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ukdm

18,077 karma · joined January 12, 2010

freelance game designer, writer
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ukdm··on Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?
I've been on a low carb diet for 5 years now. The key I found to "sucker for sweets" desire is you take one day a week off. I find sugar is like salt now... if you give it up for a while and go back it's really really sweet and after a day of enjoying sugar I'm ready to stop eating it again for 6 days. If you haven't tried the one day a week off I recommend it next time you do your 3 months.
ukdm··on Ask HN: Laptop that doesn't suck
XPS 13 or 15 are worth looking at
ukdm··on Ask HN: Any advice for switching from self-employment back to employee?
Two things I noticed when going from employed to self employed is:

1. You gain a lot of time back due to zero travel 2. You can earn less to earn the same as you were when employed. This is true because I removed the transport and time cost.

It's worth keeping in mind these will be reversed if you situation is similar to mine. You'll have much less time available, and your salary will need to be higher than you earned being self employed to achieve the same end-of-month income.

Good luck.

ukdm··on Sketch goes subscription-based
Is this a subscription?

No. Once your license has expired you can still use the app for as long as you want. We will not force you to pay again to use it. You don’t have to renew your license if you don’t want to.

ukdm··on Ask HN: Best linux laptop right now?
Not the Apollo, but Linux Voice did a review of their Proteus. Worth a read (PDF) https://www.linuxvoice.com/issues/011/laptop.pdf
ukdm··on Cerberus – 18L mATX case
It launches on Indiegogo in March. You can sign up to be informed exactly when at the bottom of the page.
ukdm··on Bitwalking
They covered it on the BBC's click show. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34872563
ukdm··on Enpass Password Manager
"Pay once, use forever. No monthly or yearly subscription is required to use Enpass. You just need to upgrade the trial version only once for life time usage."

I don't see any pricing listed, if it is, it's not obvious. Wish services would stop hiding prices.

ukdm··on Beijing to Shut All Major Coal Power Plants to Cut Pollution
from the article "The facilities will be replaced by four gas-fired stations with capacity to supply 2.6 times more electricity than the coal plants."
ukdm··on Bitrig 1.0 Released – OpenBSD fork
Why did you fork OpenBSD?

OpenBSD is an amazing project and has some of the best code around but some of us are of the opinion that it could use a bit of modernization. OpenBSD is a very security conscious project and, correspondingly, has to be more conservative with features. We want to be less restrictive with the codebase when it comes to experimenting with features.

https://github.com/bitrig/bitrig/wiki/Faq

ukdm··on Ruby Warrior
It's very annoying when a website blasts out music without user consent as soon as it loads. This is a case in point.
ukdm··on Empty Me, a simple HTML5 game
I think there are two click mechanics going on -> visual and non visual. Depending on the level, not every click gives you visual feedback of the liquid decreasing, however, you get audio feedback for every click. Would be better if the clicks were always registered visually, though, and should be easy for the developer to implement.
ukdm··on Mercedes Is Owning This Formula 1 Season
Today's race was the first time we got to see just how fast the Mercedes is on low fuel with new tires. This innovation is worth 2 seconds per lap, which is massive in this sport. The championship is theirs to lose this year. Teams don't make up such a time gap over a season, and Mercedes won't stop developing.
ukdm··on Nerdalize: warm house, cheap datacenter
http://vimeo.com/68294884
ukdm··on Why I Canceled Amazon Prime
In the UK Amazon has its own parcel delivery service that is used to deliver the majority of the larger parcels in my area. But it's not great. Some of the drivers decide they don't have time, or it's near the end of their shift, and log deliveries as no one home. I've had this confirmed by some of the drivers that do bother delivering.

So while I've been home all day, I get an email (usually around 6pm) claiming no one was in when they attempted the delivery.

This is frustrating when it happens once, but it has now become a regular occurrence and complaints just end in a free month of Prime being added to my account (had 4 extensions this year so far).

ukdm··on How I Make A Living Using GameMaker
I don't believe that to be the case, at least not any more. The lead devs are quite active on Twitter, they have a bug reporting system all users can take advantage of, the documentations is growing, and the DRM you speak of is no longer in place and they admitted it was a bad decision (after the skulls incident).

