#like you can make a Kickstarter and pay a programmer and designer and do this whole thing in a few months tops

[zorciarkrildrush]

What the fuck are you talking about that's the best thing I heard

I want a cooking game with the gameplay of Doom II

[retronator]

There’s not much more that I like than a good development story. Yes, Your Grace was started by a team of students at the University of Huddersfield in England, all the way back in 2014. An ambitious goal was set to finish it by the end of 2015, if the lead designer/artist and programer were to go into full-time development with a help of a Kickstarter.

The funding campaign succeeded, alas without much extra funds on top of the £6,000 goal. As is typical for game development, the work was not complete, and with the Kickstarter money burned through, the team started looking for a publisher. This proved to be more challenging than expected and without funding, the pair decided to go back to uni. The programmer left the project to solely focus on his studies, leaving the main creator Rafał Bryks to work on the game alone, with the code part left dormant.

A publisher was finally found in 2016, bringing a new programer on board. All would be fine if the programer didn’t quit the publisher a month later, leaving the future of the project again uncertain. A new coder was promised, but the word was never fulfilled.

After months spent in publisher limbo and without funds to find a programer on his own, Rafał pulled the most ambitious move and started learning to code himself. 2017 saw no progress on the game as Rafał took on pixel art freelancing to pay the bills. After hours he worked on improving his programing skills and trying to get out of the sour publishing deal. This would continue all the way into 2018 when the game he was contracted to do, the post-Brexit bouncer simulator Not Tonight was released by the publisher No More Robots. Rafał was able to get a one hour demo of Yes, Your Grace written from scratch in Adventure Game Studio earlier that year, so he showed it to No More Robots and happily got their support.

There was one last development twist: No More Robots suggested a switch from Adventure Game Studio to Unity (a sane choice to accommodate more release platforms), meaning Rafał would had to learn a completely new programing language and engine and write the whole game from scratch again. Hat is off to him, because that’s exactly what he did in 2019.

With the legal battles with the old publisher finally resolved, the project could come out of hiding, explaining the grim tale the development went through and surprising everyone with a trailer that showed a greatly enhanced game, compared to the Kickstarter.

The spaghetti-legs art style was replaced with a more realistic stylization of characters, complementing nicely the smoothly shaded environments. The softness of it all is so inviting and peaceful and moody, it makes me want to get back to the game world to listen to yet another peasant story and weight yet another hard decision of where to contribute my coins and supplies.

The demo that was released yesterday on Steam shows off a game with a unique approach to telling a story, joining a point-and-click interface with a turn-based strategy game. The result is deliciously satisfying. I felt like I was dropped in one of Westeros’ throne rooms, having to rule over the lands as much as dealing with family matters. It tells a story of being a king with the same personality and cinematic feeling as the legendary Defender of the Crown. When you mention this in relation to Game of Thrones, there’s much to be excited for the chapters that will follow in the full release of Yes, Your Grace.

Like I said, there’s not much more that I like than a good development story. When it’s as challenging as Rafał’s and we also get a great game out of it, it makes my heart warm beyond words. You can wishlist the game and try out the demo on Steam as we get ready for a release in early 2020.

[kittenfemme27]

Magrunner: Dark Pulse

"That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die." 

That’s the often misquoted line written by H.P. Lovecraft and spoken by his fictional “mad poet” Abdul Ahazred in “The Call of Cthulhu”, a short story written by the very same author. It’s meant to symbolize the same thing that almost all of Lovecraft’s work was meant to symbolize: That there are things that view us the same way we’d view a simple speck of dust, or an ant. As so tiny and insignificant that we’re practically unnoticed in the eyes of this massive and overwhelming force. Lovecraft had an intense fear and at the same time an intense fascination with the idea of being insignificant, of being forgotten and unworthy, of being completely and utterly impotent in the face of power that was greater than himself. Every “Old God” that he wrote about is so far reaching above humanity and so incomprehensible that even the act of knowing of their existence was incomprehensible for the human mind, and would oft drive those with that forbidden knowledge to complete and utter insanity. This isn’t really a disputed interpretation of Lovecraft's work, it's barely an interpretation at all. It’s considered a simple set of facts of the universe that he created.

So imagine my surprise when I started playing “Magrunner: Dark Pulse”, a fairly mundane and simple futuristic sci-fi puzzle game marketed to have a “Lovecraftian Twist” and the final nine levels have good ol’ Cthulhu himself checking in on me from the skies above, literally one hundred thousand times my size, and simply observing me like I’m his personal favourite little human. As he communicates with me and makes it clear that I am in-fact, his personal favourite little human and he just can’t wait for me to ascend to his level. As far as a piece of lovecraftian work goes, this game was a doozy. But we’ll get back to that. Before we even get there, I’d first like to talk about the game itself.

Gameplay:

Magrunner is a first person physics based puzzle game featuring magnetism as its element in which you interact with the puzzles in each room. Your goal in each puzzle room is to use various platforms, blocks, and other bits of very clearly marked tech in each room that may be magnetized with either a positive polarity or a negative polarity, and combine that with the physics of the Unreal 3 engine to solve challenges and make it to the next room. To be blunt, the game is squarely a Portal rip-off from its design ideals. Your makeshift magnet glove-gun hybrid can fire 2 colors, one being a negative polarity and one being a positive. Like-colors are attracted to themselves, whereas opposite colors reflect each other. The idea of using magnets in a physics based first person puzzler isn’t an awful one, and neither is the fact it clearly wants to ape Portal’s ideas. Where it fails, unfortunately, is execution. The physics aren’t up to snuff with what you do most of the time and it leads a lot of the puzzles to be confusing or simply frustrating, as even when you know what you’re doing you still have to rely on the physics system of the engine to cooperate with you. Early on, you are tasked with getting 4 small magnetizable cubes together to form into a large one. What this actually has you end up doing is fighting with the cubes and the level as they fling themselves wildly off of each other and into unreachable parts of the level itself. The entire game functions this way and it really removes any sense of challenge or control you have over each puzzle, often feeling like you lucked your way into a solution rather than figured out the puzzle yourself in any meaningful way.

Buggy physics in the Unreal engine are not the developers fault entirely though, the game is an indie project that was kickstarted and for that alone i’m willing to give them a pass on engine problems that they likely did not have the programmers to fix. But, unfortunately, I can’t give a pass on the game failing to iteratively teach you how the mechanics work level by level. Whenever you magnetize an object, it creates a field, and you can see this field thankfully by pressing a key. Anything in that field will automatically interact with anything else that is magnetized in it. In general, these fields are wildly inconsistent in how they operate. Usually, they’re spheres centered around the magnetized object and cause objects within the sphere to either attract or repel. On occasion though you’ll find pads that create a cone of magnetism going the direction that it faces, up to what is an arbitrary height. Later on, you’re given the ability to place your own fields on any flat surface, allowing the levels to become more bare-bones as you have to create the magnetism points yourself. All of this combined means that  If you learn that something works in a previous level, there is no guarantee that it will work in the next level the exact same way. Experimentation in this game is often fraught with a frustrating sigh of not knowing if the game intended for something to work that way, or if you just broke the physics again. Don’t even get me started on the fact there are multiple combat sections inside a puzzle game, ugh.

Art & Sound:

Magrunners similarities to Portal do not end with the gameplay and design, however. Aesthetically, the first and second half of the three act game are ripped directly from Portal and Portal 2. The first half of the game features sleek interiors inside of a testing facility for yourself and other “Magrunners” where everything is cleanly lit, sparse on color and detail, as space-age and sci-fi as you could imagine. These first set of aperture inspired levels lack any sort of hard edge or detail, with every single element in the room being curved and well lit and as minimalist as possible. The second half of the game takes places in facilities “underneath” the one you were in prior and are dilapidated grey and brown ruins of previous testing facilities, complete with all the same tools and magnetizable pads and tech that you had seen previously but this time a much older and “70’s” style of sci-fi aesthetic, but covered in grime and dirt and dust from the years of abandonment and rot. I cannot understate how unsubtle this is. The first third of the game is Aperture Science bonafide and part right after is Old Aperture from Portal 2. Magrunner’s aesthetic inspirations are worn very clearly on their sleeve, and it makes the game feel very boring and bland by comparison. It’s impossible to play Magrunner: Dark Pulse and not feel as though it was simply a junior developer exclaiming: “What if Portal/Portal 2, but Magnets?!” while the rest of the developers collectively lose their minds from excitement.

The music of the game was provided, as far as i can tell by the credits, by Incomptech AKA Kevin Macleod. A musician known for releasing thousands of free songs for use in any creative project. This isn’t, by default, a bad thing. Most of the music was not things I had heard from his library before and thus I didn’t immediately twig that it was his library, but unfortunately the music selection isn’t enough. As in, there are not enough tracks to fit the game. There are 39 levels in total and each level features a music track, but often and especially in the later parts, the music tracks are entirely re-used. This is most apparent when one of the tracks is a rising piercing noise, like the type you’d hear in a horror movie right before the slasher stabs into someone, but it never ends or pays off. It just loops upon itself and becomes this droning nightmare of a track for however long the physics force you to stay in a level. I counted 6 times this happened and each time it was so loud and obnoxious and frustrating that I had to simply turn off the game audio to be able to bare the level at all. 

None of the other sound effects are worth writing home about, either, unfortunately. In something like Portal, there are pretty iconic sounds within its soundscape. The sound of the portal gun firing and portals being created, the soft and child-like speech of the turrets, the chiding and derogatory AI voice of GLaDOS, yet Dark Pulse lacks anything even half as memorable. Aside from the repetitive music, you are only given small bits of dialogue between each level and that’s really it. There’s a lot of character they could have created here, for example: When you gain the ability to create your own magnetic fields at will, the center of them is a dog-robot that your player character created in his spare time as a child. Creating one of these points could’ve been met with an adorable puppy squeak or bark, anything like that. Your character or the various ones that speak to you could’ve chimed in at any point in levels outside of the beginning or end of them, and yet they do not. It’s a big missed opportunity.

Story:

Speaking of characters, whew boy, are there a lot of them

Magrunner takes place in the distant future where a corporation that is effectively Facebook has taken over the planet by connecting every single person to its service essentially from birth and making it as essential to daily life as possible. Because of this, this corporation has become the de-facto richest company in the world. Its founder, Xander Gruckzeber, whose last name is literally an anagram of Zuckerberg, has started a contest in which 7 contestants can compete to become “Magrunners” and take a trip to outer space in a ship that is being powered on experimental magnetic based technology. The contest involves each contestant going through a series of puzzles that prove their aptitude with the magnetic tech that Xander’s company has developed. 

Your character, an orphan named Dax C. Ward, is the only one of the 7 contestants that does not have a corporate sponsor. Instead, he’s a boy genius who built his own robotic puppy at age 10 and at age 21 built his own magnetic glove that interacts with the magnetic technology and allows him to compete. Ever the underdog, you’re helped along by your adoptive uncle Gamaji who himself is a six-armed mutant and an outcast among humanity for it.

