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Alan Au

@alanau.bsky.social

2.4K followers 1.3K following 7K posts

Trickster disciple. 🦊 Game developer. 🎲️✂ Professional data generalist. 📊 Delightfully imperfect. ☁️ Not that kind of doctor. 🎓 [E] Itsatrap 🎮 He/Him

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · Nov 13

Days since uttering "what the actual fuck?": 0

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 4h

Yes, it is time; I have switched to my cold weather bedding configuration. Hopefully this will mean better overnight temperature consistency, with the tradeoff of making it harder to pry myself out of my cozy, warm bed in the morning.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 4h

Oh hey, doc has another writeup about FPS games. Go check it out!

doctober @docseuss.bsky.social · 1d

GUESS WHO'S BACK

BACK AGAIN

DOC'S BACK

TELL A FRIEND

That's right. It's time for part 3 of the FPS series; this time, a lot of assorted thoughts on what makes for good enemy design. This one was fun as hell to write.

docseuss.medium.com/building-a-b...

building a better first person shooter part 3: enemy mine

So! First, we talked about a specific subgenre of first person shooter, loosely starting with Unreal and Half-Life and dying off around…

docseuss.medium.com

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 5h

I generally consider Hollow Knight to be an excellent game, although I also have complaints about some of the design choices. In particular, I find that the difficulty spikes in some weird ways. You can argue it's part of the experience, but at some point, it detracts from the enjoyment.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 6h

John Searle died at the age of 93 today. His "Chinese Room" thought experiment considers whether machines actually "think" or not, and my feeling is that more people should familiarize themselves with it.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · Feb 4

I wonder how many people are familiar with Searle's "Chinese Room" thought experiment. It calls into question the difference between algorithmic process and actual meaning. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese...

Chinese room - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 10h

I'm simultaneously impressed and dismayed by the amount of work required to do amazing stuff like this.

It makes me self-conscious about how I spend my free time. But then, I also have to remind myself that these folks do this professionally.

2025 Halloween Light Show - KPop Demon Hunters, Wicked, Alien Ant Farm, 30 Seconds to Mars, & Zombie

YouTube video by Tom BetGeorge

www.youtube.com

Reposted by Alan Au

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 4d

One of the really bizarre things about being part of the old guard is that people will sometimes defer to me. And it's flattering, but also, I haven't thought through every scenario, so I have to make snap judgments about stuff and it's terrifying. There's a whole decision-making process there.

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 13h

There are just soooo many external factors and things beyond our control that lead to weird outcomes. There's no one thing that will change everything! I joke sometimes that the thing that actually matters the most is ... marketing dollars. 🫠

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 13h

Ugh, causality is such a hard problem. I mean, if it were easy, people would have figured it out by now! But also, even though methods exist to try and figure out some of it, non-data people just really don't understand how much of a problem it really is. 😭

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Reposted by Alan Au

Kat Abughazaleh @katmabu.bsky.social · 13h

Playing Stray now!! Come hang out 😸😸😸

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 18h

Finance is its own weird language, and it's intentionally cryptic.

Also, here's a clip from "The Big Short" of Margot Robbie in a bubble bath explaining what a subprime mortgage is.

The Big Short (2015) - Margot Robbie in a Bubble Bath Scene (1/10) | Movieclips

YouTube video by Movieclips

www.youtube.com

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 19h

I think I broke my sleep schedule and the two most promising solutions are: 1. stay awake all night, or 2. sleep all day.

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 19h

It's a temporary fix.

🏰meg⚔️ @Birthright Audiobook! @impavid.us · 3d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand

I'll go first: Six page commercial lease.

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Reposted by Alan Au

Randy Au @randyau.com · 20h

Lol on LinkedIn I saw a 100% serious, completely not ironic job posting for a part time data scientist... The job is to clean up and fix ai coded machine learning

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

a group of men are running on the beach and one of them is wearing a white shirt with a british flag on it

Alt: A short GIF of the beach running scene from Chariots of Fire (1981) set to the iconic Vangelis theme.

media.tenor.com

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

Ah yes, everybody knows that's why it's called Twilight Confederation. 😂

Reposted by Alan Au

Tess Snider @malkyne.com · 2d

My "Require alt text before posting" setting got randomly cleared, at some point. If you use this setting, you may want to make sure it's still turned on.

A picture of the Alt text settings in the Accessibility section of BlueSky's settings.

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

I very occasionally dip my toes into a competitive multiplayer video game of some sort, and anytime I'm at the top of the leaderboard, something has gone very, very wrong.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

Free Guy (2021) was fine as a Tron remake. But mostly it was about watching charismatic actors make fun of modern video game culture for 2 hours. Although, now I can't help but wonder what would have happened if they swapped out Jared Leto for Ryan Reynolds.

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

castlevania: castle of the vania

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

Not *entirely* unrelated, I don't think there have been any significant advances in teledildonics. Uh ... not that I've checked recently ... 😳

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

The good news is that the videoconferencing part has been somewhat improved. The bad news is that actual tools for remote diagnosis have not. The thing I was particularly working towards was better access for rural maternal checkups, so that expectant mothers didn't have to trek out to a clinic.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

Oh right, in one of my past lives, I used to work on telemedicine stuff. This was all in the pre-pandemic era, so the tech hadn't advanced particularly far at the time. But even so, I'm still surprised and a bit annoyed that it hasn't really advanced much beyond video-conferencing.

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

Is it also called a "sound hole"? Because that would be a really weird coincidence.

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

Extra cards come from a long tradition of adding weird crap to games. And by weird crap, I mean stuff like face cards, or major arcana, or seasons. Basically games about numbers where you add stuff that isn't numbers. 🎲✂️

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

There are very few universal truths, but "nobody wants to see Jared Leto in movies" is one of them.

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