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linkgoron

130 karma · joined February 6, 2019

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linkgoron··on The science of Monkey Island: can grog dissolve a metal mug that fast?
The Drifter is a great narrative, but the puzzles are just OK.

Wadjet Eye developed and published games have quite a few great games. Blackwell series is awesome (I would've wanted a different ending for the series, but the games are great), Resonance, Unavowed, Primordia, Gemini Rue and Technobabylon are all great as well.

Kathy Rain is also good (haven't played the second one).

I doubt, though, that any are better than Curse of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango (which is arguably held back by its 3d graphics and controls) or The Longest Journey.

linkgoron··on The science of Monkey Island: can grog dissolve a metal mug that fast?
Thimbleweed Park was a fine game with a very disappointing ending, as was RTMI sadly. I was also fine with Return's more "streamlined" game approach, but I would've liked the games to have a real storyline with a real ending instead of some kind of meta story where the journey is more important or whatever. I just lose interest almost immediately... I wanted to play Thimbleweed Park's free "mini-game" that he released during Covid, but just couldn't make myself play it due to the ending of Thimbleweed Park.

Sadly, I had a somewhat similar disappointing experience with Dreamfall: Chapters (although it was a worse game than Gilbert's games), as The Longest Journey is, IMO, one of the best adventure games ever. I played it as the episodes were released, and wanted to get back to it as they improved many things post-completion, but the could never force myself to do it.

There are still adventure games that are great that are released today by other people though.

linkgoron··on The Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem
You don't need a GOOD proof, just A proof.
linkgoron··on AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs
What are you trying to prove? He never said you're wrong, just the fact that something is illegal doesn't mean that it won't happen to you, just that it's illegal - those are just words written in a book somewhere. Even so-called law bound adversaries break the law all the time. A cop beating you senseless or breaking into your home is illegal, but it happens all the time. You're welcome to sue after the fact.
linkgoron··on Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees
Microsoft hired a lot of people post-covid. Googling, they went from 125k employees in 2017, to 163k in 2020, to 221k in 2022, and have been mostly steady in size since then (latest number from 2025 is 228k).

How "temporary" is overhiring? I think that they could probably cut quite a bit from the company, and it might actually improve their output.

linkgoron··on DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
> If a party runs on the platform of ending democracy, and they win a fair election, I don't know of any safety mechanisms in democracy itself that prevent that.

Yes there are, laws requiring super majority, for example, to change, or counter. You even state so yourself:

> There are existing laws that limit powers, but with enough support and legislative seats that can all be changed.

These changes need "enough support", because there is protection built in the system - so a majority is not enough. Other examples of protection are the Judicial branch having the power to cancel illegal legislation, EOs and other government decisions, the President having the power to veto bills. All of these supposedly provide a checks and balances system, although it is of course imperfect, especially with gerrymandering or the way that the Supreme Court is built (in my opinion life tenure is a bad idea, the court itself needs more members, and the way the members are selected is too politically oriented).

> We either believe in democracy and accept that means majority rules, or we don't and we might as well pick a different system as we don't really believe in the principles of democracy.

If you have a super-majority that supports extremes that's a whole different ball game. You originally talked about "majority", and how that's the be all end all of democracy. For example, in the US, to change the constitution you'd super majority on the Federal level, as well as (IIRC) majority in 75% of the states.

Nonetheless, everything I've stated is of course based on police/army that will listen to the law and act accordingly. If the people with guns/tanks/advanced weapons act in an illegal way and against the system, of course the law is worthless.

linkgoron··on DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
> My point is simply that if a person or members of a party get elected in numbers to change that, and were clear of their intentions with voters, its totally within Democratic principles for the laws to be changed.

Not, it's not. If members of a party get elected to remove the ability of their opposition or some of their opposition to vote or cancel the next democratic elections that's in fact undemocratic. Especially in a system like in the US where even without an actual majority of votes you can get the presidency or a majority in the legislative branch.

linkgoron··on DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
If that's true why have a constitution and laws limiting the power of the government? Using your logic, every decision made by the government is fine.

