Liru's recent activity

  1. Comment on Reddit is removing ability to opt out of ad personalization based on your activity on the platform in ~tech

    Liru
    Link Parent
    From a quick check of my subreddit statistics, most users use mobile apps, followed by new.reddit, followed by old.reddit way down in the list. It's a substantial sliver, but that's all it is, a...

    I don't think they'll remove the old Reddit, even they must be knowing that most users use that version instead of new experience.

    From a quick check of my subreddit statistics, most users use mobile apps, followed by new.reddit, followed by old.reddit way down in the list. It's a substantial sliver, but that's all it is, a sliver.

    13 votes

  2. Comment on Unity reveals plans to charge per game install, drawing criticism from development community in ~games

    Liru
    Link Parent
    This has been studied for roughly half a century now; the more socially acceptable term to use for this is the door-in-the-face technique. It's commonly studied when referring to psychological...

    This has been studied for roughly half a century now; the more socially acceptable term to use for this is the door-in-the-face technique. It's commonly studied when referring to psychological compliance methods.

    16 votes

  3. Comment on The problem with ChatGPT is that all of these websites like W3Schools and TutorialsPoint will go bankrupt in ~tech

    Liru
    Link
    Why would we want to keep them alive? If the rise of ChatGPT means that TutorialsPoint and similar sites (GeeksForGeeks, TutorialsTeacher, etc.) will finally stop appearing in my search results, I...

    How can we keep these sites alive, and still make use of ChatGPT?

    Why would we want to keep them alive?

    If the rise of ChatGPT means that TutorialsPoint and similar sites (GeeksForGeeks, TutorialsTeacher, etc.) will finally stop appearing in my search results, I would say that that's one of the few outright positive effects that it would bring. Those sites are awful. I have never found them to actually contain any useful information; 95% of their content seems to be ripped from official or better documentation, which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't then remove everything except for most basic use cases, which makes it worthless.

    Even that wouldn't be so bad if a good chunk of those basic examples weren't horribly flawed or opaque, though.

    52 votes

  4. Comment on Twitter is now X as the little blue bird disappears in ~tech

    Liru
    Link Parent
    I'd appreciate getting a code, since it seems a bunch of people I follow on Twitter are starting to move there.

    I'd appreciate getting a code, since it seems a bunch of people I follow on Twitter are starting to move there.

  5. Comment on Any Bevy (the rust game engine) users here? in ~games

    Liru
    Link
    Are there any actual good resources for developing games using an ECS system? I've been following Bevy on-and-off since 0.4, making trivially small games with it, but the lack of development...

    Are there any actual good resources for developing games using an ECS system? I've been following Bevy on-and-off since 0.4, making trivially small games with it, but the lack of development guides has been killer due to the uncertainty of if something is being done in the correct way or not. Ironically, when I had more time to try it out, it seemed like there were more articles on how to implement your own ECS library than how to actually use one properly. It didn't really help that most ECS guides were of the typical "here's a position component, here's a velocity component; wow, physics! Now go code the rest of the fucking owl" variety.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on What is your most important game? in ~games

    Liru
    Link Parent
    Oh, wow, Dark Throne is certainly a blast from the past. I remember trying a bunch of text MMOs in the mid 2000s, and even trying to develop my own with a few people I played with. I spent a bit...

    Oh, wow, Dark Throne is certainly a blast from the past. I remember trying a bunch of text MMOs in the mid 2000s, and even trying to develop my own with a few people I played with. I spent a bit of time playing Dark Throne, among other games in that space, but I eventually focused on Hobowars with a bit of Torn City on the side.

    I wonder if simple text based games like that would ever proliferate again due to the rise of mobile phones.

    3 votes

  7. Comment on What consumeristic and somewhat pointless hobby do you have? in ~hobbies

    Liru
    Link Parent
    Knowing my personality, I am explicitly staying away from "collecting" old records. I drew a hard line because I know that once I start looking into first pressings and other rare items, that will...

    Knowing my personality, I am explicitly staying away from "collecting" old records. I drew a hard line because I know that once I start looking into first pressings and other rare items, that will just lead to frustration and unhappiness that I don't have a "complete" collection. At the moment, I'm just buying music/albums that I enjoyed when I was younger but couldn't afford due to being broke, or stuff that looks cool enough without worrying about collecting it.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on What consumeristic and somewhat pointless hobby do you have? in ~hobbies

    Liru
    Link Parent
    I feel the pain of this one, having "started" at the beginning of this year, but ramped it up a bit in the past month or so. I currently don't have much to show for it, but at least it's...

