Fr0styMatt88

To me, Google killing off Daydream and Samsung killing off GearVR is akin to TV manufacturers killing off their black-and-white TV models because everyone has moved on to colour.

I tried the Beyond Meat patty, version 1 I think. Wondering if anyone else got an absolutely strange type of taste / sensation in their throat when they tried it? It wasn’t at all pleasant and really hard to describe. Kind of like - I don’t know - canola oil mixed with peanut - sort-of? While breathing in a thick gas. Very odd.

I was really hyped up to like it, but found it only somewhat like meat. I was impressed with the texture inside. The outer crust reminded me of warm cardboard. To be fair, I might have burned it so I do want to try it again. Really keen to try an Impossible Burger (anyone know if there’s somewhere in Australia that serves them?).

My whole place smelled sickly sweet after cooking it as well. I’ve seen some people describing it as smelling like cat food, which I’d agree with.

Also interesting is the game 'Universe', which boasted achieving 256 colours on ECS (edit: a comment on the StackOverflow page linked below says it works on OCS as well). Some quick Googling before asking you guys about it as I was planning to turned up this:

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/44/how-to...

The Amiga was such an interesting machine. It's too bad I never got into assembly programming back then.

An almost constant criticism of Unity that I hear is that it's "too slow", that games made with it run slower than what their visuals would suggest. This has been such a common criticism of Unity for so long. So I don't think it's solely a response to requests from AAA studios either. My impression is that the current Unity model just doesn't scale by default (as in, yes it can be made to work but it's not the default and you'd be fighting with the architecture to do it). Or perhaps a much better way of saying it is that the default Unity architecture encourages less-experienced developers to write slower code. I've heard them say that "performance by default" is a goal for DOTS in a number of talks.

I keep debating whether I want to commit time to doing a hobby project in Godot or Unity (yes, I know I should just pick one and do it). Unity has made massive strides but I just find Godot so damn pleasant to work in, especially with code editing being built right into the editor and GDScript being such a nice language.

I can really see Godot becoming the Blender of game engines. Kudos to the team!

Every time I try to play a game that I paid for on iOS that no longer works because Apple doesn't care about backwards compatibility, I'm reminded of how thankful I am for Microsoft's efforts here.

I really think the amount they've improved Windows under-the-hood over time is impressive, especially taking into account the constraints they've had to work within.

On a related (though somewhat tangential) note I must say that I think MS tying WinRT (which as I understand it is the clean rewrite of the Windows API) to the Microsoft Store initially was a massive mistake. I still don't have a clear, confident impression of where I can or should use WinRT, even after all these years.

The bloat in Windows is an interesting issue. I put together Windows OS images and a freshly-installed, before-updates Windows 10 image might be around 2 gigs (maybe a bit more or less, I’m going from memory here). Granted, a Linux distro may hit that size with a lot more preinstalled software, but I haven’t paid much attention.

Windows starts bloating when you apply updates. It keeps a lot around to facilitate rolling back updates if needed; this gets cleaned up over time but it can be an issue on a small disk. There’s ways to get the size back down (while sacrificing the ability to roll back updates that you’ve applied), but you don’t regain all the space.

I get the feeling the Windows Update mechanism is a large legacy mess that is stuck having to account for corner-cases that have built up over time. Microsoft are improving it; I think it’s just a really big engineering task that they’re having to slowly work through. I vaguely remember something about the way Windows handles overwriting open files in-place which makes this worse, but I can’t remember the specifics off the top of my head.

I think they need to let you watch stuff (some stuff) without logging on or creating an account, or at least have a landing page that's geared for viewers. I hope eventually that's what happens.

I was also extremely confused looking at it - I wasn't even sure whether I was signing up as a creator or a viewer. Then I signed up and got in and was presented with nothing except a bunch of locked content. I had watched the video on the launch and still had no idea that it was a pay-per-month thing. I'm not against that at all - I just didn't know.

I'm extremely glad Floatplane exists. YouTube is changing for the worse IMHO - at least I no longer feel like I'm their target audience.

I hope the Floatplane guys are reading this and other places and taking all this feedback in. I'm really excited to watch this one; I can see the end of YouTube, at least as a viewer and I'm glad that people are starting to build and consider alternatives.

So I’ve got an interesting question - how does this fit with the subjective experience (insofar as we can tell) of an Alzheimer’s patient? If they can’t remember the last 20 years say, does that mean they were unconscious for those 20 years?

