Comment from Noam Brown in the article's comments section:
"I'm an author on the paper. I want to point out what I think are a few mistakes with the blog.
First, Zvi says "The strategic engine, as I evaluated it based on a sample game with six bots and a human, is mediocre at tactics and lousy at strategy." This is not the feedback we have gotten from expert Diplomacy players. The general consensus among expert Diplomacy players is that the strategy/tactics are extremely strong, perhaps expert level, but that there is room for improvement in the dialogue. I'm not familiar with Zvi's experience with the game of Diplomacy, but I did place 3rd in the North American championship this year and have learned a lot about the game of Diplomacy, including how humans play it, over the past 3 years, so I feel somewhat qualified to comment on Diplomacy strategy.
In particular, I disagree with Zvi's opinion on the bot's strategy. Zvi says "I hate France’s tactical play, both its actual plays and the communications with Russia that are based on its tactics, dating back to at least 1903. The move here to Irish Sea needs to be accompanied by a convoy of Picardy into London or Wales, fighting for Belgium here is silly."
It's well-known among experienced Diplomacy players that France needs 3 armies on its mainland in order to defend itself well from a hostile Germany. Moreover, a convoy to London or Wales is unnecessary here. By moving to Irish Sea, France is setting themselves up for the option to convoy directly into Liverpool next turn. England can't block it because they have no army on their mainland. In short, I feel pretty confident saying that France made the right move here. If Zvi still disagrees, we could pull in some consensus expert Diplomacy players to get their opinions on this.
Second, we did a 200-game tournament for no-press (that is, no-dialogue) Diplomacy back in January where players were informed that one of the players in each game was a bot. Our bot, Diplodocus, placed first in this tournament. There's a video on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWQFhYSD7h4&ab_channel=Diplo... . You can see in the Youtube comments that one expert Diplomacy player (Sploack) described the bot as "currently the best gunboat player in existence, or at least in the top 5." The strategy/tactics in no-press Diplomacy don't match up perfectly with full-press, but they do carry over to some extent.
Third, Zvi criticizes the fixed 1908 end date as working to the bot's advantage. The no-press tournament mentioned above did not have fixed end dates. Also, I think the fact that the full-press games ended in 1908 rather than a later date (say, 1910) actually hurt the bot. The bot handles endgame tactics quite well."
Here's a neat video, where Miyamoto describes some of the processes. You can see near the beginning that the sprites were hand drawn on graph paper and translated onto the computer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLoRd6_a1CI
Alllllll that tooling had to be built in-house. Sprite editors, level editors, debug and test tools.
Doing it well requires multiple people working across multiple games.
I guess smaller studios were left having to roll their own stuff, which set them at an even further disadvantage to the Capcoms and Konamis of the world.
IIRC an NES dev kit was mostly just the hardware and a manual, not even an assembler
My first thought is that such a focused environment for the code to run in might make this a helpful tool to teach kids programming in a fun and engaging way. I sincerely believe that game creation is the single best vector to get children interested in programming, and this seems like a cool possible vector. (Python is a great beginning language!)
> "Android 4.4, KitKat, which comes on Nexus 5, will also soon be available on Nexus 4, 7, 10, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One Google Play edition devices in the coming weeks."
Hopefully they get it working for the Galaxy Nexus somehow, mine has been a crapshoot for memory recently with Chrome just randomly restarting at times.
We'll see ports to the GNex by various teams soon enough, although it is a bit of a shame Google are not supporting it themselves, that leads me to believe they tried and failed to make it work properly.
That's a bit odd, though, as 4.0 works almost perfectly on my Galaxy S, and 4.3 runs "okay". The smaller memory footprint should make 4.4 work great in theory, but it might not be a memory issue at all.
That statement doesn't mention the Galaxy Nexus one way or the other. I imagine it's just a listing of the devices that Google has direct control over that they'll update in the near future. Since updates for the Galaxy Nexus have to go through the carriers, Google can't really say how soon the updates will go through, or if they ever will.
The Galaxy Nexus doesn't go through carriers unless you're on Verizon (or maybe Sprint). It was sold through Google Play (and given away at developer events like I/O) completely unlocked.
Here are the images Google has supplied for this device in the past:
My bad, I have the Galaxy Nexus through Verizon and assumed it was the same for other carriers. I forgot it was available unlocked through the Play store. I'm used to ignoring all of the news from Google and waiting an extra 6+ months for every update.
