kruczek

Similarly this one: https://stackroboflow.com/#!/question/19297

Sounds like jumpstarting your userbase would be easy, once you allow users to define other users :)

> Secondly, it needs a phone number all the time to use, which ties in with personal identity. Why? A better alternative would be a project that allows someone to choose a username and be done with it! Like HN!

Thousand times this! And it is actually a problem both with Signal and Telegram. In the latter case, I managed to avoid installing Telegram app on the phone, by using Android emulator and registering from that, but why forcing users to use such workarounds, instead of simply allowing to register without any ties to the telephone. I'd be willing to pay for a messenger which provides privacy and is not tied to the phone.

> You say "awful AI", but it's clearly a AAA selling game, where 90%+ of players play on the single player setting.

Yes, 90%+ of players play on the single player setting - despite an awful AI. And I say that as one of that 90%. It is certainly not the AI that made me buy and play Civ. I don't expect nor want AI to play perfectly, but I do want AI to play good enough to not make ridiculously dumb decisions.

For example, notice how often AI leaves embarked units unprotected, so they can be easily destroyed. Or how often despite having long range artillery, it will enter town's firing range (even with that artillery!). Or how with its own towns it prefers so much to fire at even slightly damaged units, before attacking siege weapons (which deal much greater damage to towns).

Eh, I think Civilization is a great example of an awful AI. Specifically I mean here Civ5 and they way it does combat. It is absurdly easy to outmaneuver and defeat even vastly superior armies. It'd be much more fun to have an enemy who can put up a fight.

While reading the article, I got a feeling that reading support emails is only one step away from answering support emails - and here you are, suggesting just that.

I've seen further steps down this road - if there are engineers already answering support emails, then why do we need support people at all. After all, engineers have better knowledge of technical details and can make changes themselves. No need for intermediaries.

I understand the reasons for having engineers read (or maybe even sometimes answer) support emails, but still I'd be extremely wary of again working for a company that walks this path.

> it's not the medium it's the message that has an effect.

Exactly.

Thousands of years ago Socrates was complaining about the invention of writing which would "create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves".

Hundreds of years ago due to the invention of printing press "there was growing concern (...) that these cheap, plentiful books were seducing children into a life of crime and violence".

And today people worry about TV, video games, etc. - while at the same time holding books as the holy grail of knowledge.

All these are merely mediums for transfer of ideas. Blame the message, not the messenger.

> The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding In all of the directions it can whiz As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is

Faster than that - the universe expands faster than the speed of light, because it's not the matter that is moving away, it is the space itself that grows between.

I don't think it's rose colored glasses, but neither do I think gaming industry is becoming more and more focused around ROI. AAA titles developed by large companies certainly in most cases are like that, but the gaming industry is much bigger than a few corporations releasing titles with the speed of machine gun.

There are hundreds of indie developers and I believe this is where most of the innovation can be found. In that regard it is the same as in the "good old days", before the arrival of AAA corporations.

Of course, and I'm not arguing with that.

I'm arguing with the notion that science can't be used to figure out the truth. Even if it can't reach the truth in the mathematical/logical sense, it is still the best tool we have to move in the direction of truth.

> The scientific method can't be used to figure out truth. It can't be used to prove anything. It is an extremely useful method for describing how the world likely works, and for building tools.

How the world works is the truth which science seeks to figure out. And scientific method is the best tool we have for that task. Certainly much better than religion, which starts with "the truth" and then walks backward to prove it.

However I get a feeling you use different meaning of the truth, than I do. If by it you mean some profound reason for our lives, then I agree that is not the truth that science seeks.

Sure they do. The examples you gave are all for subjective meaningfulness - my teeth, my health, my pain and pleasure are all very meaningful to me, but at the same time I know they are meaningless in the grand scheme of things and I'm fine with that.

In my experience the difference between Google and DDG results is that when Google has desired page as the first result, DDG will have it somewhere on the first page of results. Definitely not as good, but still very much comparable.