If the majority runs on cancelling democracy itself (e.g. that if they're elected there will be no more elections and they will stay in power), and they gain a small majority, is it fine for them to now cancel all elections in the future?

If a party runs on (say) taking the homes of those that voted for the opposition, do you think that it's fine if they do it if they get in power? Maybe put them in jails or camps?

Democracy is not just about majority rule. It's about protection of minorities, different rights like free speech or property rights, free trial and other things. There's a reason why there's are constitutions, courts, legislative branches etc.

linkgoron··on BYD quarterly sales beat Tesla for first time
Battery is fine by itself, but I'd say that the range is somewhere between 315-350km depending on terrain etc. Definitely not the 420km that's advertised. I knew this beforehand from reviews so it wasn't unexpected, but I'd be pretty angry if I didn't read about it from reviews before I got the car.

For me it's fine as I still only charge once a week and I still have around 70%-80% usually, unless I visit remote relatives. I could probably stretch and recharge every other week if I really wanted to, but I prefer to have it ready as we sometimes do have longer drives.

linkgoron··on BYD quarterly sales beat Tesla for first time
I've been happily driving a BYD Atto 3 for ~6 months now. Very happy with it, its got a lot of nice software and hardware features, carplay/android auto works well, driving is nice and very smooth (especially on sport mode), and my daughter loves playing with the "strings" on the doors. The most glaring issue is the battery which is really its weakest part.

Is it better than a Tesla? Probably not - there are clearly places in the software where I know that Teslas are more polished (e.g. the "360" parking view which IMO could be a bit better, although I feel like I'm parking in gta 2), and the acceleration won't blow your socks off. However, they're much cheaper and it's a good family car (for us) - definitely for the price.

linkgoron··on Awsviz.dev simplifying AWS IAM policies
yes, I immediately thought that the pronunciation was Auschwitz...
linkgoron··on An even faster Microsoft Edge
While somewhat true, to its credit Teams is using basically the same UI stack for its web-based product (teams.microsoft.com) and its "native" desktop app, so there's a win there.

Also, the Teams desktop app has moved from Electron to Edge WebView2 - which is a Microsoft product.

linkgoron··on An even faster Microsoft Edge
Teams is no longer using Angular, it has moved to React
linkgoron··on I'll refrain from providing code that involve concepts as you're under 18
I wonder if it's confused because the code and question contain "std".
linkgoron··on FAQ on Leaving Google
I did not miss the point, I just don't see why it's relevant. This isn't a thread about Apple's products and their success. The fact that Apple started from KHTML is not really relevant. However, it's clear that at the beginning Google was very dependent on Webkit and Apple, and there's a good reason why it took them five years of gaining development expertise and market share before forking Webkit.

I've already stated that Chrome's success is not just because that it was forked from Webkit (e.g. v8, and other things that people mentioned here as well), but it was a huge jumpstart for them, and it would've taken them much longer to get a leading browser without it. e.g. Microsoft basically gave up on developing their own engine after failing with IE and the original Edge - and are now also based on Chromium.

Chrome is (IMO) much better than Safari, Maps is (IMO) a great product, Youtube is a a huge success and much bigger than it was when they bought it (homegrown Google Video failed), Android was also essentially an acquihire, as others have mentioned (using a lot of Google's resources) and is hugely successful. It doesn't change the fact that most existing Google products today are acquisitions that they improved, and not home-grown products from the "20% do your own thing" era - which is what the original comment talked about.

linkgoron··on FAQ on Leaving Google
Chrome/Chromium was developed for quite a while using Webkit. Chromium was created in 2008 and only after Google had already captured a third of the browser market share (according to Statista) did they fork it (April 2013).

The fact that basically all of the big companies (Microsoft, Google, Apple) use Webkit or Chromium shows that it's very difficult to build and maintain one successfully IMO. I think that Mozilla are essentially the only ones developing something that's somewhat competitive, not to mention that most smaller companies (e.g. Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, Island etc.) all use Chromium.

