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Would be great if that were solved, CW! Did you happen to see this blog post by Ron Gilbert about how he dealt with the same issue for his Thimbleweed Park engine?

https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/savegame

I brought this up in the AI Singularity thread, but maybe it's something that deserves its own topic.

Researchers recently figured out a way to use "deep learning" neural networks (as used in facial and other image recognition) to instead generate pictures: http://googleresearch.blogspot.ch/2015/06/inceptionism-going-deeper-into-neural.html

People, in particular a group called "Ostagram", are already applying this technique, which Google dubbed "inceptionism", to achieve some startling artistic effects.

You can apply the art style of one image to another:
+ =











Or blend them to create more surreal (nightmarish) results:







Using slightly different techniques, you can even have a robot/printer paint a hardcopy of the result:
[embed=560,315]http://youtu.be/IuygOYZ1Ngo[/embed]

I expect that this technology will be generally accessible pretty soon. If this becomes as easy as a Photoshop filter, how do you think it would be used, e.g. for 2D game art? What if you could take a photo or a simple background sketch, and run a "Bill Tiller" filter on it to make it look like Monkey Island 3?

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Maybe time to take down the banner?

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[cannot]

I figure we need a new controversial debate thread, so what do you all think about the whole Greek economic crisis/bailout/referendum/Grexit thing?

On the one hand, the anti-austerity side (which argues that the "troika" of Greece's main creditors - the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF - should offer the country more generous terms, and often that Greece should otherwise leave the Euro) argues that austerity is a failed economic policy that has led to immense suffering in Greece, with sky-high unemployment and poverty, and that the costs of helping the country out aren't that big, relatively speaking. They also accuse the creditors of trying to dictate Greek policy against the democratic will of the Greek people (in particular by not extending their deadlines until after the referendum this weekend), and many have suggested that they have deliberately scuttled negotiations in order to overthrow the Syriza government.

On the other hand, in favor of a harder line against the country we can note that successive Greek governments have reneged on the terms of previous bailouts, failing to fully implement promised reforms to the economy (e.g. simplifying the tax system and closing loopholes while improving the collection rate, reducing subsidies, liberalizing the economy, cutting over-generous pensions, and privatizing assets). Also, while austerity has been painful, it is the price the country is paying for spending way past its means for the last decade or more. While of course it would be more comfortable to Greece if others just extended them unlimited credit to finance their social system, creditors and tax payers in the nations bailing the country out simply aren't willing to help unless the country makes deep cuts in order achieve solvency in the long run (and arguably shouldn't be expected to do so). Other countries that have implemented austerity policies coupled with economic reforms (Spain and Portugal, for example) have started to see their economies turn around, and there was a similar upturn in the Greek economy before the Syriza government came to power. Looking at the terms of the deal Greece turned down, they don't sound all that draconian to me, anyway: for example, Greek pensions (which are massively unaffordable) are still more generous than German ones, and still offer numerous loopholes for early retirement - fixing that seems pretty reasonable. Finally, Syriza in particular have strung out negotiations interminably, engaging in populist anti-EU brinkmanship that made a deal much more difficult, and missing every possible deadline: if they wanted a referendum on a deal, they should have called it a month ago, before the current bailout program and lines of credit expired.

The party is also being disingenuous and highly irresponsible in suggesting that the country can refuse a deal and yet remain in the Euro: While the country can't be "forced" out of the currency union, if Greece and its banks can't get credit (and without a deal, the ECB arguably cannot continue to extend them credit), the banks and the whole Greek financial system will collapse unless bailed out by the state, which Greece is in no position to do without printing their own money.

So with all of that in mind, I think Greece should vote yes, toss their current government, accept something like the creditors' terms and implement reasonable reforms, working towards a debt write-down later on. At the same time, having them leave the Euro is probably better for everyone concerned in the long run (that way they could devaluate and improve their economic competitiveness), but in a controlled manner, not in the midst of a collapse.

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Having spent the last few weeks coding heavily in 3.3.3, there's one particular bug that really bothers me: The search, and the feature to "Go to definition"/"Find all usages" when right-clicking on a variable or constant, are very unreliable. For example, if I'm looking at a variable definition and want to see where it's used, it'll sometimes not bring up anything at all. But when I comment it out, I immediately get a bunch of compilation errors because it IS in fact used.

I haven't checked carefully exactly when this happens. I know that "go to definition" often does not work for global variables (but sometimes does), and for #define constants (maybe never does?). I think search will sometimes fail even if there are references in the current document, and seemingly even more often with references in other documents. It's possible this depends on when the file/project was saved/rebuilt, but the link is unclear to me.

I find this to be quite a serious problem, because it makes it very hard to check whether an edit will break something, or to track down bugs in my project. For example, if I know that a bug is caused by a certain variable being modified incorrectly, I need to be able to see every place in the code where that variable is touched, and right now I can't always do that.