And I also pretty much never have to use !g. DDG results are sufficient most of the time, and when they are not, I notice Google usually also fails to provide satisfactory results.

You can withdraw consent, but data may have been collected not based on consent, in which case your consent is irrelevant.

> I've been hearing that VR will be huge since the 80s, which is when I first tried a VR headset. Current tech is higher res and framerate with nearly all the same limitations.

I remember seeing a VR headset in the 90's once. The only thing in common with today VR is that it provided stereoscopic vision. I find it baffling to say that current VR only has higher resolution and framerate.

There were many different improvements, which make current VR way better than two decades ago:

- smaller headsets (those headsets from the 90's where huge helmets, nowhere near the size of current goggles)

- true 3d graphics (the 90's demo I saw was of Doom, which didn't even have 3d models, only sprites)

- headset tracking (the main source of immersion, if I turn my head I expect the view to turn in VR as well)

- hands tracking (because obviously I want to directly interact with the world, rather than through the mouse and keyboard)

- force feedback (by itself it always felt like kind of a useless gimmick, until I experienced it in VR)

> somebody whose attention is being drawn by something that only one of us can see.

Typically whatever is seen in VR is repliacted on the monitor, so it's not true that only one person in the room can see what's going on in VR.

Hm, from my experience, hot-seat VR removes only visual contact between people on the couch and the person in VR. But there is still conversation, there is still commenting about what is going on and giving hints. Much more so, than when watching a show or a movie together with someone else - in which case it usually means passively watching, exchanging maybe at most one or two sentences along the way.

From the two, I'd say watching TV together is what is "barely more than passive consumption of content", VR feels more much active, because the people involved create the action, rather than just consume it.

> The VR optimists underestimate how deeply human it is to manipulate a tool with your hands.

But that's exactly what VR enables. Instead of clicking a button to swing an axe, in VR you can naturally swing that axe with your own hand. Instead of dragging a mouse to draw a line, you can just move your hand. In many cases VR allows to skip that layer of indirection between input (keyboards/mice/joysticks) and output (screen).

I agree that in general it is a very important improvement for VR to allow motion-sensitive people to enjoy it. However I do not agree this by itself will make VR much more viable than it is now. Motion sickness is just one problem, but without addressing others (high price, low resolution, narrow FOV, bulky headset), it will not get much more viable.

And I say it as someone who considers current state of VR to be amazing and enjoys it daily. But personally for me relatively low resolution would be #1 priority to improve.

> I feel like teachers should be graded every fews years on their teaching skills.

They are, or at least used to be. At least at high schools in Poland, teachers would get occasional visits from higher ups who observed their lessons and would give them feedback.

I used ClearCase 3 years ago and this is spot on. ClearCase is little better than keeping revision history manually by zipping old versions of files. I sometimes wonder what kind of insane mind came up with its workflow.

First of all, to checkout a branch, you don't simply select its name. You need to write a freaking configuration file to tell CC what you want to checkout. And it is entirely possible to accidentally write that configuration file in such a way that you'll have half of repository checked out from one version of code, while the other half is checked out from another version of code.

Then there is history of changes. Or in case of ClearCase: histories of changes. Because there are many, in fact as many as there are files. Yes, each file has its own history of changes, completely independent from other files. So if you make a commit which changes 10 files, CC will create separate commit for each of those 10 files, each with the same commit message. Needless to say, browsing history with same commit messages repeated tens or hundred of times, is quite an adventure.

Oh, and because of that, it is not possible to simply checkout some old version of code. If you are lucky, you will have put labels on all files of needed version of code, so then you can checkout that label. Otherwise the only option is to checkout based on dates of commits, and hope that your provided date won't actually cut any commit in half.

Possibly.

Under GDPR, if your data processing is based on user consent, then that consent must be given freely. That means you should provide equivalent service, regardless of consent being given. Providing one service for free and another for a fee is not equivalent, so I'd argue that such consent would be invalid, as it was not freely given.

However, consent is only one of several conditions for processing data. Another would be "legitimate interests" of the business. If you choose to process data based on it, then you do not need consent at all. In such case you can provide separate services: free with data sharing, and paid without data sharing.

