undopamine

Just started Quantum Break: Zero State

Highly recommend the game for anyone who liked Dark or Primer (or any other fiction that features stable time loops).

'For Lisa' - If we're not in pain, we're not alive (Blindsight, Peter Watts)

small talk with your neighbour

I've started 'The One Thing' by Gary Keller and it's serving as a helpful reminder to keep my focus undiluted.

You have to trick your mind into believing it's not a drastic change, otherwise the fomo will step in and you'll eventually get doubled down relapse episodes.

1. I uninstalled the mobile apps and turned on 'desktop site' view on my phone browser. That way I never really "quit", but the experience of scrolling comes with so much friction that I don't feel like opening it unless absolutely necessary. The added battery life is a bonus.

2. I reduced my feed with extreme prejudice. My fomo wasn't letting me unfollow pages, so I moved them to alt account/custom feeds/bookmarks. Muted the remaining ones except the handful friends I wanted to see updates from.

Finally, don't be hard on yourself. You're going against meticulously engineered data streams that have been perfected over the years with the assistance of top behavioral scientists.

Given the current public opinion on AI adoption, especially around art, it's too early.

I'm personally not a fan but for different reasons. AI-voiced (story-critical) characters would diminish the concept of copmletion-ism, as LLMs can talk to no end. Similar to how procedural generation can discourage exploration (but I'm just one data point and No Man's Sky sales numbers indicate otherwise).

Minor NPC personality is s a gap I'd be happy to see LLMs close. After crossing 70 hours on Cyberpunk 2077, I'm catching NPCs repeating themselves.

I do three categories in my gmail:

- Primary: mail from knowns, important starred mail

- Updates: OTP/accounts related, good newsletters that post less frequently

- Promotions: everything else

I always see Merchant of Record payment processors get recommended in every thread like this on twitter, while it's bad for beginners.

MoR processors, since their per-state thresholds have been crossed, charge sales tax starting from your very first sale, which you'd otherwise not have to pay, since YOUR sales volume are far from reaching anywhere near thresholds.

I found the last chapter of Griffiths Electrodynamics a good beginner resource for special relativity.

Playing Mass Effect: Legendary Edition

'Build in public' communities on twitter have good volume of discussions like these.

Did you try the UnTrap extension for Youtube? It can block shorts, infinite feed, related videos, even comments if you wanna go extreme.

The 3-body problem trilogy (Rememberance of the Earth's past). My first sci-fi novels ever - the Netflix show sold me and these novels compelled me on a whole new hard sci-fi rabbit hole.

Presumed Innocent (preceeded by the Apple TV show of same name). Murder mystery. Loved it.

Tie-in novels from videogame franchise:

- Deus Ex: Black Light

- Devil May Cry: before the nightmare

I've also started Marvel Comics in anticipation of Fantastic Four and the whole Secret Wars storyline it will build up.

Couldn't finish a single non-fiction this year, but enjoyable so far:

- Zero to One

- When I say no, I feel guilty

- Designing data-intensive applications

- Reading on mobile: ReadEra, Document Viewer (by SufficientlySecure, no longer maintained)

- Music: Windows Media Player, Spotify

- File Management: Syncthing, TreeSize

- Code: Vscode, Github Desktop

The Prestige

I just create shortcuts for resolving any potential ambiguities.

My backups in other devices are organized by monthly folders.

Good stories that trigger introspection, characters you can relate to or sympathize with, fun gameplay with no consequences, ultra-realistic graphics, immersive environments, or just a cozy game to cool off after a long day, choose your drug.

Here's a few I can vouch for, my inclination is towards narrative-driven and fast-paced combat:

- Death Stranding

- Deus Ex: Human Revolution (and sequel Mankind Divided)

- God of War Greek Trilogy

- Prince of Persia Trilogy

- Call of Duty Modern Warfare (Original trilogy)

- Assassin's Creed 2 (and sequels Brotherhood, Revelations)

- Devil May Cry 4

- Prototype

- Battlefield 3

Or you can sample from the hottest names and zoom in on what you enjoy the most:

- Cyberpunk 2077

- Elden Ring

- Baldur's Gate 3

- Starfield

- Ghost of Tsushima

- Final Fantasy XVI, VII Remake

Or maybe check out titles that have stood the test of time:

