NotDorner

The Kindle Pagewhite is truly a sight to behold, it even conviced my dad of ebooks to some extent, and hes a former librarian + somewhat of a techno grouse. Very pleasant to read on, even for people that detest screens. that being said, electronic books creep me the fuck out. I just see 1984, changing history to fit the political landscape, ninja edits, the slow erosion of absolute truth. I see despots salivating at the prospect of an information cloud, where nothing is a solid and everything can be redacted by an invisible hand in realtime. there have been cases where secret edits have been done to physical books (Tragedy and Hope comes to mind) it took some serious sleuthing to catch those, think how easy it is to control knowledge when they could literally edit something under your very nose. hopefully the two will coexist. An ebook reader is an amazing tool, but there are some things that should really have a physical copy backing them up. be wary of people that want to get rid of books, I think thats a real lesson from history Oh and finally, they should give me a free fackin ebook when I buy a physical copy of something, charging extra is ridiculous especially this early in the game, if you want customers you need to hand out some testers mane

Psyched for this episode, came into Wolfensteiner with low expectations but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Not only shooting Nazis, thats always fun, but some of the stylistic choices they made were spot on imo, I like to think I even detected a hint of subversion simmering under the surface. first of all the "resistance" is polish, something that always warms my heart. All we ever hear about is the french resistance, the poles are always painted as victims (which they were, the nazis exterminated 16% of the polish population, try and wrap your head around that). In reality the polish resistance was fuckin fierce however, throughout the war. the only countries that kept up in terms of insurgency were russia of course and the czechs. an objective look at warszawa uprising will show you just how dedicated and downright insane the polish resistance was. My granddad had to choose whether to surrender to the germans or the russians when they invaded poland, they chose russia and spent 3 years in a gulag eating fish heads until they were traded to the english. He went on to fight from africa to italy under an english flag, and got lots of medals despite being a mechanic (one of the medals was for pushing a german officer and his car off a mountain near monte casino in his halftrack :-D) anyhow you can imagine my pops inundated me with glorious tales of the polacks kicking nazi ass, and despite my inherent skepticism as far as I can tell most of em are pretty damn true. In fact, anyas gramps in Wolfenstein kind of reminded me of my grandpa, he was a bit of an asshole as well;-) obviously its still a cheesy AAA action game(max payne called, he wants his dangerous whisper back) but I really thought they did well within that confine. Max Hass was a nice addition, even a subtle reminder of the cost of war like Max`s deformed head is a victory in AAA imo, the ex nazi taking care of him was well done too(of course the main character always stays pretty, but hey its a start). usually I groan at AAA attempts to invoke humanity, but it actually kind of worked in Wolfenstein to some extent. Fuck I almost teared up when the ex-nazi sings "Schlaf, kindchen, Schlaf" to Max, my mom used to sing that to me. as for the subversiveness, im pretty sure its there and im not just thinking wishfully. first of all the only reason you get into a certain building is with the help of an allied suicide car bomb, if that isnt a little poke in the ribs then I dont know what is. there are a couple of those moments where I was all "whoa, are they comparing US imperialism to nazism?!" but I might be talking out of my ass. Im gonna shut up now until ive actually listened, final thing is I found it a bit easy honestly, and im no FPS Pro. Go ahead and try it on "Über" you will probably be fine and enjoy the combat more. Oh also, I dont know if anybody mentioned this but jimmy hendrix lives in your hideout :-D P.s. The diatribe your jewish friend gives in the KZ you are holed up in was excellent, although I think ive heard it before, somewhere: "This is the product of pure conviction" gave me goosebumps

