keerthiko

Not usually, but there is a peculiarity with making (effectively) 2D browser games in vanilla-ish HTML/CSS (no react etc) and canvas JS (max jquery) — the UI can be nearly code-free, and significant game graphics logic can be hooked up to HTML/CSS as well, and so the js can focus on actual core mechanic logic, + hooks into HTML events. Accomplishing the equivalent in a native game engine (Unity) or non-HTML rendering platform can take up several hundreds of additional lines without the addition of a bunch of frameworks perfectly suited to your game's UI and game-world organization (or vice versa).

that's amazing, i recalled greatly enjoying and also seeing the potential from your original prototype when i saw it in 2014 (my comment from back then says so)!

sounds incredibly gratifying to bequeath it to a new gen of devs and see them exceed your expectations for it, especially as an educator. great job!

At least we have lots of very complex simulated or pseudo-simulated environments already — throw your AGI agent into a sandbox mode game of GTA6, or like OpenAI and DeepMind already did, with DOTA2 and StarCraft II (with non-G-AIs). They have a vast almost-analog simulation space to figure out and interact with (including identifying or coming up with a goal).

So while it is significant compute overhead, it at least doesn't have to be development overhead, and can often be CPU bound (headless games) while the AI learning compute can be GPU bound.

i recall seeing something similar a long time ago, with a very similar name, and found it via HN search: sineridergame.com — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8615416

and it looks like you own the domain and route it to sinerider.com now? Are you affiliated with the creater from 8 years ago or did they abandon it? The game seems somewhat distinct though obviously similar. Did you ever interact with that game?

Be careful about crossing the line from "innocent until proven guilty" over into "victim-blaming" territory.

It takes an insane amount of courage to come forth publicly with the kinds of accusations these women are bringing, and a history of men victim blaming women is why so many abusers roam our midst with impunity. When I hear these kinds of accounts, I typically have more reasons to distrust the accused abuser who is usually the person wielding more power in the whole system.

the very same comment you are replying to mentions the Abel prize and the Wolf prize for recognizing general mathematics achievements, which if you look at the recipients over the last 2 decades, are almost all over 40 (usually white men who typically get tenured as mathematics professors and have the time and resources to focus on research).

I appreciate OP for explaining that the field recognized this pattern and made a step to try to encourage future mathematicians to have something to aspire to.

Anecdotal and relevant feedback from someone who really likes to write (about specific topics), but doesn't write that regularly for one big reason: At this very moment I am very much stuck reading and re-reading a hot-button post with a lot of strong opinions, and not sure whether I should put it live yet or smush words around some more (even if all I will receive as feedback is silence).

If I have a good editorial experience I am more likely to "ship" my writing, and move on to the next essay/piece/post, and keep using the editorial service as a part of my "shipping" process (starting from my first draft of the post). Still, I would definitely be slower initially as I reforge my writing habits around an on-demand editorial service, but eventually I expect I would write often.

Any pricing structure that relates more to the amount of writing/editorial work I get done rather than to units of time would make me far more likely to buy in — non-expiring "credits" I can buy, or per-word pricing, or flat pricing per essay/post/doc/<10k words bloc.

> a giant mud-ball of for-loops, while-loops, variable assignments, and other wonderful side effects.

Woah woah. This is literally the kind of complexity grug wants to avoid. Simple doesn't mean using the fewest language features or keywords, it means simple to read, follow along, reason about, and debug. Abstractions can aid in that (like using a third party library!), until they are imported/implemented aspirationally and thus often unnecessarily, and sometimes resulting in abstractions for abstractions, selective application of the abstractions vs fresh implementation, etc (...and thus AWS)

At no point does grug argue that you should stick to what you know, he just says you should trap your complexity in crystals ie literally suggesting to use the Good Abstractions, When They Make Sense.

There is a stream delay setting in OBS — check your settings on the source setup running OBS. 5 seconds sounds like the default, you could potentially set it to 0. This is in place to

a) head off any network dropped frames and allow OBS to backfill the stream buffer. At 0 seconds you may see slightly more quality drop from 1080p to 480p if your stream source upload bandwidth is unreliable than if you left this at 5+ seconds.

b) for game streamers of competitive multiplayer video games, to protect them from "stream cheating" where an opponent recognizes their in-game ID and then looks at their stream to get additional information in the middle of a match (eg: looking at their hand in poker). With many games a 5 second delay nullifies this issue, and many streamers set it to more like 30-45 seconds depending on the game they play.