- God of War

- Mass Effect Trilogy

- NieR: Automata

- Metal Gear Solid V

- Resident Evil 4

- Detroit: Become Human

- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

- Red Dead Redemption 2

Just saw a horror story on r/startups. Dev guy worked for two years with no pay while the project went nowhere. Now reluctant to "give away" his work as he feels cheated.

https://old.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/1fkruy3/i_want_to...

r/Piracy mods are compromised[1], one was recently caught accepting payments in exchange for hosting malicious sites on the megathread

Victims' posts get downvoted to invisiblity because it's reddit.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1evqxed/delete_this...

Every year I move a couple thousand bookmarks to my obsidian to make them easily searchable, then gradually move them to appropriate note.

Eventually it got so overwhelming that I started building an automatic bookmark tagger. Going to launch soon, waitlist in profile.

Lmao glad I could help. Sedated myself with this for six months straight.

Scrolling through top AskHN posts of all time scratched this itch for me, but it's too deep of a rabbit hole, right next to TV Tropes.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Likewise:) But the more I watch it, the more I understand why it was labelled as 'pretentious' by first-time watchers.

The Winter Soldier is probably the most rewatchable movie I've ever watched. You know exactly what's gonna happen, but you're hyped up regardless.

Woah! I knew it was improv, but didn't know it took just 5 days! I'm convinced Coherence trivia is as interesting as the movie.

- Nolan: Tenet, the Prestige, Memento, Interstellar

- MCU/Marvel: Iron Man 1-3, Cap Winter Soldier, The Amazing Spider-Man 1-2

- Scifi: Coherence, Volition, Primer, Predestination

- Mystery/Thriller: Shutter Island, Triangle

- Action: Commuter (+anything Liam Neeson), Wanted, Salt

- Comedy: Shaolin Soccer, Wolf of Wall St

- Horror: The Conjuring (+universe)

1. Sources:

- Steam suggestions based on what I've liked in the past.

- Subreddits like gamingsuggestions to find games similar to X, or by genre.

- Gameplay footage from YT channels like gameranx that publish top 10 lists.

2. I crave:

- good stories: Assassin's Creed 2, Battlefield 3, Prince of Persia trilogy

- Satisfying gameplay: DMC4, Prototype, Resident Evil 4 (2005), Tomb Raider 2013

- Impressive visuals and fantasy worlds: Witcher 3, Elden Ring

3. Finding new games is easy. Everyone and their dog have a must-play list. Finding games that you'd enjoy is frustrating. Reddit comments have proven to be the most misleading, even disingenuous. They'd write paragraphs praising Tetris's deep lore and high-fidelity graphics.

For this reason, my shortlisting process roughly looks like this:

- Accumulate suggestions over the long term from steam, reddit, YouTube, etc .

- Create your own wishlist, distribute it in tiers - GOTY winners and nominees, AAA, top steam ratings, sequels of games you've enjoyed in the past, etc.

- order games in each tier based on what factors you desire the most - graphics, gameplay, lore, time to beat. You may move certain games to higher tier based on your bias.

- Every time you hear another suggestion for game X, move it one position higher (within the tier).

I'd love to see a public backlog DB, howlongtobeat.com is a good one. But I'm also convinced it's a highly subjective and personal process, so I count as a customer who doesn't know what they want (in case you're looking to build something around this).

4. Recent favorites:

- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - The 101 trailer was enough to convince me [1]. Also, its prequel Human Revolution was a favorite back in 2012 (got it from a friend).

- God of War 3: again, wanted closure for so long. 1 and 2 were favorites back then, source: friend.

- Death Stranding: received it for free on Epic. Had heard about it a lot, the relase date was recent, and the trailer was intriguing. Also, Kojima.

[1] https://youtu.be/Sh_65yx-sc8?si=B6uoQ7akYRHHMI4B

A bookmark organizer powered by language models, demo coming soon at https://www.undopamine.com?src=hn

This was the turning point for me as well. Decided I'd use my own hardware for primary copies.

Quote from Max Payne 2 on free will:

"There are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask 'Why me?' and 'What if?' When you look back, see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or a forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions.."