text_garden's recent activity
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Comment on Once you hear it, the 'Gen Alpha melody' is everywhere in ~music
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
text_garden Link ParentMy OpenBSD based web server is basically The Shire.My OpenBSD based web server is basically The Shire.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
text_garden Link ParentI've been using it almost exclusively for my personal work in the past few years. Very good quality of life features and it fits naturally where I would otherwise use C. Still very much WIP, but...I've been using it almost exclusively for my personal work in the past few years. Very good quality of life features and it fits naturally where I would otherwise use C. Still very much WIP, but at least for my purposes the individual releases have become stable enough that I can just stick with them until I'm ready to adapt to the changes in the next version.
The design facilitates a style of programming where you can easily avoid dynamic heap allocations. For example, every standard library function that needs to allocate takes an allocator as an argument, where you can plug a general heap allocator, a heap-backed arena allocator, a plain page allocator, an allocator backed by a static buffer, a counting allocator (for tracking leaks) or whatever implementation you can come up with yourself.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
text_garden LinkI made a small Gopher server in Zig. It reads a request from stdin and outputs the corresponding file content or menu to stdout before exiting, so it's intended to be used with something like...I made a small Gopher server in Zig. It reads a request from stdin and outputs the corresponding file content or menu to stdout before exiting, so it's intended to be used with something like inetd or socat. It can either generate menus from directories dynamically, or you can place an ".index.gopher" file in any of the directories which is emitted instead of the directory listing, or a ".header.gopher" file which is emitted before the directory listing. In these files you can omit the host and port columns if you just want to make local links.
Here's the source: https://text.garden/gopher.zig. It's for Zig 0.15.2 and I know that it won't compile for the current version because the way Zig does I/O changed since then, but an upgrade to later versions should only be a small change in the main function.
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Comment on GOG confirm they are working towards GOG Galaxy on Linux in ~games
text_garden Link ParentIf by external installer you mean downloading the installer exes manually and dealing with those, that's a solved problem. I mostly use Heroic for my GOG games. It integrates with GOG through...If by external installer you mean downloading the installer exes manually and dealing with those, that's a solved problem. I mostly use Heroic for my GOG games. It integrates with GOG through their APIs and does all the Wine/Proton/DXVK/what-have-you stuff rather seamlessly like Steam. You get a list of your games and install them with a couple of clicks. Lutris does as well.
If by external installer you mean a different tool and launcher to install games, well, that's what GOG Galaxy is as well.
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Comment on What pre-NES games do you still recommend today? in ~games
text_garden Link ParentIt can be played in a browser in the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/beneath-apple-manor-1978-version-fixed I've never given it an honest run myself.It can be played in a browser in the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/beneath-apple-manor-1978-version-fixed
I've never given it an honest run myself.
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Comment on What pre-NES games do you still recommend today? in ~games
text_garden Link ParentEnjoyed it! Very absurd setting, and I like the interface. Avoids verb hunting without becoming a CYOA type game. I found a small typo ("arugment" when talking to the dashboard).Enjoyed it! Very absurd setting, and I like the interface. Avoids verb hunting without becoming a CYOA type game. I found a small typo ("arugment" when talking to the dashboard).
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Comment on What pre-NES games do you still recommend today? in ~games
text_garden Link ParentCool, it's a small world! Ever played Beneath Apple Manor? Supposedly it's a bit of a proto-roguelike similar in design to Rogue but released a year before.Cool, it's a small world!
Ever played Beneath Apple Manor? Supposedly it's a bit of a proto-roguelike similar in design to Rogue but released a year before.
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Comment on What pre-NES games do you still recommend today? in ~games
text_garden Link ParentOh, ZIL, that's cool! I've played some modern games in the genre but it's been a while. I remember being impressed by a 1999 IF take on Hunt the Wumpus by Andrew Plotkin: Hunter, in Darkness. I'd...Oh, ZIL, that's cool! I've played some modern games in the genre but it's been a while. I remember being impressed by a 1999 IF take on Hunt the Wumpus by Andrew Plotkin: Hunter, in Darkness.
I'd love to hear more about your games!
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Comment on What pre-NES games do you still recommend today? in ~games
text_garden LinkRogue is a 1980 classic that I still play regularly (though still rather poorly) and its design sensibilities had a bit of a mainstream resurgence through the 00s indie game boom, to the point...Rogue is a 1980 classic that I still play regularly (though still rather poorly) and its design sensibilities had a bit of a mainstream resurgence through the 00s indie game boom, to the point where every game and its grandmother now aspires to be "roguelike" in some (often misguided) sense.
