tomw1808

I was long thinking if I should comment on this or not...

First of all, I feel bad that my comment before apparently conveyed the wrong message: The project is well executed, code wise. It was (most likely?) a ton of work and I did not mean to comment anything negative towards the project at all.

Second, if anything in that project would have hinted even a tiny inch towards more inclusivity in card games, I would probably never had said anything. But it doesn't.

The project markets itself as solving a problem I never heard of anyone ever had ("a situation many of us have experienced") and therefore does not resonate with me or most likely anyone I ever played cards with in all-nighters. Instead, it would've been a buzzkill to play on the phone. But ok, I (or anyone I played with) might not be the target group. As I said, it was my personal opinion and that's what I expressed.

but then ... "if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all" ... because?

Shutting my mouth there would basically equal to a lie. I am not a liar and I am not becoming one just because my criticism is making anyone uncomfortable.

I am that kind of person who is telling people if they have spinach between their teeth, I tell people if they sat accidentally on a chewing gum and I definitely tell people if I think they are solving a non-existent problem (or their marketing message is not on par). Last time I checked, that is what this platform is for. If criticism makes people uncomfortable, great. Uncomfortable is where the comfort zone ends.

Mind you, at no point I got rude or personal or unreasonable, I hope. I stated its my opinion. My personal one. Based on my experience. And at no point I mentioned the code was bad, or at any point I was downtalking the devs, insulting or otherwise. Instead I respect their work to the utmost level. But I simply do not understand the problem they solve, instead it goes against what I experienced in my life. And on this platform I sure hope this is something that is not only allowed, but very welcome.

There are games made specifically for the phone I could imagine to pull out in a group of people, but its not card games. It's games which specifically benefit from a multi-touch device like a phone or the graphics or the gyro or other sensors. Games you cannot play without a phone. Would also be weird to play counter strike without a computer.

Especially card games are offline games for me. They're (my personal) go-to tech detox social thing and doing that with phones is simply weird for me. That's maybe why I felt so strong to make this point.

Again, awesome project. Maybe its for some, but not for me.

Let's talk card games then, because a lot of the card games are strategy.

It's how you interact with the cards.

You are not staring in your cards. Maybe you are sorting the cards. You are observing what other people are doing with their cards. Sometimes you are just glancing at cards and putting them back on the table (e.g. poker).

Everything vanishes with a phone doing that for you. It takes away the magic of card games for me.

Again, I am strictly speaking of myself, but if I go with a group of people to play cards and then they pull out their phones, I'll simply leave the table and go home or do something else.

I think its an awesome showcase project, no doubt - I starred it and bookmarked it, probably like so many others.

However, I would never use it as a game. Ever.

One of my primary objectives playing card games with a group of people in a local setting is the social aspect. It means: no phones. I find it utterly asocial to sit there in a group of people all with their phones in their hand staring at the phone, then at some point getting distracted with doom scrolling instagram. Its so disturbing. Maybe I am old (40), I don't doubt that. Maybe I reach that point where I simply "don't get it" anymore. But I stand by it. It's not for me. Maybe I am alone, but I doubt that.

I know that isn't an AMA, but may I ask, how is running a publishing house working out for you? From the outside, having a small publishing house, sounds like an uphill battle on all fronts. What is the main driver to become a publisher - hobby turned into profession?

And I thought I have the only bad apple...

. . .

sry, I see myself out.

So I got this really weird thing on MacOS ...

I was a Windows user since like windows 3.0. With ISO German Keyboards. I never had to retrain my muscle memory to anything else, until I decided its time to buy a Macbook about 1.5 years ago.

Since then I'm struggling with Karabiner to get the key mappings right.

And its not just command -> control to map cmd+c to ctrl+c for copy etc.

It's also weird things like the ^ or the <> not being mapped on the right part of the keyboard. This is especially apparent (sometimes?) when I use an external keyboard (e.g. the sharkoon purewriter, but not limited to). It's a really weird issue, because on the internal mac keyboard its mapped correctly, while on the external one its not. Then I go into karabiner, select the external keyboard and remap _just for the external keyboard_ the few keys are not mapped correctly. And then weeks go by, it works, and suddenly the keyboard keys are correct without the mapping and the remapping now is the problem, so I delete them.

