Personal news

[Numsgil]

Hey everyone, if you've been curious what I've been up to the last 6 months, I've changed jobs and now work for Google as a programmer, as of last week.

I've been busy and stressed from the whole process (in a good way), and haven't really worked on anything code related for DB3 in that time.  I'll probably miss my Sept 2015 goal for DB3 by a fair number of months.  I'm trying to get back in to a rhythm with it, but I don't know when that will happen exactly.  Also going forward, I think any contributions I make code-wise will technically be owned by Google, and they'll just license it to the Darwinbots project under the MIT license.  I still need to wrangle with Google legal around that point, but Google has well established channels for this sort of thing, so I don't anticipate any issues.  Part of that means I probably can't contribute to DB2 source code at all, since it's licensed under Carlo's license.  But not like I was doing that anyway

On the plus side, I get a small amount of cash to use for advertising anything I want on AdWords as a company perk.  So I might start advertising for Darwinbots for search queries around artificial life and programming games and the like.  If people would like to submit ideas for what keywords it would make sense to advertise against I'm all ears.

Otherwise I don't think it will really affect anything.  Just FYI for what's going on, as I've been running kinda dark the last few months.

[spike43884]

Keywords to advertise against:
Artificial Life, Simulation, Darwin, Evolution, Cellular Life, Free


Also, could you find SOMEONE NEW TO MANAGE THE LEAGUES! ._. Im sick of waiting for botsareus, he's not coming back, we need someone to replace him!
About DB2 being covered by carlo's license...Surely just have a joint licensing (if you can ask carlo about that) stating any new source code done by you while you work at google is licensed by google (or MIT or whatever) then the code written outside is licensed by carlo?

[Numsgil]

Also, could you find SOMEONE NEW TO MANAGE THE LEAGUES!

Are you volunteering?

About DB2 being covered by carlo's license...Surely just have a joint licensing (if you can ask carlo about that) stating any new source code done by you while you work at google is licensed by google (or MIT or whatever) then the code written outside is licensed by carlo?

Well for one I'd rather choke myself with a used diaper than touch VB6 code ever again.  But that aside, I'd need to get everyone who's ever pushed code to DB2 to agree to license it under MIT or Apache or GPL or something like that, as everyone who's worked on the code has licensed it under Carlo's original license.  I'm not sure I could even reach PY or Eric, so I think it's practically a non starter.  But again, my complete and absolute hatred of the current DB2 codebase makes this sort of moot anyway.

DB3 is licensed under MIT, and even if it weren't I retain copyright on 99% of contributions so I could relicense most of the code under a different license if I had to.  But MIT is about as unrestrictive as it gets while still being a realistic license (the wtfpl is arguably more liberal, but good luck getting a lawyer to pass off on it), so no need.

[Peter]

Good luck at google!

Does it mean you can spend 20% of your time on your own projects?

[Numsgil]

Good luck at google!

Thanks!

Does it mean you can spend 20% of your time on your own projects?

Yes and no.  I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say about it, but I'll say work has to be approved by Google and be important to Google in some way.  Darwinbots doesn't really count.  But open source projects in principle aren't off the table (Chrome and Android are obvious examples of how Google feels about open source).

[spike43884]

Are you volunteering?

I would but my computer is way to weak to run a league...And thats not even including all of the bots, thats just a small pick of them that it struggles on...
Could Peter run it maybe?

[Shadowgod2]

i will

[Numsgil]

I don't really remember the details for it, but I think you can search the forums for instructions on how to do it.  eg: running the leagues.

[spike43884]

i will

I don't really remember the details for it, but I think you can search the forums for instructions on how to do it.  eg: running the leagues.

Well, thats sorted that, just remember to give shadow permissions to manage the starting gate etc.

[Peter]

I don't really remember the details for it, but I think you can search the forums for instructions on how to do it.  eg: running the leagues.

Bots changed the leagues quite a bit. I don't think that link is up to date.
For anyone planning to run the league, the last leagues bots posted are run with all bots in a tournament setting. (meaning if 1st and 2nd strongest bot fight in round one, 2nd strongest bot doesn't show up in the top bots) For a proper leaguetable it'll need to rerun with a stepladder. Be warned that may take time, if you're going to run it with all bots. (may take the last leaguetable before bots implemented tournament as a starting point)

Seems Google is looking for people. I just got an email from a google recruiter. Pity they don't have any office remotely close.

[spike43884]

I don't really remember the details for it, but I think you can search the forums for instructions on how to do it.  eg: running the leagues.

Bots changed the leagues quite a bit. I don't think that link is up to date.
For anyone planning to run the league, the last leagues bots posted are run with all bots in a tournament setting. (meaning if 1st and 2nd strongest bot fight in round one, 2nd strongest bot doesn't show up in the top bots) For a proper leaguetable it'll need to rerun with a stepladder. Be warned that may take time, if you're going to run it with all bots. (may take the last leaguetable before bots implemented tournament as a starting point)

Seems Google is looking for people. I just got an email from a google recruiter. Pity they don't have any office remotely close.

Well, maybe just point these points to shadow as he's the league guy now? Yeah, stepladder will take time peter, I mean...Look at the starting gate of the bots that clogged up from botsareus's absence.

[Shadowgod2]

yea things have slowed down because i've gotten ill though not seriously. just enough to effect me mentally so at night i just don't have the mental capacity to do much. so far i only have 2 bots but i plan on having a page done a night before i start the leagues starting fully next week. at least i didn't get the brunt of the cold like my parents.

[spike43884]

What if we opened up a download for a leagues round runner, of course you couldn't do it nums, but peter could. Then just make it automatically go onto the next stepladder/round recording it in a text document?
Then the leagues could be ran without even someone there, just someone to initiate it, and record it.

[Botsareus]

Peter, you are forgetting about league seeding. The first and second place bots will never run in the first round. Although if I to do it over would have made it based on energy and not population.

I think the best solution is to have a submit button that goes server side and updates a step ladder. Numsgil at one point was considering something like that with a web crawler.

[Numsgil]

Numsgil at one point was considering something like that with a web crawler.

I didn't get very far on it but being able to automatically run the leagues on the server as things get submitted is definitely preferable to the current hit-or-miss manual methods.