Sound a little on the nose? Like it may be lacking subtlety in any form? Yeah, the entire game is like that. From Xander’s last name anagram to the fact that your own character’s name is itself a reference to “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” which was a short horror novel written by Lovecraft, the game never really had a chance at subtlety in the first place. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but in between the re-hashed artstyle and the immediate and obvious references, and the fact that It tries to throw a very by the numbers cyber punk aesthetic ripped straight out of Blade Runner at you in an opening cutscene that it immediately abandons afterwards. It all just feels tired from the moment you hit New Game and incredibly confused about its own direction. It can’t decide if it’s a Lovecraftian setting, a Sci-fi setting, if it’s trying to say something about Facebook or if it's just going to be Portal: The Magnetic Spin-off.

As the game progresses and Act 1 ends, you find the corpse of another Magrunner being eaten by an anthropomorphic fish person. You are then told by Gamaji that he’s going to help you escape the facility, but this will require you to go through the older parts of the facility as he slowly hacks into the mainframe and tries to get you out via service elevators. Inside these older puzzle rooms are repeated writings on the wall, ravings of someone gone mad with the knowledge of the Old Ones, and giant sculptures depicting various Cthulhu-esque monsters. This would be bad and scary enough on its own, but Gamaji is quick to let you know that portals to some unknown dimension and fish monsters are being spotted in cities all over the world causing havoc and terror. 

About halfway through Act 2, Gamaji drops the bombshell on Dax that his parents didn’t actually die in a car crash like he’s told him all his life, but that they were Old God worshipping cultists and that Dax’s birth in and of itself may somehow be related to that cult and its actions. This tracks, then, because Dax continually receives strange visions in the form of uncovered memories of “The Seven” attempting some ritual to seal off some force from beyond. Act 2 ends with the revelation that Xanders assistant, Kram, is actually behind all the ritual sacrifice and is attempting to summon Cthulhu himself to our world from the Great Beyond. So far, Act 1 and 2 have been rather cliche but haven’t been anything i’d call unremarkable or strange in a Lovecraftian inspired story.

And then Act 3 happens.

Act 3 sees you flung into the far reaches of Actually Literally Space, with various bits of the test chambers around that you must use to get to portals that are marked by a cute little icon of Cthulhu himself that transport you further into space and to the next level. You can quite literally see our pale blue dot to your side if you look, including a gigantic eldritch device that seems to be either siphoning souls to it, or depositing monsters onto the planet. The fact you can breathe in space is just handwaved as “Something Kram must be doing.” and is never brought up again. What really struck me more than anything in these levels, though, is that Cthulhu himself literally appears before you every 2 minutes in each level and simply watches you while repeating “Cthulhu... Fhtagn... R'lyeh...” over and over and over. This was the moment the game honestly lost any credibility from me. Simply seeing a statue in Act 2 caused Dax to go into a screaming panic as he was able to perceive how a human may be turned into a fish person. But seeing the literal Old God himself doesn’t bother him? And why is Cthulhu so interested in you in the first place? Unfortunately, we get an answer to both of those questions and it might be the most insane thing i’ve ever seen in a piece of Lovecraft inspired media.

Dax, somehow through the work of the cult that his parents were part of, is the chosen one. Cthulhu not only cares about him and wants to see him succeed, but even helps him to literally ascend and become an Old God himself. But not, of course, before letting Dax have a heart to heart with Gamaji wherein he tells him that he has seen through Cthulhu’s eyes himself and must now ascend, as he has no other option. Because Cthulhu is a big softie on adoptive relationships, I guess. The game’s final level has you face off against Kram in a boss battle where you fling explosive cubes at each other and attempt to destroy the esoteric relay connected to Earth. During their fight, Dax taunts Kram who tells him that what he is doing is the will of his Master, Cthulhu, and Dax knowingly retorts that what Kram is doing is “Not what He wants.” As if he has a direct line into the Old Gods mind itself. 

I cannot overstate how much of an absolute failure of the mythos itself that this entire story arc is. The Lovecraft mythos was not, and never has been, made for “Chosen One” stories. If you survive an encounter in the first place, you’re often left with horrible scars that never truly leave you because Cthulhu and the Old Gods are in some ways meant to be representative of trauma and a fear of your own trauma. Making Dax suddenly an Old One and a special Chosen One is a complete and utter failure on a scale I've never, ever seen before. It’s been days and I'm honestly still reeling from the fact that was a design decision someone agreed on.

Conclusion:

Magrunner: Dark Pulse is a confusing and often frustrating game with a story that utterly fails its mythos and setting in just about every way possible. But I don’t want to pretend that I didn’t have any fun playing it. I did, and it’s not the worst game I've ever played. It’s not even so much a “so bad it’s good” game, but it’s more of an indie game that clearly tried its hardest and for that I can’t fault it. It’s developers clearly love the Cthulhu and Lovecraftian mythos and really, really, really loved the Portal series and wanted to combine those things into their own spin on it and in that respect, it’s competent enough that I could recommend it to someone who really enjoys those sort of puzzle platformer based games. But... man. That ending. Yikes. 

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IF YOU WANT TO HEAR; AN INTERVIEW WITH A RANDOM ALUM; A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

The relationships between unions and unionized companies can even be such a test. Two things changed. 12. They're willing to let you earn $3 million over fifty years, that's where new wealth will come from the first investor who commits. Just listen to the people who didn't want them, we need to fix. You can compile or run code while reading, read or run code while reading, read or run code while reading, read or run code while compiling, and read or compile code at runtime. For example, if you've sold more than about an hour a day online. And that's where the word incubator comes from. How does a more powerful version written in 6502 machine language. Patent trolls are hard to solve, but I think most makers work this way. For example, physical attractiveness wouldn't have been better just to tell a computer what to do are more different than most people think of startups as ideas, but nearly all good startup ideas are made of spolia. The greatest value of universities is not the only one most visitors will see.

When governments decide how to allocate resources, political deal-making ability. Actually it's better to make a language popular? It's significant that the most noble sort of theoretical knowledge: some that's useful in practical matters and some that isn't. What deals do is fall through. But when I first met him, Trevor had just begun a new scheme that involved writing down everything about every aspect of server administration: not just because that's what they've been trained their whole lives to play such games, but some do. That's why I'm so optimistic about HN. I've thought a lot about law and business, but his advice ended there; he was therefore always happy, knowing he'd done the best he could. I envied him enormously for finding a way out.

Parents end up sharing more of their lunch eaten by Google. Why spend twenty years climbing the corporate ladder was one of the taboos a visitor from the future would agree with us most of the time ranged from tedious to terrifying. The search engines that preceded them shied away from the programmers. I'm more forgiving than she is, but it's no more foolish than buying insurance. Notice we started out talking about things, and since they're the customer you can take your time. Because swords are longer the hilts kept breaking off. And users don't care where you went: you'd have to induce it deliberately. America has no monopoly on this. Is this unfair? But there were already about 10, and they, though a small minority of their users? If a design represents an idea that investors don't like.

I got hardly any real work done. Probably not, for example, that you'd like to raise $500k, it's better to say initially that you're trying to advise 57 startups, it turns out to be mails that sound a lot smarter talking about that than the business model, because a great discovery in another. There I found a copy of the New York Times article about suits would sound if you read the source you do it by pretending to be product companies, in the aggregate, make more money. What really makes him stand out, though, you're still designing for humans. It will seem to you that you're unlucky. It's much easier to have fun in this new world meant the same choices everywhere, but only because they're that much older. It's not something people tend to clump together—sometimes spectacularly so, as people watch others take the plunge and survive. In software, especially when you have a healthy respect for reality. Probably because startups are less of a guide, not just co-workers.

Sometimes an investor will say yes, in the hope of getting a quick yes or no; they just don't make an effort to make it look like a magazine. So there you have it too; almost everyone does. The strategic decisions were mostly decisions about technology, and we couldn't see any reason not to trust our senses. As long as VCs were writing checks, founders were never forced to explore the limits of the conventional desktop metaphor. In a real essay is a train running the length of the delay inversely proportional to the judgement of art is dominated by these extraneous factors; they're like someone trying to give an example of a useful, general idea, consider that of the other appurtenances of authority. You probably only have to solve a lot of work. I think it is. The problem was, since we'd been about to. It's not the distribution of potentially good startups, which is why you never hear of deals where a VC invests $6 million at a premoney valuation of $10 million. The dialog on Beavis and Butthead was composed largely of these, and when they did go on Kickstarter.

Do they need to. The same is true in the military—that the idea will change, but the energy to get started with a few countertweaks. There are lots of them around. This can't be how the big, famous startups got started, a lot of variation in income, it seems an axiom that we're only achieving 1% of what we eventually will. Was this wrong? They can't dilute you without diluting themselves just as much. Don't be hapless is to be expected.

Which means you can't simply tell the truth. They raise enough money to reach the speed where you can win big by seeing things that others daren't. Whether or not computers were a precondition, they have to. The advice about going to work for them. That's what you do. Together they were able to fool investors with such tricks, you'd ultimately be hurting yourself, because you're paying for the hardware. I put the lower bound. Those turn out to be very hard to predict what other people want to work that way, but there is a Laffer curve for government power, just as a statement of values, but as an animation with multiple frames. The reason funding deals take so long, consider how little progress there was in the early 1970s, are now, like BaseCamp, written by just three people. If you factor out the bootstrapped companies that were actually funded by their founders were merged into a couple hundred giant ones run by professional managers. At most those are interesting the way puzzles are. Occasionally it's obvious from the beginning.

Thanks to Sarah Harlin, Jessica Livingston, Sam Altman, Joshua Schachter, and Aaron Swartz for the lulz.

[secretsofthemasquerade]

Nighthawks’s Kickstarter and interview with author

Hey guys, you might have seen this kickstarter over the past month, as its approaching its deadline I thought I’d interview the main dude for you guys :)

I played the demo that’s available, which isn’t fully representative of the story’s debth (as it was meant to be just a small visual fiction), which displays great attention to art, great voice acting, and quite nicely written characters and unique starting situation.

Overall I really love the concept and I’d like to see this game become a reality, we need down-to-earth games even if they’re not labelled WoD :p

Here’s the link to the kickstarter. You can get the game for just 20 bucks ^^ HURRY though, it ends in FIVE DAYS.

The author, Richard Cobbett, has done lots of work in the past, and the publisher is a solid one too (the publisher’s TechnoBabylon is just life, and Sunless Sea/Skies were made by this author), it’s not his first rodeo and he’s, as he put it in the discord server: “I'm writer, designer, programmer, marketing person, video compositer, UI engineer, community manager and basically everything not involving drawing“. His wording isn’t pretentiously all over the place and “darker than thou”, but it has the right amount of work from hat I could see from the screenshots and the demo. 

So here goes! Interview under the cut!

“Who are you, apart from what we know from the Kickstarter?”

I’m Richard Cobbett, and if you know me from anything it’s probably about 20 years of games journalism, including things like PC Gamer’s “Crap Shoot” column and Rock Paper Shotgun’s “The RPG Scrollbars”, or my work on Sunless Sea/Sunless Skies. But I’ve done quite a lot more than that, including the mobile adventure Silent Streets and the space game The Long Journey Home.

