On the flop side, maybe there wouldn't be as many garbage papers printed if there were any actual negative consequences. It's not so simple as you make it out to be.
A national "War on Data", a Data enforcement agency (DEA), and a Data Abuse Resistence Education (DARE) program and we should have this problem wrapped up in no time.
So I, as a software engineer, have to deal with the impacts of this administration both making my employment harder as well as terrorizing the city I live in. Where do you suggest I would go to share these issues other than the site that is specifically for hackers and tech workers?
I get that people want to make the place 'non-political', but a lot of us in the US live in major metropolitan areas and are very directly impacted by all of the shit going on.
No. It means "sick to death of hearing about politics everywhere I go and I am desperate for the occasional respite from that madness". Your interpretation is extremely bad faith.
This is what the biggest names in the VC class want you to think as they continue to enrich themselves, while (in the USA at least) they support a regime that is growing in its authoritarian output.
Thiel, Musk, et. al., support, for example, Curtis Yarvin, who believes that democracy is a failed experiment and should be replaced with an all-powerful "CEO"
> Thiel, Musk, et. al., support, for example, Curtis Yarvin, who believes that democracy is a failed experiment and should be replaced with an all-powerful "CEO"
These guys all benefit when the No-Politics Purity Brigade drives by and flag-kills every article pointing out their wrongdoing as "political." By flagging this stuff, they're actually making HN more political: They are defending billionaires, their agendas, and their status-quo politics.
Claude definitely has some API token security baked in, it saw some API keys in a log file of mine the other day and called them out to me as a security issue very clearly. In this case it was a false positive but it handled the situation well and even gave links to reset each token.
Those games have 100x to 500x smaller budgets than the AAA-games. Yes, they often have cute ideas, but, like a blockbuster movie, 99 times out of 100 you need a solid budget to make a solid movie/game.
If you want AAA games, you are going to have a safe game. You get the same with movies - Bigger budgets cause safer behavior with less risk taking. You wind up with a pretty game, a somewhat safe story (that they think will sell) and gameplay they think is just good enough to keep you going.
It isn't that the other games are bad, though. It isn't like we are talking "handheld camcorder student-written movie" vs "polished hollywood blockbuster" but more.... Beautiful painting by a mostly unknown artist vs beautiful large, publically displayed and privatly funded artist. Big budgets get you more assistance and more/better tools and more space and more human help and more connections.
It is probably important to remember that a large portion of a blockbuster's budget is advertising. Advertising is often 50-100% of the production budget and I'm guessing AAA games have similar advertising budgets. I'm not sure how a large advertising budget gives you better products, though it might get you more folks if your game is online.
Of course, I'm guessing if you limit your search to FPS games, your experience might be a different.
The top of the list is Genshin Impact, although it'll probably be displaced by GTA6 soon - that one's estimated to come in at $1.5-2 million. There's multiple FPS games on there but there's some pretty expensive open-world games too.
> 99 times out of 100 you need a solid budget to make a solid movie/game.
Sure, but 1 in 100 still gets you dozens of games a year now. There's plenty of genres where the top titles are nowhere near an AAA budget: Hades 2, Silksong, and Claire Obscura all being popular examples from this year, and Factorio being another well known example around here. Even simpler games like Balatro and Vampire Survivor are plenty of fun for some people.
The biggest studios have rarely been the ones producing the best work - budget gets you fancy cinematics and a beautifully rendered 3D world, but it doesn't make level design go any faster. It could plausibly buy better writing, but that requires all the executives to back off and trust the creatives.
And for what it's worth, the big studios are all happy raking in money on mindless remakes - it keeps working for them.
If 1% of indie games are solid, and all AAA game are solid, and there are 100 times more indie games than AAA games, then there would still be the same amount of solid indies as there are solid AAA games. As it is, I think for every good AAA game, there are somewhere between 50 and 500 great indie games.
Finding them is slightly harder, but absolutely worth it.
In any case, complaining about how many games there are out there that are not your thing is a waste of time. Much better to define what you like and look for recommendations from people who like similar games. Who care how many FPSs are released if you don't like FPSs? If you like RPGs, find RPG gamers and ask them what's good. Substitute for any genre; there is no genre out there that's not getting more releases than you could possibly play.
