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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Oh, the metaphor goes further. We’re not the pilot of the suit, we’re not the hardware, we’re not the OS of the suit, we’re the AI assistant

    We speak for it with the other AIs, we get called up to handle things we don’t have learned behaviors for, we analyze and provide feedback - we give advice and it feels like we’re making decisions, but we’re not



  • That’s not what I’m mad about. I’m mad that it won’t ever work - Ubisoft isn’t trying to figure out why their games are failing, they’re trying to figure out how to keep the stock price projections up

    Hence this article, which is signaling to wall Street “we’re going to make layoffs and hire cheaper, less experienced people”. They’ll probably do it by closing studios and buying up new ones - that’s pretty much their standard operating procedure. They buy up a studio, take their IP to add to the pile, then turn it into a formula and churn out games until the players lose interest in the IP

    What’s the problem? They’re too damn big. What’s the solution? Block them from acquiring more studios and they’ll die without leaving a swath of destruction on the way down. Ideally split them up. Do the same with Microsoft and EA, and we could save the gaming industry overnight (granted, more like over the course of a few years)

    Voting with your wallet doesn’t work because to the leadership of a Corp, sales aren’t what matters. Stock price matters, which is only tentatively linked to how profitable the company is, which is only tentatively linked to the quality of their products








  • Why do you think C is the one true language? It’s a tool.

    There’s a single very simple answer to “what tool should I use?”. Use the best tool for the job

    The job is the objective - what are you trying to accomplish? What are your priorities? What compromise is best between time, cost, and quality? What are your abilities? What’s in your toolbox right now, and what could you obtain within the time frame?

    For you, the best tool might always be C. I don’t know how you’ve specialized or what you do, but C is powerful. Maybe you have an orderly thought process code meticulously, maybe you struggle to learn new languages. Maybe there’s just no better option for the jobs you take on

    For me, C is rarely the answer. Not never, but outside of school I can count on one hand how many times I’ve chosen it. I code intuitively and feel how the code fits together, I can pick up languages on the spot and switch even more easily. But I’m not meticulous, it’s against my nature. I make mistakes frequently - but I learn by doing, and I don’t need to understand to start doing

    All that said, why do we keep making languages and frameworks? Because as programmers, we build the tools. We can also share them without losing them. The perfect tool for one job won’t be the same for any other job, but a pretty good tool for many jobs is a valuable tool

    The trade-off with our tools is between power, versatility, and cost (generally being time). We all want powerful and versatile tools - but our time is limited, and so we can’t afford the cost

    Ultimately, I think you’ve correctly spotted a recurring problem but misidentified the cause. The cause isn’t the tools, it’s the fact that the cost is someone else’s time. And the fact we have no way to translate money into their time

    A corporation can fund a team to continuously develop a tool they rely on. An individual can’t - we could chip in a few bucks here and there, but we use a lot of tools. We don’t know good tools from bad ones until we use them, we don’t know what tools are used to build the ones we need either.

    So everyone and their mom wants to build a service to fund work on their tools. I hate services, I don’t want to give them my data or my money - I want tools that will work on my devices, not because I don’t want to deny them pay for their work, but because I pick up, drop, and modify tools all the time

    That’s the real problem - if I could donate x dollars a month to support the tools I use, I would. If I could choose for us all to pay more taxes to support the tools we all use, I would take that deal. Hell, I’d go through the effort to generalize my personal tools

    Instead, the only real profit to be had in OSS comes from companies, because they can afford to fund them directly, or services, which individuals tend to hate but companies barely notice. The tools aren’t the problem - the economics are the problem


  • It’s actually really fascinating - cats seem to rapidly learn culture while they’re weaning

    Cats in Japan are very friendly and trusting of humans, cats in America are more cautious and wary

    Japan has folklore about multiple variations of cat yokai that range from fickle trickers to malevolent supernatural ones. Cats are considered good luck, killing them invites bad luck. They have euphemisms like being in no position to refuse even a cats help, and their presence being a good omen

    America has folklore about cats being bad luck, and tied to witchery. We still use euphemisms about skinning cats, letting them out of bags, swinging them, etc. Killing cats wasn’t abnormal behavior even a century ago

    And apparently, if you bring a female Japanese cat to America, it’ll take several generations for the descendents to localize to the culture. They even meow differently







  • That’s basically what I’m saying - the US massively overproduces food. There’s many problems with how it’s done and how it’s used, but the Americas aren’t likely to starve. So long as the US stands, starvation isn’t likely - we literally burn crops to keep production at a level where we could feed much of the world

    Climate refugees aren’t murderhobos - they’re people. People that will mostly without a job, often living out of their cars, and largely desperate. They need just as much to survive, but desperate people do desperate things. The ones that aren’t desperate will integrate, the ones who are will be a burden on the system

    Let’s say Florida or Texas start bleeding population. Almost nowhere is equipped to handle 5 million more people in a short time frame - it would wreak havoc on the job market, strain supply chains, and lead to a massive increase in crime. Desperate people do desperate things

    Yes, it’s our current problems magnified. There is enough to go around, but not like we do it today. We have to restructure the world - will we do it today, while we have breathing room, will we do it in a decade, when our systems fall apart around us, or will we do it decades from now, when the choice is between sacrifice and death

    Climate change is here - it’s a right now problem. If we give it time, it could collapse everything - if the US collapses entirely, a famine in Toronto is a possiblity. Every city could starve. I don’t think we’ll get to that point, but there will be death. There is already death. The sooner we start to address reality, the less suffering our species will undergo

    I don’t think humanity could die out unless Earth becomes another Venus. We’re too adaptable, too widespread for that. And if we’ve already lost, who cares. It’s a pointless line of thinking. We could be screwed, but I don’t think​ we are…I think the Earth trends towards a stability humans can live with. I think we have more systems balancing us, if we go down that road it’ll be a slow and painful one we won’t live to see

    This is a problem that will affect you, it will affect everyone. We can minimize it - many will die no matter what we do. But most could survive, but only if we change the systems at play - I think we’ll get there, but the question is how much suffering we endure before then


  • I’ve used expo, which is really just react native with some helpful tooling around it. It was my first real project with react as well, and all and all I’d recommend it.

    React native is pretty great, but there’s a steep learning curve. Expo has some bugs, and once you get off the beaten path you might have some issues. You always have the option of ejecting to react native or native code, but the expo app is incredible - you can do live updates remotely, the app will just reload with the changes without rebuilding everything

    I’ll probably use it for most apps moving forward