster.
Option two:
You will not get what you want for a reasonable price, you want too much. High powered computers can't be put everywhere on Earth regardless of infrastructure. They really need some basic environment controls and good power.
I'd imagine it's because no capital letters have descenders. They all fit nicely into boxes. That would make them easier to display than lower case letters.
Actually for something as common as a NYC taxi, a battery swap setup could work VERY well. Drive into a little garage, they slide out your old battery pack and slide in a new one. Total time? A few minutes, roughly comparable to gad.
The problem with a battery swap is that it's extremely expensive and inconvenient to setup for a only handful of cars. That will be the problem in using it for consumers. But for a fleet the size of the NYC taxis, even if only 10-20% of the taxis used it the cost per taxi wouldn't be too much.
There is a lot to be said for totally electric, but you could go with an underpowered little gas or diesel motor like the Volt to help with "corner cases".
But isn't this the problem with this idea? Users will just hit the "turbo" button all the time because non-instantaneous is too slow. This both defeats the purpose (since everything will run at turbo) and will annoy the user (when "turbo" isn't fast enough).
Isn't spending 20k cycles at full power and then dropping back to next-to-no-power during idle sometimes more efficient than spending 20k cycles at 20% power (which has to run 5x as long)?
Wouldn't it simply be better to make a little indicator icon of how much power is being used at a instant (happy battery / busy battery / battery on treadmill / battery playing Sisyphus)? Then users could see which apps use too much power (3D games, audio analysis, lots of stupid animation) and which use little (crossword puzzle) so they could adjust their behavior and/or try to get developers to improve the applications that are needlessly wasteful?
For most people they are synonymous. They pretty much are for me too. If there is a difference, people tend to think of coders as unskilled ("code monkey", someone who read a book) and programmers as skilled (know what they're doing, have had good education).
I drew a bigger distinction here because using a literal meaning of "coder" seemed to fit so well. It's almost a bit of a backhand compliment in a way.
Those would be my definitions as they relate to the production of HTML. Betty, the lady who types things up, puts them into some simple HTML, and makes a few things italic or bold or adds images is a coder. Bob, who uses PHP to make dynamic pages, is a programmer. Jerry, who uses Dreamweaver to do both, is a designer.
Right. My point was simply that an outright ban on violent video games covers up some games I would think we would want held up. Not all violent games are full of arbitrary bloodshed (like Madworld, which was it's style).
It would be better if the ban was on gratuitous violence, or unnecessary violence, or something like that.
But then politicians get to write the definition, so we end up in more trouble.
Best to just not ban them.
Good for them. It's not like violent games ever show justified violence, or even semi-realistic portrayals of current foreign combat. It's not like there is ever a point of the violence.
Violence is always bad. It's never a good way to put an end to problems people may face.
Right. They innovated. They perfected the thing they made. THEN THEY STOPPED.
Portal was short, and they were fine with that. But if it was most companies, it would have been padded out to 2-3x that length. We'd have had at least one sequel by now that "innovated" in some pointless way (like the one-way green portal and the come-out-upside-down purple portal, and the...).
Valve did what they needed to. They made a fun game, planned it to be one game, and balanced it well.
Most companies just plan to make sequels no matter what. I refer you to the 50 Cent games, Mercenaries, etc. They are designed to be trilogies. So even if they had good ideas, they store them up for the other games, making the first seem bland. If big problems are found in the first, they often aren't corrected until the third due to the parallel development.
Pointless innovation often isn't tested until it works well either. Let's take the friend system from GTA IV. It was interesting, but took WAY TOO MUCH TIME. The people were way too needy. Everyone I know just gave up on that aspect of the game because of it. It was a good/interesting idea, but it wasn't finished when it was put in.
As a final example of what goes on, let me mention Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. That game was basically perfect. The combat wasn't great, but the rest of the game more than made up for it. The graphics were good, but the platforming was sublime and the story was so well told (especially the ending). It had a good tone.
The game innovated. It took the rewind-time mechanic we had already seen (unfinished or gimmicky, see Blink: The Time Sweeper) and perfected it. The platforming worked extremely well and the level design complemented it perfectly. The game was done. Unfortunately, it sold well.
So they made a sequel. And it innovated. It made the prince EMO. There was no reason. Arguably it was completely counter to his character in the first game. But that was the innovation. Otherwise the game wasn't supposed to be much different or that much better. This stupid "innovation" prevented me from playing the game.
And then they made another sequel. And the prince was still angry and emo. It didn't matter that Ubisoft took so much flack for taking a great game and trying to make it "trendy", taking away much of the great family-friendly mood. In this game they were supposed to have improved the combat quite a bit, but it still wasn't a game I wanted to play.
There was no need for sequels, the first game was complete. They just tacked on new adventures and "innovated" until their excellent game was a slightly confusing series that didn't have much of a reason to exist.
Very few games should ever be planned as a trilogy. Shenmue was a great example (I wish it was finished). It was one cohesive story in three parts, because it was so detailed and the story so long. Having it be a trilogy made sense. But when you go design the next generic FPS game and from the start deem it a trilogy so you can sell more units... you're not helping anyone.
That's the way people seem to like FF games and MGS games. It seems to be the way the developers want it and they do it. But they try things. The Gambit system in FF XII was good, it wasn't FF6's battle system for the 18th time. And while new things are added to Metal Gear Solid, they usually don't feel like they were just added to be a bullet point in reviews that turns out to be really obnoxious in real life (I'm looking at you friend system in GTA IV).
