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lazerwalker

2,528 karma · joined March 11, 2011

www.lazerwalker.com
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lazerwalker··on Criticisms of “The Body Keeps the Score”
This person takes specific claims from the book and tries to dispute them, while ignoring that the book’s number one big-picture idea of “trauma is unprocessed emotions and memories physically stored in the body” remains the conceptual grounding for all modern non-cognitive trauma processing methods like EMDR (which are clearly effective, even as we do not fully understand e.g. the neurological mechanism by which the adaptive information processing network functions). He then points you to an older article of his that is behind a paywall.

I have my issues with van der Kolk’s work (I would personally not recommend The Body Keeps The Score to most people), but this is sloppy embarrassing clickbait.

lazerwalker··on Claude Code on the web
I have criticisms of both tools like Claude Code and how applicable the 'pair programming' metaphor is here, but strong disagree that the person driving during pairing is the one who learns the most (or perhaps the implied "and the non-driver doesn't learn enough"). A good dynamic pairing session is equally valuable for both participants, even if there's a skill gap, and even if you're not alternating drivers as often as you should.
lazerwalker··on Show HN: I've built a tiny hand-held keyboard
For folks who are interested in the UX design of chorded layouts, Artsey and Ardux (https://ardux.io) might be of interest. Artsey is a specific 2x4 one-handed chorded layout (of which Ardux is now a more robust implementation, with optional variations for slightly larger numbers of keys) that borrows a lot from colemak. I'm a big fan.

I particularly appreciate the simplicity of a 2x4 layout — OP's device rocks, but I worry about the ergonomics of thumb movement.

lazerwalker··on Gem.coop
This project is or will be a worker-owned co-op, as evidenced by the strict requirements placed on anyone who registers a .coop domain name. I imagine at least equal ownership (if not risk and power) is a given in this specific instance, and profits will explicitly not flow upwards to shareholders who are not also workers.
lazerwalker··on We're bringing Pebble back
Just basing things off of Android won't get you the "measured in days to weeks" battery life people appreciated about the Pebble, and building your own watch OS from scratch optimized for battery life but still supporting BLE connection to a phone sounds like a great way to spend several years.
lazerwalker··on How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain
For most people, using e-ink for general-purpose computing tasks is going to be so jarring and unpleasant that it's extremely difficult to recommend to anyone who doesn't have severe eyestrain issues and has tried and failed more typical accommodations. I adore e-ink for reading, and own several e-ink readers in various form factors, but the tradeoffs just don't make sense for a desktop computer for most people unless staring at your monitor for eight hours a day is causing you physical harm.
lazerwalker··on MiniConf: A Virtual Conference in a Box
This looks great! I’d love to see some of the fantastic context in your lovely Twitter thread included on the website.

As someone who’s currently in industry rather than academia, I interpreted “virtual conference” as “a Twitch or YouTube stream, and likely some sort of chat space like a Discord”. That landing page does a great job of explaining the technical underpinnings of your tool, but doesn’t actually explain what sort of site/services the web server actually serves!

Even just including the GIF from the beginning of your Twitter thread would be super helpful.

lazerwalker··on Shopify Goes Digital by Default
It's really not fair to describe the current situation as a "forced WFH experiment". We're trying to work and be even remotely productive during an unprecedented global pandemic, and also happen to be working from home.
lazerwalker··on Using Anki to remember what you read
I agree, Anki on iOS is significantly underpriced relative to the value it provides ;)
lazerwalker··on Show HN: Set with Friends – A Real-Time multiplayer online card game
You can't copyright a game mechanic, but you can copyright content. This is why Words With Friends has a different board layout, tile distribution, and tile point values from Scrabble.

In that Set C&D, the infringing implementation is using art assets from the copyrighted Set game. Presumably, a version with different colors/shapes/etc (and a different name, so as to also avoid trademark infringement) would be totally fine.

lazerwalker··on Tools we used to create a hit HTML5 game on Steam
These days it's mostly still just "use Cordova/PhoneGap", yeah.

For Flappy Royale (http://flappyroyale.io, https://github.com/flappy-royale/flappy-royale) we built our own native web view wrappers for both iOS and Android, but that's mostly because we already had extensive native iOS/Android dev experience ourselves and wanted more control.

In my experience Cordova/PhoneGap come with a lot of cruft and bloat if all you care about is a canvas and a handful of other hyper-specific native API hooks. At least in the sense of engineering and tooling complexity; I can't speak to runtime performance considerations, except that it should be irrelevant on iOS since everything's using the same WKWebView under the hood.

lazerwalker··on Tools we used to create a hit HTML5 game on Steam
I'm guessing that means you rolled your own canvas API code, rather than using a library like PixiJS. Is that something you'd consider open-sourcing, or is it so tightly integrated with game-specific logic that it wouldn't make sense?
lazerwalker··on Peloton S-1
I have a smart trainer, rather than a 'dumb' stationary bike, because the thing that gets me to ride a bike in my apartment without the satisfaction of getting somewhere or feeling the wind rushing in my face is getting to measure my performance and see numbers improve over time.

I get that I'm not Peloton's market (they don't care about nerds who build their own kit, and that's probably the right choice) but I 100% understand why this stuff matters.

lazerwalker··on Escape rooms are big business
This is a cool idea, but also a pretty unsolved problem, even in digital games. Heck, computers can't even procedurally generate decent crossword puzzles.

Best comparison point I can think of are roguelikes, but even if you can figure out a way to make custom hardware build-out easy, roguelikes largely work by making replayability cheap. It's hard to build an on-ramp to teach players about the interactions of complex systems when each playthrough costs them $50+ and takes an hour plus transpotation time.

lazerwalker··on Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut
Sync.com
lazerwalker··on Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut
I wouldn't necessarily frame that as an inevitability of Dropbox as a product, as much as an inevitability of the traditional VC funding model.