It's a turn-based single player character tactics/light RPG dungeon crawler with procedurally generated levels and high stakes risks attached to exploration, combat, item use and time spent. It rewards resourcefulness and calculated risk taking, but a great deal of it just comes down to luck. I think highly skilled players of later Rogue-like games like NetHack or Brogue CE are more consistent at beating that than anyone will ever be at Rogue, but those are also relatively modern games still in active development.
I think it can be appreciated for what it is, but I want you to play it for the entirely selfish reason that it's increasingly difficult on tag-based platforms like Steam to actually find the whole genre of games that are actually meaningfully like Rogue, so I wish more people would play the original and be more conservative about calling games "roguelike".
It should be noted that I think most versions of Rogue you'll likely casually be able to pick up are somewhat newer than the NES and the original Unix game. The one I first played was released for the PC by Epyx in 1984. The one I play now is a newer Unix release from 1986 and maintained in the BSD-based operating systems.
I have a soft spot for Jupiter Lander for the C64 and VIC-20. You have to land an LEM-like module using thrusters to position yourself as well as compensate for inertia and gravity with a limited amount of fuel which doubles as your base score. There are different landing spots which each has a score multiplier. The more difficult the landing, the higher the multiplier. Basically a simplified version of the arcade classic Lunar Lander for home computers because you can't turn your lander.
It's very simple but I think it's timeless fun, and a great game to pass the joystick around with company. The mechanics have aged very well, I think.
Infocom became successful in the early 80s for releasing a bunch of text-based puzzle adventure games, the most prominent probably being Zork. The game would start by offering a description of a scene and you would type plain English commands in response to perform actions like picking up and moving objects, walking or climbing to a different scene. There were earlier games in this genre like Adventure, but I think it's fair to say that Infocom popularized the genre for the brief time that was commercially viable. Their games were also typically bigger, more complex and better written than earlier examples, and the engine behind their parser based games survives to this day in the form of the Z-machine.
Zork is a good play if you don't mind taking notes and have the patience for experimentation with sometimes obscure puzzles verging on moon logic. Infocom marketed their stuff by saying that they drew "graphics from the limitless imagery of your imagination" and in that sense I think a lot of their games still hold up even if their unforgiving game design may not have aged so gracefully.
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Comment on Tildos, let's be unserious for a while; show us your dankest memes and god-tier shitposts! in ~talk
text_garden LinkI literally laugh myself to tears almost every time I look at this picture: https://i.redd.it/a6xwckcree9g1.jpeg Not so much for the comment in the screenshot but for the picture of the dog...I literally laugh myself to tears almost every time I look at this picture: https://i.redd.it/a6xwckcree9g1.jpeg
Not so much for the comment in the screenshot but for the picture of the dog itself. The dog looks so ugly and judgmental. Also very human-like in its appearance. Reminds me of an old coworker of mine who would squint hard slightly baring his teeth when he got out in sunlight.
The first time I saw it I had several bouts of laughing myself out of breath just focusing on different details of it.
If anyone has a high resolution copy of the photo I'd appreciate it.
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Comment on How do you live simply/save money? What does your lifestyle look like? in ~talk
text_garden LinkI try to be wary of the forces at work trying to turn hobbies that you can engage with for free or inexpensively into expensive consumption habits. There is a certain satisfaction to researching...I try to be wary of the forces at work trying to turn hobbies that you can engage with for free or inexpensively into expensive consumption habits. There is a certain satisfaction to researching options, comparing features and buying stuff, to the point where I've caught myself rather do that than to engage with the hobby itself. Bad habit.
That's not to say that you shouldn't buy stuff, just that you should be mindful about what needs and wants you are actually satisfying, and whether they're in service of the hobby or in service of some fleeting sense of satisfaction and excitement for buying and getting a new thing.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
text_garden LinkI implemented custom drum kits for my software groovebox Pocket Acid. For some context, all the drum sounds are sampled. They were previously embedded in the binary as raw sequences of 16-bit...I implemented custom drum kits for my software groovebox Pocket Acid. For some context, all the drum sounds are sampled. They were previously embedded in the binary as raw sequences of 16-bit little endian samples, and the assignment of drum sounds to particular drum kits was hard-coded.
