I don't know what you mean by "block of information". I suppose you want to study some aspect of a relational database. What is it you're trying to understand?

Block of information - any information topic. > I suppose you want to study some aspect of a relational database no, you dont understand me. its not releated to something specific like DB/indexes. Its about to "learn how to to learn" > What is it you're trying to understand? the best way to study something in IT

I see. So are you a self-taught programmer? What level would you say you're at?

https://barbaraoakley.com/books/a-mind-for-numbers/ I enjoyed this book on the topic. It's not really about math or numbers, moreso about general learning techniques. The https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn based on the book and taught by the author is one of the highest rated on all of Coursera. My general approach is to "prime" for the content by casually glancing through the content. Read the table of contents, look through the bold and heading text, check out the images, etc.. Watching a summary video is good too. Then actually read it and highlight the parts that seem most important, but don't get too caught up in the annotation process. Then make some notes about the important parts, preferably in your own words. Finally, review the notes often enough that you remember the parts you deemed important. I like making and reviewing flashcards using Anki, but YMMV. I guess the important takeaway is that you'll forget most of what you read and review is necessary. Paraphrasing the content into your own words is very important as well. Re-reading stuff over and over is not effective. Cramming isn't effective either. You might feel like you've learned everything but real learning comes after you give the content time to be re-contextualized. You gotta acquire the info and then re-process it from many angles. With programming stuff, practice is a good way to do that.

@UPWHQK562 will check it thank you

I second that recommendation, I thought the course "https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn" was well done and useful.

An older resource but a classic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book

I find that using a note taking tool like Obsidian is really useful when wanting to learn anything. Writing things down really helps me to memorize it better.

@UPWHQK562 thanks!

@U04BRV8JQKE good luck! If you end up trying some of this stuff and find a workflow that works for you, I'd love to hear about it.

Over last month I've slowly been adding more and more layers, even when home.

Saving the environment one layer at a time

I guess the upside is, my friend messaged me today saying his november utitilies bill was ~ £300, whereas mines is less than £70

I heat less and added an additional layer. In will know how much I have to pay after winter is over 🙂

That would require Microsoft make a good product or a clever business decision, so I wouldn't hold my breath

It actually did use it in the US English version originally, at least on phone.

Interesting. I only tried it on Windows desktop, where I remember quite distinctly that the voice shared absolutely no resemblance, beyond being female, to the voice in the games.

FAr as I can tell, the US English version still uses it, but only for canned responses, anything else it falls back to the TTS. The UK English version uses a different voice.

They also seem to be phasing it out slowly though, the phone apps were dropped, and Win11 removes some of the default integration and stuff. So it's possible they dropped the voice to save cash and Wiki just hasn't updated yet.

I had to disable it in Group Policy on Win10 because I kept accidentally turning it on XD

Having it swap between 2 different voices sounds jarring. In my fantasy, where it maybe would have survived, they would have put some meaningful effort into a TTS voice that was distinctly Cortana, even if that was far from the perfection of having a voice actress record canned responses. Pretty clear the project has been mostly abandoned. Not clear whether some small remnant might continue in perpetuity.

The tech is possible; Siri was assembled from a real human voice. It is possible however that the technique for doing so was patented, so maybe they couldn't.

TBH though, voice assistants just ...weren't really ever there, and I never ended up using them because they couldn't actually do much. Classic case of tech money being thrown at something that isn't actually ready and doesn't do what it claims.

Relevant: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/

Halo OPS - use halo as a way to manage Azure

The AI for teammate soldiers in Halo would be great for fuzzing. You can always count on them to go exactly where they least belong.

Jeebus. I suspected the VAs were a bit naff but 10bil a year?! Criminy.

