If I remember correctly, back then all "good" entries in the contest solved the game by syncing with the RNG and could basically predict where and how new asteroids would spawn. The difference between entries was planning ahead movement and residence against control issues due to the contest setup (like inputs getting delayed). I wonder how Astra managed so much better, I thought the problem was already solved

Thanks! I went back, and had a look at both the contest rules and the highest scoring submission again. Turns out I benchmarked against infinite games, whereas the contest measured a 5min time limit. So, Astra solved a different problem.

Comparing strategies, though, Astra does something pretty different from the highest scoring submission. It doesn't predict the RNG, instead it reacts to the visuals on-screen, planning ahead by estimating velocity of all objects on screen. Unlike the winning solution, it actively flies the ship, whereas the winning solution basically only rotates and teleports. So Astra behaves more like a regular "perfect" player would, rather than one that breaks the PRNG.

My apologies, and it's too late to edit the parent now.

To be fair, though, I mainly ran this experiment to distinguish models, not to see if they were better than humans or not, so for that purpose it didn't really matter if the basic conditions were the same or not.

Not that I agree with the comment you're replying to - but I find this response funny, when just today there was a link on the front page about the US military bombing a school because of AI output

That you clearly only read the headline of

And what brings you to this very wrong impression?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but isn't a sizeable part of the article about how Air can be used with any agent (section "The future is multi-vendor")

What's your issue with traffic in Germany? I know it depends on the city/state, but it always seemed pretty okay to me (though I haven't been driving much in other countries, so I don't have that much experience with "better" systems)

From what I've seen about US traffic, there doesn't seem to be much to be envy of.

I wouldn't know where to start from.

Most intersections are atrociously designed. Protected left turns everywhere, with their own lane and their own traffic light causing slowdowns and triggering also when nobody needs them.

Many pedestrian crossings could be moved 10m further from an intersection, allowing up to a couple of cars (wishing to turn right) to wait on the pedestrians without blocking all the people who were just going to proceed straight ahead. On the other hand, this problem would often not even occur if we hadn't wasted a lane for a protected left - there now would be a dedicated lane for those going right.

Right-on-red is legally permitted (there's a dedicated street sign for it) but almost never implemented. It's so frustrating.

An overwhelming majority of the traffic lights I encounter is completely non-adaptive. I wait an average of 40 seconds every morning at a specific one which is, in aggregate, causing entire human lifetimes of wasted time on a monthly if not weekly basis.

Zebra crossings are often outfitted with a pedestrian traffic light which is red (rather than off) by default. If the road is completely clear, you could just cross, but no, you must press, wait up to half a minute, and finally it turns to green for you. Now you also stopped a car or 2 which need to wait for your green to finish. If it defaulted to OFF, you could have crossed 20 seconds ago without interrupting anybody's life, and the traffic light would still still be available for elderly or disabled (or whomever wishes to press and wait, while not having it as a default).

...I could continue.

That would require the editor to be able to build an AST - defeating the point of LSP, because now the editor needs to know every possible language again

I meant the language server builds the normalized, lossless AST and gives it to the editor. Changes in the AST can be provided as events/diffs to the editor. The normalized, source-mapped AST is effectively the stable language protocol. (Possibly given in a columnar, database form via Apache Arrow, but thats impl specific). Was discussing alternative architectures with a collague since even the best language servers really suck on large projects.

Smoking areas are more a requirement of the location than anything else

Google Streetview isn't opt-in, it's opt-out. But it was used so much that Google simply gave up for a while.

Blurring faces (and I assume license plates) was a thing before they started serving imagery for Germany

You will usually see these in public places that have no other access controls - think in a park, rather than in a restaurant. It's for places that have a high risk of people sleeping in them.

Yeah, I do visit public bathrooms from time to time, especially in Spain, Germany, France, Denmark and Sweden, and never seen that once anywhere, although I've seen much worse things on single occasions than a timer for the door to open.

I've seen them in some of the shadier parks in the Netherlands, Italy and Austria. Yppenplatz, Vienna, has a particularly nasty (smelling) one which the countdown clock does very little to obviate.

A really nasty smell would get me out fast. Can't imagine any use for the timer, unless you're trying to estimate the remaining oxygen.

The timer is to let the junkie know how much privacy they have left before they can be discovered in the act of shooting up.

A misfeature is specifically a feature that's just bad, while verschlimmbessern can happen with everything that nobody would call a feature (insert something about xkcd 1172). But yeah, it's pretty close

It's certainly used - not in the top 100, but if the situation calls for it, it's not unexpected.

There's a big difference between enshitification and "Verschlimmbesserung". The latter has the intent of actually improving things, while the first is making things knowingly worse for profit.