Time to get #Terminated – #empscifi

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Cool flower #bro #meliad

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Magnolias n shit at #UW #missedthecherryblossoms #earlyspring

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The same thing we do every night Pinky #cats #animaniac

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#tillythesilly #goodpup

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#seattlesunset #waterfront

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The #octopus was making love today #seattleaquarium

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#FebruaryBlues finding #calm

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Is this really #january #suckiteastcoast #bestcoast

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Troubled Outlook: Always 2-Steps Behind, Looking far beyond, and dreaming too large

I need to vent, seriously vent. Every month, suicide is looking like a better and better career choice, but I can’t afford life insurance so there’s no real benefit to anybody for taking that option. Also, just in case the singularitarians are right, I certainly don’t want to miss out on the big party at the end of the time. So suicide is a terrible idea. Fleeing to live in the woods might be much nicer.

Anyway, I’m tired of fronting ideas, expending huge efforts, and putting my life’s work into projects just to be undercut by a group that has 1000x more funding and 10x the experience. I can’t escape it in the job market, I can’t escape it in my personal projects. There is no place for me, no ladder to climb, no guaranteed growth. There’s not even sustainable paychecks any more. Being idealistic means a figurative death at the hands of personal expenses. Often I’ve tried to remedy this with awesome projects, but something always goes wrong.

• In 2007 - I told my friend who owned a computer shop to make a small computer in a box that plugs into the TV because internet TV was the way of the future. He didn’t listen.
• In 2010 - I tried to convince my peers at  a logistics company that 3D printers would one day be super disruptive to transportation. They thought I was an idiot.
• In 2013 - I got together a team to build a networked simulation platform, but too much overtime at work killed my involvement and the project died.
• 2011-2014 - I contributed to /r/Futurology helping to grow organically a userbase of self-organizing techno-progressive activists. It went mainstream and new leadership turned into a news site.

Today (1/28/15) – Stardock announced Offworld lead by Soren Johnson. I’m a big supporter of both him and Stardock, but it might totally bury all our work Asteroid Ventures. At least it proves the market is there though, for realistic space games. They even have the non-warfare competitive features we were trying to pioneer – stock purchasing, sponsored revolts, infosec, chartered pirates…. Goddamn it! At least we’re going to showcase the entire solar system and have some focus on managing interplanetary trade networks. At least their prospecting appears a bit different from ours. Our game will feel more like a Paradox game than Firaxis or Stardock, which is GREAT, Paradox has valuation well beyond $10 mil according to my snooping.

I need just one project to be successful so that I can flee the country before income disparity becomes permanent (OR HOPEFULLY do something about it!). The Ferguson riots are going to look like a walk in the park in about 5 years time. The streets of the US will look like Donetsk, Ukraine if social programs get slashed simultaneous to machine intelligence winning the hedge fund race and offshoring to dodge taxes. With the right(evil) combination of AI and greed, the entire US economy will evaporate overnight. People are afraid of military Terminator robots, they should be afraid of abstract financial automata consuming their pensions and medicare.

One of my roommates told me “there’s Steve Jobs and then there’s you Tom, you’re a normal person and should know your place.” He was right, without wealth it’s excruciatingly challenging to generate more wealth. Maybe I do belong at the bottom, chained into a low-paying contract position with no health benefits or vacation hours. Maybe just by dreaming of something more I’ve obsolesced myself out of a place in this world. I never fit in, I’m always angry at society, the world feels backwards, broken, and wrong. Maybe I should figure out what pills to take to kill my ambition permanently.

I’m extremely thankful for the people who have come together to push forward into the crazy projects I put together. By going after idealists who believe in the product, who want to evangelize space travel and simulation, we will be unrelenting regardless of circumstances. More than just a startup, rSimulate (soon to be Universe Builders) is a digital guerrilla movement focused on creative efforts. I’ve had to bend my ideology to chase capital instead of utility, but that won’t last forever. I’ve sacrificed everything, repeatedly, it’s destroying my personal life and my well-being, but the ends are more important than the means.

