kiawe_fire

Well this sucks.

I bought a Chevy Blazer last year, and it’s the best car I’ve ever owned. Great balance of design, gas mileage, comfort, etc.

I was definitely planning to make my next car the EV version of this.

Part of that package is flawless CarPlay integration. It’s simplified the music and navigation experience more than I ever thought possible.

The only reason I wouldn’t demand it on my next car is if something demonstrably and overwhelmingly better came along.

Everything described in the article sounds worse.

Subscription services tied to my car and not my phone?

Needing to maintain navigation routes on my car AND my phone?

Being forced to use only built in apps like Spotify instead of “whatever is on my phone that supports car play”?

Waiting on my car to decide when I can get the newest navigation app or the latest update to Spotify like this is some janky non-Roku smart TV from 2012?

No thanks.

> GM's decision to stop offering those systems in future electric vehicles, starting with the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer, could help the automaker capture more data on how consumers drive and charge EVs.

That doesn’t even make sense.

NONE of those things would require an absence of CarPlay, nor would they require the presence of some omnipresent Google / GM replacement.

Those metrics are all collected by the systems using them, with the infotainment simply being one possible UI for display of those metrics.

Sucks. Just when I found a car brand and manufacturer that seemed to be doing things well, and I was excited for the EV version of it, they pull this.

Why can’t I have nice things?

I think it’s the latter.

Because, as you point out with low poly models, there’s so much that goes into the fidelity of a game beyond just output resolution - there’s polygon count on the models, resolution of the textures applied to those models, shadow and light effect resolution - each operating independently.

When a game like Apex is played at high settings but output at a low resolution, at that point upscaling it isn’t much different than upscaling a standard def DVD of a movie like Frozen or Avatar. You’re not creating detail in things like individual set pieces that didn’t previously exist, you’re filling in the blanks of the entire image blown up at once per frame.

I feel like Spotify going after big celebrities like the Obamas is a bit tone deaf specifically with regards to the podcasting audience.

At least anecdotally speaking, my experience is the podcasting audience largely seems to seek out fresh and lesser known voices rather than big, established celebrities.

If SiriusXM is the audio equivalent of premium TV networks like HBO, which has an audience base interested in following big celebrities (or, at least, did so 5-10 years ago) then podcasts are the audio equivalent of YouTube.

That said, it sounds like Spotify kind of threw a variety of deals at the wall to see what stuck. By now, they should have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t, so hopefully they aren’t reigning in all the spending equally, but instead are being smart about it.

SiriusXM was either very smart or very lucky in the deals they went after at the time, but Spotify was not so much. So now’s their moment to show what they’ve learned.

I still maintain that audio is unique amongst all entertainment avenues in that it does not ask for undivided attention, can be listened to everywhere (work, car, at night in bed while sleeping) and therefore is not subject to as much competition of human needs as video or gaming is.

At the same time, the cost of entering the space is so low, I don’t think you can ever really “out own” your competition.

I’m beginning to dislike this anthropomorphization of AI, and tech in general.

I feel like it’s contributing to a further misunderstanding of what it actually is and how best to use it or think of it.

It’s really unfortunate that the author started with the most controversial of rules, because I find much of the rest of the article to be quite the helpful summary.

Particularly padding and margins - I’ve only recently taken the time to study what makes a design look good vs looking off in terms of spacing, and have come to similar conclusions as the author.

I suspect if the rule against pure black on pure white were buried in the middle (or omitted) then the response would be warmer.

The owners are both engineers, primarily back end, while I do both front and back end.

I suspect they are partially motivated (as other commenters suggested) by not changing too much of what they themselves built personally.

Partially out of a fear of change, but also partially out of a “if we find ourselves without employees and need to run the whole show on our own again, we can’t have a bunch of code we don’t understand” fear.

Which I understand. But fact is, we have customers and internal users who are overworked and have needs. Needs that we aren’t meeting because we never deliver the “right” solution in full, in part because so many parts of the system just seem unofficially “off limits”.

I’ve offered many times to start a regular engineering training and sharing session where I can help make others aware of how I’ve been building things and how they can help maintain them, to try to make everyone more comfortable with the front end, but that also has met the same friction as my projects.