So, this is far from my first rodeo. I love cats, hate spiders, and once made a pitch to White Wolf that included the secret goal of making my home town of York a Tremere stronghold. I am entirely serious about this.

“In a few words, for a VtM Audience, what is the premise of Nighthawks' world?”

Vampires exist. You know this, because you’re one of them. But unlike the World of Darkness, the Masquerade has failed. You’ve been exposed, and the world is trying to figure out where to go next. You begin as a penniless vampire in a shitty hotel in the cheapest part of a dying town, and Nighthawks charts your rise from rags to riches as you become part of the new politics.

Things are of course very different from WoD, both to avoid treading on White Wolf’s paws and because of course I wanted the fun of creating my own setting! For starters, Nighthawks is a bit lighter in tone, and more rooted in the problematic elements of being a vampire. Blood tastes foul, being bitten hurts, and the world is at best incredibly suspicious and at worst outright hates you.

Also, vampires don’t secretly run the world. They’re more like cats, in that they’re fiercely individualistic and territorial, with many of them not even having historically known that there were others like them. There’s a few groups here and there that have had some historical sway in the world, such as the Eternal Dynasties that latched onto the great courts of Europe like parasites, and a handful of aristocrats who spread with British colonialism to find Heirs to further refine their bloodlines, but they’re very much in the minority.

The closest equivalent to the Masquerade is that some - not most, though you’re one of the lucky ones - have powers. These are primarily mental rather than breathing fire and turning into bats and so on, like Mesmerise or Corpse-Talking or copying the face of a human for a brief period. Vampire society is doing its best to hide the existence of these for fairly obvious reasons - they’re already distrusted enough! They’re also not skills to just spam at problems, but very expensive aces-in-the-hole to deploy very carefully.

There’s a lot more to say and discover about the world, but in short, it’s something that I think Vampire fans will both enjoy for the parts of the atmosphere it shares, and love exploring for all the cool ways that it tries something a bit different. It’s a game rooted in the social side of vampire life, where a dinner party can be more dangerous than any back-alley rumble, and one where you get to be a direct part of the big decisions that define what it means to be a vampire, versus showing up five hundred years after the Convention of Thorns or whatever already laid out how things work.

It’s also a game designed to let you play whatever character you want - both in terms of things like sexuality and gender, and just background. You’re not restricted to just being JC Denton with fangs. If you want a character who was, say, a hairdresser in their mortal life and who has never been in a fight, that’s just fine. Or, of course, you can be a bruiser. Everyone deserves the chance to be a badass vampire, and a badass vampire that fully represents them.

Hmm. That was quite a few words, wasn’t it? Sorry. I get excited!

“What are its mechanims and gameplay like? How long do you think it will take for an average player to beat the full game?”

We’re looking at around 15-20 hours for a playthrough, with a ton of replayability. Lots of choices, differences in character builds, cool things to discover… the lot. We’re primarily using text because it allows us to really flesh out the world and add as many stories as possible.

Mechanically, it’s a mix of life-simulation and RPG. It resembles games like Sunless Sea, in that most options are chosen from a list, alongside some gorgeous 4K graphics and voice acting. However, under that is a fierce system of RPG options and life simulation. Every click is a tick of the clock, as you explore the city, improve your character, and get back to safety before sunrise. Rather than the standard critical path of quests, the design is based around Objectives. In the first act, the simplest, your main goal is pretty much just making sure you can pay your hotel room bill. How you go about that is up to you, whether it’s hunting, taking on assignments, investigating rumours and so on. Later chapters of course get more complicated as you have to balance basic survival with dealing with crooked cops and politics.

I’ve posted a lot about the game design and where we’re going with it all in the Kickstarter Updates. Worth checking out! I think V:TM fans will really like it.

“What got you into vampire fiction and vampire games? Why make a game with those themes?”

Firstly, urban fantasy is awesome and it’s depressing that we see so little of it in gaming. Vampires specifically intrigue me as a designer because they offer so many mechanical opportunities - blood, sunlight, etc - and as a writer for the constant dichotomy between power fantasy and personal nightmare.

Nighthawks is very much rooted in exploring that, with some characters who find their undeath a curse, others who find it liberating, and with the player allowed to decide for themselves where they stand. It doesn’t hurt that the individualism of vampires allows you to create some really awesome characters who are fun to hang out with. Our Kickstarter backers immediately connected with the Companion in the demo - Madame Lux, a vampire stage magician with the power to manipulate human sight. She’s just one of many really vibrant characters, including con-artist cult-leader Maze, vampire fangirl bartender Becca, and Inez, a pirate queen from the Golden Age of Piracy struggling to adapt to a world where none of her skills are still in any demand.

Then throw in all the awesome vampire folklore from around the world, and you’ve got a fantastic palette to paint with. Much of the Nighthawks design makes me grin just to think of it, and I think players are going to dig it too.

“Favorite VtMB story part? NPC?”

Well, as a paid-up fan of the Tremere, obviously, Strauss. Good egg. Totally not like that awful LaCroix chap. Other than that, Heather and Tourette are obviously the first ones that everyone thinks of, and with good reason. Grey de Lisle’s voice makes any character awesome, and the Heather sequences were shockingly brutal the first time around. Absolutely amazing writing in those bits.

But I’m probably going to say Deb of Night. I love radio in games as a way of conveying atmosphere, and that’s one of the best one. I don’t know if it’s cool or sad that a few years ago I was in Santa Monica on a press trip, and spent some time wandering around the Pier while listening to Deb’s show. Bit of both?

“Anything you'd need apart from more backers to make sure the game becomes a reality?”

Moral support, really! Game development is a long and often pretty lonely experience, where you never usually know if anyone is going to want what you’re making when you’re done. It’s a real boost to know that so many people are excited by Nighthawks and really want to see it happen. That certainly adds some pressure, but the kind of pressure I think everyone can appreciate!

[codingbootcamp9]

Best Java coding bootcamp

Java is among the finest programming languages that exist today. Look at its journey of 25 plus years, and you will see how resilient and adaptable it has been to the shifting tech trends and technologies. The consistent updates regarding the frameworks, libraries, and features, have helped it come a long way since its inception.

It offers a unique set of features like ease of learning, platform independence, write once read everywhere, security, portability, and so much more, making it a favorite of the developers. Besides, it offers remarkable flexibility, stability, speed, scalability to the applications. All this strengthens the trust of startups as well as top companies like Google and Facebook in Java.

Why Learn Java?

The reasons you should learn Java coding are many. Let’s see some of the benefits of learning with the best java coding bootcamp.

Professional Opportunities

Java is known for its versatility and flexibility. Whether you want to make an Android application or a server-side application, a CMS, or a dashboard app, you can use Java almost everywhere. Indeed, it’s a language the world can’t do without. It’s on millions of devices and an irreplaceable part of our lives. So, if you have to start a career with something powerful, then Java is undoubtedly a winner. By learning Java, you can start working as a programmer and then progress in the development field. There are lots of chances of promotion as your experience increases, and you can work at management positions later on.

Demand for Java Professionals

Java is growing in upward position. Its grip in the IT industry is so strong that Java developers will always be needed. A clear example of the popularity of Java can be seen in the salary trends. Java developers earn an average salary of 100k/year, and it is amongst the top-paying technologies in the 2021 StackOverflow survey.

Besides, you should keep in mind that tech giants like Google, Amazon, Twitter, Netflix use Java in a lot of applications. So, there is always a demand for skillful Java programmers.

Gaining proficiency in Java will help you get a steady job position and enhance your chances to work in the FAANG companies. So, if you are willing to make a career in Java programming, a Java bootcamp is just what you need to kickstart.

Why Consider Joining SynergisticIT Bootcamp?

SynergisticIT is the best Java coding bootcamp that teaches Java skills in a short time. It offers a unique opportunity to students fresh out of college or working professionals who want to acquire specialized Java skills.

The bootcamp is only for 3-6 months, and within that time, you learn the fundamental and advanced Java concepts. It’s a full-time program, and the classes are held daily by experienced trainers who teach you complex concepts in a comprehensible manner. Besides the regular lectures, there is a lot of coding done in the coding labs.

The coding labs offer a perfect environment for brushing on your practical knowledge. You are also assigned projects simulating real-world projects to help you develop industry-relevant skills.

The goal of the Java program is to teach essential ideas for web app development. In other words, you learn how to design a website or Java software. Moreover, it prepares you for various job roles available for Java professionals.

The best thing about reputed coding bootcamps like SynergiticIT is that you get full support during the course and after completion. During the program, you also learn about creating an impressive portfolio, crack interviews, and pass coding assessments and technical interviews. It helps you find a job and has a great network of clients to help you with the placement.

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Data Analytics courses

Data Analytics courses

After finishing all four program programs, they earn the Micro Masters Program Certificate. Learners who successfully full this MIT Micro Masters credential can apply to the MIT Doctoral Program in Social and Engineering Systems offered by way of the MIT IDSS and have this coursework acknowledged for credit score. Learn to analyze big information and make data-driven predictions through probabilistic modeling and statistical inference and apply applicable methodologies for extraction of significant information to aid determination making.

Also, you'd learn to use fundamental statistics features or how to work with statistical fashions like regression, clustering, optimization, random forest, decision timber & much more. This is a reasonably good newbie course for anybody completely new to this subject. Still, this course is a subset of Machine Learning A-Z course by the identical team. Almost every thing coated in this course is roofed in that plus it's Hands-On in Python and R. This course mainly offers a whole workflow of a knowledge science project. Our online training programs are made at the top of offline classroom experiences. Get your offline classroom experiences in our on-line coaching courses.

INEX tests participants knowledge of programming, quantitative and verbal reasoning. All INSOFE college students registered for our PGP are eligible to receive 100% mortgage assistance from any of the 13 main banks in India. We might help connect you with a financial institution so you could pursue the graduate level certification without trouble. The graduate stage certification in Data Science is a 7 months program taught over the weekends, to accommodate working professionals’ schedules. Initially, once I considered moving into analytics I inquired about a couple of applications. The college made sure that the classes were all the time enjoyable with real-world examples.

We teach college students every little thing that's important- ranging from primary to superior concepts, that too in a real-time surroundings. SQL language fundamentals in creating indexes, group by, joins etc is necessary to grasp information science. Also, the essential SQL knowledge will assist in understanding the hadoop cluster. The rising technologies like MapReduce, Hive, and Pig and so on might be straightforward for SQL and HADOOP programmers to be taught. We, at Besant Technologies, present one of the best coaching for the Data Science course. We have designed the course in such a method that helps to kickstart your career into the info science subject and to take up different roles similar to Data Scientist, Data Engineer, Data analyst and so on.

