But while I did not know the concept of loops, I did deduce functions from how main() is being used.

Entire thing was one big recursion.

Bro discovered functional programming.

Someone with the expertise should correct me if I am wrong; it’s been 4-5 years since I learnt about NPUs during my internship so I am very rusty:

You don’t even need a GPU if all you want to do is to run - i.e. perform inference with - a neural network (abbreviating it to NN). Just a CPU would do if the NN is sufficiently lightweight. The GPU is only needed to speed up the training of NNs.

The thing is, the CPU is a general-purpose processor, so it won’t be able run the NN optimally / as efficiently as possible. Imagine you want to do something that requires the NN and as a result, you can’t do anything else on your phone / laptop (it won’t be problem for desktops with GPUs though).

Where NPU really shines is when there are performance constraints on the model: when it has to be fast (to be specific: have real-time speed), lightweight and memory efficient. Use cases include mobile computing and IoT.

In fact, there’s news about live translation on Apple AirPod. I think this may be the perfect scenario for using NPUs - ideally housed within the earphones directly but if not, within a phone.

Disclaimer: I am only familiar with NPUs in the context of “old-school” convolutional neural networks (boy, tech moves so quickly). I am not familiar with NPUs for transformers - and LLMs by extension - but I won’t be surprised if NPUs have been adapted to work with them.

I’m pretty sure most video games require AI already. I stuggle to name ones that don’t use AI. Some that I can think of are snake, two-player pong and two-player chess.

Neural nets, on the other hand - I find it hard to imagine running a NN locally without impacting the game’s performance.

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This episode has a slower start but given how the anime went in the past episodes, I just know that there is going to be a payoff towards the end.

And payoff it did.

(Basically, all episodes must end with a climax of sorts, pacing be damned; the episode can be sped up or slowed down in whichever ways as long as it ends with a bang - and it’s working on me)

Also, I know that “mother” in Japanese is “haha”, but when Satsuki refers to her mother as “hahari” (I guess it is the Japanese equivalent of “mommy”?), it drives home just how on-point the pun is in 100 girlfriends.

Banner candidate: it’s a teaser as usual, but it may be slightly spoilery. Perhaps others can weigh in with your opinions or nominate other banners?

@rikka@ani.social

Can’t believe I am saying this but the last few chapters of 100 girlfriends feel really weak.

One aspect of 100 girlfriends that made it so entertaining is how unpredictable it can be. When the chapters become formulaic, it starts becoming stale.

I know it is easier said than done but I hope the author can come up with crazy ideas again instead of giving us old wine in a new bottle.

Past Seasons

Continuing from season 1, I watched season 2 and 3 of Haikyuu over the past week.

Season 2 had a bit of a slow start because the first half is just a training arc but once they start the tournament proper, it became as exciting as ever.

By the way, I’m proud that I predicted

How Heavy Are The Dumbells You Lift got me to start working out.

How Heavy Are The Dumbells You Lift wasn’t able to get me to start working out - because I was already working out.

I’d imagine Umamusume got plenty of people into either IRL horseracing or running.

Personally, I watched the more hyped races - including some that haven’t been adapted to anime yet.

My favourites include:

1. the 2013 Arima Kinen featuring Orfevre and Gold Ship
2. the 2020 Japan Cup which pitted 3 triple crown winners against each other: Almond Eye who had 8 G1 wins under her belt, Contrail who was an undefeated triple crown and Daring Tact who was an undefeated triple tiara.

A more meta one is Gundam: Witch from Mercury starting my real interest in anime.

GLADOS?

Are there any other shows that can compete with those two’s worldbuilding?

I didn’t watch HxH and One Piece so I can’t really compare against them, but my favourite worldbuilding is from Cells at Work!.

The bodily functions are presented in a way that dumb things down sufficiently to the viewers while still largely retaining scientific/medical accuracy.

Honourable mention goes to the Umamusume franchise. The level of details that goes into building a world that is almost exactly like ours - except with horsegirls instead of horses - is more than I’d expect.

It’s amazing how a gooner-bait monster girl manga that came out of nowhere can have actual romantic development in a short number of chapters.

Since the story is approaching its climax, I won’t be surprised if it ends soon.

Ooh (partial) title drop / title backstory.