    I feel the pain of this one, having "started" at the beginning of this year, but ramped it up a bit in the past month or so. I currently don't have much to show for it, but at least it's something.

    Heck, I even went to a record store yesterday to buy a bunch of stuff. $700 later, and I only have about 2.5 inches of record thickness to add to that shelf.

    1 vote

  9. Comment on What was the best piece of content that came out as a result of the pandemic? in ~misc

    Liru
    Link Parent
    Very few bloopers, but other than that, correct. A lot of alternative takes/collages, and some extra songs that didn't make it and were repurposed into others, which you can compare with how "The...

    What's the story with Outtakes? Alternate takes of performances? Additional songs that didn't make the cut? Bloopers?

    Very few bloopers, but other than that, correct. A lot of alternative takes/collages, and some extra songs that didn't make it and were repurposed into others, which you can compare with how "The Future" eventually ended up as "Problematic", or seeing a previous version of "All Eyes on Me".

    One of the more popular songs from it seems to be Five Years, which is basically on par with most of the other songs in the special. Personal favourite is the SPIDEEEEEER, HIDING IN THE CORNER, SUPER FUCKING NORMAL, but honestly, the whole thing is worth a watch.

    3 votes

  10. Comment on COM+ alternatives in 2023? in ~comp

    Liru
    Link Parent
    So, unless I'm misunderstanding, something like plain database access over an API? Wouldn't EF and WCF cover that?

    So, unless I'm misunderstanding, something like plain database access over an API? Wouldn't EF and WCF cover that?

  11. Comment on First they came for /r/pics ... now Reddit are coming for the individual personal subreddits in ~tech

    Liru
    Link Parent
    Heck, go to any subreddit with poor moderation and compare it to any subreddit with good moderation. There's a reason /r/AskHistorians and similar subreddits have held up and are known as high...

    Heck, go to any subreddit with poor moderation and compare it to any subreddit with good moderation.

    There's a reason /r/AskHistorians and similar subreddits have held up and are known as high quality. While part of it is due to the commenters, one wouldn't believe the amount of stuff that has to be pruned for the good stuff to be seen, and to encourage that high quality to be there. Just saying that something should be a space for high quality discussion doesn't work, for some strange reason.

    11 votes

  12. Comment on COM+ alternatives in 2023? in ~comp

    Liru
    Link
    The main question would be "what are you using COM+ for?" COM+ encompasses a lot of things, so narrowing down what you actually need it for would help.

    The main question would be "what are you using COM+ for?" COM+ encompasses a lot of things, so narrowing down what you actually need it for would help.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on Reddit communities are switching to NSFW to create some friction and rob Reddit of ad revenue in ~tech

    Liru
    Link Parent
    All posts in a NSFW subreddit are considered NSFW, with no way to mark them SFW. There's a button to unmark it, but it doesn't do anything. Made it a bit annoying when I wanted to have SFW...

    All posts in a NSFW subreddit are considered NSFW, with no way to mark them SFW. There's a button to unmark it, but it doesn't do anything.

    Made it a bit annoying when I wanted to have SFW discussion threads in a NSFW subreddit I moderate but wasn't allowed to mark them as such, and then finding out that it's not a bug, it's a feature.

    13 votes

  14. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Liru
    Link Parent
    Attempt to write a FFI wrapper for a closed-source dynamic library. Find slightly annoying hiccups that would make it a bit more difficult than usual for others to distribute. Try to work around...
    1. Attempt to write a FFI wrapper for a closed-source dynamic library.
    2. Find slightly annoying hiccups that would make it a bit more difficult than usual for others to distribute.
    3. Try to work around it.
    4. Decide to just do a Rust native library instead.
    5. Learn how to use ltrace, ptrace, and strace to keep track of requests/responses the library makes, so that a native, open-source version could be written.
    6. Try to understand one particular API call, search online for some terminology in the hopes that it's more widely used than in just this library.
    7. Find a library written in Python, which you previously assumed used the same shared library bindings as in step 1, that basically has all the logic laid out already and doesn't wrap the library at all.
    8. Headdesk repeatedly.

    At least I learned how to use the trace tools to some extent.