I think he is saying where is the creativity in the AA+ space. Which still might be a lack of depth / breadth of search, or platform exclusive content. Not everyone can own all the consoles.
Maybe won't be viewed favorably by the HN crowd, but I enjoyed the most recent Bret Weinstein interview on Joe Rogan [0] where Bret talks about his pet theory on natural selection / evolution (maybe 2/3 way through the interview).
Basically, the "junk" DNA we have may be "variables" that influence form and morphology, thus giving natural selection a vastly reduced design space to search for viable mutations. E.g. not much chemical difference between a bat wing and another mammals hands - mostly a difference of morphology. Allowing for more efficient search of evolutionary parameters instead of pure random walk.
1) No one asked why it's being down voted (to... -1, the horror). I'm not here for internet points.
2) This isn't my field - I am not making any claims, merely relaying what I thought was an interesting concept/mechanism I hadn't heard of before, that I thought other curious individuals here might also think was interesting. Isn't that the entire point of HN? I would have very much appreciated links or something to Google over this bizarre analysis of why my comment is downvoted. I didn't know this wasn't novel and was accepted science.
3) I understand Bret/Joe aren't looked upon favorably by certain crowds, particularly on this forum. I tried to get ahead of the "but didn't you know they can't be trusted!" comments and attempt to focus on the substance. If the substance is wrong, great! Let's talk about that.
4) You are assuming malice where there is none, and calling me disrespectful and insisting I must know things. I find that quite disrespectful and uncalled for. Not everyone has your opinions or knows what you know. 10k a day and all that https://xkcd.com/1053/
HN guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
You obviously know they can't be trusted, you just said so.
Why not just say that as a disclaimer to the video, instead of attempting to "get ahead" of other people who also know that, and will call you on omitting it.
Don't dismiss HN users as "certain crowds" and preemptively try to head them off at the pass for pointing out what you chose to omit. What "certain crowds" would that be, people who don't tolerate bullshit?
It's not about "certain crowds" who know Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein are full of shit, it's about Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein being full of shit, and you knowingly repeating and recommending their shit.
FIFY:
>Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein are full of shit, but I enjoyed the most recent Bret Weinstein interview on Joe Rogan [0] where Bret talks about his pet theory on natural selection / evolution (maybe 2/3 way through the interview), which is bullshit.
Then don't just repeat their bullshit without question. You could have even gone as far to explain WHY they're full of shit, and who they really are, and what other malicious bullshit they spew, instead of just propagating their bullshit without warning, as if "certain crowds" are trying to suppress that vital information.
When you uncritically recommend and parrot bullshit, and try to preempt comments from "certain crowds" who you know rightfully disagree, it sure comes off looking like you believe it, which is not a good look. The strongest plausible interpretation is that you enjoy listing to deceptive idiots make fools of themselves and spread misinformation, and I'll give you that.
"Junk DNA as variables that reduce search space" is a very old idea, but it's routinely introduced in popular media as if it fixes a flaw in evolution — usually the "pure random walk" strawman. That framing is a huge tell, because evolutionary biology abandoned that view generations ago.
Weinstein and Rogan’s signature move is to take settled science, remove its context and literature, and rebrand it as contrarian revelation, implying experts missed something obvious or are hiding it. That move reliably revives strawmen, Intelligent-Design-adjacent language, and manufactured doubt, while producing zero new knowledge.
Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein are notorious not because they're unpopular, but because they're dishonest and corrosive.
Whew boy, your comments are great examples of not being curious, understanding or promoting civil discussion.
> You obviously know they can't be trusted, you just said so.
A baseless accusation with no supporting evidence. I never asked anyone to trust anyone else. I didn't even assert the idea was true, just interesting to consider. I merely thought the idea was interesting as a layman with little knowledge of evolutionary biology.
> Why not just say that as a disclaimer to the video
Because you're putting words in my mouth that I don't believe.
> What "certain crowds" would that be
Curmudgeons like you.
> When you uncritically recommend and parrot bullshit
Really? I recommended something? I thought I said I enjoyed a video talking about a pet theory relevant to the topic at hand, which I had recently learned of.