It's not bothering enough to write an issue on karabiner. Heck, I'm even convinced its not even a karabiner issue, its something else. But I'm not deep enough into the mac system to understand where I should even look, if its even possible.

If someone is using houmain to remap keys, can you maybe share a config that would map MacOS keys back Windows for someone who has a deep ingrained windows-style muscle memory? I just briefly looked through the docs, not sure if I missed it, but can houmain just remap keys for certain keyboards, but leave others unmapped?

I thank you for the blog-post length reply and I am sorry I triggered that with my simple question in disguise. I knew it was hard to answer.

It is funny that you specifically mentioned the bread. I go a fair bit between Austria, Spain, Greece, the UK and all around Asia.

We have a lot of really dark and heavy bread in Austria. Austrian bread frequently incorporates a variety of whole grains, including rye, spelt and whole wheat. Darker, denser loaves like Roggenbrot (rye bread) and Dinkelbrot (spelt bread) are the norm here. Austrian bread is typically made with just flour, water, salt, and natural leavening (sourdough or yeast).

I didn't ask you the question to gleam with that, am I'm apologizing in advance if its coming through like this. My point is the additives. And it might get back to that Fanta-to-Fanta comparison, but with so many other products, many American store-bought breads contain added sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, whereas Austrian breads rarely do.

I also think that a lot of additives or chemicals are simply banned in the EU leading to a lower shelf life of products, but generally more natural products. Like Potassium Bromate, ADA, BHA & BHT etc which are banned in the EU. Together with the corn syrup found seldom in eupean products, or Austrian.

Spain and Greece have less of the black and dark breads, but that movement is slowly coming. Spain has a lot of really really really great food, and very high quality.

Asia is a different story. There are some artisanal bakeries popping up in places like Hongkong, Singapore, Thailands larger cities, Malaysia etc. But in general, stores have these softy loafs of what we call toast bread. But then, they don't eat a lot of bread :)

Not sure where I'm going with this, if at all anywhere, next time you come to europe, try some of our bread.

sorry the late answer, got distracted yesterday... but here it is:

Piracy is rampant, Udemy isn't doing anything against it (afaik). If someone needs to pirate a course and download it for free that's offered for 9.99 and not get the Q&A, the downloads, the additional stuff, the updates and all of that, so be it. Can't change that. Also, a lot of the folks who pirate a course will never pay for it. It's a loss on paper. Still a loss though.

Here's the kicker: I'm thinking, if my courses teach someone the blockchain stuff and turn his life around to go from $3/h job to a $60/h job (happened), feel free to pirate. Actually, send me a message and I'll give you a free coupon if you really can't afford the whatever $10. I did this so many times, I'm happy to help, I do care more about other peoples success than about the little money udemy brings in.

Plagiarism is another category. If I catch you taking my content and repurposing it to sell it under your name, I will come after you as hard as I can. I am not sure if udemy does something actively against plagiarism or not, but if I find a person who is bluntly reuploading my stuff verbatim to udemy (happened) or slightly editing my courses and repurposing them to make money (happened too), I will not only send a takedown notice, I will come after you and collect damages and ruin your life as much as I can, because I consider that the absolut scum of the internet and I wish everyone who does that has rashes on intimate body parts for the rest of their lives and can't sit straight.

That's my take.

Do you know if the regulations regarding contaminants in both soaps, as well as consumables, is more stringent in the EU (beyond the "Fanta-to-Fanta" comparison)? In other words, would you feel more comfortable eat something basic like bread and other consumables from supermarkets in the European Union vs the US, or not? Can you eventually share a few thoughts on this?

I came here wondering if I am the only one not knowing what Diethalothingythings are. Thanks.

I am publishing my content on Udemy since 2016. I made about 200k since then, about 50% of that in the first 2 years.

My courses were about Blockchain Development. We were the first ones there.

It's a side hustle for me.

Like so many other publishers, I have one course that sells really great. I got about 15 courses now published, one sells great, one sells meh, the other ones don't sell at all.

I also have my courses on Packt. Interestingly, I have another course there that sells really great. It's a different one. No overlap. The one on udemy doesn't sell on Packt and vice versa.

I think its pure luck. It's a perpetual motion machine: Once a course sells, it gets recognized and pushed by their marketing team/algo, it gets more visibility and it sells better, which means, it gets recognized and pushed by their marketing team/algo, and sells better ... you get the idea.

