wizardbeard

um ackshually that's Metal Sonic, first appearing in Sonic CD.

Mecha Sonic is a boss from Sonic 2 Game Gear, and is totally different.

Which should never be confused with Mecha Sonic that's one of the final bosses of Sonic 2 Mega Drive/Genesis.

Or Mecha Sonic Mk II from Sonic and Knuckles, who is clearly an upgraded version of Mecha Sonic, not an upgraded version of Mecha Sonic.

Or Super Mecha Sonic, the transformation of Mecha Sonic Mk II, but who has nothing to do with Mecha Sonic, Mecha Sonic, or Metal Sonic.

And I could never imagine how anyone could be stupid enough to confuse them with Mecha Sonic Mk III, the background decoration from Sonic Adventure, who is clearly an upgrade of Mecha Sonic, not an upgrade of Mecha Sonic, Mecha Sonic Mk II, or Metal Sonic. (Why do I taste copper?)

But you could be forgiven for mistaking Metal Sonic for his later self-upgraded form Neo Metal Sonic, the antagonist from Sonic Heroes.

Neo Metal Sonic can transform into Metal Madness from Sonic Heroes. Only a fool would think that Metal Sonic, Mecha Sonic, Mecha Sonic, Mecha Sonic Mk II, Super Mecha Sonic, or Mecha Sonic Mk III could do that.

Metal Madness can transform into Metal Overlord, of course. I don't know how that could be any more obvious, or how anyone could confuse this for Metal Madness. C'mon they're completely distinct. (Does anyone smell burnt toast?)

And only an idiot wouldn't understand Metal Sonic 3.0 is a completely new robot made as an upgraded version of Metal Sonic, created by an alternate dimension version of Eggman who isn't from an alternate dimension but is from the future, who is a rival to Metal Sonic who is no longer Neo Metal Sonic. It's mind boggling that something so simple could confuse anyone with a basic modicum of intelligence.

And the Metal Sonics from the Archie comics are entirely self explanatory. Why is there this wet red stuff coming out of my ears? I think I'm going to have a lie down.

I honestly don't remember the specifics of how I've got my Pro install configured for updates. I think it doesn't notify of available updates until they've been out a month (keeps me from pulling down a bleeding edge update that causes more problems than it fixes), downloads them so they'll auto-install on shutdown/restart for a week, and if I don't uodate that week then it flashes up the "your organization requires you to update by [next week]" message. I don't think it actually forces when that week runs out, so you're probably right, but it's been a long time since I've went two whole weeks without shutting down or rebooting.

I do know that I've got "feature updates" (read OS changes) set to only be available if I manually install them. So the whole "Windows forces you to upgrade to 11" complaint is pure BS at least.

You can totally stop updates on Windows. Fully off. They don't offer good options for updating on demand on your own schedule, but you can disable updates entirely and for pro and enterprise skus you can use GPO for additional delay options.

It definitely means more than just that in this context. Being able to consistently communicate that knowledge in a usable format is important. It's important that it doesn't regularly get delusional and output falsehoods.

That second point is the biggest problem. LLMs have people pretending that the ultimate form of word association done at an incomprehensible scale will eventually become something comparable to logic and reasoning. Even the newer models like deepseek that output "thinking" steps are almost entirely shadow play.

There has been some minor success using text analysis to insert small expert systems (actual logic) into the middle of the text analysis -> text generation pipeline, but it turns out that those have all the limitations and constraints they've always had (limited problem space, difficult to build and maintain, requiring actual subject matter experts to create), and putting them in the middle of multiple "lossy" steps (the analysis and generation of text) doesn't help their efficacy.

The reason there’s so much resistance to conceptualizing anything in the AI field is that AI is scary and people would rather be in denial about its existence.

Additionally, like most fad science trends, there is a gap between enthusiasts and professionals. See the old joke about tech enthusiasts vs old sysadmins.

