That was bargain basement for that era. IBMs, Compaqs and the like were ~$5k similarly configured, and the first 486s were in the $7-9k area.

I guess what might be more interesting is how many people bet $1000 the day before that, and the day before that. That would be more helpful to determine what is noise from well-informed outsiders vs. insiders.

I remember beating Zaxxon when I was only 6 years old in '82, in large part because I probably spent at least 100 hours watching older kids do it.

Claude OTOH works better with ambiguity, but it also tends to stray a bit off spec in subtle ways. I always had to take more corrective action w/ the PRs it produced.

That said, I haven't used CC in 3 months and the latest models may be better.

- I don't update plans in the past - any work that superseeds work from an earlier plan is simply a new plan. If during creation of a new plan I review the plan and decide I want to something else that requires a spec update, I trash the plan, do the spec update, and rerun plan generation. Past plans of course can point to divergent specs but that's not something I care about much, as plans are a self-contained enough story of the work that was done.

- Specs: these are generally static, but updatable as the project evolves. And they're broken out to an index file that gives a project overview, a high-level arch file, and files for all the main modules. Roughly ~1k lines of spec for 10k lines of code, and try to limit any particular spec file to 300 lines. I'm intimately familiar with every single line in these.

- Plans: these are the output of a planning session with an LLM. They point to the associated specs. These tend to be 100-300 lines and 3 to 5 phases.

- Working memory files: I use both a status.md (3-5 items per phase roughly 30 lines overall), which points to a latest plan, and a project_status (100-200 lines), which tracks the current state of the project and is instructed to compact past efforts to keep it lean)

- A planner skill I use w/ Gemini Pro to generate new plans. It essentially explains the specs/plans dichotomy, the role of the status files, and to review everything in the pertinent areas of code and give me a handful of high-level next set of features to address based on shortfalls in the specs or things noted in the project_status file. Based on what it presents, I select a feature or improvement to generate. Then it proceeds to generate a plan, updates a clean status.md that points to the plan, and adjusts project_status based on the state of the prior completed plan.

- An implementer skill in Codex that goes to town on a plan file. It's fairly simple, it just looks at status.md, which points to the plan, and of course the plan points to the relevant specs so it loads up context pretty efficiently.

I've tried the two main spec generation libraries, which were way overblown, and then I gave superpowers a shot... which was fine, but still too much. The above is all homegrown, and I've had much better success because it keeps the context lean and focused.

And I'm only on the $20 plans for Codex/Gemini vs. spending $100/month on CC for half year prior and move quicker w/ no stall outs due to token consumption, which was regularly happening w/ CC by the 5th day. Codex rarely dips below 70% available context when it puts up a PR after an execution run. Roughly 4/5 PRs are without issue, which is flipped against what I experienced with CC and only using planning mode.

What's interesting is the one in use today - from the early 17th century - is not the most modern variant. There was another revision from the mid-19th century that fell out of favor because it sounded a bit off, less rhythmic, less sacred (ie. Kingdom -> Government).

I started my CS degree in '94, and my junior year was... weird. Suddenly a quarter of the faces in the lab were not the types you would ever expect to see there.

The first half has me thinking instant classic, my hope is sky high. But then toward the end I find myself looking at my watch and realize it's simply not going to the stick the landing.

OTOH, many acclaimed streaming series have generally done this well. My take is that as long-form storytelling has evolved, movies have transitioned into this post-modernist phase as directors/writers don't feel they have the runway to tell something truly cohesive that doesn't end up being trite. It's much more about saying 'something' or imbuing a feeling than telling a fully fleshed 3 act story.

Cyberpunk has changed my perspective on this. Started last August, now 84 hours in, and I plan to do a completion-ist run of at least 120+ hours. Around hour 50 I could have completed the main storyline which snuck up on me quicker than expected, so I'm trickling in the Phantom Liberty quest-line while chewing thru gigs and side jobs, many of which add a ton of narrative impact.

I remember way back when Sopranos ended and I was fairly sullen for a few months after... similar response to The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, BCS, Succession. Don't watch TV as a rule, but I immediately stopped what I was doing when a new ep of those dropped. Felt almost like I lost a loved one when each ended.

Pretty sure I'll have the same response to this game, I'm dreading leaving this universe. After that I'll get to Baldur's Gate 3 and probably have the same experience. Then after taking a year to finish that off, will likely move on to RDR2. Maybe by then I'll be able to play GTA6 on my Mac.

Basically, my thinking is that - a premium series is going to be roughly 50-60 hours, so if the story and immersion is there... which it certainly is w/ a game like Cyberpunk, the base game should roughly give a similar playtime. The fact that there is so much bonus content that is lovingly crafted gives players the option to stay longer if they so desire is fantastic given these things are now taking 10+ years to produce.

It's not like someone is going to prompt up "gimme GTA7 based on what you know about all the past GTAs" and similar crazy high level instructions in a few weeks and go, "yep, that's our standard". There are almost certainly thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of little decisions that go into producing something so massive in scope. Anything that could significantly speed up prototyping, world building, character modeling, NPC behavior, etc, should be seen as a massive boon, and probably the shot in the arm the video game industry needs.

And I have the same critique of premium streaming series. Vince Gilligan likes to extoll the benefits of not using AI at all in producing his work, but then he gives us a potentially 3 year span between seasons of his latest entry... where not a lot happened, because it's almost entirely chewing character dev stuff. The idea that a 5-6 season show might take longer to complete than seeing a child born and off to college is absolute bonkers.

More generally, it seems inconsistent to assume someone can voluntarily tolerate significant cold discomfort while being unable to manage similar degrees of hunger discomfort.

Anecdotally, my first 72-hour fast was revealing. Around the 48-hour mark my body aggressively signaled hunger, esp. for sugary foods. By the third day, however, hunger largely subsided, and at break I wasn’t hungry at all. For the following week the usual sugary suspects in my life went untouched. Subsequent 72-hour fasts were far more manageable, suggesting at least some component of adaptation.

My understanding is that this ability to adapt exists because intermittent hunger and cold were regular aspects of human life for much of our history, particularly in environments without reliable food access (pre-agrarian) or thermal protection.