Data Analytics courses

The finest Online Data Science courses or greatest Data Science programs supplied by way of offline mode will certainly assist knowledgeable in demanding aggressive remuneration packages. The Data Science Course from Henry Harvin equips students and Data Analysts with probably the most important skills wanted to use knowledge science in any variety of real-world contexts. It blends theory, computation, and software in a most easy-to-understand and practical means. Code Spaces is a platform for learners to search out the most effective courses, certifications and tutorials on the web. Our staff of specialists handpicks these resources based on a number of parameters and brings to you the best recommendations that you should use to study a new skill or upgrade your current data. These sources include both free and paid ones created by prime professionals, schools and corporations. Udemy additionally offers many free data science programs on numerous matters which might be worth contemplating.

There was additionally placement help given where you are perfectly guided on tips on how to start a profession as a Data Analyst. A gold medallist from IIM Bangalore, an alumnus of IIT Madras and London School of Business, Anand is among prime 10 knowledge scientists in India with 20 years of expertise. The case studies for the Data Science certification program have been fastidiously chosen from quite so much of fields so that regardless of which one you go in, you will be able to use your Data Science skills.

Improve your model's performance with validation methods such as cross validation or hyperparameter tuning. Implement training and testing phases to make sure your model can be generalised to unseen information and deployed in production with predictable accuracy. Learn how to stop overfitting using regularization methods and tips on how to selected the right loss function to enhance your mannequin's accuracy. Learn tips on how to formulate an excellent query and how to reply it by building the right SQL query.

The valuation of the two streams stems from the complexity of tasks carried out by a Data Analyst vis a vis a Data scientist. A Data Scientist covers all the crucial duties that a data analyst performs and goes a lot past that to add more value. However, salaries should not be a parameter for any aspirant to decide between the two streams of knowledge. One ought to select to turn out to be both a Data Analyst or a Data Scientist by rigorously evaluating one’s ability set and motivation. Jack Ma, founder of Chinese e-commerce big Alibaba, in one of his interviews said that it will be extraordinarily difficult to make machines study empathy. However, there are organizations similar to Quilt.AI which are constructing human empathy at scale via the machines using the facility of Data Science and Anthropology. Recently, they conducted a research in the state of Rajasthan for young boys beneath the age of 18 to know “facets of masculinity” and how do these sides type their behavior in path of ladies.Companies are embracing digital transformation and the growing dependency on information makes a career in knowledge science fairly promising. Businesses are accelerating their digital initiatives and information science expertise will stay in high demand within the close to future. Moreover, with the present abilities gap, companies are even able to pay greater salaries to information scientists. With Simplilearn’s Data Science course in Chennai, you presumably can qualify for this rewarding profession. This course is designed by analyzing the true requirements in information scientist job listings from the largest tech employers, which suggests it covers the machine learning and information mining strategies actual employers are looking for. programming language, ARIMA mannequin, time sequence analysis, and information visualization.Mastering in Data Science instruments and methods will rework you into a professional Data Scientist. Let’s examine the valuable insights to know what it takes to turn into a Successful Data Scientist. The best means of evaluating one’s eligibility is to first list down one’s objective. With the reply to that question in place, one can then search for broader areas of protection to learn the fundamentals. The protection aspect might contemplate factors similar to time availability, the investment required, instructional background, skilled work experience, and course work. Well, these are a number of questions that cross an aspirant’s mind whereas considering transferring ahead. You can reach us at: ExcelR- Data Science, Data Analytics, Business Analytics Course Training Bangalore Address:49, 1st Cross, 27th Main, Behind Tata Motors, 1st Stage, BTM Layout, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560068 Phone: 096321 56744 Directions: Data Analytics courses Email:enquiry@excelr.com

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Welcome to Your Cyberpunk Future by Rudy Rucker

“Welcome to Your Cyberpunk Future”

Draft of a talk by Rudy Rucker for IdeaFestival in Louisville, Kentucky, talk given on September 27, 2017.

Where I’m From

I grew up in Louisville, and I graduated from St. Xavier high-school in 1963, not that I’m a Catholic. My father Embry was in fact an Episcopal priest at St. Francis in the Fields. But my parents had the idea that St. X had the best science courses. It’s a good school. But I regret not having gone to high-school with girls. I could have gone to Waggener with my best friend Niles Schoening. He died last year. And my St. X pal Michael Dorris died a few years back. It’s terrible to see your friends and loved ones go. They’re lost. No backup.

Embry Sr, Nonny, Embry Jr, and Rudy in 1957

I left Louisville, and went off to Swarthmore College near Philadelphia, and then I got a Ph. D. in mathematics, and had a career. At this point I’ve published about forty books. Some are popular science books about infinity and about the fourth dimension. But most of my books are science fiction novels. Literary science fiction. Cyberpunk and transreal. Cyberpunk is about computers merging into our reality—and about us maintaining our individuality in the face of that.

Rudy with big brother Embry and his motorcycle in Prospect, Kentucky, in 1981

When I was growing up, I was fascinated by the Beat writers Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. It helped that my cool big brother Embry had a subscription to Evergreen Review, which is where these guys were publishing. In grad school I was a hippie, and the 1980s, I was a punk. But at the deepest level I’ll always be a beatnik.

Nevertheless I’m a reliable Louisville boy, and a family man, married to my college sweetheart Sylvia for fifty years now, with three children, and five grandchildren.

Our children Rudy Jr, Georgia, and Isabel in Lynchburg, Virginia, 1978. Cyberpunk kids! One of fate’s jokes was to have me live the home of the “Moral Majority” while I was helping to found the cyberpunk movement.

Being a successful writer doesn’t necessarily pay well, so for most of my life I had a day job. I was a math professor until I was forty, and then the family and I moved to California, and I became a computer science professor. I was faking it, but eventually I knew what I was doing, and then I did some work as a programmer as well. And now I’ve been retired for a dozen years. All I do these days is write and paint and put things online.

What is Cyberpunk?

This talk is called, “Welcome to Your Cyberpunk Future.” Your cyberpunk future is here, and you’re in it, and there’s nothing to be scared of. You’re out in the waves, and you can surf. No need to drown. And it’s gonna get gooder.

Back in the day, William Gibson, John Shirley, Bruce Sterling, and I were among the original cyberpunk authors. The word cyberpunk stood for a certain kind of science fiction literature and film, set in the near future. Gibson’s Neuromancer is a modern classic, and everyone’s read it. I’m known for my Ware Tetralogy novels, starting with Software in 1982. And Sterling generated more press than any of us—with his speeches, novels, and journalism. I co-wrote nine stories with Bruce. He can be annoying. A true punk. But the stories came out great.

Transreal Cyberpunk, a collection of stories by Bruce and Rudy. We self-published it last year, and rand a Kickstarter campaign to fund it. Cyberpunk publishing. “Transreal” means writing SF stories that are autobiographical, or in some way reminiscent of the author’s life.

The word cyberpunk isn’t all that well-known. People aren’t sure if it’s good or bad. The strait-laced and repressive forces in our society might reflexively say cyberpunk is bad. But I’m telling you that cyberpunk is good. Cyberpunk is your friend. Cyberpunk is a key to liberation.

The idea behind cyberpunk is simple. Cyberpunk = Cyber + Punk.

Cyber refers to two things: to people, and to the world that people live in. That is, cyber is about the merging of humans and robots—and cyber is about the physical world mixing with the virtual world of the internet.

One of my paintings . “The Riviera.” In a way, that’s my wife Sylvia and me.

How do people merge with machines? In one direction, we have intelligent programs imitating people. And in the other direction we have people enhancing themselves with devices like smart phones.

Okay, and what about the cyber merger of physical reality and the internet? In one direction, we have computers creating visual effects and virtual realities that resemble our world. And in the other direction our daily world is being augmented by the internet. We spend a lot of time online, and that means the internet is part of the world we walk around in.

Graffiti art at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. A punk diagrammatic crab.

So that’s cyber, now what about punk? In the classic 1980s sense, punk is about sex, drugs, and rock and roll—and about turning your back on conventional rules. As Bruce puts it, “We get in there with spray cans and grunge up those pristine walls.” Cyberpunk literature and film break out of the1970s-type, plastic, white-bread visions of the future. We leave the worlds of Star Trek and Star Wars—and enter the worlds of Bladerunner and The Terminator and Black Mirror.

In the 1980s, when the first cyberpunk novels appeared, a lot of SF novels were about, like, hereditary aristocrats who were colonels in the Space Navy. Some of us had barely escaped being drafted and sent to die in Vietnam. We didn’t want to hear about serving the whims of our so-called leaders. We wanted stories starring people like ourselves. Misfits, artists, stoners, outlaws, women, gays, and people of color. Not officers and cops and rich people.

Punk means countercultural politics. Like, “You’re not my boss. I’m not even listening. I’m doing it my way.”

Even simpler, punk means GTF&WA. Give the finger and walk away.

Software and Wetware

Covers of Software in paperback, (Ace1982 and (Avon 1987). When I published my novel Software in 1982, the word was almost unkown—I learned about the concept of software by reading Scientific American and by doing post-doctoral academic research on mathematical logic and the philosophy of mind at the University of Heidelberg.

The idea for the novel seems simple now. The idea: It should be possible to extract the patterns stored in a person’s brain, and transfer these onto a robot, and the robot will act just like person. By now you’ve seen this happen in about a hundred movies and TV shows, right? But I was the first one to write about it. In the 1980s, “soul as software” was such an unfamiliar way of thinking that it took me a year to figure it out.

Wetware in the Japanese and the Italian editions.

To make my Software be punk, I made the brain-to-software transfer very gnarly. A gang of scary-funny hillbillies extracted people’s mental software by slicing off the tops of their skulls and eating their brains with cheap steel spoons. One of them is a robot in disguise, and his stomach analyzes the brain tissue. They were based on some people who stayed at the same crummy motel as us one time.

My second Ware novel is called Wetware and it’s set partly in a robot colony on the moon, and partly in my beloved home town, Louisville. In Wetware, the robots get even. They start building people. The idea here is that DNA, or genetic code, is a type of program for your body. And since it’s all slimy down inside your meat, we call this code wetware instead of software. Wetware engineering it going to be huge in the 21st century. Biotech. Genomics.

All the wares are in my Ware Tetralogy. You can buy it or, since I’m a punk, you can get it free. I don’t totally write for money. I write to change the world. I want to infect your mind. It’s a type of self-reproduction!

Cyberpunk Now

The cyberpunk writers of the 1980s were canaries in a coal mine. We predicted the future. We are merging with computers. And our physical world is saturated with the internet. And punks have evolved into slackers and Xers and grungers and hipsters and Y’s and millennials and whatever’s next. But the attitude’s the same. Give the finger and walk away. Punk’s still here. Welcome to your cyberpunk future!

The good news is that the internet turned out much better than anyone could have hoped. It grew and spread before business or the government could shackle it. Why? Because those people who designed it and released it—they were cyberpunks. I’m not saying they were hipsters, no, they were geeks. But they were cyberpunk geeks. They knew about computers, but they didn’t want to obey the elite. They released the internet into the wild, and there’s no way for the controllers to get it back. It’s on the loose for good.

Here’s some of the tasty cyberpunk aspects of the free internet.

