As fun of a theory as this is, star-history.com just seems to round off the numbers at multiples of a hundred - just look at any other repo on the site.
When modern DAWs like FL Studio started democratizing music production, there was immediate backlash in the music production community. I know this because I lived through it. Music made with FL Studio was considered garbage, not by serious musicians, amateur. "FL Studio users are incapable of making good music", etc. Of course now well-respected musicians like Tyler the Creator and Porter Robinson use FL Studio and there isn't really a question. This is a common theme every time some new method of creating music comes around - just look at how they called Dylan "Judas" when he debuted electronic guitar, etc.
"Every previous technological advancement in music produced amazing new sounds and styles" is classic hindsight bias. In retrospect, once everything has sorted out, and all the good music has risen to the top, it's easy to look back in history and point to the highlights. But when you live through it, it looks a lot more like a mess with no redeeming qualities.
It's easy to apply the same pattern of "people hated it, then liked it" but I think something's different about AI. I think a lot of the kneejerk reactions are subconscious but I don't think that means they're unfounded or invalid, they just haven't articulated the reason yet.
When AI image generation was a thing that hobbyists were messing around with (before it became good sometime in 2023) a lot of the creative-type people that abhor AI today were interested in it. Same thing with LLMs and stuff like AI Dungeon. ( I don't think AI music generation had a similar hobbyist era but not sure. )
I think the main thing that changed was how big and commercial it became. There's nothing counter-cultural about AI anymore, it's become the polar opposite. Nobody was making billions selling synthesizers & convincing investors it would replace 99% of musicians.
FL Studio was absolutely a massive commercial success. I mean, sure, nothing compared to AI, but in the music community bubble, it was enormous - and still is. It did what AI is doing today - it made a very expensive and time consuming process before (buy a thousand dollar guitar or other expensive instrument or synthesizer, rent a studio, get a producer, blah blah, etc) extremely cheap. This then led immediately to complaints - why is it that all music made with FL Studio so lame?
If we are going to say that the knee-jerk reaction to AI is somehow different I'd be curious to know what the difference is.
FL Studio has advanced a long way since it first came out. The software professionals are using today is nothing like it was 00's. The name at the time "FruityLoops" also didn't help its image as a pro tool.
First of all, super cool. I have a soft spot for SimTower as well. :)
> I didn’t want to do a function-by-function port. First, APIs may be copyrightable - and copying a binary that closely might implicate copyright more than an approach closer to clean-room design. But it was clear that I needed some level of feedback from the ground-truth binary in order to provide a hill for the LLM to climb on the reimplementation.
Interesting, but isn't this what, say, the Ocarina of Time reverse engineer port does[1]? I imagine the fact that this hasn't been served a takedown notice from Nintendo is a proof that it's defensible? Or at least that there's precedent, ha.
Anyway, this is really cool. I genuinely think the only thing that's missing for me to waste an afternoon here is the sound effects!
Depends of the country, a lot of countries have exceptions for interoperability (at least the whole EU) and since these projects are mainly used to make ports to other systems, it may be covered.
You absolutely aren't copying the work, recompilation projects are intensive work and a re-imagining of what the source code could look like. Compilation is still a one way process.
And then for the legal part, that's why it's called an exception.
There is little to no creative work whatsoever if you end up with exactly the same game; and often they end up with exactly the same binary as well. Source translations are derivative works almost by definition. It doesn't matter what magic you use to generate it.
And again, where is the interoperability here? Interoperability exception would apply if there was whitebox cryptography, Nintendo logo-style things or anything else where the only method for the work to run would be to violate copyright of _exactly that_. Under no circumstances you can simply copy & distribute the entire work (or derivates) while claiming "interoperability exception!". It makes utterly no sense.
I disagree, the creative work is in figuring out what the game does, and the resulting recompilation is completely different from the original source code.
And then for the interoperability, these decompilation projects are primarily made to target other systems, not the original platform. That's the textbook definition of interoperability.
Let's be real, N64 and the PS1/PS2 (where most of these projects are based) are crumbling old platforms at this point and these projects are sometimes the best way to run games when they exist.
Decompilation produces a derivative work. This is not up for debate, or disagreement.
The exception for interoperability only applies to _the minimum required_ for interoperability. You can use this exception to distribute e.g. game authorization code even if copyright would not allow you to do it.
You _cannot_ use this as an excuse to pirate the entire program, much less to create your own derivative work and distribute it!
This is just wishful thinking that comes up every so often in these threads (now it is the 5th time I see this parroted here). And then, when Nintendo inevitably shuts everything down, cue the crying. This ignorance is simply setting these projects for failure.
Your interpretation, I have mine. As far as I know, none of these recompilation projects ended up in any EU court yet so your interpretation is as valid as mine.
And Nintendo can pound sand, sorry. The only realistic ways to play those aging games is on an emulator or recompilation projects nowadays.
Nintendo also didn't strike these projects, maybe they are afraid of making a precedent.
There is a bazillion of jurisprudence about decompilation in the EU . Just search for your favorite case. I'm based in the EU (France). But FYI, despite what you may think, in practice the US is more lax about this than the EU is.
