I didn't consider latency spikes on slower resources like that, thanks for the examples.
232 karma · joined August 6, 2015
I initially pictured someone picking the highest spec option they can afford when setting up a new service, rather than choosing based on actual demand of each node.
> "If we took the server down for 1 hour to upgrade it, how expensive is that?"
Putting my CI / DevOps hat on for a sec: who takes production servers down for upgrades without some level of HA to avoid downtime? ;)
Wow, this really clicked with me.
Games had always been a big part of my down time, often as a platform to stay in touch with friends from my home town after moving away.
My interest and enjoyment came in waves, based on what we were playing, outside life and a bunch of other factors. I did notice though, that the amount of time I spent didn't really relate to how much I actually enjoyed the games (or gaming in general).
I realised I didn't actually like playing games as much as I thought. I started pulling apart exactly what I _did_ enjoy, and what was actually tied to gaming (vs something I can achieve / obtain elsewhere).
First, I stopped buying single player games. The social side was a big part of why I liked games, and most single player games I do play, I don't finish. They're generally from a friend's recommendation, so I've started borrowing games from them once they've finished. It seems to avoid the hype train too. ("No Man's Sky was fun for a few hours, but you'll get bored. Try this instead.")
I love the aesthetics and creativity of games, and a lot of my enjoyment comes from just experiencing and absorbing that. I'm sure the SEGA and Nintendo sound chips constantly chirping from my TV set up the brain pathways that make me enjoy repetitive Techno so much now.
I've gone from playing guitar, to a stable of synthesizers and samplers. When an old NES tune pops into my head, I'll start jamming rather than fire up a game I've finished a dozen times.
I don't know if there was a point to that ramble, I just thought I'd share.
They'll get several seasons of Power Rangers, a quality production that required the work of many professionals in the same industry. A lot of whom were probably new to the industry, building experience required to land jobs under people like Spielberg in the future.
Honest question, have there ever been any attempts to vary the price of content based on cost to produce?
If a studio wants to pump out high quality, low budget teen slasher flicks, why cant they sell at half the price of a CGI blockbuster?
Would those straight-to-dvd or midday movies do better if their value wasn't directly compared to AAA titles? Sure, it may not have been The Godfather, but it was a quarter of the price to see, so I don't feel ripped off.
If a movie uses unknown actors (which to me always feels more immersive than trying to imagine a star as yet another persona...), why does it have to cost me the same as a movie with individual actors paid an order of magnitude more than the previous film's entire budget?
Why do foreign films have to compete with American films at an equal price point (for local tickets)? Would more people choose a random Bollywood flick over the generic rom-com on date night if tickets were half the price at the same theater?
Maybe that's what we're seeing with original programming on things like Netflix?
He does a great job of walking through the thought process of deciding which of the options makes sense in different situations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmTagWcqoE
He has 3 guidelines:
1. Prefer scoped lifetimes by default (local members)
2. Else prefer unique_ptr and containers
3. Else consider shared_ptr
His whole talk gives examples that show the flexibility of unique_ptr and how modern C++ can express ownership.
See slide 5 here:
https://github.com/CppCon/CppCon2016/blob/master/Presentatio...
https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/sfml-game-developm...
SFML is a C++ library that handles window management, input, sound, etc... For reference, a friend and I went through the book chapter by chapter a couple years ago. He was new to programming, and I'd made a few simple games and read scattered info in the past. The book had a good pace and filled in a lot of the gaps I had.
Another great book is "Game Engine Architecture" https://www.crcpress.com/Game-Engine-Architecture-Second-Edi...
This book is a lot deeper, but I found it a great reference. I probably spent more time reading this book and going back over my engine code to refactor based on what I learned (rather than use it as a direct example implementation.
At that stage, there were a few good articles online that were focused on the ECS pattern. Here's a couple, but try to find something that matches your language, there's plenty of info out there.
http://www.dataorienteddesign.com/dodmain/node5.html
https://eliasdaler.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/using-lua-and-cp...
https://github.com/junkdog/artemis-odb/wiki/Introduction-to-...
Good luck and have fun!
If anyone is interested in creating an indie/hobby game engine, I'd recommend the following:
- game loop with independent render FPS and a constant simulation tick delta (otherwise it runs non-deterministic due to floating point) - "entities, components, systems" architecture (ECS) - data-driven content (load level and game object data from JSON or similar, and programmatically build your scene) - basic event or messaging system
Honestly, I can't think of a field that covers as wide a range of CS topics at the depth I've seen in lower level game development.
If you focus on understanding and implementing the popular patterns and algorithms recommended by the indie community, its not the most daunting of projects. There's so much great information, and a few good books that break down and walk through a working implementation you can build on once you understand it from the ground up.
I find most guides are aimed at beginners following an example, and aren't always the best resource to get through an issue when I'm stuck on one detail.
The alternatives are browsing the actual documentation, which can be hard to navigate when you are still learning.
The last option is to ask questions on coding forums, which is where I have had the most success. The main problem is the asyncronous nature of clarifications or follow up questions.
I'd love an app or site where I can post a question to a forum, with a link to a realtime chat session I can monitor for the next few hours and interact with people interested in the topic / question.
I've had a few great experiences on irc channels where a string of questions would turn into a tech talk by someone who understood things in detail. Or someone bored found my problem interesting enough to walk me through step by step until things clicked.