Every time I follow this train of thought, I also end up pondering time’s arrow. I also wonder - since I’m conscious of typing this right now, can I assume that I will never get Alzheimer’s that will erase this precise moment from my memory?

Somewhat related - I made the mistake of putting effort into learning how to stereo free-view Google Cardboard / Daydream VR apps. At the time it was kind of interesting what it felt like.

Except I must have made something super-sensitive in my visual system, to the point where now it’s almost TOO easy to stereo-fuse repeated patterns — though having said that, my visual system is kind of different I think anyway. Now if I see repeated patterns I’ll start getting phantom stereo fusion if I keep my eyes looking at one spot and relaxed too long. It’s not distressing or anything, it’s just really unusual.

The latest software update for the Oculus Quest shows you what you’re setting the slider too now as well, FWIW.

I've never seen it put this way before. This exactly describes me - I enjoy purchasing. I don't enjoy shopping.

Many many times I've consciously thought "I'm going to give retail a chance!" and go out of my way to find something at a physical store. Often it's because I might want it that day; sometimes I've just wanted to explore.

Yet I always end up wasting many hours. I can't drive, so it's public transport and walking everywhere for me (that's fine, it just adds to the time). My experience has been that if you know exactly what you want and it's anything slightly off the beaten path, you're going to have a hard time finding a store that will stock it.

Recent examples that come to mind: a certain kind of USB cable, an SSD, musician's earplugs, an induction cooker. Plus almost any book that I want.

This year was the first year that I've done the majority of my Christmas shopping online (I actually managed to get to it early enough!). It's been hands-down the best experience I've had Christmas shopping. Not to mention that I haven't had that Mariah Carey Christmas song shoved down my ears this year as a result :)

Physical stores just can't compete for certain kinds of shoppers.

Also, I hear so much about physical stores treating their employees like shit. Primary examples include GameStop and EB Games. When I think of that, I think that some stores deserve to fail.

I really think this is the way to do it and it's also how I've always approached this. So much so that now the other members of the team I'm on joke about how I'm the guy that likes jumping down rabbit holes - which they're perfectly fine with!

Something very important to this approach IMHO is paying your learning forward. Mentor other devs, write guides for your team/organization, etc. Make the benefit of your learning visible to everyone else.

That means that yes, your learning has to have value to the business and to the team. If that aligns, I can't imagine many problems arising. Your learning becomes an act of giving and taking, rather than just taking, which is a win-win for everyone involved.

It's not even about reflowing text, it's just the usual two-finger zoom gesture that gets disabled. I'm very accustomed to moving the large text as I read it, so don't even need reflow.

I'll use the system zoom if I need to, but it's very awkward compared to the browser zoom. You're stuck panning around the magnified screen with one set of gestures, while also having to scroll through the page using the browser's gestures. It works but it's not pleasant.

The excuse I always hear about disabling zoom has to do with the multi-touch delay. I can somewhat see the sense of that for very particular applications, but definitely not for AMP, which as I understand it is meant for mostly static content (I'm only assuming though).

More often than not, what I find is that if I override zoom disable and then browser zoom on a site that doesn't allow it usually, it ends up breaking the layout as you zoom. This makes me wonder if they're just disabling zoom because they can't be bothered fixing their CSS to deal with it.

That abundance of software jobs might be the case in SV, but definitely not in other places of the world.

The most annoying thing for me, as a vision-impaired user, is that AMP pages disable zoom.

I know that can be overridden in Chrome's accessibility settings, but it's a shitty practice that something like AMP shouldn't be promoting.

I'm pretty sure it does better than 'next video = random(from all of YouTube)' would, but would it be much better than 'next video = random(videos with the same subject or tags as the one playing now)'?

The thing that I find really daunting with Jupyter is the set of APIs that it seems I need to learn in order to get it to do anything cool, like for example visualizing data or a function, or making an interactive widget that does the same. I don’t remember the same kind of pain when playing around with Mathematica. I really want to like it and learn it — I really like interactive programming. It just never makes it high enough on my brain space list to seem worth it.

Since C# is my daily language, this is pretty cool though. I just really wish that I had a use-case strong enough for it to overcome the initial pains of learning it and the ongoing mental maintenance of staying usefully fluent in yet another set of libraries.

I felt puzzled by Reddit's redesign until I started using the mobile app. Then as I was just scrolling and scrolling infinitely, just seeing what it would offer me next -- THAT is when I think I understood what the new Reddit interface was likely optimizing for.

