Happy to hear it! It’s very different from the other Hitman games, but maybe that works for you?

Damn, that’s a choice. How is it?

Honestly just pile up containers in a cave and store the waste there. It’s highly unlikely you’ll run out of storage before winning the game.

Is RNG always bullshit?

Do you feel like that’s the case in Blue Prince?

To me, the RNG feels fundamental to the puzzling in Blue Prince, not something that could be removed to make a better game. And Blue Prince is undeniably an interesting game.

No, that sounds like a terrible game. How exactly is this relevant?

Well… A puzzle is a challenge. In Blue Prince, part of the challenge is that you need to engage with the clues you have available, not necessarily the clues you hoped for. Removing that challenge is to remove part of the puzzle.

You’re fully within your right to say that’s not your cup of tea, but I think it does contribute something meaningful to the puzzling.

While there is one main goal in front of you, all the shit they pile in front of you is more mystery, the solution of which will carry you closer to your goal.

It’s more like if Obra Dinn randomly had you play an Outer Wilds loop or Chants of Sennaar segment, with all the mysteries tying together.

Thanks for the long reply! To me, there is another element that RNG can add: the challenge of adapting. Think of x-com: you’re immediately told the odds that a shot will succeed, and have to decide whether to take that shot based on that chance and the consequences of it failing.

You know that on average things will work out fairly, but you have to be ready to push the successes without letting failure trip you up.

During most of the game, Blue Prince poses many different puzzles and riddles to you in parallel. If you focus on one thing you’ve had a eureka moment about, you’ll be frustrated with the lack of control, but if you approach the situation holistically, and pursue all puzzles at the same time based on what is available, it’s a very different experience. Your thought processes and realizations are shaped by the randomness of the day.

Furthermore there’s always an interesting strategy element of mitigating the chance by ensuring lots of redraws in different ways, upgrading rooms to serve several purposes, piling up resources between runs etc.

I do think it’s novel and interesting, though not necessarily the best idea in the world. To properly do the holistic approach I mention you need a massive infrastructure of photos and notes to keep track of all the clues you’re pursuing. I wish it had some kind of overview of found documents and clues, though I can see how that’s not so simple to implement for this game in particular.

Do you feel the same about other games that involve random chance, such as roguelikes and RPGs?

I actually like the lack of aim dot. A lot of the archery feels like it would be sort of trivial with an aim dot?

While it doesn’t make archery feel like real life, it does add to the feeling of starting out as a useless peasant.

I guess there is some cultural nuance - my impression is that for some people, sexual exclusivity is understood as an impossible virtue which it is important to appear to uphold, but where breaking it is kind of like sneaking a cigarette after having quit.

Which doesn’t make them untrustworthy necessarily, they just have a different understanding of how big of a deal it is.

But if the macroscopic world is a consequence of the microscopic behaviour, how would you know how to simulate the macroscopic without simulating the microscopic?

With the microscopic being unsimulated, would there not be macroscopic effects without any causes? Wouldn’t be be able to detect this discrepancy on further investigation?

If you had to retroactively simulate a cause for all effects that get investigated, wouldn’t it be simpler to just simulate the microscopic in the first place?

The game is The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy

Sometimes you think you say the right thing, but you didn’t, and you’ll have to live with the consequences. This is a major part of the Witcher games, that your actions have possibly unforeseen consequences that you’ll have to live with.

Accept that Triss has made her choice. If you don’t want to be with Yen, then don’t be with anyone, that’s completely fine.

What kind of game is it?

Civil War and Dredd. You decide which one is political and which one is apolitical.

I made the attempt, but couldn’t parse that first link.

Fair - it is indeed difficult for non-experts. But all you need to see from it is that it is a concrete example of a (small) actual quantum computer as reported on outside a corporate press release. The focus on error correction comes from the fact that this is the next big hurdle in the way of scaling up. But the machine is there!

This is just one more kind of chip that will be found in computers of the future.

Exactly - this was never meant to replace classical computers, but to do things that are impossible for classical computers to ever do.

Problem is, this only works for systems that have a known answer (like cryptography) with a verifiable result, otherwise the system never knows when the equation is “complete”.

This isn’t quite right. It’s true, there’s never 100% certainty you have the right answer, but 99.99999% is usually good enough. A classical computer also isn’t 100% certain since it’s also technically just a “physics experiment”, but it has an extremely low error rate, like 10^(-20).

when they talk about speed, they aren’t exactly being forthright

Sure, quantum computers aren’t faster than a classical computer for now, and won’t be for a while. But exponential speedup means that the problems we can eventually solve with a quantum computer are literally impossible for a physical computer to ever solve. This part of the corporate hype speak is true. It’s a purely physical fact. Though for sure we aren’t there yet!

it’s… not really useful in power expenditure or financially to do much beyond a large corporation or government breaking encryption.

Indeed, very likely nobody is ever going to be doing personal computing on these, but they were never meant for that, they are meant for supercomputing level calculations.

Mr. Robot

Hell yes! I’d love to share some stuff.

One good example of a quantum computer is the Lukin group neutral atoms work. As the paper discusses, they managed to perform error correction procedures making 48 actual logical qubits and performing operations on them. Still not all that practically useful, but it exists, and is extremely impressive from a physics experiment viewpoint.

There are also plenty of meaningful reports on non-emulated machines from the corporate world. From the big players examples include the Willow chip from Google and Heron from IBM being actual real quantum devices doing actual (albeit basic) operations. Furthermore there are a plethora of smaller companies like OQC and Pasqal with real machines.

On applications, this review is both extensive and sober, outlining the known applications with speedups, costs and drawbacks. Among the most exciting are Fermi-Hubbard model dynamics (condensed matter stuff), which is predicted to have exponential speedup with relatively few resources. These all depend on a relatively narrow selection of tricks, though. Among interesting efforts to fundamentally expand what tricks are available is this work from the Babbush group.

Let me know if that’s not what you were looking for.

Indeed I did. They seem to be pointing to the fact that current machines are not factoring primes in any serious way.

Does this contradict my point?