It's becoming a very solid toolset that can produce games for most platforms and does not require a plug-in for web games. The recent roll out of v1.2 has also made it much faster.

Mike Dailly, head of development at YoYo recently did an AMA on Reddit. There's some good information in there on the state of GM and its future.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gamemaker/comments/1lsz0o/im_mike_da...

ukdm··on German government warns Windows 8 is a security risk
Translated version: http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&pre...
ukdm··on BioWare writer quits after death threats to family
http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/15/4622252/plague-of-game-dev-...
ukdm··on Google confirms Nexus Q not supported in latest version of Play Music
From the comments:

"I reached out to play support via email, and here is the response I got: "We're aware of a streaming issue with the Google Play All Access app and the Nexus Q and are working on a fix""

ukdm··on All Chrome OS hack attempts fail at Pwnium 3
Yeah, my mistake, I meant it to be in response to mtgx
ukdm··on All Chrome OS hack attempts fail at Pwnium 3
"Chrome was compromised using similar methods to the IE10 and Firefox attacks. MWR Labs bypassed Chrome’s sandbox and used a Windows kernel vulnerability in Windows 7 to elevate privileges as well as execute commands outside of the sandbox. In addition to executing code, MWR researchers were able to read memory and find the base addresses of certain .DLL files."

http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/internet-explorer-10-...

ukdm··on SEND UP TO A TERABYTE, FOR FREE.
http://gigaom.com/2013/02/15/bittorrent-soshare-app/
ukdm··on Sweden To Charge TV Tax For Anyone With A Computer or Tablet
If I'm understanding it correctly, there's already a TV license in place that households pay. This update just means if your house doesn't have a TV, and instead consumes all media on a tablet or similar device, you still need to pay the fee, where as before you could argue you didn't need to pay it for lack of a TV.
ukdm··on New $250 Chromebook
There's 2 models listed in the UK at £229 and £299. Not sure why, the only spec diff I can see on PC World is one says LCD the other says HD LCD. Yet the resolution is listed as being the same.
ukdm··on Founder explains the Raspberry Pi journey so far
They've made it clear all along this isn't the Raspberry Pi ready for schools. This is the enthusiats version, the one that spurs the development of the tools, the guides, and the supporting hardware. We're already seeing this with projects like ModMyPi that sell you a complete (compatible) set of peripherals, and the OS course that appeared on HN yesterday. This is the groundwork being laid for what you desire.
ukdm··on Bethesda admits they can't get Skyrim Dawnguard running on PS3
If I remember correctly, doesn't the PS3 split the available memory in half? Therefore limiting the options you have. Where as on Xbox it's up to the developer how they use all of the available memory.

EDIT: See w0utert's comment in this thread for more info: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4459260

ukdm··on Samsung Pays Apple $1 Billion Sending 30 Trucks Full of 5 Cents Coins
But we're all secretly hoping it isn't, right?
ukdm··on 'Kidney for iPad' Trial Begins in China
"Wang's mother, Ou Linchun, told the court that her son did not sell his kidney to purchase the Apple devices.

"My son was tempted by the illegal organ traders and might have been afraid of getting caught with such a large amount of money, so he bought a cell phone and a tablet PC," she said"

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-student-sells-kidney-...

ukdm··on EA turns hypocrite, discounts games on Origin up to 87.5 percent
I'd prefer it if the head of Origin didn't make statements about protecting IP and not shortchanging developers only 2 weeks later to change his mind.

It was a stupid statement to make to begin with. He accused Steam, the most successful digital games distribution service available, of going about their business the wrong way and that Origin wouldn't make the same mistake.

I think this is more of a complaint about the way EA do business. What was the point of DeMartini's original comments? Who was he trying to appeal to as it certainly wasn't gamers.

ukdm··on APC, $49 Android computer, now accepting pre-orders
Carries a $38 shipping charge for US/Canada/Europe
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