We need to convince the world to go into space for sustainability & parity, and we need to try and save the global economy through socially-aware software and predictive simulation. Either help us get to the top, or put a bullet in my head, but I won’t stop. Anything short is a failure and I will carry my regret into the grave regardless of any apologetic words. I’m tired of being labelled a detriment to society when all I care about is our long-term safety and prosperity. Somebody show me where to sign my soul away to achieve success in my idealistic endeavors. It’s no longer worth anything so I won’t miss it much.

http://ift.tt/1Czv8Kl http://ift.tt/1Czv6C4 Life, Personal, rSimulate, adventure, anger, bleak, cynicism, depression, gamedev, regret, simulation, singularity, space, universe

#undertheneedle #seattleblooms #chihuly

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#chihuli #spaceneedle #glasselfie

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The Quest to Discover Starivores

A couple of years ago I read a non-journal paper by Clemant Vidal titled - “Starivore Extraterrestrials? Interacting Binary Stars as Macroscopic Metabolic Systems.,” and recently – this was picked up by Vice Motherboard.

I was curious as to what set of observations could legitimately be carried out to test for Starivores. The concept which seems most approachable might be in sampling spectra of accreting binaries which have an edge-on inclination – like the method used to detect exoplanets via lightcurves.

But instead of generating the lightcurve alone, could you also take spectra while the entire system is facing you and while the majority of the accretion trail is occluded behind the large mass star? Would the rotational period of a binary system like this be long enough that you could expose long enough during the transit?

From undergrad research, I know that hydrogen alpha is used to find CV’s, but I never learned anything about what spectral clues to look for in terms of heavier stuff. I would guess that silicon, lithium, sodium, would have much higher abundance than most metals, and that you would need enough material in the atmosphere to make the absorption line detectable.

So then, assuming that the you are able to deduce the spectra of the accretion stream and disc – could there be any indication as to loss of heavier elements and rotational energy which might result in having artificially controlled flow of the accretion stream?

I would imagine, even if the above observations were possible, you’d still need to repeat this on similar binaries in multiple places. Then you’d need to compare samples, and look for correlation in one spatially proximate area. (Or run back proper motion) Also, I would imagine that CV white dwarf partners are off the table because novas would be a risk to infrastructure. Even controlled accretion flow would eventually hit unstable mass ranges.

Anyway, could an experiment like this actually work? IMO I think we’ll spot ETI’s handiwork well before we get a communication signal. If I were setting up an interstellar internet, directed coherent light between com-points would make a lot more sense than broad reaching radio dealing with R³

Here’s a visual of the experiment I would propose:

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#januarysunset #wintersun a good walk on a nice day

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Intense lighting on the #citystreets of #bellevue

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Havy a happy #Washington #Cascadia #Christmas

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#Sleepymonkey #christmaszoo

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#sleepy #christmasdragon

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A very pretty #Solstice #Sunset

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Neverwhere – Geographies & Histories in Civcraft

The act of worldbuilding is a thrilling and addicting feeling. It’s a work of art which requires compulsive attention to detail, causality modeling, and fresh thinking.

I’m actively working on a project called Asteroid Ventures – I need to take a 2 hour mental break though, so I wanted to ruminate on an interesting digital anthropology observation I’ve made over the last few years.

Collective Ethereum

Games can construct a history for you, or you can take a different approach… Open world simulations with individual player agency. While in previous blog posts I have highlighted how agent based modeling in conjunction with voronoi clusters and settlement mechanics can model nation-states… Those simulations cannot be explored on foot. They feel less real.

There are games like Dwarf Fortress which simulate history prior to the player entrance. An entire fantasy world constructed in a blink. There are history simulators like Paradox titles or Civilization which offer holistic controls to a single player -but a creative MMO offers something much more unique – the chance for competing agents to create a naturally occuring historical narrative. Neat huh?

Enter Civcraft

There is a group on reddit called /r/Civcraft – devoted entirely to one of the single biggest/longest open Minecraft servers. The mechanics are barely modded from “vanilla” – so there is no huge learning gap like in technical mods such as the Tekkit pack.