In the EU, for example, decompilation even if you don't distribute may very well be illegal (because it would be an unauthorized temporary copy of the program); the US courts are way more lax when it comes to these temporary never-distributed copies (which are almost always fair use, a concept that doesn't exist per-se in the EU). This is a big problem in the EU for security research (which obviously does not fall into interoperability).
Emulation would be acceptable, which is yet another reason the interoperability clause does not apply (since you _already_ have a way to interoperate that doesn't require distributing copyrighted software, and the EU interoperability clause very explicitly says that then it does _not_ apply).
Derivative works aren't some unknowable arcane legal term. They're a pretty fundamental aspect of copyright law. The canonical examples of derivative works are things like adaptation of a book to a film, translation of a book, or a sequel.
And given these examples, it's very clear that recompilation to play on modern hardware is quite similar in spirit to translating a book into a different language, which makes it a derivative work. The other alternative is that there is insufficient creativity in the recompilation effort to merit independent copyright at all, in which case it's just plain copying of the original work. In either case, it's infringement.
Not quite. Google v Oracle ducked the question of API copyrightability (that was one of the main complaints of Thomas's dissent), instead saying that Google's use of the APIs were very definitely fair use in a sufficiently general manner that any clean room implementation of API for compatibility is very definitely fair use.
This is so good! Using mouse motion as a control scheme is particularly genius - how did no one think of this before? I particularly like the points where the mouse control is taken away from you, i.e. when you float downstream, or when you go down a slide. It's also particularly genius how the mouse can 'teleport' around the screen (i.e. when you go into a door and come out somewhere else).
This idea could even be taken further - it would be really cool to have terrain that is more difficult to traverse. I'm also intrigued by the lack of walls. I think something like a hedge maze would be really fun!
I think the water is difficult to traverse, in that it slows you down when 'swimming'.
It's really interesting how it still feels grounded even though you can fly all around. Having the cursor disappear underneath bridges and behind buildings really helps the illusion.
There was an old game called cursors.io which was the same concept but collaboratively traversing a maze where you would sometimes have to leave other players behind to reach the next level
A random experiment I made a few weeks ago does something similar, but it only uses the real cursor position for now: https://2shine.nl/demo/mousemaze/
I hate to dismiss Zed for such a stupid reason, but I have tried to use Zed seriously many times and every time I stop because I can't get over the theme. I've tried basically every single theme I can find that is reasonably popular and they are all equally poor. VSCode and Cursor have vastly better default themes.
Does anyone have any suggestions here? I would love to use Zed more.
What's your favorite theme, maybe we can point you to something close? If you have any special needs or usability issues (colorblindness is common), that's probably relevant too.
I just want you to know that I read over this thread and you are obviously completely right. This sort of incurious, immature stance is something I've seen become the norm on HN over the last few years, particularly when it comes to AI.
It’s insane to me how yesterday someone posted an example of ChatGPT Pro one-shotting an Erdos problem after 90 minutes of thinking and today you’re saying that AGI is a fairy tale.
It's not one-shot. Other people had attempted the same problem w/ the same AI & failed. You're confused about terms so you redefine them to make your version of the fairy tale real.
We already know that same problem has been examined by many credible mathematicians already and couldn't be solved by any of them yet.
Why are we expecting AGI to one shot it? Can't we have an AGI that can fails occasionally to solve some math problem? Is the expectation of AGI to be all knowing?
By the way I agree that AGI is not around the corner or I am not arguing any of the llm s are "thinking machines". It's just I agree goal post or posts needs to be set well.
People want to believe in magic so they will find excuses to do so. Computers have been proving theorems for a long time now but Isabelle/HOL didn't have the marketing budget of OpenAI so people didn't care. Now that Sam Altman is doing the marketing people all of a sudden care about proving theorems.
Isabelle/HOL (a specialized software to do math proofs) doing proofs is not the analogue to LLMs (with the common accepted degeratory description: automated plagiarism machine) being capable of doing proofs. It's not the marketing, it's what the intention and the capability matrix is coming up to. I would be excited the same when Isabelle/HOL writes poetry.
Chemistry is magic to uninitiated. Perhaps LLMs are to you because you are not initiated yet? I never said LLMs are AGI or will ever be AGI. I also never suggested LLMs are perfect and can prove math problems. But having incidents suggesting there are instances that does excites me. Because it was never in my expectation levels.
You were misrepresenting what actually happened b/c you want to believe in magic. I'm not calling it magic, I'm saying your interpretation of events is magical b/c you don't actually understand how computers work. There is nothing magical about theorem proving, Isabelle/HOL has been doing it for decades.
Isabelle/HOL haven't been solving open problems, as far as I'm aware. They've been used for making fully-formal proofs of problems that were already considered proved to a satisfactory level by the mathematical community. I believe mathematicians generally consider proving something to the mathematical community the "hard part", while making it fully formal is just a kind of tedious bookkeeping thing.
an article about a new app is an article about a new app, even if self promotional.
an article that spends most of its time talking about the sunshine and roses of purchasing domains from a domain squatter, even if you are a domain squatter, is an article about domain squatting.
it WAS being used for what I hope we can all agree is a very low value use that generated significant revenues by essentially tricking people to visit. That's the morality question here. Maybe it speaks to the bigger, general question of "do the ends justify the means?"
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