Very encouraging to hear!

Thanks for the advice! I looked it up, and https://interviewing.io/ is indeed the place.

That sounds like exactly the kind of thing I need to gain some confidence.

I’m sorry for what you’ve been through as well. I can relate to much of it. The feelings of being trapped are a real thing.

I really appreciate the advice, hopefully you’re doing better. FWIW, what you’ve shared has already been a big help in my attitude.

That’s a fair question. I honestly haven’t “fought” for my projects probably as much as I should.

Some of this is a result to how their criticisms are shared. Often, they will initially softly praise my efforts (“that’s a good idea, but we need to discuss it more before going live with it”).

Then, time passes, we put out other fires, other ideas for unrelated projects get discussed.

Often throughout, the problem that my (now on hold) project attempts to solve will come up multiple times. At some point, I remind them that I have a potential solution ready to go, but we still need to discuss it before going live, as they requested.

I get a “yes we will, soon” response once or twice, until finally they mention something superficially wrong and easily fixed about it (“the order of the form items need to be switched around” or “we should add a summary screen” type trivialities) and is then used as a reason why, instead of spending a day finishing the project up, we should instead focus our time on x, y, or z (none of which are even actionable projects yet).

At which point I cave. Every once in a while I get irritated to the point of blurting out something snarky when the problem presents itself (“you know, we could be done with problems like these if we had implemented my idea”) only for me to follow it up with some joke to smooth it over and not sound so bitter.

I’m sure there’s a better way for me to fight for these projects, and I hope as I become more inclined to leave, I’ll have more backbone to try them out and commit to it.

Thank you for sharing.

I can relate. This is my first “real” full time job, and I’ve now been there 10 years with little to show for it, and not for lack of trying.

Software engineer for a small company, report directly to the owners.

Repeatedly, I pour my heart and soul into a project that I believe in, only for ownership to trash the project for superficial reasons.

I’ll do small things and get overly patronizing praise, and then when I try to initiate or lead something bigger, they crush it with passive aggressive, belittling remarks. They mostly just want me doing grunt work, despite my desire to do larger, “force multiplier” type work. Work that my coworkers and customers are asking for.

My self esteem is terrible and I haven’t left for fear that I won’t be able to “make it” anywhere else, paralyzed by the fear of ending up unemployed.

I’m angry that I have a 10 year career full of ambition that went absolutely nowhere, I want to leave, but it’s scary.

Your story gave me a great boost of encouragement to start seriously planning my exit.

To me, the paradigm only works if both sides are labeled in both states.

    Light [* ] Dark

This is essentially how a physical switch would be labeled, and is the best way to prevent ambiguity - the current state is the label that the switch is closest to.

But most implementations don’t do that. And I can understand why, because the following…

    Show Notifications   Yes [* ] No

…is a bit awkward looking.

Sure… I read that. The instructions do a great job of explaining a few cases of what is definitely a digital asset, and they explain what you and I both know are obviously included.

The instructions “include” a few obvious things. They don’t “exclude” anything like V-bucks.

So what constitutes a “representation of value”?

I can buy and sell V-Bucks cards, can I not?

It may sound like I’m being a bit obtuse, but there is nothing here that tells me whether my ultra rare skin that I received that I could sell my account for $100 on eBay applies or not.

Many things are obviously a digital asset, but determining what isn’t is far trickier, especially once you move away from perhaps the easiest example of digital currency in Fortnite.

Saying “obviously they’re targeting Bitcoin and the Charlie Bit My Finger NFT” tells me what I already know I should declare. Nothing tells me what I shouldn’t… almost like they can decide that whenever they want during an audit.

Maybe a dumb question, but how does or doesn’t this apply if you have played virtually any modern multiplayer video game in which you receive digital assets from loot boxes, or from buying cosmetics?

“Digital asset” seems like a VERY broad term just looking for perjury.

Not that the entire concept of how one files taxes in the US isn’t one big perjury trap already, it just seems less and less subtle about it with each iteration.

Thank you for the informative reply - I stand completely corrected.

I can definitely see now why this would be problematic.