This whole "framing is a huge tell", and "reliably revives strawmen, Intelligent-Design-adjacent language, and manufactured doubt, while producing zero new knowledge" shtick is boring and wrong. I've been atheist since I could critically think for myself and it's silly how off-base you are.
Since you seem to be so knowledgeable on the subject and confident in your position, can you point me to something I can read instead of just taking your word for it? Otherwise you're no better than them. I skimmed a few wikipedia pages [0][1] and didn't find the morphology "variables" Brett was discussing.
Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if you just pattern matched on Rogan/Weinstein, typed out your reply and don't actually know what was being discussed. The tone and tenor of your comments so far would seem to indicate so. Your entire objection boils down to "I don't like them and no one should listen to them". Light on substance, heavy on the ad hominem - not exactly persuasive.
I’m not objecting because I "don't like" Rogan or Weinstein, and I'm not saying you're religious or wittingly pushing ID. I’m objecting because the specific framing you're repeating is decades old, well studied, and routinely mis-presented in popular media as if it repairs a flaw in evolutionary theory that doesn't actually exist.
The idea that non-coding DNA, developmental constraints, or regulatory structure "reduce the search space" is not controversial, it’s foundational. What is misleading is presenting this as a fix for a "pure random walk" model of evolution. That model was abandoned generations ago and is mainly kept alive in popular discourse by critics of evolution (Creationists, the Discovery Institute, Intelligent Design proponents, Teach the Controversy perpetrators, anti-science podcasters, etc).
Weinstein calling this a "pet theory" is itself revealing. What he’s describing is not a theory in the scientific sense at all, and certainly not his. It’s a loose, personalized retelling of ideas that have been standard in evolutionary biology for decades -- regulatory architectures, developmental constraints, biased variation, and genotype–phenotype structure.
Labeling it a "pet theory" performs two rhetorical tricks at once: it makes old, well-established work sound novel and contrarian, and it subtly implies the field has overlooked something obvious that only an outsider is willing to say. That framing flatters the audience, but it misrepresents the science.
His "pet theory" is a non-refundable Monty Python dead parrot: widely known, long settled in the literature, yet periodically propped up and insisted to be alive as if it just said something profound.
Nothing here is hidden, suppressed, or newly discovered. What is new is the podcast packaging: stripping away the literature, resurrecting a long-abandoned strawman ("pure random walk evolution"), and then presenting the correction as a unique "pet theory" of personal insight rather than as settled biology. That move reliably generates the impression of deep insight without adding any.
If you want solid, non-Rogan, non-Weinstein sources, here are places to start:
Sean B. Carroll -- Endless Forms Most Beautiful:
Classic introduction to evo-devo, gene regulatory networks, and why morphology is highly constrained and reusable.
Gerhart & Kirschner -- The Theory of Facilitated Variation:
Explicitly addresses how biological systems bias variation toward viable outcomes. This is probably the closest rigorous treatment of what Weinstein gestures at, minus the hype.
Wagner & Altenberg (1996) -- Complex Adaptations and the Evolution of Evolvability:
Shows how genotype–phenotype mappings are structured, non-uniform, and historically constrained.
Pigliucci & Müller -- Evolution: The Extended Synthesis:
Covers developmental bias, constraint, and non-coding DNA without implying evolution was ever a blind bit-flip search.
Lenski et al. (2003–2015) -- Long-term E. coli evolution experiments:
Direct experimental evidence of cumulative selection exploiting structured variation.
None of this is new, hidden, or suppressed, or invented by Weinstein. It’s in textbooks and review papers.
The reason I push back hard -- and people get downvoted for recommending Rogan/Weinstein (which you already knew, just not why) -- is that their signature move is to strip this literature of context, reintroduce a strawman ("random walk evolution"), present a well-known correction as contrarian revelation, and imply experts missed something obvious.
That pattern reliably manufactures doubt without producing new insight.
So no, my objection is not "don't listen to them".
It's: don't mistake and parrot repackaged, incomplete explanations for novel insight, especially when they're framed as fixing a problem experts allegedly ignored.
If you want to understand this topic deeply, the literature above will take you much farther than a podcast -- or Weinstein’s dead parrot -- ever will.
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