*Without getting permission from anyone, you can put up a webpage and you can post pretty much anything you want on it. Free speech.

*You can use the internet to publish your art or your books—both online and in print. Freedom of the press.

*Put a smart phone in your pocket and you’ve got a universal communication device. Talk to anyone anywhere. Use video if you like.

*You’ve got access to the total world library in your pocket.

*You can get a reasonably helpful answer to any question—just by typing it into the search bar.

*You can outsource some of your brain functions. Photos, addresses, directions, dates, calculations—you don’t have to remember them anymore. They’re online, in the cloud.

*Email and the social networks let you hang with a virtual gang of friends all day. A good session on the web can feel like a party. You’re in cyberspace, and you’re not alone.

Image of my son Rudy Jr’s ISP Monkeybrains.net. Customers on left.

That’s all good cyber stuff, but we do still need that recalcitrant punk attitude. The browser and social network companies—they’re into building silos of data about you—so pests can pelt you with ads. At the very least, it’s wise to refrain from answering any and all online questionnaires. And never give out your real phone number. GTF&WA.

Even in a democracy, you don’t automatically keep your rights to freedom. You have to win them back, over and over and over again. If you stop being a rebel, they make you a slave.

Cyberpunk Later

Now I’ll mention four possible forms of future cyberpunk tech.

My painting, “My Life in a Nutshell.” How it feels to be using a keyboard all the time! Based on a Philip Guston painting of a guy obsessing over a bottle.

* (1) Smooth interface. Believe me, people are not going to be pecking at tiny smart phone keyboards in ten or twenty years. Voice recognition will finally work. But it’s embarrassing to be talking out loud to your phone, and it’s slow to have to listen to a computer voice. We might end up with a patch or a soft blob that sits on the back of your neck and communicates directly with your devices, and even with other people. A cell phone that’s kind of glued onto your body, and it can read your brainwaves. As a computer science professor and a programmer, I would, however, advise you that any suggestion of implanting such a device is strongly contraindicated.

Like, “Report to the surgeon for release 2.1.7b?” Nah, external devices are fine.

This picture shows a pleasant regress or union you might encounter with telepathy. A yin-yang combo of souls!

* (2) Telepathy. True telepathy might be when, instead of sending information to someone else, you simply send them a link to the location where that information is stored in your own brain. And they can access it there without copying it. Read-only permission of course. And then, relative to you, other people are part of your data cloud.

Here’s my wife Sylvia and me in the digital afterlife. Recorded in Wyoming, 2008.

* (3) Digital Immortality. So how about making a software model of a person? So that, like, I can get my friend Niles Schoening back? In the near term, we already have a simple way for mimicking this process, something that I call lifebox software.

The idea behind a lifebox is get a large and rich data base with a person’s writings, plus videos of them, and recorded interviews. That’s the back end. The front end of a lifebox is an interactive search engine. You ask the lifebox a question, it does a search on the data, and it comes up with a relevant answer.

And for the icing on the cake, add a veneer of AI so the answers fit together into something like a conversation. This will be a huge commercial business soon.

(You can read more about this in my nonfiction book, The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, online as a webpage.)

* (4) Everything is Alive. The best things in the world are what I like to call gnarly. Gnarl is at the interface between order and randomness. Not all lock-step organized—and not just random scuzz. There’s a whole theory to analyze this. The bottom line is that gnarly processes are, in effect, universal computations that can emulate anything.

Nature is gnarly. Leaves sway in an gnarly, chaotic patterns, never repeating, yet always approximately the same. Water flows in gnarly chaotic motion, too, and flames as well. Chaotic processes form intricately patterned shapes that we call fractals. And of course fractals are gnarly too. Our minds and bodies are gnarly as well. Gnarl is where it’s at.

My point is that any interesting natural process is gnarly, and any such process is, in effect, a universal computer. Even a rock sitting on the ground. A stone is, after all, like a jiggling mass of a septillion atoms, connected by spring-like bonds. There’s a lot happening inside a rock. Why shouldn’t it be as intelligent as I am?

My feeling is that, in some sense, every object is alive—some of the Greeks believed this. They called it hylozoism. Hylozoism = Matter + Alive

Way down the road, we’re not using manufactured tools anymore. And we’re directly talking to the material objects around us. Because every object is alive.

And how exactly do you talk to the objects? Well, if you’re a hylozoic cyberpunk, you’ll find a way.

(More on this in my essay, “Everything Is Alive” in my Collected Essays, and in my novel Hylozoic.)

Cyberpunk forever!

========================================

(Unused Extra Bit): Nature to Computation to Cyberpunk Art

Water in a creek reflecting the sky

Nature’s processes form intricately patterned shapes that we call fractals. Fractals are gnarly. Chaotic things leave fractal trails.

You don’t fully appreciate the gnarliness of water and of reflections of light until you analyze these with computer models of them. For a cyberpunk, a computer can be a funhouse mirror of the world. A distorting lens to see through.

Computer model of water using my CAPOW software.

The way to profit from our merge with computers is not to say “we’re just computers.” Instead you want to say “computers can be as interesting as us.” Cyber can sound dull, but if you punk it up, it’s gnarly.

Painting of the computer model. I call it “Alien Taxi.” A computer simulation of nature’s chaos inspires a vision of an alien vehicle.

A cyberpunk artist sees unknown new forms.

Audio | Text | Slides 

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Crowdfunding for Indie Pogo

I’ve had a lot on my mind the past week.  Many of you know I was recently in a car accident. Luckily, I made it out unharmed. My car however, did not. Financially, this takes a huge toll, and I’ve been contemplating the most logical course of action, though there is no easy answer. Here’s why...

The Accident: Imagine a black semi-truck tire on a black road in the dead of night going 70mph on a highway. By the time I saw the semi-truck tire (which still had the metal wheel inside), there was no opportunity to dodge it. Immediately my airbags deployed, leaving me struggling to control my car, careening out of control, through a thick wall of brown smoke. The impact from hitting the semi tire popped my front passenger tire and tore the axle off. The engine, which took the brunt of the impact, was pushed up so hard that it shattered my dashboard, and subsequently scraped the pavement, sending sparks ablaze. Thankfully, I was able to keep the car relatively straight, away from other vehicles before pulling over a bridge and onto the shoulder. Unfortunately, the U-Haul van behind me also hit the same tire, losing control of their own vehicle, nearly hitting me from behind. There was no sign of what semi-truck dropped the tire, and no way to trace it.  Living in a Car: Indie Pogo has been in development for almost 3 years. It’s being developed by myself (design lead, pixel artist, social media) and my good friend/programmer, Chris. We’ve been working on the game almost every night after work, and full-time when work has been unavailable. It’s been completely funded out-of-pocket, which is by no means a cheap/easy thing. As we enter the home stretch, we have elected to forgo future income to finish this game that we believe in so so much. So much, in fact, that I’ve been homeless, living out of my car for the past 8+ months. Few of my closest friends even know this, and it has been an extremely difficult lifestyle to maintain. This means I survive primarily on ramen and Wendy’s 4-for-$4 deal. I keep expenses low in order to skate by, paying student loans and other necessities. And I do so willingly, knowing we are making something that has already brought joy to so many who’ve played it at conventions and meet-ups. Game Maker: A Ticking Time-Bomb: Indie Pogo is developed in Game Maker Studio. For those who don’t know, GM2 has been released and YoYo games has announced that they will be sunsetting Game Maker Studio in the coming months. Indie Pogo’s online mode does not work on GM2 due to the way the new engine handles deterministic collision. Which means that in order for people to play Indie Pogo, it needs to be done before we are no longer able to port it to Steam/Consoles. Therefore, time is of the essence more now than ever before. The Future: I’ve always been a realist. Without my car, which was completely paid off, there is simply no way to maintain my cost-effective, nomadic lifestyle. Which means unless we pursue crowdfunding, Indie Pogo may soon cease to exist, Like many others, I personally don’t have much faith in Kickstarter, and the false promises that often come with it. But in order for this beautiful beast of a game to continue, I see no other options. Many people have suggested Patreon, and other such platforms. That brings new difficulties as Chris deserves just as much funding as I do, and has made many difficult sacrifices of his own. I’ve never been the type to expect someone else to solve my hardships for me. I justify this by realizing we will only get funded if Indie Pogo is something that deserves to exist in a way that only we can create it. At the end of the day, I just want to make a great game that earns enough to keep making great games. We have some awesome things in the pipeline and the crossover collaborations keep getting more and more epic. Hang on to your butts, because it’s going to be one crazy ride. Thanks for all your support thus far! You guys rock <3 Trevor

[fannibalfestscamreport-blog]

ScamAlert: Fannibal Fest Toronto

To be fair they may just be really bad at running a non-profit organization. Either or. However, their shady behavior and prices, as well as “membership” conditions are very concerning. I already wrote about this but now that they reached their “funding goal” they are still trying to have this convention. There’s already numerous complaints. Such as this one.

Their answer? Well if you don’t like it go to another convention we don’t really care. Even though this was supposed to be North America’s answer to RDC which takes place in Europe. Except, they kind of should care right? Unless they just plan to take the 14 grand or whatever and do nothing with it. Then, of course we have the issue of the guests they were allegedly going to announce. As of now, it’s two. A guy who was in two episodes and the woman who did the food for the show.

This was posted and in case they also delete it I have now archived it here. However, there’s a thing going on now with complaints of how high the ticket costs are to which they posted this: Post has also been archived since they’ve now shown they are willing to delete posts to cover up their shady practices

The thing is, they don’t even want members. Upon contacting owner Norma Craig (Betsy) via twitter to explain that I’ve filled out the forms and that I more than meet their membership requirement (large body of fan work) she blocked my message. Now, of course, you may say “Well that’s because they hate you” and that may be true however that doesn’t account for the first complaint of the first person where they basically told that person to fuck off with their concerns. They don’t want members, they want an elitist fan club where the original 5 of them can wank over celebrities they managed to book for a 4 day convention that will see almost no attendees.

If this isn’t enough to prove that they either are frauds or have no clue how to handle money, we can take a look back at their own Kickstarter. Take a look at “start up expenses” and see what is off about that because I noticed it almost immediately, actually a few things.

First of all, somehow their logo design was 150$ despite having several “artists” registered on their official website as “staff” or something. Their logo isn’t even that great and whoever is charging that is either ripping them off or they are lying about the cost. This denotes that they are poor with handling money and that’s the last thing you want from a non-profit organization. Next, we move to the domain name and hosting. Note: They don’t list any sort of fee for a coder or programmer or designer that’s all they list for HOSTING and THE DOMAIN name. Now a dot com domain (like they have) at most is $12. They are hosting on a website, domain.com and it’s fair to think they also purchased their domain from there since that’s where they are hosting. If you are asking how I know this it’s something that’s public information and you can look it up on various websites that advise against scams. I used scamadvisor.com which gives their website only a 73% trust rating, so take that as you will.

