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BOBOTWINSTON

196 karma · joined March 3, 2016

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BOBOTWINSTON··on Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall
Short Answer: The whys can just be boiled down to gambling, weird investing, flexing wealth, sports fandom stuff, or wanting to invest in your hobby.

Long Answer: It is a bit of a perfect storm, and you'll get a lot of mixed answers to this, however these are the reasons I see roughly in order of their impact.

1. Skins are the vehicle for gambling (you bet them instead of $). The loot boxes definitely get people hooked, but the skin gambling arena is a whole different beast.

2. Valve, whether by luck or skill, created a perfect system of scarcity. I can elaborate a lot on how this is done. The rarity of the skins is one thing, but the float system giving each drop a mostly unique appearance causes a 2nd tier of scarcity that adds a lot of value. They hired a bigwig Greek economist to develop this system.

3. The market has been stable-ish for long enough that some people view it as a legitimate safe investment. I have heard this is very popular in China, but I really don't know how this behavior is spread out globally. I have a friend with over $100k in the market (well, he did before this).

4. Almost everyone I know who plays seriously has at least invested a small amount in the game. I play with roughly the same 8 people, and 7 of us all spent $1-2k on the game, with inventories ranging from $1-5k.

BOBOTWINSTON··on NCAA cancels March Madness and other championships
So socially responsible.

This hurts a lot for some of us. I am a Creighton fan and this was our first big year in a long time, maybe our best of all time.

Sports fans get accused of forgetting "it is all a game" sometimes. It is certainly more than a game when you think of how much some people's lives depend on the money from these events, but limiting the impact of this virus is certainly not "soft".

BOBOTWINSTON··on Covid-19 update and guidance to limit spread
I think he is referencing this line in particular.

"Live performers are going to be hard hit economically. Consider supporting their work on Patreon, directly via PayPal, or attend only the smaller shows. Promote them on social media. Buy their work directly."

I do not really agree with removing this line, as it is good advice. I wouldn't be against expanding the content to include other professions, although the single-payer advocacy kind of does that for some of them.

BOBOTWINSTON··on Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
Assuming you can, you should live around the type of community you want. You sound like you want to live in the HOA controlled landscaping suburb, which is great! OP clearly chose to live somewhere where they wouldn't have neighbors saying these sorts of things. They have put thought into a cool experiment that has apparently paid off for them.

Personally, I've never experienced a neighborhood with a strict HOA that I could stand to stick around in. There always seems to be a minority with too much time on their hands playing neighborhood CIA operative and acting like they've just received power for the first time in their lives. I know that might be a little harsh but there always seems to be some variant of this around.

I live in a condo now where those people still exist, but it is so much better. They have much less power and visibility.

BOBOTWINSTON··on Play AI Dungeon 2. Become a Dragon. Eat the Moon
I won a game using the same pope moment!

When I learned that the game was developed by BYU I decided to play a Mormon spy. I was able to grow my church by building churches in poor areas and aggressive use of missionaries. After I was big enough I declared a holy war on the Jehovah's Witnesses and eventually steal their Mind Control Tech. After buying a major media outlet I was able to use the mind control to take over North America. I demanded the Pope surrender his church to me and Mormonism and the game gave me a victory.

Honestly I played about 100 of these and it was maybe my favorite one: https://pastebin.com/Ar9rBEvu

BOBOTWINSTON··on Generating a Java program with 90% less code
I find it really amazing when a language's weakness drives an unintended strength to evolve like this.

Ruby Example:

Ruby projects tend to always have really well maintained test suites. The language makes it easy for you to introduce non-obvious bugs or write unreadable (yet efficient) meta code.

This has lead to 1) very mature testing frameworks (meh) and 2) high adoption and usage of these frameworks (actually impressive).

Funny enough, I think adoption of IDEs is extremely low in the Ruby world. 90% of the developers I interact with in my city are on Sublime/VSC/Vim. I've seen some pretty impressive usage of Rubymine that has made me curious, but never bothered to really spend time with it myself. I'd be really curious what the teams at GitHub/Stripe/[Insert big Ruby company] typically use editor-wise.

