There’s also an EULA that you have to check the box for before you download the server software that basically amounts to “I acknowledge and accept that Microsoft can shut this down whenever they want for no reason at all and I have no recourse if they decide to do that.”
One time I was in the ER, and a doctor noted that my heart beat has a rather pronounced split s2 rythm which is something that doctors need to learn to discern when listening to a heartbeat, so for the next hour as I was waiting around, I had several other younger physicians stop by and say “hey I was told to come listen to your heartbeat.”
Made me feel a little special in a very peculiar way I haven’t known since.
I have a bit of a reputation among my friends for missing pretty basic stuff in games. My best guess is that I replay a lot of older games that I already know everything about, so it’s kind of a reflex to just ignore text that pops up on the screen. This is how I end up several hours into a game being unaware that there is a block mechanic.
As I insert a blank line before starting the fourth paragraph of a text message:
“Maybe I’m providing a bit too much detail… Should I take a few sentences to explain why?”
My favorite part about Death Note is that the whole point of the series is “Nobody could be trusted with a power such as this and the existence of such a thing would only lead to ruin,” but every single person who watches it, including me, can only think “yeah, but if I had that power, I would weild it responsibly and only use it to fix things.”
I once had a roommate who preferred to keep the peanut butter in the fridge for some reason. I didn’t really get it, but it was easy to accommodate so I did. Turns out they were just doing the same thing for me because they assumed that it was my preference. I have no idea which one of us originally stuck the peanut butter in the fridge.
Last time I went to use one of those stupid key kiosks, it was out of fucking keys. Not to worry though, some enterprising genius thought of a way for them to still make a sale in this case, and the best part is you never have to refill the blank keys!
When it’s out of keys, it instead asks you to just scan your key, enter your postal address, pay at the kiosk, and they’ll mail you the key simple as that!
Which means that somewhere out there, there’s a corporate database that knows exactly two things about you: what your house key looks like, and what your address is. We all know how careful corporations are with our personal data. I’d sooner make the key myself than give them that info.
Honestly I’d say it’s a pretty apt comparison. Pledging to defend your rights while avoiding using anything labeled “AI” because fascists use it is about as smart as pledging to defend your rights without using guns because fascists use them.
I was messing around with a steetview app one time and I was pretty fascinated by the fact that basically anywhere on the globe, clicked at random, looks incredibly similar to somewhere that I’ve been. Click randomly in Ukraine, “huh, I’ve definitely been on country back roads in the US that look basically just like this.” Click a spot in Kazakhstan, I’ve seen places in the Midwest that look pretty similar. Click something in a more tropical spot in search of something altogether different, “you know I’ve been to some coastal towns that look a lot like this.” Click a spot in a French mountain range, “This doesn’t look all that different from parts of the Rockies.”
It brings to mind one of my favorite quotes:
“If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”
$80b does not describe the figure that they put into Horizon Worlds, it’s the total of all R&D for their entire VR/AR ecosystem. The first VR headsets had to use screens that were designed for smartphones. Now, panel manufacturers fill custom orders of screens that are specifically designed to be used in VR. A lot of current-gen headsets are using panels that were custom made for a now abandoned meta headset. I could go on and on about the major innovations that they’ve brought to the medium, but it’s mostly nerdy shit that doesn’t sound particularly flashy. When the quest 2 came out, the controller tracking was so bad it would lose the controller’s position if it was near your face, so drawing a bow in VR was a crapshoot. Now, you can serve a ping pong ball behind your back. I don’t think most people realize how insane that is. The headset has no positional data for the controller if it can’t see it. They’ve gotten so good at predictive motion tracking using only IMUs that you can accurately hit a ball behind your back even when the controller is completely obscured by your body, and they did that all with software. There are dozens and dozens of similar small improvements that wouldn’t even be noticed by someone who doesn’t play a lot of VR, and many of them were incredibly complex engineering and software problems which are now solved.
Zuck’s still an evil bastard, and Horizon Worlds is a steaming pile of shit, but I’m a big VR nerd that’s been following the progress of the medium since before Facebook bought Oculus. I am so glad that Zuck was convinced that his metaverse idea was viable. It caused him to dump billions into R&D that would have taken years and years to develop organically. I promise you the entire medium of VR is now years ahead of where it would be if not for Zuck blowing all that money.
