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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Thing is, if they have backups, even editing data doesn’t do anything. Or they could even just have it set up to only display the most recent version but still keep each edit on the db. Wouldn’t even be hard to implement. Hell, it wouldn’t even be that hard to implement a historical series of diffs so they don’t have to store the full comments for each edit if the edit is a small one.

    Like if I wanted to run a service that made it easier to find interesting data, part of that would be to flag deletes and edits as “whatever was there before has a higher chance of being interesting”.

    Once something is posted, IMO just assume that it can’t be unposted and trying to unpost it might work similarly to the Streisand effect.

    Even here. Sure, the source is open and I’d bet looking at the delete and edit functions would make it look like everything is fine. But other federated servers don’t have to run the same code and can react to delete and edit directives from other servers however they want. The main difference between this platform and Reddit in regards to control over posted information is the fediverse can’t prevent entities from accessing the data for free (albeit with less user metadata like IP and email).


  • Exactly. Oh and I also just remembered another angle: their anti-linux stance. They used to make games with native Linux support, but as I understand it, they’ve even removed Linux support from some games that already had it, trying to keep the Microsoft monopoly going. I wonder how much money ms is giving epic for that.

    Same reason why a lot of the non-steam handhelds are non-starters for me. And yeah, I can live without games that depend on Windows kernel-level anti-cheat.

    My backlog is so full I could keep entertained even if I ignore every single game I don’t currently have in my steam library. Hell, I even ignore some that are there when I realized they have denuvo or something like that after buying and the refund window has already passed when I do notice.



  • Yeah, they expressed that they wanted to join the online game store scene and the big feature they were offering to draw in users was… anticompetitive exclusivity deals!

    Plus the company killed off the unreal tournament franchise because they didn’t want it to compete with fortnite.

    I have no interest in supporting a company that thinks removing options is the best way to get users to use their products.

    It’s the same shit that has turned streaming services from great back when it was new to now having content spread across many competing services. I’d rather they competed based on their own platform’s features and advantages than the whole “if you want to watch x, you must use service y”. It’s just a series of mini monopolies.





  • A part that complicates it is nutrition. Nutrients are related to food cravings, but if you don’t have access to food that has the nutrients your body is craving, you might eat other things in an attempt to satisfy that craving. But since they don’t contain what your body needs, the craving doesn’t go away, so the drive to eat more remains.

    It’s like the difference between being satisfied and full. For the first one, your body decides it doesn’t need anything more and the desire to eat just isn’t urgent (comfort/habit eating can still be a thing though). When you’re full, it just means your stomach is full and you can’t eat more without discomfort. But once there’s room again, the hunger might return.

    It was something I’d always notice with McDonald’s. One big Mac never felt like it was enough. I’d eat the food and then be disappointed because it was all gone but I still wanted to eat.

    But a good meal with a variety of ingredients can satisfy even if the volume of food isn’t high. Like I’ve only tried fine dining once and went in to the 9 course meal expecting to need to stop for a burger or something afterwards because I knew the portions of each course would be tiny. I walked out of that restaurant with room in my belly but no desire to fill it with anything else.

    It’s also why pregnancy cravings are so strong. The body needs more nutrients when building another body, plus the timing of accessing those nutrients is more important.


  • It’s a story that’s been repeating for decades now. Company creates a new market with new useful tech, run by engineers passionate about the tech, experiences exceptional growth, becomes large corporation, much larger than any competition. Uses relative wealth to keep competition from catching up. Eventually saturates market to the point where market growth doesn’t finance the growing R&D expenses (which were tuned assuming previous rate of growth would just continue). At some point, profit increases start coming from business/marketing side of things more than engineering side, resulting in MBAs and marketers getting more promotions and eventually control of the company. Then tech stagnates because they don’t think investing in R&D is as worthwhile. Also aren’t able to prioritize what R&D is still happening effectively because they don’t really understand the tech as well as engineers. But they tread water and even increase profits because they dominate the market.

    Until competition that is engineering focused (often also made up of former engineers from the dominant company) catches up or creates a new market that makes theirs start going obsolete. Suddenly trouble, then they either pivot to quietly supporting businesses that continue using their products, or gets in trouble with the law because of increasingly anticompetitive practices.

    Xerox could have owned the PC market but thought they could continue being a household name sticking with copiers. IBM outsourced everything and people eventually realized they didn’t need IBM. FoxconnFairchild had two groups of engineers leave and create Intel and AMD when they were dissatisfied with how management was running the company. And now Intel coasted while AMD floundered and was completely unprepared for TSMC and AMD to make large technical leaps and surpass them.




  • Could have a system where a government site cryptographically signs a birth year plus random token provided by the site you want to use.

    Step 1: access site
    Step 2: site sends random token
    Step 3: user’s browser sends token plus user authentication information
    Step 4: gov site replies with a string containing birth year, token, and signature
    Step 5: send that string to the other site where it uses the government’s public key to verify the signature, showing the birth year is attested by the government

    No need to have any direct connection with the user’s identity and the site or been the gov and site.








  • Does it also include those cutscenes where you have to press a button that pops up on the screen or you have to start the cutscene over again?

    I hate those because:

    1. Every console has a different layout for basically the same buttons.
    2. I like cut scenes being little breaks where you just watch and soak it in. At least assuming the character doesn’t make choices I hate or suddenly surrenders because a few enemies point weapons at them (after probably having fought more of those enemies actually using their weapons instead of just threatening it).
    3. If I’ve seen a cutscene already, I’d rather skip it and get back to the good gameplay. Maybe the interaction was intended to reduce that “go away cutscene, you’re boring, I want to get back to the fun stuff” but I don’t find it accomplishes that at all.
    4. It’s not good gameplay. Even if I don’t end up panicking and hitting a wrong button or missing it because I’m not ready to think about where the X button is on this particular controller, it’s not rewarding at all to succeed, other than the “yay, I don’t have to repeat this stupid shit anymore”.
    5. And I especially hate ones that prompt mashing buttons as fast as you can or rotating a stick as fast as you can (and this applies outside of cutscenes, too). I don’t find anything interesting about testing the physical limits of my thumbs and wearing down the buttons or sticks involved faster in the process.

  • Telephoto lenses have a low field of vision. You’d want very high resolution wide angle sensors. Or maybe a combination of the two, where the wide angle cameras spot interesting things for the narrow angle ones to look closer at.

    The difference between the two would be like when they went from U2 spy planes to satellite imagery, going from thin strips of visibility to “here’s the hemisphere containing most of Russia”.