The article mentions the "assistant" market for Google and Apple isn't exactly going swimmingly either

I loved Cortana when it first appeared -- it had a lot of "smart" things in it that Siri and GA did not have -- but it never really integrated into other apps (on iOS that was due to Apple only allowing Siri to do a lot of "system" stuff I believe), and both Siri and GA improved a lot over time, while Cortana was still locked out of a lot of iOS and Android functionality. I'm kinda sad the Microsoft Phone never really took off -- I think an integrated Cortana on that could have blown the competition away 😞 As MS have dialed down Cortana's functionality to pretty much only tie into Office, it's become pretty much useless, sadly. I can't say I'm surprised that VAs haven't really taken hold: pretty much none of them seem to understand my partner's voice (beyond very basic "Hey Siri! Set a timer for N minutes" stuff). Our new car doesn't understand Jay much either (Jay's midwest US born and bred -- I'm English born and bred and all the VAs seem to understand me just fine!).

(and I don't know if I'm weird but the first thing I do with any of these VAs is to switch their voice to male -- I really don't like that they're all female by default... that just seems to play into uncomfortable stereotypes to me...)

Never considered it at such a meta level. I just find female voices (on average) more pleasant listen to. 🤷 The stereotype argument definitely makes sense though, if you let your mind go there.

You are not the only one to notice that a whole lot of these male-led companies keep making happy little robot girls to tell what to do, no. 😉

Another way to skin this cat: men get annoyed hearing another man's voice in their ear constantly telling them what to do and where to go 😄

There's also a historical perspective which is interesting. Since airplanes are noisy, especially the old ones, a woman's higher voice is heard better over the racket

The previous game from the developer of "Into the Breach" called "FTL" is really good. But I'm not sure whether there's a "save and continue later" feature. If you don't mind a bit of adrenaline, "Nuclear Throne" and "Superhexagon" are my favorite 5-20 minute time killers.

dicey dungeon is v good, short runs, playful music, interesting gameplay, i love it

Oh, and since you've enjoyed a card game, there's also "Inscryption". Really good, although not necessarily just a card game. Great narrative, lots of meta-gaming, if that's your thing.

Thanks!

I recently played a game called Inside, which was great. It's pretty short (probably less than 6 hours). It's mainly a puzzle game with a weird plot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DLRCgTwicY

BPM bullets per minute

chess game can wrap up in 2 mins

Synthetik

Tunic is a recent favorite: https://tunicgame.com/ might be playable on osx via steam's proton stuff

I played through tunic on mac osx via steam without any problems (actually, it took me a while to figure out how get mac osx to recognize my controller, but it worked fine after that). 👍

tunic is a long game, right?

the OG question was about short/quick games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f--LjAnoSKo Try RCT2 or OpenRCT2. But you still need the original. Spoiler: It's written in Assembly. In this game you can always save and reload later. So you can spend five minutes or five hours 😄

@UEENNMX0T fair, i think it's like 12 hours or so (haven't actually finished it, which might be more telling 😕 ).

Carrion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEEiKw-VGsk

Super Tux: https://github.com/SuperTux/supertux

A Monster’s Expedition is a cute and fun little puzzle game that’s easy to pick up. It also has some very deep challenges! But you can always find another easier thing to do. https://www.monsterexpedition.com

Had a nice session of FTL, thanks everyone for your suggestions ❤️

• Limbo (same devs as Inside) is a good one. • Cuphead is a fun run-and-gun (lots of boss-fights). • Hades is a very fun rogue-like (outstanding music and voiceovers). • FEZ is a 2d side-scroller, with a 3d twist (reminds me of Monument Valley). • Braid is another 2d side-scrolling puzzle-game with interesting exploration of time (32-bit only, doesn't work on Catalina and up. There might be a 64-bit remaster in the future) None of these are necessarily short-games, but all of them are structured (IMO) with frequent short logical-breaks where one can stop playing.

Lazors https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lazors/id386458926

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1768280/Ozymandias_Bronze_Age_Empire_Sim/ - it is like Civilization, but it is only in the bronze age and it is fewer turns

Celeste is amazing

grind games like hades and dead cells are great for quick/short plays with a surprising amount of variety (and you can play them for a long time without it feeling stale)