With this change I created a simple format for encoding groups of samples as single files. The format starts with a four byte header ("PKIT") and then each sample is encoded as a two-byte slot identifier (e.g. "bd" for bass drums or "oh" for open hihat) followed by a length, followed by the raw sample data.
I converted my existing kits to this format using a simple python script. Then I changed the way kits are handled internally. Instead of using a hard-coded enum for the built-in kits which is then resolved to a particular instance of a kit, I created a registry where you assign names to kits. Then I wrote a parser for the new format, embedded the new kit files instead of the samples and parse and add them to the registry at boot up.
The final piece to cover the original functionality was to update the save file format. My save file scheme uses a set of named and versioned chunks, so I can update the individual chunks without changing everything else and write relatively small migration code.
To implement the new functionality I was actually doing all this for, I look for kits matching a filename extension (".pkit") in the data dir, read and parse those and add them to the registry at startup.
Then there was the matter of letting users create new kits. The script I made works fine for me, but requires that I convert the recordings to the expected format and sample rate beforehad. For someone not interested in using sox or ffmpeg and hacking out a makefile for this, it would be tedious to create kits, and I don't expect my users to necessarily be computer power users. So I made a browser based conversion tool, making use of the built-in audio API to handle decoding and doing sample rate conversion and then dump the sounds to a buffer according to the format which you can save upon completion.
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Comment on Silicon Valley has a science fiction problem in ~tech
text_garden LinkI recall a Hacker News comment where the author said that they didn't care about animal preservation (specifically of rhinos or African elephants, I don't remember which) because we could just...I recall a Hacker News comment where the author said that they didn't care about animal preservation (specifically of rhinos or African elephants, I don't remember which) because we could just clone these animals in the future. The horror of someone reading Jurassic Park and using its sci-fi plot to guide their political views, on something that for all we know is essential to the survival of these species struck me as a deeply irresponsible, thinly disguised fatalism. Hope for the future to the point of disowning responsibility for today's problems.
If that can happen and become an acceptable point of view that isn't immediately ridiculed to death in whatever little bubble they're in, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest the upper echelon of that cesspit, who have effectively isolated and removed themselves from worldly problems and to whom my life is about as much of a distant fantasy as Star Trek, are susceptiple to this.
I think Mark Zuckerberg is a particularly tragic example of this. I don't think he understands or even particularly likes people. Not as more than objects of marketable analysis. The entire business model of meta is contingent on the cynical exploitation of and contempt for it users. I think he struck gold by random chance with Facebook. It's fitting now that the company is named after an utter failure of a disproportionately expensive Second Life clone with absolutely no appeal to anyone, perfectly exemplifying that he's not King Midas, just a sad character struggling to understand people.
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Comment on No WebGL, no AI, no bytes to spare. My new game is a 3D 90s fever dream in 1024 bytes! in ~comp
text_garden LinkCool! I got to the darker blue level. The difficulty progression feels smooth. Gonna dig into the source you posted later, a fun puzzle in its own right.Cool! I got to the darker blue level. The difficulty progression feels smooth.
Gonna dig into the source you posted later, a fun puzzle in its own right.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
text_garden LinkI've been spending a lot of time with Ridgerunners lately. It's a very tightly designed first-person racing game where you slide along mountains and use a rocket launcher to boost yourself and a...I've been spending a lot of time with Ridgerunners lately. It's a very tightly designed first-person racing game where you slide along mountains and use a rocket launcher to boost yourself and a jetpack to adjust your trajectory.
If you've played/seen the Starseige: Tribes series and undestand some of its meta, it's basically the skiing aspect of that game turned into a fast-paced game on its own, with the combat PVP aspect of Tribes removed altogether. You can either race other players in real time, compete at your own pace in time trials or just ski around freely. The maps are randomly generated, defaulting to a daily seed, but if you want a private room with friends you can just generate a random seed and make everyone join that world.
Here's a video the dev made of a really fast run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxKilguRjPw
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Comment on The end of reading is here in ~books
text_garden Link ParentYou can of course answer that question in terms of the premise without addressing whether the premise is true. It follows from the premise that the bears of Novaya Zemlya are white, regardless of...You can of course answer that question in terms of the premise without addressing whether the premise is true. It follows from the premise that the bears of Novaya Zemlya are white, regardless of whether you are critical of the idea that they actually are. I know little about the fauna of Novaya Zemlya, but I understand it as a hypothetical syllogism, and it seems to me that the difference was that the literate peasants recognized it as such as well, while the illiterate peasants did not.
