Knusper

@Knusper@feddit.de

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⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crunch time⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I feel like most of the layoffs and the flooded market happened in the US. Judging by the name, bleistift is from the EU…
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨we're still trying to figure out if they go to the same floor or not.⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Maybe someone has a more specific explanation, but I could imagine it just being shorthands for certain departments.

Like, imagine a hospital where the third floor is dedicated to, uh, new patients, so you press the NP button.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the best way to safely and completely erase all data from old laptops?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
It took maybe 10 minutes or so for a 256 GB hard drive for me, if I remember correctly.

That was an SSD, though, so yeah, mileage would definitely vary on an HDD.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the best way to safely and completely erase all data from old laptops?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Hmm, what does that full format do? Write zeros over everything?

Personally, I would run shred on the root filesystem. It’s a tool specifically intended for properly deleting data (overwrites it with random data multiple times).
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How many of you actually use the headphone jack on your phone?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I came into this comment section wanting to make the same argument, but I guess, you could also be carrying around a USB-C-to-audio-jack adapter in addition to your wired headphones…
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube is deliberately crippling Firefox on ARM systems⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
They do have a history of such things happening, yes, which is why my comment exists in the first place. Normally, I would assume this to just be the result of regular shitty management practices paired with regular shitty profit motives.

The history makes it look like they might genuinely have a higher motive here, and I’m saying I still don’t think so, because it would be far too petty and I don’t see them benefitting that much from it.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let's meet those headlines⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
The English pronunciation of Hercules is effectively the same as the German pronuncation.

Important for the joke is that the normal pronunciation for molecules differs, even though it also ends on -cules…
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let's meet those headlines⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
They were trying to show the hero-like pronunciation applied. Think of e.g. Hercules.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube is deliberately crippling Firefox on ARM systems⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Most of it?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube is deliberately crippling Firefox on ARM systems⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Google is blocking popular instances these days, so yeah, you basically need to find an unpopular instance, which usually means it’s new and may not live for long, or it will quickly become popular, because it works, which will cause Google to block it.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube is deliberately crippling Firefox on ARM systems⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Yeah, Google started blocking popular instances of Invidious and Piped in May this year: github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/3822

Every so often, it may start working again when those instances get a different IP address, but it usually doesn’t last more than a few days…
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube is deliberately crippling Firefox on ARM systems⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
The thing is, I really don’t think, Google would care about Firefox. Firefox is sitting at negligible percentages of usage share. The only real competitor to Chrome is Safari and that’s because of iOS.
I guess, they might impact Safari on macOS with this, but someone would have to try this out to actually see, and ultimately, this could still just be a dumb mistake.

Having said that, Google holds a near-monopoly in both video content and web browsers. They have a special duty to not disadvantage competitors and even if this was an honest mistake, I do think, it deserves a slap on the wrist.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Me and my new GitHub repository⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I have my repos on Codeberg and one of the disadvantages is that, well, it’s a non-profit, so I genuinely don’t want to waste their resources.
They ask you to only host open-source repos there and so, you know, hosting backups of shitty personal projects, even if I would throw in an open-source license, is just out of the question for me.

And that has weirdly been a blessing in disguise. Like, if it’s not useful for humanity to see, do I really care to keep it around forever?

And I’ve had three projects now where I felt an obligation to push them over the finish line of actually making them a useful open-source project. Which had me iron out some of the usability shortcuts I took, made me learn a good amount of code quality stuff and of course, just feels good to complete.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can anyone tell me what format this uh.. nested dictionary is?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
It looks similar in structure to JSON:
```
{
    "attr": {
        "size": "62091",
        "filename": "qBuUP9-OTfuzibt6PQX4-g.jpg",
        ...
    };
    "key": "Wa4AJWFldqRZjBozponbSLRZ",
     ...
}
```
So, it might be some JSON meta language. I just find it weird that it seems to contain all data, so you wouldn’t use this for validating or templating JSON.

But ultimately, it also means with a handful of regex replacements, you could turn this particular file into JSON. Might make building your own parser almost trivial…
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Doomerism: Intelligence Is Not Enough -- “The lack of arms and legs becomes really load-bearing when you want to kill all humans.”⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I mean, at this rate, I’m imagining Microsoft will have hollowed out OpenAI in a few years, but I could see them buying Boston Dynamics, too, yes
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨1.1 History⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I wish this kind of disclaimer would have been in my physics book in school. Big reason why I didn’t pursue an academic career in physics is because all the quantum stuff sounded like a religion, trying to convince itself that superpositions are real and you can’t measure things, because you just can’t.

Many years later I know that there’s explanations for these things and that some of the illogical things I’ve been told were not nearly as certain or just flatout wrong. Because yeah, we’re still pushing the boundaries of our understanding outwards…
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If so-called AI is basically just Large Language Models, how come predictive text on my phone is bollock-useless?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I guess, the real question is: Could we be using (simplistic) LLMs on a phone for predictive text?

There’s some LLMs that can be run offline and which maybe wouldn’t use enormous amounts of battery. But I don’t know how good the quality of those is…
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If so-called AI is basically just Large Language Models, how come predictive text on my phone is bollock-useless?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
You’re in the No Stupid Questions community. Think about rule 7 in particular.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Creator behind hugely popular Skyrim co-op mod gives up on the Starfield version of it because, drum roll please, 'this game is f***ing trash'⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I guess, why my interpretation is different, is because I’m a developer as well. And to us, modding can be more fun than actually playing a game.