So many comments here and I’m still struggling to see why this is so noteworthy.

I’m as anti-Electron as the next person, but my arguments against it are due to the bloat and disrespectful resource usage of using an entire web browser to show local app UI.

But if what you need is an actual, literal web browser, then I’m not sure I see why this is a bad choice.

First I’ve heard of your game is via this comment, and as a fan of old Windows 95 / DOS games, this looks great! I’m eager to buy it once I’m able to load up some Steam credits.

I’ve been down your road before, and it sucks, but ultimately it’s why you need to make sure you enjoy doing what you’re doing above all else, with the hopes that others will enjoy it.

Sometimes you just gotta make something because you want it to exist in the world, and because YOU want to be the one to bring it into existence.

Personally, I love that you’re keeping a concept like this alive.

That said, because it’s the internet, I can’t help but add my $0.02 on your marketing efforts.

So, from your brief description of your attempt at Reddit marketing, I can’t help but notice that your game is very much going for the Chip’s Challenge / MS DOS / Windows 95 vibe.

Yet your marketing efforts and description of game length is trying to make a Nintendo Power / Super Mario connection. On a subreddit in which people were upvoting NES cartridges.

I’d say that’s the wrong audience. While there’s plenty of overlap between early PC gamers and early Nintendo gamers, most people tend to focus their nostalgia on one over the other.

You’ve found a cool niche, but I would expect far more resonance with the vintage PC / DOS gaming crowd, and maybe even the Amiga / Atari PC crowd.

But like I said, I’m not any better at this than you, and I also acknowledge that your Reddit story may be just one of many attempts you’ve made at marketing.

I hope you keep at it, and find enjoyment in the process, but don’t be afraid to take breaks, or try something wildly different. Best of luck!

So requiring people accept Google or Apple’s terms and conditions and being forced to own and use one of their products, on a whim, during a crisis, is less egregious than doing so long term?

“That ship has sailed” essentially means that it has already happened, and precedent has been set. Which… it has. That it was (initially) done as a temporary measure doesn’t change that.

As someone from the US state of Michigan that has at least two competing demonyms, I actually find the idea of everyone using a different form based on preference to be charming.

As an added bonus, many have an array of color options, which makes it easy to change the lights to suit Halloween, Easter, Independence Day, or any other holiday you want your house to observe.

I’m definitely going to try this out on a personal project soon.

I had forgotten about Imba. I recall trying it a few years ago, and I loved it, with the exception that it wasn’t capable of doing something that I considered rather crucial at the time.

I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, and I know there was an issue filed asking for exactly what I wanted, with positive intent to add the feature, but as time went on I kind of dropped and forgot about Imba.

I’m curious to try something in it and see how I fare with however far it’s progressed since then. And I will definitely check this framework out when I do.

I’m very sorry to read this. I went through some similar times with my mom after a stroke. Exercise, seeing people, and helping her feel useful helped a lot with the symptoms, but convincing her to do these things wasn’t always easy.

My mom’s case wasn’t necessarily a symptom of loneliness, but I can corroborate with my own anecdata that when I feel most lonely, I’m very tired, no matter how much I sleep. My muscles will ache, even.

It does take a very real physical toll, and I have little doubt that loneliness can cause or accelerate cognitive issues. Loneliness is as genuine of a health concern as obesity and other physical issues, IMO.

Best of luck to you and your mother. You have the right attitude - it won’t be easy, but you can still make some memories and experiences with her.

I can also say from my own experiences with my mom, even when she gives outward indications of not remembering what may have happened hours ago, all the time you spend together DOES make a difference.

Funny, when discussing many situations such as poverty, career opportunities, or physical health issues, negative experiences leading to a pessimistic outlook is usually accepted, and met with acknowledgement of inequalities or systemic issues. Suggesting otherwise is sometimes even taboo.

But attempt to share the same kind of experience-informed outlook on friendship and sociality, and the same empathy is rare. This outlook seems to deeply bother people who presumably have had positive experiences.

The means of reconciling this bothersome viewpoint seems to be either insistence on a supposed “friendship meritocracy” (just do these things and have a happy attitude and you’ll find friends!) or by skipping straight to vitriol. The response is fascinating in its own right, really.