  15. Comment on Is there a children's TV show in your country that is universally loved and became part of your country's culture? in ~tv

    Liru
    Link Parent
    Reksio et al definitely had an impact on culture, but that was probably solely due to them being the only decent form of animation available in Poland at the time. Just because they are viewed as...

    Reksio et al definitely had an impact on culture, but that was probably solely due to them being the only decent form of animation available in Poland at the time. Just because they are viewed as mediocre now doesn't mean they weren't part of the culture. DBZ and other anime are definitely more popular, but they're also newer media, so it's difficult to really gauge the impact.

    Also, appropriate meme for the conversation.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Formula 1 race weekend (Canadian GP) thread in ~sports.motorsports

    Liru
    Link Parent
    I would have guessed "within 2 turns", to be honest. Alonso, Hamilton, AND Russell on his butt would have been tough.

    I would have guessed "within 2 turns", to be honest. Alonso, Hamilton, AND Russell on his butt would have been tough.

    1 vote

  17. Comment on Has anybody followed along with Crafting Interpreters? in ~comp

    Liru
    Link
    My book arrived literally today. I'm going to eventually go through it so that I can learn how to properly make an interpreter, then I'm going to try to make a native Wren interpreter in Rust...

    My book arrived literally today. I'm going to eventually go through it so that I can learn how to properly make an interpreter, then I'm going to try to make a native Wren interpreter in Rust instead of having one bound via FFI. I tried making one a long time ago and failed to get around to it again because Life Happened(TM).

    2 votes

  18. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Liru
    (edited )
    Link
    Worked on creating a Rust FFI wrapper library for an SDK that only has dynamic libraries and headers publicly available, and not any of the actual source code. Learning a lot about FFI API design...

    Worked on creating a Rust FFI wrapper library for an SDK that only has dynamic libraries and headers publicly available, and not any of the actual source code. Learning a lot about FFI API design and relearning some lower-level system stuff. It would be a lot easier if the source code itself was available...

    The main problem I'm running into right now is making the Rust API consistent, accessible, and efficient. For a trivial example, there is a version method that asks for a buffer so that the method can copy a string representation into it. I thought about just caching it after the first call, but then I remembered that there may be the slight probability of someone switching out that dynamic library at runtime for some reason, and that might cause some weird issues in terms of program logic. I'm thinking of just noting that down in the docs and exposing a FFI module that calls the non-cached method.

    I'm planning on eventually just rewriting that SDK itself in Rust, since according to its own docs, all it seems to be is a bunch of Nanomsg calls to another service's IPC pipe that should be running on the same computer. Shouldn't be too difficult, right? (Famous Last Words...)

    Edit: Jesus, ffi looks terrible when my font tries to make it into a ligature.

    4 votes

  19. Comment on What are some more obscure hobbies you enjoy? in ~hobbies

    Liru
    Link Parent
    I've seen Sam Aaron, the creator of SonicPi, do a livecoding session at ElixirConf EU last year, and was amazed at how well everything managed to flow together for over an hour or so. It got me...

    SonicPi, which is a Ruby environment and full IDE/package

    I've seen Sam Aaron, the creator of SonicPi, do a livecoding session at ElixirConf EU last year, and was amazed at how well everything managed to flow together for over an hour or so. It got me interested enough to actually try it out for a bit before life distracted me with a move to another continent.

    I should pick it up again sometime.

  20. Comment on What did you do this week (and weekend)? in ~talk

    Liru
    Link
    A while back, I bought a vinyl album set on an impulse (Bo Burnham's Inside: Deluxe Edition, for those who care). After that, it turns out that a lot of older people I know have a lot of records...

    A while back, I bought a vinyl album set on an impulse (Bo Burnham's Inside: Deluxe Edition, for those who care). After that, it turns out that a lot of older people I know have a lot of records that they don't listen to anymore, so I took in a lot, despite not having a record player.

    Recently, I got a turntable, as well as some other stuff including wired headphones since I left my old set back in Europe. I set up the turntable, started hooking everything up, and realized that this particular model doesn't have a headphone jack. Now I'm slightly annoyed that I have to go shopping for either speakers or a headphone amp.

    In the meantime, this turntable has a USB out port, so I'm using that to listen to things it plays using a Framework laptop's subpar speakers. Kind of ruins the whole point of a hi-fi system, but if it works, it works.

    2 votes