In 1997, monitors and TVs were much more different technologically than they are today. Today TVs and monitors are much closer in underlying technology/capability (discrete pixels, same video signal standards, similar illumination and color tech). LCD monitors were available in the 90s (13" was fine for a monitor, not for a TV) and were understandably many times more expensive than the hitherto strictly CRT TV tech.

Even between CRT TVs and CRT monitors, they weren't even signal compatible with each other. Maybe with a discrete graphics card that could convert pixels to NTSC/PAL outputs? Was that ever a thing in the 90s? Modems to convert cable signals to VGA output? TVs had scanlines because the signal they received represented horizontal lines as modulated analog signals (+ an analog audio signal) which were displayed back as lines after demod, rather than mpeg-bits received via modulated digital signals which were displayed as pixels. All of this meant that other than sharing the presence of a cathode ray tube, monitors and TVs were quite technically distinct. So yeah, in 1997 there were very good reasons why monitors were more expensive, which have since disappeared as the media world converged on digital transmission + output. TVs and monitors are more colinear in the fundamental tech and protocols today, end-to-end, with the differences mostly being auxiliary or in specs.

IIRC where I grew up, the price differences were even more ridiculous in the 90s but because market conditions amplified the technical differences — a TV was a mainstream household appliance, and anything PC-related was enthusiast/technologist hardware.

There are several no-name monitor manufacturers from China too, and their ultra-cheap monitors are similar in price to the ultra cheap non-ad-revenue-TVs (with similar low quality tech specs usually), or price differences more obviously explained by feature differences.

The technical advantages of monitors are valid reasons for higher cost (refresh rate, response time, color accuracy, gsync/freesync), but as mentioned in the video itself, TVs do have enough tech that monitors don't to offset those differences (size+resolution, brightness uniformity, OLED/curved/thinness options), so it should be a wash.

However, the video you linked doesn't really address the advertisement subsidy point at all (I searched the transcript for any references to make sure), so it isn't really an argument that the ad-subsidy is a myth. Plenty of reporting and discussion and evidence that traditional TV advertising industry (untargeted cable/broadcast ads) is declining in revenue, but the overall TV ad industry revenue is growing (share taken up by smart TV and streaming service ads) is going up. Streaming services absolutely use platform data where they can access it (ie smart TVs). A 1997 article sounds like it would have no context whatsoever about the 2020 smart TV advertising landscape (very very different from traditional TV advertising).

Ad revshare is just so lucrative, especially for ~$0 cost/unit for the manufacturer that it pays for every smart feature and onboard computer and then some. The difference in cost for net-comparable features is still apparent — the cheapest monitor at size-resolution combo X with worst refresh rate/response time/color accuracy is still more expensive than the cheapest smart TV at X (roughly comparable features).

This is why large monitors are so expensive, because they aren't subsidized by the ads large TVs force upon their users for the most basic usage.

But if you can afford it, there are 40+" 4k and 8k monitors to which you can plug AppleTV/Chromecast/a small PC with a budget discrete graphics card. Or you can get a conference projector if no monitor on the market meets your size needs.

Usually the neighbors inflicted things like park closures, "no loitering" near commercial parking lots, and vetoing neighborhood skate parks on the skaters, all of which would be further from resident bedrooms, and much safer for pedestrians, skaters and sleepers.

Instead folks seem to hope that by demonizing and inconveniencing a relatively harmless teenage activity that simply requires a bit of outdoor space as "antisocial", skateboarding will just...go away?

all my american friends find it ridiculous, but yes, having lived my childhood in heat that you can see rising off the ground in the middle east, i love the pleasant 30-35C summers of NYC where i live now, especially when combined with the daylight deep into "night", like 8-9pm in June-August

not gonna lie, as far as i can tell every single one of these things has predated social media and online dating. the cycles are just faster and the ratios shifting, but it's roughly all the same stuff just happening faster and with more people involved.

> You seem to be implying that the political situation has deteriorated and become more violent. Is that so?

No, this was not my intended implication at all.

