I comic relief news, I couldn't remember the word "glasses" today, so my brain supplied "eye trousers".

Once again, my professional recommendation in response to the latest Linux kernel vulnerability in the news is that you should gather up all your electronic devices, cast them into the sea, and retreat to the woods.

Each night, gather your children and tell them tales of the Before Times when the hubris of humanity grew so large that we made idols of sand and spoke to them as equals. Remind them that the sand, of course, did not speak or think, but we imagined it could, and let it guide us to folly.

Should a stranger ever come to your village with a glowing rectangle, encourage the youth to beat them with sticks.

#infosec

RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/117473060849446693

The Spice Must Flow

Cranky modern indie game design thought: there are only two mechanics left: gambling (random outcomes, occasionally you get lucky) and curve-fitting (combine short and long-term advantages to stay ahead of the difficulty curve.)

Imagine your own Calvin's Dad Explains meme here.

Ongoing experience with Next Fest game pages: scroll down, see cursive text. Oh no, it's AI slop! Ah wait, it's just mature content. That's OK then.

"The Funding Problem" is why you're seeing OSS fall to LLMs day after day. We never solved it. To solve it would cost an astonishing amount of money, the kind most people simply do not have given how much wealth inequality we have as a society at present.

The corps hoard.
Governments are strapped.

If you want to see OSS not fall to slop, devs need food, housing, healthcare, and safety.

OSS falling to slop is a reflection of *society*. And yes, it's upsetting to see the wrapper torn off.

No gods, no masters, and definitely no fucking LLMs.

One of the small things I love about Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is that the manual has a list of the SF novels they read for inspiration at the back. More games should come with background reading lists!

So, #gamedev people: what's the background reading/watching for your game? I'm curious.

@emma

@Zarkonnen Thousand Hells is Orpheus/Ocean’s 11, but in more https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3794210/view/501711331410313636?l=english [edit: fixed link]

@Zarkonnen
Laurence Bergreen, "Over the Edge of the World"
Laurence Bergreen, "Columbus: The Four Voyages" (not nearly as good as the previous one)
David Barrie, "Sextant"
Mike Dash, "Batavia's Graveyard" (not super relevant but a good read)
1001 Nights, "The Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor"
Samuel Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

I'm still looking to add to this list, so if anyone has something (fiction or nonfiction) about sailing in the Age of Discovery, I'm all eyes 👀

After hearing about the AI-tech-bros taking up smoking and other hazardous activities as a show of faith that their LLM gods will cure their cancers as a reward for their beliefs, I had to throw a meme together.

One of the small things I love about Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is that the manual has a list of the SF novels they read for inspiration at the back. More games should come with background reading lists!

So, #gamedev people: what's the background reading/watching for your game? I'm curious.

RE: https://indieweb.social/@jbz/117402108243306680

gosh its almost like telling these companies "you can have massive scale a copyright violation, as a treat" has emboldened them to think they can just ignore laws completely

Starting to integrate the Quantitative Slime Dynamics into Biomechanoid Repair Shop. #gamedev -> https://zarkonnen.com/biomech

I have decided to become a full on AI accelerationist because the apocalypse where we choose to turn over our thinking to overgrown statistical models of our past utterances controlled by actual supervillains promises to be at least more entertaining than the already scheduled climate one. I think it's a solid B+ sci-fi plot.

Got bit by a mosquito. Awkwardly try to kill it while holding my phone. Slap it against the screen of my phone. Try to see if I got it, see a mosquito on the phone screen. But it's a picture of one, accompanying a news article about mosquitoes in Switzerland.

I... digitized a mosquito?

And here's the detailed writeup of what I actually did for the prototype and what I learned: https://zarkonnen.com/biomech/narrative_design

State of the Biomechanoid Repair Shop narrative prototype. Pretty happy with the horribleness now. Next up: more mechanics design and prototyping! #gamedev #writing

The Favorite (2010 / 2026)