GODDAMN WOMEN SUPRESSING ME THROUGH... GETTING PAID LESS YOU FILTHY SKANKS STOP TRAMPLING ON MUH FREEDOMS

Hello everyone! Ive been musing about this here topic for a while now, and I thought id give my thoughts. This is about 3 pages, but its well spaced and should be legible. I hope I can strengthen your resolve for when we must inevitably do battle with the automaton, sometime in the near future. If I had to title it, I would call it: Robots, Determinism, and The Great Game of Life. Or alternatively, The Story Of Donkish Dan Hello Thumbs! I am internetting over a metered surfstick that is registered to a local homeless man, so apologies if I missed any recent robot news, I have two episodes to catch up on;-) Normally, I am not what you would call a grounded individual. I am dogmatic, reactionary, and usually the first to reach for my tacticool pitchfork(http://imgur.com/VQA9gnB) However, in this one instance, let me attempt to be the voice of reason: As much as I enjoy the bi-weekly-robot-news-cast, as well as updates on what nefarious new shit google is appropriating, I get the impression that you fine gentlemen are genuinely worried about some kind of Skynet-type scenario in the near future... As little as I trust Google and the Intelligence Industrial Complex they are in bed with, let me make an attempt at explaining why some kind of weaponized AI is the last thing we should be worried about: Warfare, "Statecraft", suppression of dissent, full specrtrum dominance, perception management, and the very best games, "video" or otherwise... what do they all have in common? They are all games of incomplete information, i.e. decidedly non-deterministic. You dont see all the cards in life, or in war. You need to make educated guesses, you need to get into your opponents head, and to anticipate his/her moves. Almost more important than that, you need to be capable of masking your own moves from your opponent, going so far as to make "plays" that are actually damaging to you, but make up for that small loss by decieving and ultimately confusing/manipulating your opponent. In short, you need to be able to level: What does he think im doing? What does he think I think hes doing? what does he think I think he thinks hes doing, etc p.p "AI" is gosh darned awful at this. In fact, as soon as you take away the determinist rulebook, AI that looked semi-capable a few mintues ago will start to resemble a mentally challenged child. For examples of this, probably the best place to look would be the game that has bar none the most statistical information on hand, for obvious reasons: Poker, or more precisely hold em. Ive played against a bot before, and I crushed, but then again I have delusions of grandeur vis a vi poker and basically think im hot shit, so im probably not the best candidate. Also (very important), I knew it was a bot. A friend of mine is not a good player, against regs. He can read hands well, he is very unpredictable and ruthless, but ultimately any semi-decent regular will have his impulsive tendencies figured out within a few hours and his money will start dissapearing. Hes made some good money playing hit and run, but if he sticks around too long he basically becomes his own worst enemy. I will refer to him as Donkish Dan. I watched Dan play poker against a very "good" Full tilt bot, back in the day, and it was..enlightening to say the least. This bot was deployed on FTP and I believe the cake network, supposedly it even made some money and was lauded as being capable of playing post flop in a coherent manner. After one my peeps got his hands on this digital contraband, we fucked around with it for a few hours before sitting Dan down in front of it, without telling him it was a bot. We just told him we had a juicy villian for him to play HU. At first Dan got his ass handed to him. He was able to fold out the bot a few times but the bot quickly picked up on his heightened betting frequency and was calling down his bluffs with 1 pair weak kicker, it had pegged him as Loose aggressive, which was of course correct. Dan dropped about 300 blinds into our robot, or 60ish euros. Each time it was his fault, he thought he could fold out the bot where it was weak, but the bot had already marked him as "full of shit" and was calling with just about any pair. Dan wasnt exactly getting good cards either At this point me and my pal were sneaking gleeful grins at each other, and I kept saying stupid things involving the word "robot" out loud... Dan however was already raging and too wrapped up in the game to pay attention.. he dropped another few buyins into the robot before we finally told him what was up. It had a sobering effect, he actually went outside after we told him, smoking a fag and muttering to himself. After bickering about who would get the money and taking some verbal abuse from Dan, he said he would be damned if he got his ass kicked by a bot and double bought-in to do battle with the AI once more. I have never seen Dan play as well as he did that second time around. He crushed our bots empty soul in the palm of his hand, making back his money and everything we had on the account (about 100) within 5 hours. It was fucking spectacular. He started off by going back to ABC poker(something I had never seen Dan do), only playing solid hands, no bluffs, all with the intent of getting the bot to switch back to its default profile. After running at like 20/10 for a hundredish hands, (tightest Ive ever seen this man play, especially HU) the bot had basically learned to respect him again, which meant he had free reign to start pulling off his usual fuckery, which he did to great avail. I still have the hand history buried somewhere but the gist is that once Dan knew the bot was in fact a bot, it became very easy to tell when said bot was switching gears or attempting to adapt to Dans donkish playstyle. Dan could then quickly adapt back, with much greater success. Dan also knew that every showdown changed the bots playstyle somewhat, something you can never be sure of with a live opponent. For all you know the guy that is crushing you HU is watching ESPN and masturbating at the same time. You dont have the certainty that your opponent is reacting to your actions with a live player, with a bot you do. That was when I personally realized that human intellect is far superior to any kind of electronic reasoning, at least in anything that even remotely resembles the complexity of life. Not only is human intellect superior, the awareness that it is contending with an electronic opponent acts as a "force multiplier" If we know we are fighting a robot, our capability to fight that robot is strengthened because we know we can outhink and trick it. Playing against a bot made Dan play his best, thinking hard about every move he was making and about every move the bot was making. It also vastly improved his discipline, he couldnt make excuses in his head for bad plays because he was playing an automaton that had no feelings and made no "human errors". Obviously this is a very subjective example, But I would pose the challenge that there is not a single "AI" out there that is capable of competing with a human successfully in a non-deterministic game of incomplete information. This is a topic that will not make you friends in the chess world xD. Pointing out that chess is a very binary game that ultimately leaves little space for tactical depth will not be greeted with nods and smiles most of the time. The proof is in the pudding. Fritz will own a chess players soul, other than maybe the very best. The best of bots cant tussle with a self-named degenerate like my friend Dan:-) I always laugh when the mainstream media repeats that silly meme about ukraine, "We are playing checkers, Putin is playing chess" If anything, putin is playing poker. Nothing like ex KGB to understand the fundamental mantra and unofficial motto of the mossad, or intelligence agencies the world over for that matter: "All war is waged by deception" or "by deception thou shalt wage war" Until AI is capable of the kind of bottomless deception and intrigue we humans regularly exhibit, I think yall are barking up the wrong tree... We should not be afraid of googles robot army, or the flying death robots of the CIA that now have the legislative authority to frag `muricans with a hellfire if they get uppity; We should be angry at the people behind these contraptions, and extremely wary of their goals. These goals are decidedly human in nature. The human is the most dangerous creature in the valley, of this there is no doubt in my mind. It will be a long time until robots get on our level, at the moment "AI" is nothing more than a useful tool under set circumstances. P.s. Two relevant examples I should have built in somewhere are A) Terminal 7: I have never played this game but it is intriguing and it seems like a good example of a game of incomplete information. Could you imagine a bot playing Terminal 7 in a capable fashion? What if you knew you were playing a bot, how would this change the dynamic? Also, Telltale Poker xD Anyhow, thanks for everything, I love you guys and you have no idea how much you have helped me. Regards and best of wishes, NotDorner (on the forums, if I can find the damn email I used)