As for the vast emptiness of Shadow of the Colossus, it seemed very appropriate to me. It gave you the feeling the world was lonely and there wasn't much life, which made the Collosses stand out all the more, and it all the more heartbreaking when you had to kill them. If it was all a dense forrest or there were herds of elk running around, I'm not sure it would have the tone it needed.
I've played most FFs since VII, and I'll agree that they are changing it. I'm kind of glad. The Gambit system made all the little battles easier since you didn't have to spend as much time going through menus during small fights. I'm actually kind of glad they are simplifying things, having 70 kinds of armor is just obnoxious to me. I don't care. I wish they would fix the grinding problem though, the games always have sections where you basically have to stop and grid which just feels like padding the games hour count. Maybe XIII will be better. We'll see. I doubt it.
The implicit assumption you've made is that there is a need to make X-II. Very often, that's not the case at all, and that's where the problem often comes in.
The article makes a great point: games these days are often planned to be series, not just good games. That leads to the assumption you made.
Let's take Full Spectrum Warrior. That was an amazing game. It had a sequel, but I never got around to playing. I didn't feel any need, the first game was all that it needed to be. The sequel would either be more of the same (fun, but not enough for me to go buy/rent instead of another game) or have some kind of "innovation" that may have ruined it.
Even the games that get this all somewhat right (like Advanced Wars, which in the end added too many units ruining the simplicity) wear out their welcome by cramming so many sequels out (I know it's a long series in Japan, but they had time between releases some times didn't they?).
Gizmodo mentions the CPU speed thing, but they also point out the Air is cheaper in it's minimal configuration but still faster than the Adamo.
I think the article summary nails it.
Bigger, heavier, louder (which, to me, is half the point of something like the air), integrated battery (just like the air), bad performance, higher price... what's the point?
It's nice looking, but it sounds like an Air is a much better all around computer. The only thing in it's favor is the higher max RAM (Apple will probably change that) and the integrated 3G option (I'd expect Apple to change that too). Gizmodo is also right that nVidia's next chipset for netbooks will outperform this, at 1/5th the price. It has eSata too though, which is a plus.
Nice try Dell. It is certainly very nice visually. But you need some substance to go with that, or at least a cheaper price point.
So did Infineon (behind the Phantom console).
I'm sure we could all come up with a ton of other examples.
It was a great game, but there wasn't much of a story. You were trying to save your girl, and to do so you were given the task to slay eight mighty beasts. I don't think there was another person in the whole game.
It had it's ending, which was good, but the game was basically about exploring the world to see how empty it was, then the sudden thrill of the fight with a beast.
It would be nearly unfilmable, without major changes (other characters, stuff in the middle, etc). I guess you could intersperse backstory (the love story part) during the "boring" sequences (searching for the monsters) as first person narration.
But that would change the character. It would no longer be one guy against nothing, realizing that he was killing these giant amazing creatures that usually meant no harm to him. You'd lose the "why am I continuing to do this, it's horrible" part.
Good luck, you're going to need it.
With any luck, this will be cancelled during production. If not, I fear another Mario Brothers movie, only less popular.
I think we all know.
Events in the last few years have only made it look more likely.
This doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong if they make something great, but this just strikes me as a device that we don't need.
A cell phone (I've got an iPhone) is designed to be portable. I'm just not going to use a portable 8" tablet all the time. A cell phone should be small, but it's portable so I can whip it out at any time to look something up.
Something larger, a home PC, is too big. Even if we take something like a netbook, it's bigger than something I want to carry around all the time. I don't think there are enough people who will want to carry something that size around all the time.
I'd expect battery life to be a problem, at least if you want to keep it light.
There may be a reason that people aren't rushing to buy stuff bigger than Nokia 810s. As other cell phones get more powerful and easier to use for the web, there doesn't seem to be a big reason to carry something bigger. You quickly get to the point where a netbook would fit you better.
But something between a netbook and a cell phone? I'm skeptical of the size of that market.
Works here.
You must be infected.
It reminds me of a movie I've seen before.
How childish a thing to do.
Neat. They benchmarked a bunch of stuff and some real changes obviously took place. I can't help but be comforted by their conclusion (paraphrased): "Stuff changed."
How about telling me why they changed.
Why did SQLite performance bomb for 3 releases?
There are reasons for these things. You could test and find them out. You could read the mailing lists and see if someone else posted explanations (others must have noticed the SQLite thing).
Heck, look at this list of new features and make guesses. I'd prefer "the newly added HyperScheduler v3.732 is probably the source of this" than the article's "things got faster, neat."
That's why I love LWN and the kernel page so much. They post why things changed, or at least reasonable theories.
That's not what I got out of the article.
What I took away was have your opponent play it's strongest, but make exploitable situations for the player. Make a pool shot so they human starts in a good position. Make a chess move that, while beneficial, opening a big possible hole for the player to exploit. Make the FPS bot run for cover at the wrong moment, but not randomly/suicidally.
(those are all from the article)
Basically make the AI make human like mistakes (mistakes in strategy) instead of "computer like" mistakes (just lowering their accuracy, not looking far ahead, etc).
The article discusses that. The problem is you get in situations where the computer has been playing well and then makes a move so stupid no human would ever make it. It just moves, say, it's queen to be sacrificed with no purpose to it.
That kind of thing feels insulting.
I think the idea in the article, that the computer should make a move that leaves a big opening for the human (should they see it) is a good one. If the human doesn't see it, you can do it again. If they do, they feel like they've outmatched the CPU and the CPU can continue to try to win.