bmalicoat

Great resource, nice work putting it all together. I was on the software side of 360 (mostly C++ and Lua), so I didn't get too deep in the hardware. Most of my time was spent modifying and building on the XAM, glad to see it mentioned briefly in there!

The old screenshots of the dash bring back lots of memories. The releases were all named after European cities at the time; Berlin, Geneva, Stockholm, Madrid, etc.

Outside of the day job, trying to scrape together some projects that scratch whatever itch I have at the moment.

I'm trying to learn kanji and it was a fun exercise to learn how to render svg in unity so I made a free iOS and Android app:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kanji-book/id1532844605

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bmalicoat....

More recently during the pandemic, I wanted a simple way to stay connected to friends and family so I made an async multiplayer word game, Downwordly. I was super psyched when Apple made it game of the day a few months back! Still have to learn how to market it in non-scummy ways :)

https://www.downwordly.com/

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/downwordly/id1544633266#?platf...

Coming to Android very soon!

very very spaceship | multiple roles | seattle, wa | on-site preferred, remote possible | full-time

VVS is an indie game studio based out of the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle. Founded by the creator of the BAFTA award-winning game, 'Never Alone'. We're currently about 25 folks, privately funded, and have a history of working with partners like Google ATAP, Microsoft and others. We're currently in production on a multi-year mobile title with a major publisher.

We tend to work on projects where pioneering technologies intersect shared game experiences. We take great care when choosing our partners, the projects we focus on and the audiences we develop with. We're adept at collaboration which leads to authentic and novel experiences that add whimsy and joy to the world. Most people in the studio identify as makers, with skills and interests outside of game development. We're an eclectic crew and love to share our passions with each other and the world. Week to week, you'll find us hacking around with 3D printing, modular synths, D&D campaigns, model building, electronics, Ukrainian egg dying, building custom Gashapon capsule stations (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mWMOf1NBbM), resin casting, building haunted spaceships for Halloween open houses (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbxfXZ2UpbU) and more.

We value our creativity and love to learn and grow, so we hold quarterly game jams to keep our skills sharp. Sometimes we even release the games we make during the jam: https://vvspaceship.itch.io/

On the engineering side, we prefer generalists. People with a little bit of knowledge in a wide breadth of areas and who are comfortable not always having the answers, but excited to find them.

We're currently on the hunt for:

- Senior Client Engineer

- Senior Backend Engineer

- Backend Engineer

- QA Lead

- 3D Artist

We also have a peer company that is hiring for a Senior Firmware Engineer. I can forward your info to them if that sounds interesting.

You can see our role descriptions here: https://vvspaceship.website/jobs

If you're interested to work on projects worth making, with people that are worth making them with, drop me an email at bj@vvspaceship.email and I'll do my best to answer any questions and provide more detail on what's happening here. Thanks!

very very spaceship | backend engineers, client (Unity) engineers | Seattle, WA | ONSITE, FULL-TIME | https://vvspaceship.website/

VVS is an indie game studio based out of the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle. Founded by the creator of the BAFTA award-winning game, 'Never Alone'. We're currently about 20 folks, privately funded, and have a history of working with partners like Google ATAP, Microsoft and others. We're currently in production on a multi-year mobile title with a major publisher.

We tend to work on projects where pioneering technologies intersect shared game experiences. We take great care when choosing our partners, the projects we focus on and the audiences we develop with. We're adept at collaboration which leads to authentic and novel experiences that add whimsy and joy to the world. Most people in the studio identify as makers, with skills and interests outside of game development. We're an eclectic crew and love to share our passions with each other and the world. Week to week, you'll find us hacking around with 3D printing, modular synths, D&D campaigns, model building, electronics, Ukrainian egg dying, building custom Gashapon capsule stations (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mWMOf1NBbM), resin casting and more.

We value our creativity and love to learn and grow, so we hold quarterly game jams to keep our skills sharp. Sometimes we even release the games we make during the jam: https://vvspaceship.itch.io/

On the engineering side, we prefer generalists. People with a little bit of knowledge in a wide breadth of areas and who are comfortable not always having the answers, but excited to find them.

If you're interested to work on projects worth making, with people that are worth making them with, drop me an email at bj@vvspaceship.email and I'll do my best to answer any questions and provide more detail on what's happening here. Thanks!

very very spaceship | backend engineers, client (Unity) engineers | Seattle, WA | ONSITE, FULL-TIME | https://vvspaceship.website/

VVS is an indie game studio based out of the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle, founded by the creator of the BAFTA award-winning game, 'Never Alone'. We're currently about 15 folks, privately funded, and have a history of working with partners like Google, Microsoft and others. We're currently in pre-production on a multi-year mobile title with a major publisher.

We tend to work on projects where pioneering technologies intersect shared game experiences. We take great care when choosing our partners, the projects we focus on and the audiences we develop with. We're adept at collaboration which leads to authentic and novel experiences that add whimsy and joy to the world. Everyone in the studio identifies as a maker, with skills and interests outside of game development. We're an eclectic crew and love to share our passions with each other and the world. Week to week, you'll find us hacking around with 3D printing, modular synths, D&D campaigns, model building, electronics, Ukrainian egg dying, building custom Gashapon capsule stations (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mWMOf1NBbM), resin casting and more.

We value our creativity and love to learn and grow, so we hold quarterly game jams to keep our skills sharp. Sometimes we even release the games we make during the jam: http://k2mu.fish.

On the engineering side, we prefer generalists. People with a little bit of knowledge in a wide breadth of areas and who are comfortable not always having the answers, but excited to find them.