Just purchased - I loved the Game Engine Black Book Doom, and as someone who's always been fascinated with the CPS-1 and CPS-2 and the arcade scene that I just missed as a kid, this is even more up my alley!

This feels like the equivalent to the busywork example in the article. Instead of sweeping the already clean floors just to appear busy, we're scurrying to show frequent progress towards the impetuous goals set from the previous demo, for the sake of showing visible, arbitrary progress.

It would be like an architect and builder assembling a shoddy movie set facade of a house without a proper foundation or framing, just to please a client who expects to see visible, street-facing progress on a steady and consistent basis.

Perhaps it falls to engineering to educate management on setting proper expectations, and creating a proper timeline with milestones.

But much like an employee at Tim Horton's isn't often in a position to tell the boss that time spent physically recovering will be far more useful than cleaning an already clean floor, we're often put in a position of enabling improper client and management expectations, with an implied "or else".

> You may think that being on a project that will never ship and never have any or many customers is great because you’ll have a light schedule and can improve on some skills on the side...

Unfortunately, "bullshit project" and "highly visible project" are not mutually exclusive opposites.

Some of my biggest bullshit projects have been projects that had several prominent eyes watching them closely, demanding frequent status updates and demos (the subject of which was not always articulated).

Nothing worse than working on a project that you feel is doomed to fail or at least fail to meet overly lofty expectations, yet still feel entirely responsible to try to pull something, anything off.

Also, never doubt the ability of managers and even less skilled developer-leaders to concoct improperly defined software projects to solve poorly defined problems.

I've seen, multiple times, management say "I have problem {X}, and I think a project doing {Thing A} will solve it", only for the same management to have "problem drift" such that "problem {X}" morphs into loosely-related "problem {Y}", which "{Thing A}" won't actually solve, but too late -- management is now convinced that problems {X} and {Y} are virtually the same thing, and {Thing A} which was poorly conceived to begin with, can now definitely solve {X} AND {Y} if only you'd read their minds and connect whatever vague dots they have floating in their heads for them and built the proper {Thing} for it".

Wow... this comment turned out to be a rant.

tldr; I somewhat relate to this article.

Additionally, it seems to be a stark contrast to Twitter, which seemed to favor pitting people of opposing ideas against each other to increase engagement. It felt designed to create a powder keg.

This seems to solve two problems -- #1, the problem of "how can I not be bothered by Nazis and violent extremists", and #2, the problem of "where do the people who are being repressed from sharing information that an authoritarian doesn't want shared go".

But I don't think it will solve problem #3 of non-extremist people of different viewpoints and diverse backgrounds being able to civilly discuss ideas or share perspectives and news stories. This seems like it will just create larger, more impenetrable silos breeding more contempt for "those other people" who we will no longer have any need or reason to even speak to.

Is it even possible to solve for problems #2 and #3 at the same time?

Doesn’t a hot job market and social safety net equally provide workers freedom to choose an alternative to the supposedly exploitative gig without regulation?

Generally, if a job market is hot, it means employers are incentivized to not be jerks and try to lure workers to them with perks, thereby giving plenty of alternatives to those who feel exploited.

And given a social safety net, wouldn’t one not feel “stuck” in said job as a necessity to live?

If someone still chooses something “exploitative”, then perhaps there is a benefit to that job that makes it worth while in a way that regulators (and others privileged enough not work said job) don’t see themselves.

What's crazy to me is that the NBA is banning a specific shade of cream from one team, on the basis that it may interfere with court keying in some locations, when several possible solutions are proposed in the article.

But then the NHL is just like "hey, away jerseys are white and the ice is white and the boards are white and we really dgaf".

This license, and alternatively the JetBrains licenses, are awesome. I will always try to support them!

Being given the freedom to install this on whatever computers I own, regardless of OS*, for one very reasonable fee, is amazing compared to the standard guard of “only one OS and only x computers”, or worse, “subscription based and you lose it all if you stop subscribing”.

I’ve been living in Linux using GIMP for what I’ve needed, but I’m definitely buying and supporting this for when I need a little more than GIMP.

* sans Linux in this case, sadly