Thanks for the link. That's really a shame considering they titled the post "Android for all" and made a big deal out of Kit Kat's small memory foot print. Memory has been pretty tight on my Galaxy Nexus, those optimizations would have been nice. I guess I'll have to wait for the modding community to get it working.
Just because it's a stated policy doesn't make it a justified policy or even a good policy. To reiterate what's already been said in other comments here... iPhone 4S, iOS7, etc. etc.
Android 4.4, KitKat, which comes on Nexus 5, will also soon be available on Nexus 4, 7, 10, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One Google Play edition devices in the coming weeks.
I want to know this too. When I see thing like "This fixes the DMCA", it makes me question the intentions of the advocating website. It sounds too good to be true.
Hey, I'm the FixtheDMCA founder. I set the whole thing up, and really I don't have any ulterior motives. When I was in college (2003-2006), I wrote and sold software to unlock Motorola phones (back when the RAZR was big). It was my first startup, and was a lot of fun to build. But about a year in I was sent a cease and desist by Motorola for violating the DMCA, even though there was no copyright infringement involved.
A very lovely lawyer by the name of Jennifer Granick at Stanford Cyberlaw helped me out pro bono, the case was dropped, and Jennifer went on to petition the Librarian of Congress to have an exemption for unlocking added. That exemption was granted in 2006, renewed in 2009, then dropped in 2012. I haven't been in the unlocking business for a long time, but I thought I should do something about it. I started the WH petition, which got 114k signatures and a positive response from the WH. But I realized that the real culprit is DMCA Section 1201, it really is just a really poorly written law, and it effects a whole load of people. So, with the help of some friends (shout outs to Azat, Joe, Austin and Dmitri) we threw up the FixtheDMCA site over the course of three days, and I've been maintaining it since. Meanwhile I've been trying to coordinate with folks like the EFF and Public Knowledge who are pushing things on the DC side.
For me it's kind of a fun break from startups, and I kind of feel like it's paying back the favor J. Granick did to me back when I was a college student.
I would really love to hear some decent, reasoned arguments why the DMCA shouldn't be fixed (and by fixed I mean limited to cases of copyright infringement only), as I think at a certain point the content lobbies will probably start making them and I'd love to have responses ready.
"I'm an author on the paper. I want to point out what I think are a few mistakes with the blog.
First, Zvi says "The strategic engine, as I evaluated it based on a sample game with six bots and a human, is mediocre at tactics and lousy at strategy." This is not the feedback we have gotten from expert Diplomacy players. The general consensus among expert Diplomacy players is that the strategy/tactics are extremely strong, perhaps expert level, but that there is room for improvement in the dialogue. I'm not familiar with Zvi's experience with the game of Diplomacy, but I did place 3rd in the North American championship this year and have learned a lot about the game of Diplomacy, including how humans play it, over the past 3 years, so I feel somewhat qualified to comment on Diplomacy strategy.
In particular, I disagree with Zvi's opinion on the bot's strategy. Zvi says "I hate France’s tactical play, both its actual plays and the communications with Russia that are based on its tactics, dating back to at least 1903. The move here to Irish Sea needs to be accompanied by a convoy of Picardy into London or Wales, fighting for Belgium here is silly."
It's well-known among experienced Diplomacy players that France needs 3 armies on its mainland in order to defend itself well from a hostile Germany. Moreover, a convoy to London or Wales is unnecessary here. By moving to Irish Sea, France is setting themselves up for the option to convoy directly into Liverpool next turn. England can't block it because they have no army on their mainland. In short, I feel pretty confident saying that France made the right move here. If Zvi still disagrees, we could pull in some consensus expert Diplomacy players to get their opinions on this.
Second, we did a 200-game tournament for no-press (that is, no-dialogue) Diplomacy back in January where players were informed that one of the players in each game was a bot. Our bot, Diplodocus, placed first in this tournament. There's a video on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWQFhYSD7h4&ab_channel=Diplo... . You can see in the Youtube comments that one expert Diplomacy player (Sploack) described the bot as "currently the best gunboat player in existence, or at least in the top 5." The strategy/tactics in no-press Diplomacy don't match up perfectly with full-press, but they do carry over to some extent.
Third, Zvi criticizes the fixed 1908 end date as working to the bot's advantage. The no-press tournament mentioned above did not have fixed end dates. Also, I think the fact that the full-press games ended in 1908 rather than a later date (say, 1910) actually hurt the bot. The bot handles endgame tactics quite well."