BOBOTWINSTON··on Half-Life: Alyx
The short answer is, yes they are getting better.

However, it really depends more on what is causing your specific discomfort. For some people it can be the locomotion or just bad visuals. The comfort/heat of the headset also can cause issues. If I don't use VR for awhile, then I get a little nauseous my first 1 or 2 times in, but after that I can handle just about anything for many hours.

BOBOTWINSTON··on AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)
Sort of reminds me of a talk Valve gave about creating an anti-cheat for Counter-Strike using AI. When asked if they were worried about people using AI to create cheats to fool the AI, his answer was essentially that it was an arms-race won by the person with more data/processing power. That person would most likely always be Valve.

Link to talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObhK8lUfIlc

BOBOTWINSTON··on The Next 50 Years of Databases (2015)
Exactly.

My initial thought is highly specific human language is actually harder to write than most code, and always more verbose. Well written philosophy comes to mind.

I'd argue that this is part of the reason ORMs gained so much prominence. They solve the problem that SQL introduces by trying to emulate natural language. Most developers will gladly risk sacrificing some specificity of the query in exchange for reducing the verbosity of a SQL query. Obviously if the dev knows their ORM/SQL well, there is no lost precision.

BOBOTWINSTON··on Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone
I'm excited for two reasons.

I find the ability to completely "close" my phone really appealing. It feels easier to ignore it, and the screens feel more protected to me.

I can also only describe the second benefit as "its like two monitors". I can watch TV on one and respond to messages/browse on another. I use a Note8+ already, so big screens for watching crap are already my preference though.

BOBOTWINSTON··on Facebook to acquire CTRL-Labs, a startup for controlling computers with the mind
This is still one of the reasons I won't buy one of their headsets. Which sucks because the Quest is really cool, at least PC VR has better options/alternatives.
BOBOTWINSTON··on Running GitHub on Rails 6.0
I used ActiveAdmin a lot when I started and it always gave me a headache. From what I have seen of Django Admin (admittedly not a lot) it looks very similar?

I have found that at least for my users, admin type functionality and views generally require a lot of custom work that is not easily turned into convention. About 4 years ago I stopped using Active Admin completely and just started using Ransack + Kaminari gems on their own. I have been a much happier with the way that pattern has worked out.

BOBOTWINSTON··on YouTube videos that have almost zero previous views
I don't see any buttons on FF 68 either. I was able to just click around for the first one.. can't find one to get videos playing.
BOBOTWINSTON··on Understanding Kafka with Factorio
I find having to actually move to be a pretty engaging part of the game. You have to find resources, and that might be dangerous. Vehicles and concrete help you maneuver more quickly, but have their own risks/drawbacks. Defending your base and setting up an outpost starts out as a manual task until you know how to do it automatically.

In simpler terms, having to do things the slow and manual way makes the fast and automatic solutions even more gratifying.

BOBOTWINSTON··on Show HN: Never-Blink: Blink and Lose. An Online Web Game
This is probably the result of poorly labeled training data.

I always get labeled as a dick. It might be because I look like I a mushroom, since I'm just a fun guy.

Quick edit since I just wrote a dumb joke: This actually looks insanely fun and is something I would share with non-tech people if it was hosted somewhere one day.

BOBOTWINSTON··on The Race to Become the Beyond Meat of Fish
Spaghetti Squash really surprised me. You need to figure out how to cook it right or else it gets a bit too "wet/oily", but it can really be quite amazing.
BOBOTWINSTON··on Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning
He only said it was beyond our understanding "for some unknown amount of time", or that it might end up being too complicated/incompatible with our existence.

His comment wasn't at all about giving up, honestly the exact opposite. It was about avoiding/managing the disturbed/dreadful feelings that commonly accompany the thoughts and work in this domain.

BOBOTWINSTON··on “12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News”
If someone engages with me near the post time on Reddit, then I have no issues ignoring them or responding respectfully.

If someone counterpoints something I wrote 30+ days ago... nobody else is reading so it is now a cage match.