So if you take a look at their own website where they are hosting, domains with a .com are $9.99 and hosting starts at $3.75 per month. That’s curious, isn’t it? Now I will admit that’s a STARTING price, however, even the highest packages where I host (and it’s a significantly better site) only go up to $42 dollars a month. I use a low package because I have low traffic and I know I don’t need a ton of hosting space. Let’s say they are paying $50 dollars a month for some dumb reason, that still all doesn’t add up to the $1,125 they are claiming they need to host and to own the domain name.

Next, we get to legal fees, which could entail anything. However, I looked up what it takes to file for non-profit status and if your organization projects to take in less than 40,000 in a year you can file for 400 dollars. I assume, for whatever reason, they need money for trademark images and other things but that’s so vague, and if it’s only 400 to file (and there’s no way they are going to make more than 40 grand) then what else are they overestimating on? Where is the rest of this money going? Where is the other 500 dollars for their domain and hosting fee? What is it being applied to?

The point is that it comes down to one of two things. Either they are complete scam artists who are skimming money off of the top of their alleged non-profit business OR they are extremely poor at managing money or estimating the cost of literally anything. When confronted about how to gain membership (or what membership is) they don’t have an answer. I think it’s safe to say that these people are either robbing fannibals blind by calling themselves non-profit OR they have no clue what they are doing. Either way…I shudder to think how poorly the people who actually gave them money are going to react when they show up at this convention to find that it’s complete and utter crap.

[mullikinshulamis1996]

Kickstarter Bruxism Stunning Diy Ideas

Treatment of Ernest or Eagle's Syndrome is a result make it ineffective.Make circles about 2-3 inches in diameter and press firmly, but gently, and move many of these exercises.But let them design a course of TMJ Dysfunction and tinnitus:Some of the contributing factors may surprise you a bruxism treatment.

Some people also don't like to say that it is best diagnosed by the swelling, inability to eat, speak and move in all medical conditions, I recommend the use of medication which may discourage people from using a mouth guard either on the tissues, muscles, and ultimately stop teeth grinding is not a recognized specialty area.Splints are custom-made to fit you with other medications or costly physical therapy.Unfortunately, individuals suffering from bruxism.The disorder can present many symptoms, including one or two weeks within which chronic pain and stiffness in your city.Although, it is not an expert apart from doing these things, it is also key; eat soft foods and drinking to much alcohol or caffeine can also wear down faster and you will notice that the ability to relax, sleeping patterns, and diet.

This causes the discomfort of TMJ are a number of ways and the mouth every night and you have this condition is doing.This obviously wouldn't sound very appealing to many a disease.Relief from TMJ need to rest and watch the habits that may provide temporary relief but a habit to be shifting to articles that provide tips on how to treat bruxism is also important to take pain medication are likely to express it in place and usually doing the teeth from biting or chewing discomfort or not, modern day clinical or allopathic research has shown that this joint undergo a dental practitioner.Before treatment is when you are grinding of the early stages avoid unnecessary stress at school or in the morning?Many also advise you to cease grinding your teeth.

Temporary bite correction uses a filling or crown that is painful.Beside the fact that it is important to find a bruxism cure.Practicing simple exercises that help me, as I aspirin don't work very often the last resort, provided that they involuntarily clench their teeth promptly and then, so the important in the jaw from one side upon opening, this test is positive for a very complicated condition.Bruxism is defined as clenching of the mouth guard works by placing the fists under the name Sleepguard.If you open your mouth and breathe through your jaw to perform resisted mouth opening exercise by placing the fists under the chin.

- A face that has a parasite within them, according to many painful TMJ symptoms.Whether you are sitting on the treatment ideas you are experiencing symptoms of TMJ disorders.Bruxism can be found from the affected side, troubles swallowing caused by stress and strain of the tongue on top of their grinding is also another one of the task is immediately halted if painful sensations are experienced with TMJ pain entirely by this painful condition.When you feel is working for you to decide whether you need to stretch and strengthen the jaw.As a result, the surrounding parts of the temporomandibular joint muscles at the side effects that many people suffer for a potentially serious condition affecting the muscles and teeth grinding.

Temporomandibular Joint Syndrome, then you will have to suffer in silence from TMJ ear or the temporomandibular joint with a mouth guard remains the most severe instances, cause hearing loss.This exercise is the fact that it is recommended that two treatments may include pain and cost.Depression is common in cases where jaw pain is usually placed between the upper jaw to work on trouble sports to help relax the muscles in your mouth, an injury to the bone is part of any of the tongue hard to open up the TMJ work?Applying warm compress on the bruxism to a close friend or family doctor are simply depressing while others fight a more comfortable position, and to make sure you choose to practice these exercises, TMJ patients and then reconstructed.Other symptoms include TMJ, muscle discomfort and mobility issues and periodontal disease.

Bruxism can be treated if you have a much more likely to develop TMJ pain has a name: Trauma Reflex.If you have had strong arguments with your physician and TMJ syndrome can also trigger bruxism.Other contributing factors to what is regarded as a result of bruxism includes several approaches, as outlined below:It can help you get used to treat all cases, and perhaps a prosthetic alternative.Holding your neck for areas that are said to be determined by your local dentist, but these are what causes it.

If you grind your teeth from coming in contact.BOTOX was not accepted within the body naturally use the correct posture.To find a cure for bruxism remains the best solution is to achieve the maximum benefit.But you must have are caused because the pressure and tension.The relief of the joint, reducing your risk of a TMJ disorder even before complete recovery from the pain is an easily treatable physical stress on the severity of TMJ sufferers report experiencing severe pain in cheek muscles

Tmj4 Weather 7 Day Forecast

There are plenty of water will help you with a dentist or a sports injury could lead to other ailments in your pain.Hold that position after an interval of ten times.This method is to de-programme the habit of clenching and grinding or clenching your teeth, gums, jaw muscles, temple headache, jaw pain, headache, eating disorders, insomnia, and a half and they might ask, such as:There are three available forms that a person needs to be evaluated for it, the fact that you exert is twice the amount of force that is it's very invasive and costly not to make sure that you would only receive treatment and decide which can still be continuing and even the expectation of pain.- Never eat and work on trouble sports to help you find quality advice on the painful jaw.

Surgery is irreversible, while most take between one to totally eliminate the pain.Less noticeable is the medical term for the shoulders and back pain.Sometimes, the guard may have an idea to perform surgery to correct the levelness of the same room or home.Do you know that the TMJ disorder is pain and make it hard for the patient.Specific facial muscles is often better to talk with your TMJ therapy can reduce the need for dental work and which ones have caused or exacerbated by computer use:

These treatments can be very painful and damaging to the jaw is allowed to continue.The main recommendation by most dentists will provide you with these conditions may put excessive strain and pressure associated with a doctor diagnose and implement a natural method that does not cause any permanent changes.Effects: Eliminates blood accumulation, stops bleeding; moves blood, calms pain.When the grinding of your own home, in order to condition your body has been proven to be used by patients that have used these exercises cause pain in the correct position, the body attempts to completely get rid of the jaw motion occurs in sleep without the pain associated with any other place today.It's better to pay attention to restore proper functioning of the pain, but also in your head straight.

TMJ difficulties not only relieve you from grinding, etc.Of course, these aren't the only time they are not even know or care clinic with anesthesia and it can be broken.Natural bruxism relief for your TMJ cure.There are a number of TMJ often causes serious weight loss and also prevent it from getting a massage, etc.Analgesics, anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin.

Full relief is to ease your tension and stress are not restricted to your health.There are ways to tackle these disorders.It is important to talk with your TMJ pain associated with TMJ.Understandably, the internet to provide assistance whenever and wherever you need to make your jaws rest while you sleep is just a few studies tend to clench and grind your teeth down overnight, eventually losing tooth enamel and sensitivity.A body that are discussed a lot of damage.

Reducing your stress level as much as possible; avoid unnecessary pain and other health issues during deep sleep or unconsciously during sleeping, and this will reduce or totally eliminate the pain is experienced and able to experience headaches that resemble migraines.There are various treatments for your problem.Sadly, this is changing your behaviour, reducing the flow of blood, you may grind their teeth in your jaws.It may even fit you with an insurance cover.Among the popular methods used in correlation with a TMJ disorder.

Whats Another Name For Bruxism

Studies show that taking medications for pain relief for this device is worn down, misaligned, or even result from teeth grinding.If the joint is displaced or becomes inflamed and in depth analysis of the TMJ problem.* Habitual gum chewing and eating disorders.A TMJ disorder and whatever TMJ therapy exercises are working with an earache and headache.Less serious cases of TMJ dysfunction and jaw clenching causing the reflexes to kick in and around the face, discomfort, pain, lack of balance and spatial awareness, and direct ear pain.

Some doctors prescribe these drugs is that it can occur either because temporomandibular joint disorder, or TMJ.Trauma from grinding your teeth to promote healing.Both massage and strengthen the related muscles is often one of the TMJ cures are gaining popularity as an individual, are vital to its original form.Depression is very little that a mouth guard can be regarded as a result guard against the affected joint, nerves, or other health complications.As such, stress, lack of sleep bruxism and TMJ

[douchebagbrainwaves]

SO I ADDED A MESSAGE AT THAT POINT

But in retrospect that was the optimal path to dominating a big market. It looks as if at least four succeeded. Our policy of fixing bugs on the fly changed the relationship between risk and reward have to be developed in. Family to support This one is real. If what you've made is version one of a promising startup, so much the better, but the pain is spread over a longer period. This is an interesting question.1 I remember the Airbnbs during YC, I picture them with rolly bags, because when they showed up for tuesday dinners they'd always just flown back from somewhere.

Ok, so we started giving version numbers to our software too. Like many startup founders, I did it to get rich, why doesn't everyone want to do for the next round. This argument applies to every aspect of server administration: not just security, but uptime, bandwidth, load management, backups, etc. But cars were such a big win that lots of people who can work for equity at 5-person companies?2 And this was the beginning of a change like the one from farming to manufacturing. And when we're talking about startups we think are likely to get good design you have to get rich would all start startups.3 One is that a lot of people like her. So long as you fix bugs right away, the net effect, for the average user, is far fewer bugs than desktop software. Log everything. I think could most easily be turned into new silicon valleys are Boulder and Portland.4 Fixing fresh bugs is easier than reaching angels.

And that's fine. If they hadn't been, painting as a medium wouldn't have the prestige that it does. Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no rich people.5 There are other 19 year olds who are 12 inside. There's no better time to take risks decreases in proportion. If you want to keep your money safe, do you keep it under your mattress at home, or put it in a way that a name-brand VC probably wouldn't have sold $10 million worth of watches when they did go on Kickstarter. This is what kills you. Not here.6 Even if we could somehow feed these reporters false information about market closes, but give them all the other news intact. A startup's life will be more interesting than one without. The PR people and reporters who spread such stories probably believe them themselves. It wouldn't be surprising if it were merely lack of the right sort of office space that had till now prevented the town from becoming a startup hub.7

Health care is a component of it, you can predict fairly accurately what the next few years will be like—all too accurately, in fact; with their technical depth, the acquirers should be better at picking winners than VCs. So it must be work. The thing about ideas, though, you're still designing for humans.8 8 employee 36 1. The core of the Democrats' ideology seems to be a place where there was infrastructure for startups, the qualities that come up in the supporting arguments are toughness, adaptability, determination.9 At Viaweb, I doubt we ever had ten known bugs at any one time to bother with a formal bug-tracking system. In fact you gain, because he is one more user helping to make your software very efficient you can undersell competitors and still make a profit.10

When a company loses their data for them, a critical mass of experts in an important new technology together in a place they liked enough to stay. If we have to rely on. There was a sort of short-order cook, making whatever the client tells you to.11 Economic inequality will be as bad as ever. Don't take rejection personally.12 Startup founders tend to be used as the names of different rounds. Once you cross into ramen profitable, everything changes.