To be honest, I actually don't mind that so much. The thing that annoys me about Reddit is the whole ads-that-look-like-posts thing.

I’m not blind but very visually-impaired and couldn’t agree with you more about computers. The iPad and eBooks have been an absolute godsend for me — I still remember the old days of getting unwieldy enlarged physical books. Now it’s so much nicer!!

When growing up I had to prepare for the possibility that I’d go totally blind one day (thankfully that did not happen). One of the best things that was ever done for me was getting regular touch-typing lessons from a young age.

On screen readers - I’m really excited to see what ML could bring to the table here. I think accessibility could be increased greatly with an ML that could recognise what was happening on the screen based only on the contents of say, the last few seconds of frame buffer data.

I’m also really excited for what AR (augmented with audio in particular) glasses and the like could do here too.

Is it really difficult to find private API usage? Can they be searched for through static or dynamic analysis?

I don’t develop for iOS so I’m genuinely curious. Do they provide automated tools for developers to use? Or a flag that fails your build if you’re trying to call private APIs: For that matter, how are the reviewers catching these API usages?

I find it strange that a private API can be used accidentally, without something notifying the developer before they’ve gotten to the stage of submitting their app.

That’s a really good point. I can’t imagine someone’s will to live staying strong if they’re in constant severe pain from accumulated bone/joint/nerve issues.

My dad lead a VERY active lifestyle - triathlons, squash, swimming, working on building sites, etc. What reward did he get for all that exercise and activity? Replacement hips, painful knees and developing spinal issues (spinal stenosis I think, but can’t quite remember off the top of my head) that he’s been told to live with until he can’t stand the pain anymore because surgery is incredibly risky and might not help or make things worse.

He does have great cardiovascular health though and he still works at his own business, learned how to use an iPhone, etc. Still walks a ridiculous number of steps a day that puts me to shame. The mechanical issues do make it more difficult than it used to be for him though.

Public transport to and from work can be pretty awesome. There’s a lot of stuff you can do, that you wouldn’t be able to do while driving.

Off-topic, but the ‘Dr Google’ thing is interesting. Something that makes it more nuanced in that particular case is that a patient will have better insight into the state of their own body in many ways than a physician will.

I’ve been watching a series called ‘Mystery Diagnosis’ about people with rare diseases and how they were eventually diagnosed. Something you hear most of them say is along the lines of ‘Finally I met this doctor that actually listened to everything I had to say’. It’s a really interesting series — and damn does it remind you how lucky you are to be mostly healthy!

This is what I suspected, with my perception being tainted by the "grass is always greener".

I also can't say we aren't collectively to blame, or at least somewhat - as a bunch we can be poor at political negotiation/skill, lack of standardization, etc. I kick myself every time I miss an estimate that I've given, because I know at some level that has to erode trust. Or when my manager does press for more details as to why something should be done and I can't come up with a really strong justification at that moment, etc.

So what kind of fuckup in software is going to have to happen before this is also true? My fear is that it will happen one day, if not already (see eg- 737 MAX). I'm not looking forward to that day.

The whole technical debt discussion often makes me wonder if there's a fundamental distrust (or even disrespect) of software engineers as domain experts.

Do people in other professions have the same issues? If the salespeople say this thing must be done in this particular way, or if the lawyers say this thing must be done in this particular way, are they questioned and overridden by their managers? I honestly don't know; it feels like software engineers are given a special level of distrust but it just might be that I'm perceiving that because I haven't experienced the other jobs.

FWIW where I currently work, we have an amazing middle-manager / product owner who has to fight the same battles with upper management with regards to process improvement and technical debt. She gets it, but has to fight the same battles we do. Sales and C-level want everything now with as little investment as possible.... I wonder if I just answered my own question?

This particular iOS thing has also been annoying me since I upgraded to iOS 13 (which for the record, has otherwise been very positive for me). I really wish they had done some kind of "Here's what is new" tutorial.

Rearranging icons in folders is still a clusterf--k though - am I the only one that ends up fighting sometimes just to a) get the icon into the folder I want and b) actually keep it there without accidentally scrolling the screen, accidentally dragging it out of the edge of the folder because I'm trying to page it to a particular place?

What I'm noticing with iOS in particular is that lots of 'hidden' functionality is creeping in. This is something I remember Microsoft getting criticism for with Windows 8 -- non-obvious gestures like swiping from the edge of the screen to bring something up. Apple seems to have wandered down that same road.