Optimize for luck. Be first. Be in a niche. Or have an audience out of udemy you can drive there and drive sales, so it gets recognized by their marketing team/algo.

Which brings me to the second part: I have tried (and failed) to build my own audience. I am a bad marketer. Really bad. Saying marketing and sales are my weak points doesn't do justice at how bad I am at this. I am a builder. I love teaching. I don't love bragging. And marketing/sales for me its a shitshow of shill and brag culture. I can't. And udemy does that for me. They get their cut, I get my cut and I am fine with that. What I don't like is how restrictive they got with analytics, I really can't even guesstimate what is my target audience and cater to them better. But that's a completely different topic.

I got a family and a full time job now and only do this on the side.

Thought you might like the additional info.

It's because you need more tesla coils, brrzzing.

Jokes aside, after reading a few of the official tounament strategies, its where the magic disappeared for me - its so much weight towards rushing over the enemy that wins every time, it kinda lost its bliss.

Still, sometimes its fun to just play with some like-minded friends in a multiplayer game

I love this.

Not that I play it often, however, I guess its the memories.

I remember when RA was released and I was glued to my screen, at home or at lan parties. Multi player or Skirmish, always fantastic way to kill some time with quality game play.

This and blobby volley :)

I love that they fixed so many of the shortcomings of the original gameplay in OpenRA. It's really fun to play.

I agree, mostly.

I use chatgpt like a chat-with-wikipedia. For general knowledge where I was too lazy to google or which is too far hidden in ads ridden adsense blogs, like "give me an easy recipe for waffles"

Here it becomes interesting: I have been coding with Aider and sonnet3.5 for the past 3-4 weeks. I add the few files I need to change as well as whatever structural information (db-scheme or so) and ask it to work on a task, very high level. Yes, I need to offer architectural advice or if I want library X or Y included, but overall, it produces very good (I would say junior level) code.

The thing is, it does all the long writing I got tired of over the years. The writing I don't want to do anymore. The CRUD methods. The "change the labels, and names of this to that". The "write a db connector that does XYZ". All the stuff I would normally ask a junior to implement.

The output code is generally ok. It's not an eye candy. But it does work generally, maybe with occasional hiccups.

But the time saved by prompting it with 2-3 lines and then getting code that normally takes me 30 minutes to convince myself that I really need to do that and then 10 minutes to write is now done in mere 20 seconds. Without much of a mental context switch and without being very taxing on the brain.

I am not sure if that counts as "take large amount and make it smaller" based on the extensive code it ingested during training, or if it falls in the category "create more text than I gave it", but it works for me. I would miss it if it didn't work anymore.

Now he already has 2 views on a video he didn't make yet.

I have some bookmarked, but definitely not a nice list like that one, and not as many. Do you have more like these? I love to indulge into these for a few minutes a day, during commuting on the subway. I am always wondering if its because it somehow gives instant gratification into that desire to do something meaningful with the time with very little effort, ie that something new was learned (and then usually as instantly as learned forgotten :) )

without idkfa and iddqd I cannot pass. Its the strive left/right thats missing for me (not sure if that was in the original version actually), but it really throws me off that I need to use arrows and not asdw.

There are people who create checksums of iso's and there's people like me.

And then there are people who do not read the ToS and then there's also nobody else.

I miss the simplicity of windows xp. sometimes.

I don't know why, but it very much reminds me of Pimcore [1] back when they started. Not the functionality, but the feeling when I look at the code.

Pimcore was awesome, it was clean, considering the alternatives - it was a basically a dynamic objects store which would load dynamic blocks to generate content and theming on the frontend - and editable blocks in the admin panel. It was so relatable from a webdev standpoint, and very "hackable" - I loved it.

The idea at that time was so appealing (mind you, afaik that was before React or even Angular. Jquery was a thing at that time and ExtJS, Pepperide Farm remembers...). Now it gotten much much bigger of course, but in the beginning, it kinda reminds me of this: sleek, extensible also very relateable. Definitely not made for the size of a multi billion dollar franchise, but fun to hack around while still maintaining relatively clean code.

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20110606024114/http://www.pimcore...

Why does it look ... fake?

Before you downvote, don't get this as a belittling the effort and all the results, they are stunning, but as a sincere question.

