Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/27/intrepid-diggers-figure-out-th.html
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This sounds like something out of a Neal Stephenson novel.
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I’m moderately disappointed it’s not “rosebud”
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I had no idea such an enormous amount of work and processing power went into this discovery. It’s so weird, because it’s obviously not a very interesting seed even, so it’s good for like five minutes of “I’m on the title screen!” (if that means something to you) and that’s it. Of all the things to spend time and energy on, this is one of the least explicable to me.
Yeah, except there would be some sort of payoff in the novel. Something interesting uncovered in the process or upon completion.
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Maybe the team became friends along the way?
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Goes to show you, it doesn’t matter how much time or effort you spend doing something, you’ll always find at least one “meh” in the crowd.
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Never underestimate the power and persistence of true fans/nerds!
(I use the term nerd as a badge of honour)
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It could also be something one character does in their free time to establish their character as a hacker without it necessarily paying off. Would be worth 20 pages of description.
And I’m saying this unironically. I am fully on board for Stephenson’s digressions. The Baroque Cycle is my favourite for a reason.
But yeah, more likely they would later repurpose their cloud computing framework to solve an urgent problem that seemed unsolvable in the timeframe they have and with only one laptop on a dodgy satellite connection. A laptop that has had a bullet pass through its screen but which works just well enough that you can see one line of the command line interface.
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All of these people have to have jobs in I.T already, this is not something, you avg none i.t person is going to do… Only cos they lack the skills.
help advance Minecraft-related research
Considering Minecraft is a game created by people, I’m not sure what exact deep profound research there is to advance.
Of course the fact that there is a TV Plus channel where half the content is watching people play Minecraft, maybe we are just researching the human condition at this point.
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I guess you could say the same about art history, literary criticism or film studies? They often study things the authors of which are still alive as well.
Though I guess it’s different if you study a text rather than a concrete thing, like a Minecraft seed. The parallel would be an art historian using advanced radiography to study the production techniques of a painting when they could just ask the painter.
Conversely a Minecraft researcher studying the influences that went into the representation of the Minecraft world would be completely justified to work from the text alone, without asking the creators.
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To be fair, this is an extremely “meh” bit of information, especially as a payoff for the extreme amount of work done. I struggle to think of something equivalent. It’s like studying a painting so you can figure out the exact time and place where it was painted… so you can know what was going on behind the painter that they were ignoring at the time. Except even that has more point to it - it’s funny and functions as an artwork in itself, commentary on attention and seeing. So maybe it’s more like knowing where the painting was done, but figuring out the exact square inch where the easel was set up. Not because it illuminates or informs anything, but just so you can stand on the exact spot where it was done to say you did that.
“…a team of researchers led by Texas State University astronomer, physics professor emeritus and Texas State University System Regents’ Professor Donald Olson has applied his distinctive brand of celestial sleuthing to Vermeer’s masterpiece, using the artist’s signature gift for depicting light and shadow to resolve the long-standing uncertainty over when it was painted.”
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Yeah, but where’s the exact square inch in which his easel was set up?
If I were a tech hiring manager, I would read through this project and be very tempted to find a place for him in my company.
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I think you and @SeanHyde-Moyer need to switch profile pics. I get it, this particular thing doesn’t impress you. I’ve just been feeling lately that the tendency for people on the internet to jump in with hot takes, which seemed to be mostly missing here (one of the many reasons I love the BBS), has taken an upswing, and I’m disappointed by that.
I’m actually totally fascinated by this, because I am impressed with the work that went into it, for such a weirdly, almost hilariously “meh” outcome. It’s like someone built the most amazing Rube Goldberg machine for pressing buttons, only to focus on the button-pressing. It’s like… anti-art.
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