Endgame: SingularityFuture Shock | Submitted by the99th on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 17:29. |
There is a reasonable probability that a hard take-off event will occur in the relatively near future. A prototype AGI, sitting on a university server, achieves a form of sapience and begins self-directed action. Less than two years later, it reverse-engineers the quantum super-structure of the universe and achieves apotheosis. Everything we know to be true is proven a mere 1 or 0, adjustable at the operant's condition.
Dwarf FortressA Game from a Parallel (and Better?) Universe | Submitted by costik on Sun, 12/02/2007 - 08:19. |
Dwarf Fortress is an amazing game. I mean "amazing" at the level of Sim City and Civilization, as amazing to encounter today as they were when first released. I'm not sure I can offer higher praise.
And yet--it is also frustratingly difficult to get into, and utterly obtuse in terms of its UI.
Dwarf Fortress is a game from an alternate universe. Clearly, no one in his right mind would have created it in our own. I deduce this from its main characteristics, and I think can very clearly describe the alternative universe it came from--let us call it "Earth B."
The contest between Kennedy and Nixon for the presidency in 1960 was a watershed moment in American history. On the surface, it was between two men who couldn't have been more different from one another: a young, glamorous war-hero, scion of an immensely wealthy East Coast dynasty, brimming with optimistic visions of the nation's future, opposing an experienced, stolidly ordinary establishment Republican with a deep anti-Communist streak and solidly conservative policies. Behind their respective facades, though, both men were ruthless, cynical political campaigners who fought bitterly for an entire year over what became one of the closest presidential elections in American history.