I do plenty of photography, I do a lot of videography. I know my way around Premiere Pro, Lightroom and After Effects. I also know a decent amount about computer vision and cg.

If I look at the "edited" videos, they look fake. Immediately. And not a little bit. They look like they were put through a washing machine full of effects: too contrasty, too much gamma, too much clarity, too low levels, like a baby playing with the effect controls. Can't exactly put my fingers on, but comparing the "original" videos to the ones that simply change one element, like the "add blue pom poms to his hands", it changes the whole video, and makes the whole video a bit cartooney, for lack of a better word.

I am simply wondering why?!

Is that a change in general through the model that processes the video? Is that something that is easy to get rid of in future versions, or inherently baked into how the model transforms the video?

I agree. But then, a TI-30 is also better at math than the average human. Can't google though...

The website really seems to follow Google's best practices on human interaction: hide as much as possible.

If it wasn't so sad, it would be almost funny that their Terms & Conditions page errors out (for me). The whole page looks pretty broken and like the landingpage is an afterthought...

Anyways, the closest to a contact us is this what I found (after looking for 15 seconds and randomly clicking links) https://dotpe.in/contact-us.html maybe that helps to get in touch at least...

"This is computer science. There aren't restrictions." - It's literally what many people forget when they let themselves constraint by frameworks and claim this and that isn't possible. Very refreshing to see how liberating it is if you go one level deeper.

Next up: "How I became a millionaire by consulting restaurants on Menu items and targeted Text Message Ads" ...

Seriously, its a PII leak and it should be reported. And since you said Google is an investor someone (theoretically) should care.

So, suppose I run websites. Actually I do and I have cookie banners on all of them - but only for users with EU IP Addresses.

Here's the twist: Good news is (for me), I can[1] track and do whatever I want with any other IP address. You visit my site? Well, thanks to nobody else I care about having GDPR-like regulations in place, I can make sure I'll not only track you down and display ads across all advertiser networks, feed them your visit in all imaginable and unimaginable ways, but I can do it in such a targeted way that it's borderline scary. I can literally use any information you gave me on my websites, like your name, your location, proximity to anything. And if I can't then the advertiser can. And in the case of that particular lawsuit mentioned in the article, collecting all user consents, their IP addresses, and basically which websites they visited, its like a gold mine for advertisiers. If it isn't one yet, it can be turned into one with the click of a button.

It's like that one case a few years back, where a health insurance company bought a bank and started closing bank accounts from people they knew were risk patients.

Simply connect the dots...

GDPRs promise was to make it harder to do so. It wasn't the plan to annoy the hell out of everyone with banners. The whole idea was to not allow tracking unless you opted in, because quite frankly, its scary.

And no, I'm not a fan of GDPR or overregulation. But in reality, there hasn't been any tech I've come across that really protects the non-technical internet users at large. There's uBlock and plugins, but not installed by default or built into standard mobile browsers. Apple might be close for regular consumers to stop the excessive tracking and companies like FB really hates them for it (for good reason, it costs them big $$). Google will never shoot their own foot by integrating non-tracking tech into any of their products.

So, no, my opinion is don't stop that darn annoying cookie pop-ups unless you also stop the tracking. If you stop the tracking, remove the cookie pop-up. As easy as that.

[1] I don't do it, but I could. I'm not a reckless psycho-marketer.

I usually went with the kids to Angelibad before, I really like the vibe and they love the ice cream, playground and kids pool. Now they're getting older, so we're either directly go somewhere to the Donau or hang out in one of the other baths like Strandbad Alte Donau or further down.

I normally don't like sweetwater for swimming and stayed away from the Danube for years. I was expecting the muddy smell and all, but this one's really great - I should've tried it earlier.

Vienna is very swimmable. Not right now, because its cold and rainy, but on a hot summer day thousands of people gather and swim in the Danube every single day. It's amazing, the water is relatively clean, small fishes inside, its a joy for children and adults alike.

I hope that's not a stupid question, but why define the syntax as 1/2 and 3/4 (divider) and not 1-2 (column 1 _to_ column 2) and 3-4 or 1->2 or something like that?

Sometimes, very rare, the dub is actually better (yes, subjective, but still) than the original. E.g. I do find Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in German absolutely hilarious, start to finish. Then I watched the english version - was I surprised how serious this is in original voice. It's an entirely different movie in its original tone.