So, if you assume the game will be good, you’ll probably just dive into the modding right away. Especially if you want to ride along the initial hype wave, so that your mods are immediately appreciated by lots of players.

If you do then start playing the game and notice that it doesn’t match your expectations, even if that were an entirely personal problem, that just robs you of your motivation to continue with the modding.

And I guess, that is really what the guy is pissed about. That he wasted time, because the marketing evoked wrong expectations in him.

Personally, I would consider myself wiser than that, because I’ve been burned by Bethesda’s marketing beforehand (Skyrim), but I’m certainly not wishing that kind of wisdom onto other people.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Creator behind hugely popular Skyrim co-op mod gives up on the Starfield version of it because, drum roll please, 'this game is f***ing trash'⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
If that helps you discredit his opinion, I guess, he must be.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Creator behind hugely popular Skyrim co-op mod gives up on the Starfield version of it because, drum roll please, 'this game is f***ing trash'⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Well, it sounds like the guy started out by modding the game for a week before really playing it. Don’t think, you can still get a refund at that point…
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the point of individually wrapping cheese slices in plastic, only to cover a bunch of them in more plastic?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
So, what’s the yellow stuff for? To keep the bags from sticking together?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could X go bankrupt under Elon Musk?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Sure, yeah. The way I imagine this would work out best for humanity, is if companies are forced to open up platforms they provide, when they have e.g. more than 40% market saturation with that.

Most small platforms will want to strive for interoperability with the dominant platforms anyways, so this threshold is just to keep the burden of regulation low.

In practice, this might mean that Twitter would be forced to allow federation with Mastodon.
Or that Microsoft is forced to open-source the code for the Windows API.
Or that Reddit is blocked from closing up their third-party API.

Ultimately, I don’t think, it even needs to be as concrete. I feel like even a law stating that if you’re providing a platform, you need to take special care to keep competition alive (along with some detailing what this entails), and then leaving it up to a judge to decide, would work.

The GDPR is implemented like that and while most larger companies are IMHO in violation of the GDPR, I also feel like most larger companies actually did go from atrocious privacy handling to merely bad privacy handling, which is an incredible success.

That’s effectively all I’m hoping for, too. That dominant platforms can’t just stagnate for multiple decades anymore. That they do have to put in at least a small bit more effort to stay in that dominant position.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spotify axes 17% of workforce in third round of layoffs this year⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Yeah, I could imagine their legal department actually making up a sizeable chunk, with how much the music industry loves to sue.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Not mocking cobol devs but yall are severely underpaid for keeping fintech alive⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Yeah, and from what I understand, learning the language itself isn’t the hard part. It actually has rather few concepts. What’s difficult, is learning how to program a computer correctly without all the abstractions and safety measures that modern languages provide.

Even structured programming had to be added to COBOL in a later revision. That’s if/else, loops and similar.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Against the Storm Review - An Ambient Roguelite City Builder⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I’m not saying they’re mutually exclusive, I just find it tricky to draw information from that.

For example, I correctly assumed this to not be akin to Dungeon Keeper, which would be a city builder like Rogue in the sense of it being a dungeon crawler.
But at the same, I guess, I assume Against the Storm would have procedural map generation like Rogue did, even though I don’t really consider that typical for city builders.

And yeah, this fuzziness of the term ‘roguelite’ means I don’t really know how much city builder to expect…
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Against the Storm Review - An Ambient Roguelite City Builder⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Ah yes, a city builder, which is a genre pretty much opposite to the original Rogue, but make it like a lite version of Rogue. 🙃

I mean, I don’t really care. Words change meanings. But this one does hurt my brain quite a bit, trying to understand which parts of the Rogue formula they kept…
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Android app maker Simple Mobile Tools acquired by ZipoApps⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Well, the F-Droid team may in theory permit it, but it’s also the F-Droid team that has to actively build and distribute the new version. If they don’t feel like distributing a newer version, they can absolutely do that.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spot On - Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Humans have this tendency of assuming everyone else is dumb. Whether that’s their neighbor, a different generation, a foreign nation, different skin colors, different religions, different species or indeed extinct civilizations, pretty much everyone is assumed to be barbaric, until proven otherwise.

And so, yeah, it’s usually a revelation like wow, they had calendars, they must have actually been smarter than we thought.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats with the sudden indie output from South Korea?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

Tangentially is 2023 chock full of great games because the pandemic held up the development of so many studios?

I know, they all announced that, but as a software dev, I really don’t see why this should be the case. We largely just moved into home-office and continued working, often even at increased efficiency. I guess, building games might require somewhat more creative sessions, which are generally more productive in person, but I don’t see that making a huge difference.
My impression was rather that they had the usual delays, with maybe a few hickups at the start of the pandemic, and then they just declared the pandemic the whole reason for the delays.

As for 2023 being so full, the pandemic meant lots of people were at home, consuming digital goods. It caused a massive boom in the gaming industry. I imagine, lots of studios were able to secure (bigger) budgets during that time, which are now coming to fruition.