If you're interested to work on projects worth making, with people that are worth making them with, drop me an email at bj@vvspaceship.email and I'll do my best to answer any questions and provide more detail on the magic that's happening here. Thanks!

When I was working on Xbox One, I got all the checkin mails. Whenever I had time, I'd look for Dave's changes and see what he did. Nearly all of them were over my head because they were so deep in the OS. The ones I understood were usually fixing other people's bugs or build breaks like he mentions in the video. It was definitely a highlight to see the actual work of someone so disciplined and dedicated to their craft.

Super cool to see something I worked on hit the front page :)

We had a film crew document the development of the app, you can check out the videos here http://aka.ms/syivideos and you can read some technical posts here https://microsoftstudios.com/hololens/editors-notes/

Download the code and run it in Unity, the emulator, or a real device!

It is stupid, but that hasn't stopped a lot of manufacturers from doing it. I unplugged the one that came equipped in my GTI. Google soundaktor and your make/model to see if your car has one.

The best part of the hiptop IMO, was the development community. It was ultra tight knit and accepting of newbs. I have many fond memories of side loading apps from skdr.net and eventually reaching the point of uploading my own creations.

I've been using the FB app since it arrived on iOS. At one point it was a decent app, but it is far from being the gold standard. The last few updates have just introduced more bugs and lag to the experience. Lately I don't even know if I clicked the 'comments and likes' text reliably. You can't tell if you missed the ridiculously small hit target or if it is just taking the usual 3-5 seconds to give you any kind of indication it is doing anything. That's just one example of a frustrating experience, but I consistently have others—zooming and panning pictures randomly closes them, likes sometimes never show up, my own posts won't be visible on the phone, only on the web, etc.

The author is making some pretty big generalizations IMO. While I agree there is a culture of gratuitously violent games -- which the market responds positively to -- there are also many incredible games that feature no realistic violence. Fez, Minecraft, LIMBO, and Braid come to mind. I work on the Xbox Platform Team and I feel like we have an accurate representation of the interests of the gaming world (and in fact the non-gaming world -- many people simply don't play games). Maybe things were/are different on the teams actually making games, but my team is very well-rounded. We play FIFA, Spelunky, and Trials Evolution in our down time...obviously the bro-est of games.

Good article, but isn't the author describing Huffman codes?

I'd love to try it. Username @gmail.com

Got one, thanks Rob!

I'm peripherally in the industry, but even I can say middleware is huge. Speedtree, as you mentioned, shows how niche the suites can be. You also have FMV players (especially on mobile) and of course physics engines are huge. Look for Havok and you'll see it powers most AAA games. I don't know specific pain points you can ease, but if you can generalize it, game companies will probably pay for it.

Unfortunately the 'Tweetie never crashed' bit is untrue. I had Tweetie download and cache a profile icon that was trash and it continually crashed until I deleted and reinstalled. I do agree that the app has gone downhill since the acquisition, but I don't think the code quality has anything to do with that.

Can any normal tourist get inside of the area? What are the health risks of spending an afternoon there (~3 hours)? Seems like a very unique place to visit if possible and not too dangerous.

Do RFID tags have anything to prevent a replay attack or is owning a bit for bit copy of an RFID tag the same as owning the original?

Retina Display doesn't automatically mean 300+ ppi. If you believe Apple, it simply means 'at the distance you hold this from your eyes, you won't perceive individual pixels'. I have an iPad and I hold it on my lap or a table which is usually 2-3x farther away from my eyes. I didn't do the math, but making a larger screen with that pixel density is closer to the realm of possibility than a 300+ ppi screen and it would still be called a Retina Display by Apple.

Also some people are terrified of dogs so having one sniff over them would be worse than being groped. Not that the TSA cares about feelings or anything though.

Dunno when you left, but you can go up many levels as an IC currently.

I'm only familiar with these services in concept, what incentives do businesses give their mayors? Anything unique or just XX% off coupons?

Anyone who bought that "Don't be evil" could be a legitimate mission statement for one of the most powerful companies in the world is kidding themselves.

Evil is quite relative, especially when billions of dollars are involved.

Google (and Facebook) should be held to a higher standard since there has been no company in human history that knows (or has the potential to know) so much personal information.

Your point still stands but the mechanism was first in Tweetie 2.

kjksf summed it up nicely. Google obviously provided a ton of capital but it was Rubin, using what he learned when building the hiptop, that gave the spark to the whole project.

Doesn't seem like it was that long ago. Interesting that over time people started to believe Google itself created Android, when it's actually closer to being a hiptop successor.

The question is from Giz, the author provides the answer.

Bumping can leave distinctive grooves inside the barrel and on the pins that a normal key wouldn't. They may consider these traces to be destructive even though the lock remains operational.

I have this set [1]. Though mine has a plastic handle so it was about half the price listed there. It's a nice set, quite small and very pocketable.

There's something deeply satisfying about picking locks, hearing each pin tick and feeling the barrel give just a little bit more than the last time you torqued it. I love it.

[1] http://www.southord.com/Lock-Picking-Tools/Jackknife-Pocket-...

There is no Apple Store in Redmond. The nearest one is Bellevue which gets a lot of traffic from Seattle proper as well as from Redmond.

Spoilers

Don't read if you haven't seen it yet!

Saito dies at some level (if I remember right at the top dream level) and he enters limbo. Cobb goes there from the snow compound dream level but Saito has already been there 20-40 years (maybe they said in the movie, I forgot that too). Cobb then helps him remember Saito is in a dream so they can wake up together from the limbo state.