Plus now they’re seemingly pivoting to put all that R&D toward their perv glasses, which tragically seem to be catching on.
$80b for a shitty VR version of Facebook would be ridiculous, but that’s not all they spent it on. We went from $800 headsets that required an expensive gaming PC and tracking hardware set up around your room, to a $350 battery powered standalone headset that requires no external sensors and can play games like half life 2 without needing a PC at all within ~5yrs. That’s how they spent $80b.
Gator Days comics. It’s one of the only reasons I still go back sometimes.
A dog taught me about crosswalk accessibility. I was walking someone’s blind dog, and we were waiting at the crosswalk. When the opposite side of the street started chirping when the light changed (as it always does), the dog started crossing the street toward the source of the sound before I ever indicated it was time to move. I’d never thought much about the chirping sound until then.
This sketch is funny and everything, but I feel this part in my fucking soul.
Just consider whether you’ll be able to tolerate doing the work when you’re not going to be the one in charge of deciding what you work on.
This is my main apprehension when it comes to pursuing a CS career. I already have an undergrad CS degree. I got it right before LLMs were even a thing. I know I’m rusty, but I have pretty strong fundamentals. I was already working in IT as a student so I stuck with that and all the jobs I’ve had since college have been fixing broken shit for someone else. Part of me would like to make software engineer money, but I hear employed programmers talk about the soul-crushing monotony of staring down a bottomless ticket queue and burning up their passion for creativity on fixing annoying issues with software that someone else wants them to build and I unfortunately already know EXACTLY what they’re talking about. I’m so fucking sick of ticket queues. I understand the utility. I get why they exist, but goddamn it’s such a sisyphian way to organize a workflow. It never feels like I’m actually making progress.
I’ve been unemployed for the past few months and I’ve just started getting back into coding for fun and for the first time in forever I can feel what drew me to programming to begin with. Every time I had the “what’s your major?” discussion with a fellow student, I’d explain that the reason I was pursuing programming is because I like making stuff, and programming seemed like an obvious way to seriously level-up the kinds of stuff I can make. I usually got weird looks for this answer because I suppose I was expected to just say “money.”
Using the skills I’ve developed for something I’m passionate about and applying them to a goal that I’m either completely indifferent to or actually opposed to does not sound like a fulfilling career to me. If I spent all day on an annoying software bug, I’m not going to want to keep doing software after I get home. I already know this because I didn’t want to do troubleshooting when I got home after spending my whole day doing that. I had all-but completely stopped making things for fun because the hurdles I’d run into in my hobby felt too much like work. I’m only just getting back into it now because I haven’t been working for a while.
Part of me feels like I should at least try programming as a career, but I have a terrible feeling that I already know what it will do to my mental health.
At any point that I’m about to make a post online and I realize that the emotional energy required to continue engaging is more than I’m willing to commit to this particular discussion, I just bail. No reply, no downvote, just peace out. It’s really not worth it.
It’s a good platform, but it absolutely does not cover the same breadth of content as YouTube. To me, Nebula feels a bit more like old-school discovery channel before it got all crappy. I pay for Nebula, but I still watch 99% of my online video on YouTube. Of the range of different types of content I watch on YouTube, I’d say Nebula covers about 5% of it. It is pretty nice for when a creator is dealing with copyright bullshit on YouTube, but I can still watch the video on Nebula.
I have a small ~$5 desk fan that I got from AliExpress. First time it broke, it was because the mount points for the micro USB charge port were glued on instead of soldered in place. Then the tiny crappy button which presses a smaller surface mount button inside got bent and no longer clicked the actual internal component. Then the button snapped off completely so I replaced it with a 3D printed one. Then my initial soldering broke loose because I admittedly half-assed it the first time. When it was sitting on my desk, disassembled for the 5th time, I mentioned how many times I’d cracked it open to someone and they bought me a different fan as a gift, essentially freeing me from the curse of repairing the cheap fan again, and giving me permission to just trash it…
I still fixed it and now I have 2 fans. I must’ve fixed it pretty well this last time because I’ve dropped it twice pretty hard and it’s still holding up. Repairing shit is awesome. It usually doesn’t take that many tries though…
Trekkie friend of mine has a “Boldly Go” sticker in his bathroom. Always puts a smile on my face.