I like the direction this is going: having a childhood friend group instead of just a pair of childhood friends-turn-lovers.

Did you generate this comment with a LLM for irony?

Thanks for the recommendation.

Meta

May we please have a tag for community discussion posts like those from @molave@reddthat.com? Perhaps have one for episode discussions and one for news too. It would help with filtering of posts on Photon.

Can we also have a tag to indicate that there are spoilers in the tagged post? Sometimes, people want to talk about the content of anime they have watched freely, outside of episode discussions. Spoiler-tagging a post allows people to be warned before seeing the comments.

Past Seasons

I completed Haikyuu!! season 1 over the past week. Instant 10 / 10.

Only this anime can get me as hyped up as Umamusume: Cinderella Gray.

Writing-wise, Haikyuu is basically the volleyball version of

On a more meta note, I think sports anime are the best suited to the shounen demographic. Other forms of shounen anime have tropes that I find annoying, but these tropes actually make sense in the context of sports.

For example, in many battle shounen, the hero tend to let the villain walk away instead of finishing them off when they had the chance. The villain would then live to fight another day. It’s so stupid because the villain would cause so much preventable suffering later. I’m sure it’s because they want to reuse the same character instead of coming up with a new one, but that’s just an excuse to justify subpar work.

This is not a problem in sports anime because even if the stakes are high, it would almost never be a life-or-death situation. There is no real villain. Even if the protagonist lost to their opponent because they failed to end the match decisively, it is alright - they can get their revenge in a subsequent match. Nobody is really getting hurt.

Another genre that I dislike when targeted at young boys is romance. I read somewhere that young boys don’t have much experience being in romantic relationships, so they relate to “the chase” better. I wholeheartedly agree.

My watching experience tells me that the protagonists of such anime take multiple seasons to get together and once they get together, the story ends. Personally, I find it too frustrating.

This is not a problem in sports anime at all. The focus of relationships is on friendship and camaraderie, something that shounen are more than familiar with.

This is just NTR: The Episode

Poor Ajisai got caught in the crossfire and got NTRed too. (Don’t forget that she reciprocated Renako’s “confession”!)

Lastly, this scene makes for a excellent meme template:

If you consider just the first two panels, it can be an anime-version drop-in replacement for this template:

Banner:

@rikka@ani.social

When?

Probably when I got back into anime.

Previously, I was more of a casual anime viewer, just watching anime that are highly popular (e.g. SAO), those that my friends recommended (e.g. Infinite Stratos) or just the few that caught my attention (e.g. Gundam 00). That most memorable one from that period is Toradora!, so I shall consider it my previous top one. I haven’t seriously thought about it back then TBH.

What got me back into anime was Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, around the time season 2 was airing (and not long before joining Lemmy).

My initial impression - based on the synopsis and pictures - was: man, how far has Gundam fallen to pander to its audience, focusing on cute girls in their school life instead of its core themes of war and politics. I picked it up just to pass time, with the intention of dropping it at the drop of a hat once I lose interest. But I never did.

The prologue immediately had me reevaluating my preconceived notions and biases. It reminded me that I should not judge a book by its cover; that I should probably try more anime out instead of being so selective.

The main criteria for determining if an anime belongs in my top 10 / favourites are

1. my enjoyment of the whole story
2. how many times I rewatch it
3. its personal significance to me

I enjoyed WfM a lot, I replayed various scenes and episodes (and sometimes whole episodes or even seasons) many times, and most importantly, it got me to check out around 300 anime between then and now.

Naturally, it has to be my top one anime.

I’d say Umamusume: Pretty Derby season 2 put up a good fight for the number one spot recently. Ultimately, the personal significance factor of WfM is just too strong.

Still, I can’t but noticed that I have a very specific taste based on just my top 3:

If not for personal significance, any of my top 3 anime can be top 1.

Those that I find the most useful are those that I (and likely many others) tend to take for granted.

For example, fuzzy logic may very well be used in electronics that involve temperature control - fridge, aircon, rice cooker, water heater - under the hood.

Another one is CSP (constraint-satisfaction problems) solvers which tend to be used in scheduling softwares. A possible use case is public transportation.

There are probably lots more AIs working behind the scenes that benefit everyone, but don’t get the coverage because they are just boring tech now. People may not even consider them AI!

I appreciate these AI for making my life so convenient.