BOBOTWINSTON··on Scientists are working to eliminate senescent cells
But that means we'll be the youngest, hottest, and coolest people in the afterlife.
BOBOTWINSTON··on OpenAI’s Dota 2 defeat is still a win for artificial intelligence
Maybe he was baiting, next level strats.
BOBOTWINSTON··on The Discord Store Beta
What? As someone who has been sitting in a voice chat at least 5 days a week for 15+ years (come at me I have no life), Discord is easily the best one.

It seems to run into issues at about the same rate as all the Mumble/Vent servers I've ever dealt with, except you can simply switch the region on a channel and immediately solve it.

Quick edit: Discord could improve by adding a better interface for testing your input/output, that is lacking.

BOBOTWINSTON··on Reddit Security Incident
Can you or someone else explain/link to me the basics of why SMS-based 2FA is so terrible? I've never really heard the sentiment before, but it appears to be common knowledge.
BOBOTWINSTON··on MoviePass couldn’t afford to pay for movie tickets on Thursday
It is an anecdotal response to your first point, but since you didn't place a threshold I'll say it anyway.

I have two friends who I'd describe as average theatre goers. Maybe a movie every 2 - 3 months. Since using MoviePass they both average about two movies a month during 2018. I am not sure how sustained that behavior will be, but at atleast in this early stage it is lasting.

As for the second point, he is arguing they never sell the ticket once. AMC does not get the money if the subscriber does not attend the film. So by fighting with MoviePass (as they have been), they never sell the ticket once.

BOBOTWINSTON··on Demand for Ruby on Rails is Still Huge
That is some very specific criticism to level with pretty limited evidence. Stripe might be building their own type system, as is Ruby 3.0, but plenty of apps much larger than your provided number operate perfectly.

For the record, I do think typing solves real problems for Ruby. Speaking in terms of pure productivity, it will be helpful to bring in developers who just are not experienced at working without a type system. The downside is I think most of those problems are primarily generated by inexperienced Ruby developers writing non-expressive code. Working on large code bases with Ruby is a very strange and awesome skill. The way you name things and build standards around methods/class creation ends up being a huge positive IMO.

BOBOTWINSTON··on Into the Breach’s interface was a nightmare to make and the key to its greatness
This is on their road map. Consoles/mobile are where they are still hesitating due to the experience they had with FTL porting.
BOBOTWINSTON··on A computer science study plan
Does that program not result in the same degree that an on-site student get?

I am asking to see if your comment is geared at the specific program, or if you just don't give any value to getting an equivalent degree via an online platform?

BOBOTWINSTON··on Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says
Is this referencing outside the US? I travel very frequently to both rural and urban areas in the US and have yet to find a place where I could not Lyft, but could Uber.

In fact... I have only been to one place where I could not Lyft, and it turned out I also couldn't Uber (very rural).

BOBOTWINSTON··on Firefox Quantum
I have always just used ctrl + pgup/pgdown in Chromium for tab switching (same in Sublime). I am guessing OP is referencing the fixed min-width of the tabs though?

I know it is completely insane, but I have a strong compulsion to keep my tab count low. Once it starts approaching 7 or so, it is time to evaluated which 3 or 4 have to go.

Meanwhile I go look at someone else's monitor and they have 25 open all the time, and I can recognize some haven't been touched in weeks. I just think to myself "Clean up after yourself. How can you live like this?"

BOBOTWINSTON··on X-Men: The Animated Series – Unlikely Story of the '90s Cartoon Hit
"absolutely nothing to say" is a bit extreme. The Winter Soldier had a very clear political message, Guardians has always been about artificial family, every origin story movie is an individual overcoming some relatable human flaw. They aren't complicated, but they aren't Transformers/BvS.

The victory lap movies tend to fall into your categorization at least (Avengers, Civil War, maybe Thor 3).

BOBOTWINSTON··on The ridiculous, Cachemonet-esque Bloomberg 404 page
I recall this being at the top of /r/webdev 3 or 4 years ago. It turns out that a lot of the subsections have their own themed 404s as well.

My personal favorite: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/404

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