The point was that when PoC raise their voices for BLM, refugee & immigrant rights, or when trans folk rally and protest for trans rights and against transphobic laws, or when anti-vaxxers/maskers force governments to impose mandates and reinstate lockdowns during COVID spikes, or when rural car owners demand lower gas prices forcing nations to conduct business with a war-perpetrator like Russia, it directly affects the quality of life of people who probably don't consider themselves part of these movements -- often mildly disruptive, sometimes largely disruptive, sometimes net positive.

And the implication was that with the internet in general and social media in particular dictating the rhetoric and pace of these movements gaining traction, it happens at a scale and polarization in months that used to take generations.

Regardless, state sanctioned violence is still rampant in many parts of the world, though not on the scale of Tiananmen or post-colonial freedom struggles unless you count the war in Ukraine. Often these are countries that western media pays less close attention to, and is a case in point of politics many in the west can still conveniently ignore -- the never-ending violence in the Gaza strip, Palestinians being de-homed in Israel, continued ISIS activity across the subcontinent, Venezuelan riots and suppression, Chinese suppression of Uyghurs and Tibetans, the Indian farmer protest response and anti-Muslim crackdowns, Malaysia, Philippines, the list goes on...

I believe anyone with a high enough karma can flag submissions, so it might not be that rule-enforced. It won't get banned or hidden unless a moderator is involved, who probably follows a set of rules. I'm not sure at what point the [flagged] tag is added to the submission.

I think it's simply a reflection of the shift of how educated society engages with political topics. If it affects quality of life of humans, it is political. This has always been true, it's fundamentally the point of politics.

However, the effects on the QoL of many humans is not a concern to those of us who have the privilege to simply look away and not notice a difference to our own quality of life. This privileged demo has drastically shrunk (ie, politics directly and noticeably impacts the QoL of far more people) today, mostly because the rest of the people have deservedly been given more of a voice. Policy in its present state can mean the difference between life and death for many people who happily steered clear of "politics" 5 years ago, and talking about it is an option for people who were silenced and closeted 10 years ago.

Even those of us who wilfully try to plug their ears and come up a system of rules and restricted topics that are "political" and "to be avoided" will find it incredibly hard to enforce, because someone or other will break the rule, and it's physically impossible for everyone else to keep their peace until a moderator brings the banhammer.

The world is going through shared turmoil right now and politics is naturally a first stop to look for society-level resolutions, or at least adjustments to existing rules to improve QoL.

Governments around the world have taken way too long to treat internet as a public good (i agree with you).

Especially in america, this country has been running as fast as societally possible in the opposite direction from providing such services as a public good -- so if anything even those libraries and sidewalks are mortal, and at the whims of a political machine idealists may not get to steer.

It sure would be nice if such a thing could exist in stability ad infinatum, but at the same time, there is a small turdy nugget of truth to the american principles of not trusting government with acting in the interests of the people's freedom indefinitely, as has been demonstrated by nations around the world.

We need more grassroots organizations like archive.org supported and run by the people who truly believe in it.

um...we still have, like, the internet? You can make some html file, post it on a computer exposed at a port, connect it to the internet, assign it to a static IP, and tell other people the address?

Unless you are specifically referring to someone providing general purpose hosting that you don't need to think about administering — well that isn't a feature of our present-day landscape simply because it wouldn't be a profitable venture given the risks and liabilities from the messed up things people could stash there, along with the inherent costs of admin and hosting.

But if you are willing to set up your own box and procure sysadmin for it, what you suggest exists.

anecdotal corroboration: my cat recognizes and responds to 5-6 different words/phrases for food, even from a visitor, but does not understand a single other word in any language spoken in the house: food, snack, treat, cookie, nom-nom. he responds to each of these uniquely (we use them to refer to different things he can eat).

This is nonsense. ATV is struggling to build a library worthy of a subscription.

Over the last 2-3 years, I sign up when a season of a show I hear good things about is completely out (Ted Lasso, Severance, etc) and then watch another show or movie or two for the month it takes me to finish that season.

I have never bumped into another show that made it worth renewing for a consecutive month, despite the show that I came for being totally worth the one month, and there being other shows that are strongly "related".

I will admit the production quality of the shows is very high on average, but that's not the same thing as the shows being very good.

I think for folks with any kind of seasonal affective disorder, having a fixed time on the clock year-round is still beneficial. Take more vacation in winter. Push for slightly more flexible work hours or at least a later first-meeting-of-the-day.

