13-year old 'Scuti' became first human to crash NES Tetris
Link goes to Twitch VOD of it happening, the crash occurs around 1:09:37 and you can see Scuti's reaction realizing what had happened.
From MetaFilter's posting:
On Thursday, 34 years after the game's original release, a human player crashed NES Tetris for the first time. The game's original programmers assumed that nobody would get past the "killscreen" where speed doubled at level 29, but using the "rolling" technique discovered in 2020, players have been playing deeper into the game than ever before. It was known that a crash was possible after level 155 due to flaws in the scoring code, but no human had ever reached this point. 13 year old "Blue Scuti" was on level 157 and had been playing at killscreen difficulty for over half an hour, with a world-record highscore over 6.8 million, when he became the first human player ever to crash the game (full game video).
Currently Reading: The Perennials
Blurb for the book:
In today's world, the acceleration of megatrends – increasing longevity and the explosion of technology among many others – are transforming life as we now know it.
In The Perennials, bestselling author of 2030 Mauro Guillén unpacks a sweeping societal shift triggered by demographic and technological transformation. Guillén argues that outmoded terms like Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have long been used to pigeonhole us into rigid categories and life stages, artificially preventing people from reaching their full potential. A new postgenerational workforce known as "perennials" – individuals who are not pitted against each other either by their age or experience – makes it possible to liberate scores of people from the constraints of the sequential model of life and level the playing field so that everyone has a chance at living a rewarding life. Guillén unveils how this generational revolution will impact young people just entering the workforce as well as those who are living and working longer.
This multigenerational revolution is already happening and Mauro Guillén identifies the specific cultural, organizational and policy changes that need to be made in order to switch to a new template and usher in a new era of innovation powered by the perennials.
I began it last night and I highlighted this blurb as it was discussing national retirement pensions:
In combination, compulsory schooling, wage-based employment, and pension schemes became the foundation for the sequential model of the "four stations in life," a poetic term resembling the cosmic seasonal calendar. Indeed, by the turn of the twenty-first century, virtually every country in the world had embraced the idea that life proceeds in the four separate and sequential stages of play, study, work, and retirement. It came to be taken for granted as if it were the natural, ideal, and inevitable way of organizing our lives.
The "four stations of life" here isn't something I had heard before. So I found it interesting to see it framed this way. I didn't highlight it, but it did discuss that German's Kaiser Wilhelm was the first to implement a national retirement pension in the world, and doing so diverted revolts at home.
It went on to discuss the role of school in both educating the masses, and also building in the mentality of working for the industrial revolution, etc. And when I stopped last night, it was discussing middle age and the fact it is the least of the four stations of life when it comes to research and writing. Looking forward to digging into it again later today.
52 Books in 2024
I don't normally do book challenges, but I decided this morning I am going to attempt to read 52 books in 2024. I have so many unread books. BookTok is so bad for my stack of epubs waiting to be read. And I don't currently prioritize reading, really, until I get into bed. Before that moment, I much prefer to keep my laptop in my lap.
So, for 2024 - I am going to attempt to tackle a book a week. We'll see how it goes.
Another game from my childhood for computers to dominate
Also, this is another instance of gross misuse of 'AI' in the name.
In November, US Economy saw prices fall for the first time since April 2020
Will be curious to see if it is a trend or an aberration. If the prices resume moving upwards, it is a very bad sign.
After three-plus years of prices steadily — and sometimes sharply — increasing month after month after month, they fell in November.
[...]
November's Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, a comprehensive measure of prices US households pay for goods and services, declined 0.1% from the month before, bringing the annual inflation rate to 2.6%.
It's the first time the headline PCE index decreased on a monthly basis since the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Annually, it's a marked improvement from a 2.9% rate in October and the 40-year high of 7.1% notched in June 2022.
Migrated my old About page
I had a version of this 'About' page on my old blog. Decided to move it over and update it today.
93 Percent Stardust by Nikita Gill
(After Carl Sagan, who gave me hope as a child)
We have calcium in our bones,
iron in our veins,
carbon in our souls,
and nitrogen in our brains.
93 percent stardust,
with souls made of flames,
we are all just stars
that have people names.
Reddit: what's the scariest science fact that the public knows nothing about?
Scientists were trying to study the effects that microplastics have on the human body and brain but were unable to draw any reasonable conclusions because they could not find a control group.
Not exactly surprising.
In response to the above.
Something similar happened when they tried testing for lead back in the day. The ultra clean labs we have today were originally designed so for this reason. Also, the investigation into lead also led to the discovery of the age of the Earth
I have not researched these claims yet. They are easy enough for me to believe, but I'll be curious for supporting research.
Automated Archives for December, 23rd 2023
This post was automatically generated
Mastodon Bookmarks
Wallabag Additions
These are articles that which I saved today so that I may read them later. Substance and quality will vary drastically.
- How to survive in a Chinese company - Jaap Grolleman
- How Putin’s Right-Hand Man Took Out Prigozhin - WSJ
Chess For the Day
Record: 2-0-1
Net Elo Change: +6
Games Played
Blog Posts On This Day
- 1 year ago (11 posts)