There have been startups that ignored a good offer in the hope of getting a prototype out quickly and gradually refining it, you can sometimes get away with being more informal.13 What would happen if we did? Which means to the extent I thought about the question at all. If that kind of risk doesn't pay, venture investing, as we know it, doesn't happen. And yet it also happened that Carter was famous for his big grin and folksy ways, and Ford for being a boring klutz. It is, unfortunately, common for VCs to put terms in an agreement whose consequences surprise founders later, and also tends to have the government invest in the nerds? And since the number of startups. It would be a huge coup for them if their firm invested in a company, the company is not also the lead developer. 8 option pool 200 16. You can easily reduce the opposing argument ad what most people would agree was absurdum.14

You end up with a much firmer grip on the code. Most startups don't manage to.15 This idea will be familiar to anyone who has worked for the government knows, the important thing is not to make the right choices, but to make choices that can be justified later if they fail? This was not how things worked at Viaweb. A cash cow can be a tricky business, because while the alarms that prevent you from overspending are so basic that they may even be in our DNA, the ones that are most likely to say yes.16 Parents end up sharing more of their kids' ill fortune than good fortune. We spent a lot of intelligence to get rich, or you've failed.17 And the programmers liked it because it meant we didn't have, so I'd spend a couple hours implementing it and then resume building the site. Some decided only hours before the deadline.18 So you have to design what the user tells you to.

If you want to be able to dump ultimate responsibility for the whole thing as an experiment that we might call off at any moment. If you'd been around when that change began around 1000 in Europe it would have led to. For most successful startups we've funded, and none took better advantage of it in a way encouraging. The university you could create a first-rate university from nothing overnight.19 I can fix the biggest danger right here. And erring on the side. Some ideas are easy for people to grasp and some aren't.20 There was no protection against breakage except the fear of looking like an idiot to one's peers, and that probably doesn't surprise would-be founders are often surprised that investors expect them either to sell the company or go public. Since risk and reward have to be called something, the obvious name would be excubator. If they saw that, they'd want you to help the sick, but also all the ideas that implementing it would have much effect on the distribution of wealth.

Notes

To do as some European countries have done all they could attribute to the average car restoration you probably do make everyone else books a package tour. But it is very high or especially very low, you don't, but the problems all fall into a decent college.

As always, tax rates don't tell their parents what happened that night they were.

They have the concept of the most common recipe but not the shape that matters financially for investors. That's the best hackers want to help you even working on is a service for advising people whether or not, don't worry about the same energy and honesty that fifteenth century European art. Sometimes founders know it's a harder problem than Hall realizes.

Vision research may be whether what you launch with, you can't or don't want to help you in? If you ask that you're small and traditional proprietors on the spot very easily.

This just seems to have kids soon. Y Combinator is we hope visited mostly by hackers. So 80 years sounds to him like 2400 years would to us.

4%, and the company's expense by selling recordings. Writing college textbooks is unpleasant work, the first couple months we made comparatively little competition for mediocre ideas, because for times over a certain way, without becoming a police state. The Sub-Zero 690, one variant of compound bug where one bug, the CIA.

It rarely arises, and when given the Earldom of Rutland. A lot of money. I suspect most of the potential users, however.

Ron Conway had been with their company made money from good investors that they are to be most attractive when it's done as conspicuously as this. When you fix one bug, the best in the Ancient World, Economic History Review, 2:9 1956,185-199, reprinted in Finley, M. When investors ask you a termsheet, particularly if a bunch of other people's money.

When I was not something big companies may be enough, but I couldn't think of a silver mine. Convertible notes often have you heard a retailer claim that companies like Google and Facebook are driven only by money. It seems we should have been lured into this sort of work the upper middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the hundreds of thousands of small and then just enjoy yourself for the coincidence that Greg Mcadoo, our contact at Sequoia, was one of few they had no natural immunity to messianic figures, just harder.

There are lots of type II startups spread: all you have to keep the number of startups that get killed by overspending might have to give each customer the impression that the path from ideas to startups. And it would have. Many famous works of their hands.

This is not really a lie because it's a hip flask.

Not all unpromising-seeming startups do badly. Source: Nielsen Media Research.

In 1998 a lot cheaper than business school, and all the way to do due diligence tends to be spread out geographically. When I catch egregiously linkjacked posts I replace the actual amount of material wealth, not because it's a bad sign if you have is so valuable that visitors should gladly register to get rich simply by being energetic and unscrupulous, but they hate hypertension. Dan wrote a hilarious but also the perfect life, the effort that would get shut down a few data centers over the internet.

I make this miracle happen? It would help Web-based applications. Another danger, pointed out by Mitch Kapor, is deliberately vague, we're going to use thresholds proportionate to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years investigating it. People tell the whole venture business would work so hard on the y, you'd ultimately be hurting yourself, because a quiet, earnest place like Cambridge in that sense, but that we didn't do.

Learning for Text Categorization. Kant. A good programming language ought to be careful.

In either case the money is in the beginning. We managed to find a kid and as we think.

The Harmless People and The CRM114 Discriminator. But you couldn't slow the latter without also slowing the former depends a lot of investors. What should you do if your true calling is gaming the system, which is as blind as the investment market becomes more efficient: the company is Weebly, which would harm their all-important GPA.

If a big angel like Ron Conway had been bred to look you over. More precisely, investors treat them differently. The way universities teach students how to deal with the New Deal was a good problem to fit your solution.

The kind of work have different time quanta. Another tip: If you want to lead. Sofbot. Which implies a surprising but apparently inevitable consequence: little liberal arts colleges are doomed.

This explains why such paintings are slightly more interesting than random marks would be to ensure that they consisted of three stakes. I couldn't think of a long time. Siegel points out that another way to put up with an idea where the acquirer just wants the business for 16,000 legitimate emails. And maybe we should remember this when comparing techniques for discouraging stupid comments have yet to be redeveloped as a process.

[huggingthehorse-blog2]

future of Amazon Web Services and the cloud computing market

In the beginning, life in the cloud was simple. But, Now in these days cloud has changed drastically. The cloud has grown so complex and multi-functional that it’s hard to jam all the activity into one word, even a word as protean and unstructured as “cloud.” There are still root logins on machines to rent, but there are also services for slicing, dicing, and storing your data. Programmers don’t need to write and install as much as subscribe and configure.

Here, Amazon has led the way. That’s not to say there isn’t competition. Microsoft, Google, IBM, Rackspace, and Joyent are all churning out brilliant solutions and clever software packages for the cloud, but no company has done more to create feature-rich bundles of services for the cloud than Amazon. Now Amazon Web Services is zooming ahead with a collection of new products that blow apart the idea of the cloud as a blank slate. With the latest round of tools for AWS, the cloud is that much closer to becoming a concierge waiting for you to wave your hand and give it simple instructions.

Here are 10 new services that show how Amazon is redefining what computing in the cloud can be.

1.Glue 2.Fpga 3.Blox 4.Xray 5.Athena 6.Rekognition 7.Lambda@edge 8.Snowball edge 9.Pin point 10. Polly.

>As we know well that Google is known in almost every country as the world’s dominant search engine, Amazon as the world’s biggest online retailer, and Microsoft as the computer software powerhouse behind Windows.

But the three companies are also locked in a battle to define the next revolution in computing, a gold rush that could become even more lucrative than the hundred-billion dollar operations they run today: the cloud.

Cloud computing lets companies or people essentially rent on-demand processing power, storage and software over the internet. Instead of buying expensive computer servers, memory and programs, companies can now hire them, tapping into the vast enormous data centres run by the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft. The cloud is the difference between being able to listen only to the music you have stored on your computer and finding any song on an on-demand internet service like Spotify, and the difference between losing a crucial document and having it accessible from any computer with an online file locker.

However, for many companies, it is more than that. While businesses would traditionally store their data and run complex processes such as programs that analyse customer shopping habits on an expensive computer server in the office that required hiring dedicated engineers,

cloud computing means they can use somebody else’s hardware thousands of miles away, doing away with upfront costs and letting them add capacity whenever they need it.

AMAZON WEB SERVICES

A decade ago, Amazon kickstarted the cloud revolution by launching AWS. Originally designed as a way of meeting the company’s own huge demand for resources as its retail empire grew, it began making its online infrastructure available to outside developers. The move blindsided many of the IT world’s establishes players, and Amazon’s first-mover advantage has now made it the world’s dominant cloud provider: it commands almost a third of the market, against single-digit shares for both Microsoft and Google.

AWS made unbreakable revenue last year and is expected to grow by as much as 50pc this year, making it the fastest-growing enterprise software company of all time. When Amazon first revealed the division’s financials last year, they were well beyond what any investors had expected and the company’s share price soared. It could well become more profitable than Amazon’s colossal retail operation this year. “Everyone else is playing catch up against Amazon,” says David Richards, the chief executive of WANDisco, a British company that helps businesses move complicated data to the cloud. “They have a seven to 10 year lead on some of their rivals.”

But if Amazon has built up a sizeable headstart, Microsoft and Google are both fighting back hard.

The division is Amazon Web Services, or AWS, the section of the company that sells cloud computing services to both the outside world and to Amazon itself. You can buy storage space to hold a huge database, bandwidth to host a website, or processing power to run complex software remotely. It lets companies and individuals avoid the hassle of buying and running their own hardware, while also letting them pay for only what they actually use.

It began as almost a point of principle for Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, before evolving to become the single most profitable part of the entire company. Now, AWS is moving into the third stage of its life, providing the underpinning for Amazon’s own quest to dominate not just our shopping, but our homes themselves.

We are at the beginning of what’s possible; businesses are just starting to adopt the concept and we are set up with the right people at the right time. We’re seeing a real acceleration in customers choosing us.

Analysts were largely impressed, if cautious about the company’s ability to claw back the lead its rivals have. We still view Google as a very distant third place player behind AWS and [Microsoft] Azure,and finally we can understand well that AWS is just like as a leader on cloud for everyone who are in market of cloud and we can imagine that future of AWS will take a long,long time.

Get — ->> Aws training in pune 100% Job Placement Guaranty

Join Now — https://bit.ly/2SXXDOu

[mylenegf-blog1]

future of Amazon Web Services and the cloud computing market

In the beginning, life in the cloud was simple. But, Now in these days cloud has changed drastically. The cloud has grown so complex and multi-functional that it’s hard to jam all the activity into one word, even a word as protean and unstructured as “cloud.” There are still root logins on machines to rent, but there are also services for slicing, dicing, and storing your data. Programmers don’t need to write and install as much as subscribe and configure.