A proper venting process, like a heatsink or coolant, needs a mechanism to absorb the unwanted energy efficiently, and then disperse it. Asking folks to express anger or spend energy without it specifically drawing from the negative emotions within is like pouring coolant fluid from a bottle over your CPU box.

I think carefully channelled energy, however, can really help calm. I don't necessarily think it's catharsis really, as it would tend closer to meditation. Practising a martial art, trying to focus on something creative, going on a long run, playing a mentally demanding game (chess, go, starcraft) — with the right mindset, these allow you to harness your negative feelings into an activity that exists in its own sandbox, and then get processed in a way that only makes sense inside that sandbox. It's important that your activity is one where you have practised not getting further enraged (no 'tilting', as we say in video games) when you fail/perform badly inside your sandbox.

When you leave the sandbox, you find a tiny bit more peace with whatever enraged you.

I think you missed the entire premise of Litebulb — they are avoiding Leetcode-style testing in favor of development tasks on the real business codebase, and quickly ramping up environments that are based on your business' proprietary dev stack.

Many software companies opt to avoid leetcode-like interviewing entirely. If leetcode and prepackaged, recycled, self-contained code tests are your workplace's primary process for hiring, then I don't think this service is for you at all.

If you have 2 part time devs with a manager giving them the info in the meeting, that's 3 people spending time, and the two part-time devs won't have 100% overlap of information needed and questions asked and answered (and if you have two separate meetings with each PT, then they won't have access to the questions/answers discussed with the other dev _in case_ they need it).

Additionally, everyone can focus on producing and consuming information in the downtime between focus-work sessions, without interrupting flow at someone else's convenience.

In all cases, quality documentation is more likely to produce accurate information transfer with less time wasted by everyone involved.

Broadly, I disagree, at least when talking about any team or sub-team focused on software development.

It depends more on the personalities, values and organization of the workplace and the team — for any size, if more than 20% of people involved need to spend more than 2 hrs/week in meetings — it is an organizational/ops issue, not an inherent feature of the work.

> more foreign the domain the more time is needed to coordinate work

More foreign to who? If it is foreign to individual team members, then it is a problem of insufficient onboarding/training material and process, poor documentation, or under-qualified hire.

We run a 5-person dev team (1 designer, 2 technical founders, 1 dev full-time, +1 part-time dev) with 30 minutes of sync-time per week for non-founders. Our part-time dev can perfectly run with those specs thanks to our encouragement of daily documentation and written specs rather than waiting for a big meeting to ask and be asked questions.

> But then what often happens with part time devs like this is their one foot out the door, so they will probably leave in a few months anyway.

This sentiment is what GP points out is cultural, not practical or factual. If you compensate them well for the hours they work, many part time devs will have superior per-hour output to FTEs and also be grateful for the added flexibility you afford them.

We hired a stellar part time dev recently (contract hire to start, we just increased his rate and verbally stated we are interested in continuing the relationship long-term if he is, and offered written agreement if he is interested), and he has been working out great. The option is open to him to work full-time whenever if/when he wants by planning it ahead of time with us, but our default expectation will remain being part-time so he can pursue his game development on the side.

Finding a great part-time team member is no different than a great FTE, once you and the employee are both free of the cultural negative baggage associated wtih part-timing.

As a cofounder of a very small company (8 FT, 2 part-time, 2-10 contractors varying by season), but one with a longer life than many startups newer than us (10+ years since our first revenue), I have been trying to normalize long-term part-time hires in all critical roles for some time now at our org.

Yet, it is hard to overcome the cultural energy around the implications "part time = low impact", "part time = temporary", "part time = mercenary", "part time = lazy", "part time = not passionate". This sentiment arises from colleagues, investors, leadership, customers, and hell, the part time employee themselves at times (some kind of internalized contempt for wanting/needing/preferring to go part time).

My partner just got their role converted to part-time starting March, after consciously coming to the conclusion that it was the only healthy way to remain in their career, despite not having children. They still processing to get over the feeling of guilt and of being less-than somehow for not being okay with handing over their full cognitive capacity and waking hours, especially without being an "accepted exception", ie someone with kids, being a caretaker, or a person with a (visible) disability.

I want to live in a world where people can passionately work on something as part of a team, long-term, while being fairly compensated for that work, for less than 30 hours a week. If possible, I myself want to have that level of involvement even as a cofounder or leader of a business/project/organization so I can give my diverse passions the attention they deserve, without it "being weird" to my cofounders or other teammates.