Case in point, we both reason about this account as though it happened as told even though we weren't there to experience it, and we both form hypothetical ideas about the implications of the result as presented. We accept it as true for the sake of the argument and we build ideas on it. That is immensely useful.
Now, I think it's much more dubious whether it was due to a lack of literacy that these peasants didn't understand the question. It could as well be that people that for some reason hadn't had a pressing need or interest to learn to read and write probably haven't had a pressing need or interest to engage in that level abstract thinking either for that same reason. If you have a busy day-to-day life that can mostly be understood in terms of your own experience and the knowledge that has been handed down for generations maybe you have no need or time for reading nor that kind of deductive reasoning.
There is value in a grounded perspective, but a peasantry that is either incapable or uninterested in engaging in abstract, hypothetical thinking seems like it would be less than ideal in a democratic society.
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Comment on What did you do this week (and weekend)? in ~talk
text_garden LinkI went to a tractor pulling event yesterday. Tractor enthusiasts compete by having their tractors pull a load that require greater force the longer it travels, across a course of 100 m, in...I went to a tractor pulling event yesterday. Tractor enthusiasts compete by having their tractors pull a load that require greater force the longer it travels, across a course of 100 m, in different weight classes and categories of tractors. I mostly liked the stock farm tractors. There's a competition for modified tractors and that was absolutely bananas, but they're barely tractors. Basically just engines and seats on wheels, and most have settled for a kind of builds that performs and sounds the same. That said, one tractor had an actual jet engine and sounded like an airplane taking off. Another had an 18-cylinder radial engine, the kind of thing you would have in a propeller plane.
Very loud, with fire and black plumes of smoke coming from the exhaust stacks. The biggest hot dog I've ever had.
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Comment on Physical disc production ending in January 2028 for new games releasing on PlayStation consoles in ~games
text_garden Link ParentNo, if you really want to get technical about it, of course Sony removed them since Sony manages distribution and availability on their own platform. The effect on trust should be the same either...No, if you really want to get technical about it, of course Sony removed them since Sony manages distribution and availability on their own platform.
The effect on trust should be the same either way you put it. Sony saw no issue licensing these movies to users knowing that their contract with Studio Canal meant that they'd have to remove them from users' libraries in the event they couldn't renew their deal. There's no good reason for me to trust a company that does that.
The licenses they sell for games come with a clause that effectively allow them to arbitrarily rescind access (emphasis mine):
The Software is licenced to you on these Software Terms; it is not sold for you to own, and you understand and agree that we may end online and network features of a Software that uses online servers ("Online Services"). We will provide reasonable advance notice of any end of Online Services. If we discontinue any Online Services, you may still access any offline modes we provide for the Software; however, offline modes are not guaranteed and may change or end at our discretion.
As far as I'm concerned, there's neither trust nor contractual obligation not to screw me over. So what else is there? With a PC and GOG for example I need neither trust nor contractual obligation because the copies they license are distributed as installers which work regardless of what they do with their platform.
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Comment on Consequences of advertising and enshittification on the Internet in ~tech
text_garden Link ParentIn their model, aversion towards advertising and price sensitivity are two different parameters. The assumption does seem to be somewhat supported by data, though. They cite Garrett A Johnson,...In their model, aversion towards advertising and price sensitivity are two different parameters.
The assumption does seem to be somewhat supported by data, though. They cite Garrett A Johnson, Scott K Shriver, and Shaoyin Du. Consumer privacy choice in online advertising: Who opts out and at what cost to industry? Marketing Science, 39(1):33–51, 2020 which is an empirical study finding that (free) opt-out (through AdChoices) rates of ad tracking drop as income drops, though with higher opt-out rates in both extremes. With that in mind it also makes sense to model it separately from price sensitivity. There is some other resource at play here. Maybe time and energy?
My first thought was Bad Romance but he brought it up as a counterexample because it ends on the third instead of the sixth. The third is the dominant of the sixth (I don't know if that's proper terminology) so they're harmonically very closely related. I at least don't think it should be dismissed as a possibly important influence on the trend because that thing was playing everywhere every day for what felt like years.