thankfully you left out the part where said 4chinners went home and drowned their happy meals ponies in a sea of ejaculate... oops

oh, this just popped up, 8 player free-roam confirmed: https://twitter.com/design_cave/status/441740652460519425

You mean like michael hastings? I keed, I keed...please dont suicide me...

Great episode, always jonesing for more dayZ from yall... Did I detect a hint of something resembling enthusiasm in Rodkin, in regards to DayZ?!? This is an excellent development! Since its inception ive wanted a video similar to the one that started the DayZ craze(basically CKilroy from ShacTac losing his shit), but instead with the Thumbs cast. All 4 of you, surviving together for an extended period of time would be awesome. Ive got one more idea since you guys asked for em: Instead of putting up say, steam games as a trophy, put up 100$ in bitcoin, announce it on reddit/elsewhere, and then have 20+ thumbs fans escort you across the map while various cutthroats from all reaches of the interwebs attempt to put you down! That way instead of watching a tightly knit squad go about their business we could watch a hoarde of pantless weirdos dressed in brightly colored motorcycle helmets meander across chernarus doing the miley, armed with various kitchen implements, protecting the epicenter, which would be the cast wondering just what they have gotten themselves into...

yeah this is probably about right, hard to hold true to the original vision of an artist with millions of dollars at play and everyone and their mother weighing in. Must be really painful to have an army of lawyers and producers chip away at your creation. One movie that comes to mind which managed to be subversive and mainstream at the same time was the original robocop, but it does seem to be a rarity.

not nearly as serious, But I never miss a yahtzee and Broker is great as well, enjoyed his "how video games changed the world" piece

When you start a thread about the grossest shit ever, you just know the EMTs are going to win pretty much every damn time. I am now dry-heaving.

The cracked editor is a crafty mofo, ive heard many good things about this book, I really need to check it out.