Maybe your site/app could give users a URL to paste into their posts, similar to people linking pastebin examples. It should handle the creation / removal of rooms and possibly archiving in case people want to save a transcript for reference.
If it focused on doing one thing well, I'd use it. I probably wouldn't switch to a new 'general' forum just for the feature though, unless it had a large community to go with it. (stackoverflow network for example)
Whatever you do, good luck and thanks for taking the time to give back.
Being a major city, the bus fare alone is cheaper than parking. I live within 15 minutes of world class night life, a city who's main source of income is tourism. An uber home costs little more than a drink.
For a lot of high rises, the cost of a car park is comparable in price to an extra room. It could be the difference between a nicer place or one further out.
I used to road trip to my home town before I started working, but the last few years have been trips overseas, or to other states with the same friends. Not having a car payment, or registration, or insurance helped here...
I know my lifestyle isn't for everyone, there are a lot of pros and cons. I think putting off settling down and having a family (another millennial trend?) removes a lot of the need for a car though. By the time I stopped driving, it seemed more an inconvenience than anything. Like that bulky spare couch you don't have a room for after moving house.
Just offering my $0.02 as a millennial that relates to the story.
We had a config script that we used internally for test environments, and were hoping to use it on box until our code covered this part of the setup process.
It relied on starting several services in order, and checking certain things were running at various points, by parsing the output of 'ps'.
Unfortunately, the appliance used a BusyBox version of 'ps' that truncated the output.
I ended up writing a shellscript that checked /proc manually and echoed a string that would match the main offenders, aliased 'ps' to the new script, ran the setup and it worked first time.
I used it on our nightly test runs for ~ 3 months without issue, until it was properly replaced.
- Windows VM (to isolate VPN connections)
- RDP to a Windows VM (jump box in the cloud network)
- VMWare vsphere client (to perform the initial appliance iso installation)
The bug I've encountered: the first keypress is echoed several times, while keys typed immediately after are only sent once. Any short (< 1 second) pause in input will cause the next keypress to echo several times again.
Leading to input like the following:
login> rrroot
password> pppassword
My workaround to get through the initial configuration (so I could ssh) involved remembering to press/release shift before I typed anything. (on screen keyboard also worked, but where's the fun in that?)
It ended up feeling like the habit of tapping esc before entering a command in vim :P
I swear I used to have a flowchart I'd blindly follow, and god help me if there was a conflict record :/
We had to test against the OSs we'd since dropped support for, which included HP-UX, AIX and s390.
The first time I heard someone mention a "31bit" build, I thought they were taking the piss :P It just seemed so odd at the time...
- early risers have a consistent additional couple of hours every day.
- night owls make each day last as long as it needs to.
I found an example that creates a subwindow and moves it based on keyboard input:
People often talk about the speed of use, but this is (IMO) a result of its efficiency. I liked your use of the word 'relaxed', I'd add: slow down your actions so you have time to think about what you're doing, almost like narrating your actions.
Vim has a grammar that works well when spoken. Learn Vim's way of saying the action you're performing, then learn the relevant keys, adding them to your vocabulary. If a sentence makes sense in your head, try it and it'll probably work as expected. Say you started with:
"delete 3 words" == d3w
"yank to the end of the line" == y$
From this you could assume these valid:
"delete to the end of the line" == d$
"yank 5 words" == y5w
It takes time, but it builds up when you add a word to your vocab here and there, when you have a concrete use for it. (often one you'll remember from the 'wow, that was cool' moment when you first see it in action)
In my experience, its been rock solid reliable (generally give them 6 months before upgrading to most recent versions).
For a lot of things, I see countries of the EU are _more_ unanimous on topics than the US is internally.
The death penalty is a prime example. It varies state to state in the US, but (AFAIK) is consistent across EU countries.
Gambling is another, I didn't realize it was actually illegal in some US states. I'm not aware of any individual countries in the EU that differ from the majority there.
I could never justify owning even a cheap set of golf clubs, pool cue or bowling shoes, but I'll never turn down an invitation by friends or family. If I do something rarely, but still enjoy it, I'll treat it like planning and budgeting for any other night out or holiday.
Maybe a friend buys a welder you could borrow, before you yourself need to use it. What if you need to unexpectedly fix a different problem? (roofing, tiling, etc...) Could you need another tool instead that you hadn't planned for?
I group tools with things like PC hardware, into "under $20", "~$50", "~$100", "~$250" and "~$500". I normally have $500(AUD) set aside for my next project (rather than a collection of tools of similar value), so its always there when I actually need something specific.
I've started working on a hardware MIDI controller with my little brother, so spent around $250(AUD) one afternoon on a soldering iron, arduino, book and a few bits and pieces (buttons, pots, LEDs). I avoided huge packs of LEDs, Resistors, etc... and just bought a few I knew I'd need (10k resistors for the buttons, etc...).
Anything left over, I'll donate or leave with him. If I don't have another HW project, I'll probably give him the soldering iron and multimeter too. Plus, I'll know who to ask first if I need to borrow one in the future ;)
I probably cost myself an additional $100 on this project, but I don't have to pay for a shed, or 'spare room' (like most of my friends have) to store various things, so it probably evens out over time.