Players can own property, they can “secure” objects using stone. There are factions and different government styles – each that distributes material wealth in a different way. In many ways those servers mirror behavior in the real world.

Factions are exploitative towards each other and writhe with conflict. There is enough resources never to have to fight, but the spoils of war will provide rare resources more quickly and enhance the ideology of the winning faction. Familiar?

The big difference though is the speed at which new cities can be built, and the vast emptiness felt in those empty cities. There are Non-Playable Characters in Minecraft which show up in procedurally generated villages, but they do not appear in player created cities. The streets feel big and empty.

So exploring Civcraft involves walking through expansive forests just to find crumbling ruins. There are still many active cities in the game, but an ever growing number of failed states makes for some pretty intense digital-archaeology.

Historical Narrative

Now – I don’t really have the time to expunge into the history of this fascinating world myself. In fact, I barely grasp some of the the cultural concepts floating around. Pearling, greifing, claiming, juking, there are a ton of concepts which are specific JUST to this server, on top of the core Minecraft unit operations. To an outside observer – there is essentially a micro-singularity of cultural context occuring inside of a virtual world with about 5000 people.

Recently a thread on my reddit front page highlighted this concept for me. “Ages/Eras of Civcraft 2.0” by ReformedCreeper1 states:

  As I see it we have experienced three main 'ages' from a sociopolitical perspective:  

  The First Age or Age of City-States lasted from the dawn of 2.0 until around October 2013 with the arrival of Bloodcrew. It was at this time that many of today's most affluent players gained their wealth. The AnCap ideology still held sway over many areas, including the cities of Aurora, Bryn, and Freedom. Thus, land claims in this era were based largely around the property claims of a city's residents plus a reasonable buffer zone. Cities rose and fell, with some towns such as Lio flourishing for a brief period before falling victim to one devastating crisis or another, while Aurora experienced a golden age of activity, politics, and drama.  

  All this progress was severely hindered by the arrival of Bloodcrew. The first real server-wide conflict since the 1.0 HCF War, it brought international trade to a standstill and led to the demise of Aurora. The Bloodcrew conflict reminded the less PvP-oriented players of Civcraft that they needed to more adequately protect their cities.  

  The Second Age or Age of Alliances had its roots in the Bloodcrew conflict but did not really begin until around March 2014. Soon most of the map was split between four great supranational alliances: the NEA, the UIA, the UMM, and the U3P. The idea behind these groups was to foster cooperation between member cities and provide a common focal point for regional defense. Some (the NEA and U3P) remain in place today, while others (the UIA or UMM) broke up due to infighting or simply became irrelevant.  

  While I don't know exactly where the transition was, I believe we are now in a Third Age that could be called the Age of Nations. The supranational alliances are not really as strong or important any longer, mostly serving as a regional discussion/bickering forum. There are now many true nation-states such as Fellowship that have multiple discrete settlements under a central national government. You can see this new trend by looking at the land claims of Fellowship or New Senntisten along side those of, say, Haven. Haven is more of a relic of the First Age in that it is a self-contained city state.  

My perspective has been from that of Maps. just like in real colonial times - maps = power. Some factions don’t want their location revealed for security purposes. Others have private transport networks deep underground or high in the air – which they don’t want to be exploited by others.

When I first heard about Civcraft in 2012, their maps were terribly incomplete. Transportation maps existed but were somewhat unreliable. Now, there exists a comprehensive global map – and just like the Treaty of Westaphalia, players are making meta-stable claims via these public maps. Enforcement of these claims are occurring by player agent interactions.

 

Bottomline – there is a niche gaming experience here. One that Everquest Landmark may be trying to replicate with their use of Miguel Cepero’s VoxelFarm engine. The idea is to create a set of operations and ownership concepts – then hand players in-game authoring tools and let the narrative build itself! 

While there’s plenty more speculation, anthropology and case study value here for creating similar games – I’ve got asteroids to mine, so I’ll leave you with a captioned gallery.

 

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