I'm not saying that it's easy to succeed with a product even after you've bought it, or started it from a fork (see less successful Chromium/Webkit forks). I'm just saying that it was not something built from the ground-up in Google. For example, v8 was and really changed a lot of things in the JavaScript world including Node, Deno etc.

linkgoron··on FAQ on Leaving Google
Also forked from something Apple made (Webkit)
linkgoron··on FAQ on Leaving Google
That's like saying that people should feel thankful for paying their taxes because that's what paves their roads and builds their schools. Yes, ads bring in money, and maybe they do enable Search - but it's at most a necessary evil, not something to celebrate.
linkgoron··on Apple tells EU it has five different App Stores, not just one
The system already acknowledges that two judges are not guaranteed to reach the same conclusion. First of all, because there's a system of appeals. However, an even stronger example is that you need a majority of judges in certain cases - e.g. in the US Supreme Court and other courts.
linkgoron··on Apple tells EU it has five different App Stores, not just one
That's just not true. A lot of judicial systems give leeway for judges to rule using the spirit of the law and not just the letter of the law. Especially for obviously fake arguments, or when laws need updating to newer norms or unforeseen technologies.
linkgoron··on Israeli Justices Reject Netanyahu-Led Move to Limit Court
Two of the justices (Hayut and Baron) are retiring - but I don't see this government trying something so radical again.
linkgoron··on OpenAI investors try to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden firing
OpenAI is not a "thing", the workers are a thing. OpenAI is nothing if the engineers/scientists leave the company to work somewhere else if Altman leaves. According to reports, the head of research and other senior staff have said that they will resign if Altman is not restored as CEO.
linkgoron··on Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard
What I'm trying to say is that games that are differentiators between consoles are common, and this cannot be a basis of blocking such a deal. Indeed, it's no different than applications running only on ARM or x86, or requiring ray-tracing, or a specific Vulkan version support.
linkgoron··on Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard
All consoles have console exclusives. Nintendo has Mario/Zelda/Metroid/Pokemon, Sony has The Last of Us, and God of War Ragnarok, and others.
linkgoron··on Modernity has made us allergic
Obviously, if it doesn't happen to you it must mean that he is wrong.
linkgoron··on Complexity theory’s 50-year journey to the limits of knowledge
That "proof" is applicable to any algorithm that "exists". As "an algorithm exists, so we can enumerate all of the Turing machines "in parallel" and find it" would work for anything in P, other algorithms as well. However, good luck actually running that algorithm... Enumerating Turing machines in parallel, executing them, and n could be many times larger than the age of the universe. You want something that you can execute, not something that in theory exists.
linkgoron··on Complexity theory’s 50-year journey to the limits of knowledge
An example for such a proof would be using the probabilistic method. However, even if we are ignoring some artificial problems, there are some "natural" problems that are known to be in P that we do not have algorithms for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-constructive_algorithm_exi...

Also see:

https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/92087/are-there-any-p...

linkgoron··on TypeScript 5.2's new keyword: 'Using'
Symbols are used for all kinds of "built in" functions, and they were not "introduced" for this feature. As symbols are unique, they don't break/interfere with existing methods/properties. Therefore, if someone already has a dispose function named dispose, the new feature won't interfere with a method called dispose method and vice-versa.

"Well-known" symbols include things like Symbol.iterator that make "for...of" loops possible, Symbol.asyncIterator for async for loops, Symbol.hasInstance for instanceOf, Symbol.toStringTag for toString, and others.

linkgoron··on TypeScript 5.2's new keyword: 'Using'
TypeScript is just implementing a stage 3 JavaScript feature. It's not their own invention.
linkgoron··on MSFT Q2/2023 Earnings Release
It includes 2+ months of salary for each employee, six months of stock awards, six months of healthcare and probably tax etc.
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