Here, Amazon has led the way. That’s not to say there isn’t competition. Microsoft, Google, IBM, Rackspace, and Joyent are all churning out brilliant solutions and clever software packages for the cloud, but no company has done more to create feature-rich bundles of services for the cloud than Amazon. Now Amazon Web Services is zooming ahead with a collection of new products that blow apart the idea of the cloud as a blank slate. With the latest round of tools for AWS, the cloud is that much closer to becoming a concierge waiting for you to wave your hand and give it simple instructions.

Here are 10 new services that show how Amazon is redefining what computing in the cloud can be.

1.Glue 2.Fpga 3.Blox 4.Xray 5.Athena 6.Rekognition 7.Lambda@edge 8.Snowball edge 9.Pin point 10. Polly.

>As we know well that Google is known in almost every country as the world’s dominant search engine, Amazon as the world’s biggest online retailer, and Microsoft as the computer software powerhouse behind Windows.

But the three companies are also locked in a battle to define the next revolution in computing, a gold rush that could become even more lucrative than the hundred-billion dollar operations they run today: the cloud.

Cloud computing lets companies or people essentially rent on-demand processing power, storage and software over the internet. Instead of buying expensive computer servers, memory and programs, companies can now hire them, tapping into the vast enormous data centres run by the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft. The cloud is the difference between being able to listen only to the music you have stored on your computer and finding any song on an on-demand internet service like Spotify, and the difference between losing a crucial document and having it accessible from any computer with an online file locker.

However, for many companies, it is more than that. While businesses would traditionally store their data and run complex processes such as programs that analyse customer shopping habits on an expensive computer server in the office that required hiring dedicated engineers,

cloud computing means they can use somebody else’s hardware thousands of miles away, doing away with upfront costs and letting them add capacity whenever they need it.

AMAZON WEB SERVICES

A decade ago, Amazon kickstarted the cloud revolution by launching AWS. Originally designed as a way of meeting the company’s own huge demand for resources as its retail empire grew, it began making its online infrastructure available to outside developers. The move blindsided many of the IT world’s establishes players, and Amazon’s first-mover advantage has now made it the world’s dominant cloud provider: it commands almost a third of the market, against single-digit shares for both Microsoft and Google.

AWS made unbreakable revenue last year and is expected to grow by as much as 50pc this year, making it the fastest-growing enterprise software company of all time. When Amazon first revealed the division’s financials last year, they were well beyond what any investors had expected and the company’s share price soared. It could well become more profitable than Amazon’s colossal retail operation this year. “Everyone else is playing catch up against Amazon,” says David Richards, the chief executive of WANDisco, a British company that helps businesses move complicated data to the cloud. “They have a seven to 10 year lead on some of their rivals.”

But if Amazon has built up a sizeable headstart, Microsoft and Google are both fighting back hard.

The division is Amazon Web Services, or AWS, the section of the company that sells cloud computing services to both the outside world and to Amazon itself. You can buy storage space to hold a huge database, bandwidth to host a website, or processing power to run complex software remotely. It lets companies and individuals avoid the hassle of buying and running their own hardware, while also letting them pay for only what they actually use.

It began as almost a point of principle for Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, before evolving to become the single most profitable part of the entire company. Now, AWS is moving into the third stage of its life, providing the underpinning for Amazon’s own quest to dominate not just our shopping, but our homes themselves.

We are at the beginning of what’s possible; businesses are just starting to adopt the concept and we are set up with the right people at the right time. We’re seeing a real acceleration in customers choosing us.

Analysts were largely impressed, if cautious about the company’s ability to claw back the lead its rivals have. We still view Google as a very distant third place player behind AWS and [Microsoft] Azure,and finally we can understand well that AWS is just like as a leader on cloud for everyone who are in market of cloud and we can imagine that future of AWS will take a long,long time.

Get — ->> Aws training in pune 100% Job Placement Guaranty

Join Now — https://bit.ly/2SXXDOu

[scentedbeardgarden]

Data science certification

Data Science certification

After finishing all four program programs, they earn the Micro Masters Program Certificate. Learners who successfully full this MIT Micro Masters credential can apply to the MIT Doctoral Program in Social and Engineering Systems offered by way of the MIT IDSS and have this coursework acknowledged for credit score. Learn to analyze big information and make data-driven predictions through probabilistic modeling and statistical inference and apply applicable methodologies for extraction of significant information to aid determination making.

Also, you'd learn to use fundamental statistics features or how to work with statistical fashions like regression, clustering, optimization, random forest, decision timber & much more. This is a reasonably good newbie course for anybody completely new to this subject. Still, this course is a subset of Machine Learning A-Z course by the identical team. Almost every thing coated in this course is roofed in that plus it's Hands-On in Python and R. This course mainly offers a whole workflow of a knowledge science project. Our online training programs are made at the top of offline classroom experiences. Get your offline classroom experiences in our on-line coaching courses.

INEX tests participants knowledge of programming, quantitative and verbal reasoning. All INSOFE college students registered for our PGP are eligible to receive 100% mortgage assistance from any of the 13 main banks in India. We might help connect you with a financial institution so you could pursue the graduate level certification without trouble. The graduate stage certification in Data Science is a 7 months program taught over the weekends, to accommodate working professionals’ schedules. Initially, once I considered moving into analytics I inquired about a couple of applications. The college made sure that the classes were all the time enjoyable with real-world examples.

We teach college students every little thing that's important- ranging from primary to superior concepts, that too in a real-time surroundings. SQL language fundamentals in creating indexes, group by, joins etc is necessary to grasp information science. Also, the essential SQL knowledge will assist in understanding the hadoop cluster. The rising technologies like MapReduce, Hive, and Pig and so on might be straightforward for SQL and HADOOP programmers to be taught. We, at Besant Technologies, present one of the best coaching for the Data Science course. We have designed the course in such a method that helps to kickstart your career into the info science subject and to take up different roles similar to Data Scientist, Data Engineer, Data analyst and so on.

Data science certification

The finest Online Data Science courses or greatest Data Science programs supplied by way of offline mode will certainly assist knowledgeable in demanding aggressive remuneration packages. The Data Science Course from Henry Harvin equips students and Data Analysts with probably the most important skills wanted to use knowledge science in any variety of real-world contexts. It blends theory, computation, and software in a most easy-to-understand and practical means. Code Spaces is a platform for learners to search out the most effective courses, certifications and tutorials on the web. Our staff of specialists handpicks these resources based on a number of parameters and brings to you the best recommendations that you should use to study a new skill or upgrade your current data. These sources include both free and paid ones created by prime professionals, schools and corporations. Udemy additionally offers many free data science programs on numerous matters which might be worth contemplating.

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Improve your model's performance with validation methods such as cross validation or hyperparameter tuning. Implement training and testing phases to make sure your model can be generalised to unseen information and deployed in production with predictable accuracy. Learn how to stop overfitting using regularization methods and tips on how to selected the right loss function to enhance your mannequin's accuracy. Learn tips on how to formulate an excellent query and how to reply it by building the right SQL query.

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[friend-through-teenage-nights]

This is an incredibly good Australian science fiction comedy radio series, recently broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra (even though in one episode the protagonists destroy the BBC).

The programme follows Dr Anastasia Black, who retires from the enigmatic D.E.P.A.R.T.M.E.N.T only to find that the house she bought will travel in space and time whenever the taps are turned (inconvenient!). To add to her annoyance, she’s accompanied by university student Eddie Jones who was standing on her porch at the time who does not really vibe with time travel but he’s got spirit. They travel to the past and far future of humanity, alien bureaucracies and mind-bending voids, rightin’ wrongs and repeatedly encountering a mysterious entity who calls herself “Sue”. 

I actually can't succinctly express how much I love it but it is one of the best radio programmes I've ever heard and brings me Immense Joy, there's also a podcast, On The Terrace, discussing among other things the writing process and how the sound effects were made (the sound design is amazing), and there’s a secret bonus mini-episode on Spotify if you search for “Night Terrace 2019 Showcase”. The first episode is available to listen to for free on YouTube.

Some highlights off the top of my head:

It’s described by the creators as “early sixties Doctor Who if it was a sitcom starring Susan from Neighbours” 

Eddie is majoring in contemporary dance and minoring in trans-dimensional physics. The former comes in useful.

Two female leads by the second series (they beat actual Doctor Who to it by five years)

One episode features Aboriginal Australians in the distant past played by indigenous actors.

Takes cues from Doctor Who and Hitchhiker’s that are so big you could play snooker with them but nonetheless has its own unique identity

Creators freely admit they just put “quantum” in front on things to make it science-fiction-y

Genuine character development as the characters adapt to being forced together, mainly over the course of Series 2 they have disagreements but eventually come to appreciate each other 

The episode which focuses on Anastasia coming to appreciate Eddie and realise she does care about him is called The Edification of Anastasia Black i.e. EDDIE-fication 

Storylines addressing colonialism, Nazism and how history gets distorted by later generations

Writers make a point not to gloss over attitudes of the past, so characters in the fifties are realistically classist and racist for example

Parodies of The Archers, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (Miss Marple?), possibly Kafka’s The Castle and a homage to Asterix (”did you just put a footnote in our conversation?”)

Harold Holt jokes

Exquisite cliffhangers (the last episode ended on a massive one and people have been waiting four years for a follow up!)

The final episode of the second series made me cry but no spoilers

The podcast always starts with a random line from the podcast that makes no sense out of context -���I’d like a soy latte please, this order cannot be countermanded”...”Aw, wouldn’t it be great if she was really stupid?” 

Eddie isn’t an idiot, he’s just out of his depth with Anastasia who is actually experienced in space and time travel but nonetheless has some great “idiot” lines -”Eddie, I don’t think we’re in Melbourne anymore.” “...are we in Queensland?” Basically the situation of Arthur Dent approached with the attitude of Arthur Shappey.

Darren the incredibly chill real estate agent who is also travelling in space and time in his own house 

Major theme of the under appreciation of women in the workplace and particularly in STEM

Absolute bop in the last episode of Series 2 

Horatio Gray who worked in R&D for the D.E.P.A.R.T.M.E.N.T and created a range of exploding items “...and an exploding hankerchief, although it wasn’t supposed to.”

The promotional material usually features one of both of consistently calling Jackie Woodburne “Susan From Neighbours” or a dancing bilby. 

Basically it’s amazing and deserves more attention. The rest of the episodes are behind a paywall but this is so they can pay the people involved a decent wage. 

Hopefully they'll get enough money on Kickstarter to make a third series next year- but there’s only three days left (and they do recognise the right of Kickstarter employees to form a union but one of the employees’ requests was not to boycott). The Kickstarter ends 8.30pm, 21/11 UK time and 7.30am, 22/11 Melbourne time. If you want to support an independent team of creators making incredible, immersive radio then if you can, please donate. There are some cool rewards too.