Discworld novels are great. My old man worked as a prison librarian in AZ way back in the day, the inmates LOVED Discworld novels, across all races. he said they were by far the most popular fiction books in the place

This is probably nothing new to yall, but hes my favorite degen in the comics world, so I feel I must: Garth Ennis is known as the wacky, wanabee tarantino of the comics world, but some of his stuff is actually really powerful imo, particularly his shorts about ww2 which all offer unique perspectives. Some of his earlier stuff about ireland is very interesting as well, and you cant miss PREACHER, as nutty as it is. I also really liked his punisher reboot, the first arc is very well done, art as well as story. Oh and if you want to feel dirty and disturbed for at least a day or two, check out CROSSED. *shiver*. I still get nightmares about that shit. Not for the faint of heart.

This and this again, It felt to me like Bane should have been a much more complex, even believable villain, more a hyper-violent che guevara insurrectionist type than the caricature and ultimately the pawn he turned out to be. there was so much fodder at the time to give him real motivations that would have reflected on the state of the nation, what with the bailout, occupy, rampant cronyism etc. instead of the cartoonish nonsense we were served with at the end. I find villains that believe they are actually doing good far more disturbing than your run of the mill cookie cutter baddy. interestingly a game that invoked this precise feeling in me was BlOps 2, I only later found out goyer, the man who wrote DKR also wrote the.."story" for Blops2. Holy shit they could have done something with that villain. south american, having suffered under US imperialism, he decides to use Americas massive army of killer robots against them, using cunning propaganda techniques to not only turn the world against the US, but also the lower classes and the criminals in country. I actually thought we just might get a COD that at the very least attempted to put a human face on all the brown people you are slaughtering. Nope, just the usual cookie cutter bullshit. Villian was mad about his sister dying or something, really ridiculous shit considering the scope they were aiming for. Maybe im just being an arrogant neckbeard, but it seems as if it would not have been that hard to apply at least a smidgen of nuance to such a tale. the paranoid schizophrenic in me almost thinks villains are done badly on purpose. They dont want us sympathizing with the villian, because that would render the underlying propaganda ineffective. Especially in the case of blops I dont think this is too far-fetched. every "character" in COD games is such a ridiculous ooo-rah wanker It wouldnt take much to see them as the bad guys...

holy shit gary blows alien guy right out of the water. How come ive never seen this man before, is that a hat, and if it is where can I buy it?

I would love to play a game based on THEY LIVE, my absolute favorite 80s B-movie. the cameo in Saints Row 4 was awful, frankly, had little to do with the film. Maybe something along the lines of State Of Decay, i.e stealthy, with management aspects, interspersed with short but intense bouts of violence as you reclaim reagans 'murica from the lizard people? Agentry was a big theme in that movie, you could add some kind of mechanic where members of your team just might be working for the lizards and you have to test their loyalty/ ideological soundness... I see kiddos spouting "OBEY" T-shirts/caps as of late, they probably dont even know where thats from(insert harumping and other various old man noises here).

Hello Thumbs! I bumped into the video to "Space Asshole" on YouToob well over a year ago, needless to say I was enthralled. I found all the older casts there as well, and I really must thank you guys, you helped me through some rough times. Laughter is the second best balsam for a wounded soul(the first of course being homemade chicken soup:-). You provided me with much of that, along with insightful commentary into video games, something I literally had no idea existed. I wont put it all on you guys, but Idle Thumbs was definitely a stepping stone for me that changed my relationship to vidya. It used to be a guilty pleasure I partook in, in a borderline compulsive manner. I would hide it from friends, I would binge-play for 20+ hours and it was having a bad effect on pretty much every aspect of my life. Although I will still occasionally lock myself in my pad with an O and shoot people in the face for a few hours, all in all it has gotten WAY better. I think this is in part because the cast validated my interest in the medium on an intellectual level, thus letting me look at my relationship to gaming in a more objective matter. this led to me being more picky with what I played, and thus appreciating the good things more while skipping a lot of the "reaction/brain/emotion candy" I would bombard myself with. Its a very strange relationship that I have with yall, honestly. I get literally NOTHING out of nintendo games f.e.(even Zelda) but I could listen to Rodkin wax on about them for ages. Remo as well, his taste is pretty damn far away from mine, but his angle is always very interesting and basically makes me think differently about the shit that im playing. to top that off, every now and then yall throw out a game that is great, that I would probably have never heard of were it not for yall, Miasmata f.e. So thank you again, from the bottom of my heart. Id love to dayz with some thumbers, however Im in germany on a surfstick at the moment, ill need to see how my ping fares. If it works, the beans are on me (oh and maybe a BTC bounty or two should someone manage to put me down;-)