Plus, people like Sam Altman have demonstrated that there is an absurd amount of money to be made and influence to be wielded by overstating capabilites and anthropomorphizing code. Pushback against the griftiness is natural and healthy.

This recent push of AI is the most costly business pursuit ever done, and sold entirely on the promise that they're going to bypass limitations inherent to the core design in some unspecified way at some unspecified point in the future, they just need even more money. OpenAI is the most successful example, and they lose money on every query.

My point is that there's plenty of reasons to be skeptical or even distrustful of this shit besides "wElL yOu JuSt DoN't UnDeRsTaNd"/"YoU'rE jUsT sCaReD oF aI". Those are just cop out excuses for your own lack of interest in engaging with opposing views, and lack of interest in examining the underlying technology and business facts beneath the hype machine.

AI is groundbreaking and amazing. It is also definitively not capable of the dream they've sold us, and there is no clear path from A to B. I don't hate it. I find it far less useful than it's sold as. I have absolute contempt for the record breaking amount of money and resources going into it that would be far better invested elsewhere. I have negative amounts of confidence that even if by some reality bending miracle they achieve the lofty hype machine goals, that any significant amount of the benefits will trickle down to the layperson at all.

Apologies for the ramble. I'm just sick and tired of the thought terminating argument that all people speaking against AI are scared or somehow don't get it. That's bullshit and even a moment of thought should make you dismiss that as some sort of hard and fast rule.

That's a bit of a spoiler, isn't it?

There are active private servers still. I think they all use the gamecube version.

Then you need better ear plugs. Not whatever headphones you use to jam out (although there are decent noise blocking in ear ones if you look hard enough) but actual hearing protection. Maybe look into ones for gun range use? If you can bear sleeping in them, there's also the kind of earmuff hearing protection gear that workers use when working on the airport tarmac.

Or louder white noise. The whole point is so that you have audio that you can sleep through (and won't damage your hearing) that makes outside noise quiet enough that it doesn't wake you up.

Like seriously what the fuck are your neighbors doing that gets through a good eye mask and ear plugs? Coming inside your room and shaking you?

At some point I would think it would be enough you could lodge a noise complaint with your landlord, RA (if you're in dorms), or the local police (using the non emergency number).

There's also melatonin and stuff like zzzquil, but those don't work for everyone and I would be concerned about anything more than melatonin being potentially habit forming.

Not to turn this into an ad, but these are real and sold here.

Definitely prefer the ones with mechanical parts rather than the modern ones with eyes that are just backlit screens. I've always found animatronics fascinating, and it's neat that they managed to sell what was effectively a mini animatronic at consumer prices.

I'm a big fan of the various mods of them that people make, like the long furbys, hydras, etc. I'm sad that most of the mods don't go farther, like custom microcontrollers and such. I'm shocked there isn't some open source project to replace the guts with an rPi Zero or something hackable.

Your question sent me down a rabbit hole and apparently the original source code is semi-available. Scanned PDF of code included with the original patent filing.

This comment brings up another important point: by reddit's own "reddiquette", upvotes and downvotes are not meant to be used as a sign of support. Everyone knows that they are, but officially they are meant to simply be used as "this contibutes to the conversation".

So there's hypocrisy right at the base concept this whole plan is built off of. Not surprising.

Eye mask, white noise machine or app on your phone to help drown out noise, and if that's not enough then ear plugs.

There's an old speedrunning trick for this: If you don't put new clothes on each day and instead keep re-wearing them, it stops growing.

The game tries to prevent this with the stench debuff and the hit to your cleanliness stat, but you can counter that with routing to avoid enounters with other players. Then the debuff does nothing and the cleanliness stat only matters once it gets low enough to trigger damage to your HP.

So it really only works for specific builds, but if done right it can save you a lot of time.

What do you mean they added a large negative modifier to the mental health stat when using this strat? I guess this works better on earlier patches before personal hygiene became so important in the meta.