The trick here is that you actually need to be able to prove that "legitimate interests" of your business require collection and processing of that data. And additionally such interests are overridden by "fundamental rights and freedoms" of users. Which is probably why most businesses went the consent route, as it appears to be more clear-cut.

> it has become fashionable to decry making personal changes as "irrelevant" and "ineffective" with the lie that since everyone isn't doing it, there's not point in anyone doing it

I think it's very short-sighted for people to say that. While there may be no direct effects of certain personal changes, there are still indirect results.

Such change may make me more self-conscious about our environment. If I made a hundred irrelevant small changes, then perhaps it'll be more likely for me to even realize the need for a big change, when it comes.

Same way, other people who see my small changes might be more likely to even start thinking about our environmental impact.

Personally I find current VR already at the mind-blowing level, although I agree there are some things which definitely need improvement. However for me FOV never has been an issue, I barely notice lack of peripheral vision.

The main issue I see is relatively low resolution - with normal monitors you have at least 1920x1080 covering small percentage of your view; with VR there's half of that covering whole view. Increasing FOV without providing better resolution will only make it worse.

This can be especially noticeable in games with large distances (like ETS2) and games with small text size. For those I'd definitely like to see a headset with at least 4k resolution.

Hm, as far as I understand these statistics count people who have had their headset connected at the time of measurement. I wonder how much this skewed the numbers, since for example I connect the headset only when using it. So despite using it daily, I still likely wouldn't appear in these stats.

> VR headsets are very hard on the human brain, since they confuse our multiple range sensing systems.

I disagree. They are hard on brains of some humans, mainly due to motion sickness. But that happens only when there is artificial movement involved - when user's movement doesn't match camera movement.

And it really depends on the person, some are more susceptible to that, some are less. I also think some resilience to that effect can be trained with practice.

Then there's the style of artificial movement provided by software. I've seen several solutions which make it more bearable - generally those involve some degree of physical activity beyond just pressing a button.

Adjustment of focal plane seems like a rare problem; it's honestly the first time I hear it mentioned as an issue which is "very hard on the human brain". Usually it's all about motion sickness.

> but I have yet to see any usage that would justify spending spending as much one one as I did my TV

For me, it's about activity it provides as much as it is about immersion. I wanted to reduce my time sitting idly, and VR lets me do just that without abandoning gaming at all.

I could understand involving police and courts when there's virtual currency involved, if that currency is related to real money.

But seriously? Sending police after people who enable players to teleport, have god mode and fly in a game???

That puts Rockstar and Take Two on my personal no buy list.

> around 60-90 seconds every 15 minutes or so

Fairly long is relative. Compare that to TV where 15 minutes is the duration of ads, not interval between them...

> There is nothing in the GDPR that puts on legitimate interest over another including your so called right to privacy.

In fact there is one exception which thankfully limits legitimate interests of data controllers:

"processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child."

It remains to be seen in practice how much data controllers' interests can be overridden by "interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject".

Please see GDPR Article 7, §4:

"When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia, the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract."

And then Recital 43:

"Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case, or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance."

If:

1. You ask users for consent

2. The consent is not strictly necessary to provide the service

3. You deny the service to users who decline to give consent

Then the consent isn't freely given and therefore invalid.

> GDPR does not forced you to provide a free service or a service that generate less revenue.

True, but then consent isn't the right basis for processing of data. As you mentioned, business justification, or "legitimate interests" as GDPR puts it, is what you should be using.

> If a user really consents to being tracked for advertising purposes, the GDPR allows tracking.

That's not exactly true either. For the consent to be valid, it must be freely given - that is:

1. The user must have a choice to give consent or not give it

2. The service provided should be the same regardless of #1, unless the consent is necessary for the service (e.g. consent to store address for delivery of goods - although in such case this shouldn't really be based on consent)

Unfortunately many sites either do not give opt out at all, or make it hard to find it - in such cases consent can't really be considered to be freely given.