It's likely you could build a very healthy business selling people file syncing — I personally use a tiny minimalist Dropbox competitor that seems to be doing just fine. The hypergrowth demanded by investors when you take on $1.7B in funding is what's the challenge.

lazerwalker··on Amazon will pull the plug on dash buttons
FWIW, Apple's 30% cut doesn't apply. You can't use Apple's IAP system for physical goods.
lazerwalker··on Show HN: Generate a fake app to replace any addictive app
What I'm hearing is if they replaced "for server costs" with "for costs", people would be fine.
lazerwalker··on Duolingo Built a $700M Company Without Charging Users
Is "our users aren't our customers" really something to be proud of in 2019?
lazerwalker··on The art of interrupting software engineers
An answer there would likely be smaller teams. For context, when I was at Pivotal (on the consulting side, years ago) a team of 4-5 pairs would be considered quite large.

Also a problem that's solved by the combination of pairing and frequent communication. You don't need full context on anything yourself, as long as the combination of you, your pair, and anyone you can grab within arms reach can fill in the blanks.

lazerwalker··on Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model
Most times I've worked with Lambda (or other competing cloud functions) it's been difficult or infeasible to run my function locally. Which means I can now ONLY test my code manually after a minute or so of deploy time.

Separate from anything else about Dark, it appears to fundamentally avoid that problem.

lazerwalker··on The Hottest Phones for the Next Billion Users Aren’t Smartphones
Probably depends on what you mean by "young". Anecdotally (family friends + news articles, although who knows what the latter is worth) a lot of teens are super-into videochat as a primary means of communication. Facetiming someone is (allegedly) as common and casual for teens as texting is for 20-somethings.
lazerwalker··on Nintendo Switch Lite: a smaller, cheaper Switch built for handheld play
Nintendo first-party IP is a HUGE draw, and they're currently on a roll in terms of making games that are both innovative and good. It's hard to overstate how important that is.

The Switch is also huge for being the most successful example of letting people play "real" not-mobile games in a portable device. With pretty much any modern indie release, my choices are to buy it on my computer, where I can play on my TV or my monitor, or buy it on Switch, where I can play it at home but also on the subway, when traveling, etc. That's huge.

It also means local multiplayer with my friends is way easier than it's been before. My Switch case (which comfortably fits in my bag) has 4 controllers, and because the Switch itself is so portable, it's also easy to play games where my friends each bring their own Switches. The combination of the Switch's mass-market success, and (again) the fact that these are "full" console-sized releases instead of smaller "portable" releases, make it feel meaningfully better at this than e.g. the various Game Boys/DSes or PSP / PS Vita.

lazerwalker··on Pirate our games, don't buy them from key resellers, say indies
I think there's a giant qualitative difference in the ethics of price discrimination around medical necessities vs luxury goods.
lazerwalker··on I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things
Do you personally have recs for how to parse manpages? In my experience, I've found them far more difficult to grok than e.g. the MDN JavaScript docs. Particularly if I'm trying to look up a tool that I don't already have familiarity with, as opposed to e.g. just trying to look up the correct syntax for a flag.
lazerwalker··on Boden – Native mobile cross-platform applications
Apple's App Store licensing agreement allows you to distribute GPL v2 software. However, the GPL v2 license does not allow distribution under Apple's licensing terms.

It's possible to have GPL v2-licensed software on the App Store, but it essentially requires relicensing or dual licensing by the copyright holder (which is what they do here with selling a commercial license to distribute).

lazerwalker··on On Perks
In the US as a freelancer, you generally either:

(a) Have a plan bought on an ACA marketplace (pretty expensive and not very good)

(b) After you leave a full-time job, a government program called COBRA means you can still maintain your relationship with your old health care provider for 18 months, except you have to pay all the premiums your employer formerly paid (generally better coverage than an ACA plan, but way more expensive)

(c) Have a spouse whose plan you can be on, or be on your parents' plan if you're under 26

It's not great.

lazerwalker··on JetBlue explains to a passenger how it got a photo of her face
When flying from a Schengen area country to the US, border patrol on the departing side is entirely managed by that country. Often e.g. United-operated flights from larger European airports will have their own passport check, but that always happens after you pass through the departing country's passport control. At least, this is my personal experience flying between Germany and the US ~once a month.

I have been to a few airports where you explicitly clear US customs at the departing airport before leaving for the US — Vancouver, BC and Dublin Shannon come to mind.

If you've overstayed your automatic 90-day Schengen area travel visa, a common hack for backpackers and such is to intentionally leave the Schengen area from someplace like France that's generally less strict about counting exact days than many other EU countries.

To be fair, I don't have much experience flying from the Schengen area to non-Schengen area non-US countries. It's totally possible this is all rigamarole that the US government pressures other countries to do.

lazerwalker··on JetBlue explains to a passenger how it got a photo of her face
To the parent's point, though, passports ARE checked at the point you exit the Schengen area, whereas they're generally not when you leave the US.
lazerwalker··on Coffee Cups Are Next
I recall doing a science project in middle school where I did double-blind taste tests of tap water with a half-dozen brands of bottled water (in a place with decent-tasting tap water, FWIW). IIRC, people showed no statistically significant preference for Evian or other fancy bottled water over the local tap water.

That isn't to say that there's no taste difference, but that preferring a specific brand of bottled water is likely to be much more about the subconscious effect of marketing than something a priori more enjoyable about the mineral content of a specific brand.

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