text_garden's recent activity
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
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Comment on DOOM (2016) is now available DRM-free on GOG in ~games
text_garden Link ParentWell, I can still play Unreal Tournament online despite the publisher removing every trace of the game and closing the master server. The actual game was run on private servers from day one and...Well, I can still play Unreal Tournament online despite the publisher removing every trace of the game and closing the master server. The actual game was run on private servers from day one and doesn't strictly need a master server (which is only used for announcements). A master server has been implemented as open source software since, and using a community maintained instance of it on the client is just a matter of a configuration change.
In the interest of continuity, I would favor games like that, with a decentralized online play model. That comes with its own bunch of caveats, though. Moderation, getting rid of cheaters etc. becomes a local problem that every server owner has to deal with. As a player, getting kicked out for entirely arbitrary reasons at the whims of the server owners, too.
Personally I'm more inclined to accept most online games as something likely ephemeral that will die with the community if not the service. Still, there are some games that have shown enough of a lasting appeal to keep a decent player base for decades.
Going back to the topic of Doom, I played a lot of Doom II online during the pandemic using Odamex. The Dooms and the Quakes have had a sort of ultimate boon to "preservation" by eventually becoming GPL licensed software that anyone can build on. The original Doom multiplayer ran synchronously on IPX, modem-to-modem or null cable IIRC and now 30 years later I can run it online with client side prediction+interpolated rollback, smooth as butter. I imagine that licensed engines and middleware are so prevalent in commercial games now that this may not be not feasible for most modern games.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
text_garden LinkI implemented a sparse array with a dense index data structure in Zig, with only three mutations: reserve (appends to the end of the array), release (releases any element in the array, leaving a...I implemented a sparse array with a dense index data structure in Zig, with only three mutations: reserve (appends to the end of the array), release (releases any element in the array, leaving a tombstone in the index) and compact (removes all the tombstone and compacts the index). Release is O(1). When the array is compact, append is O(1). If the index is not compact, append may call compact, becoming O(n),
Because for my application the deletions are mostly batched, the cost of compacting (which is O(n)) can be amortized after deletions in this way. I'd call it once after a deletion pass, and then it would remain compact until the next deletion pass.
The next step is to benchmark it. Specifically, I want to compare it to the solution I use in my game: pool-backed linked lists. Performance is very good for the game already, but I just finished and released it so I have some time to play around with ideas that were harder to justify before release.
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Comment on What's your favorite music album to get high to? in ~music
text_garden LinkCurrent Events by John Abercrombie. Spacious and understated jazz fusion until some point nearing the end where it explodes into something more like free jazz.Current Events by John Abercrombie. Spacious and understated jazz fusion until some point nearing the end where it explodes into something more like free jazz.
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Comment on A slow guide to confronting doom in ~health.mental
text_garden Link ParentAt this point I'm inclined to think of LessWrong and the "rationalists" as some kind of collaborative mixed-media sci-fi project, whether they themselves are aware of it or not. It seems obvious...At this point I'm inclined to think of LessWrong and the "rationalists" as some kind of collaborative mixed-media sci-fi project, whether they themselves are aware of it or not. It seems obvious to me though why Eliezer Yudkowsky would feel threatened by something that so far has shown so much promise in the areas of spitting out pages worth of nonsense in no time.
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Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and US influencers bash seed oils, baffling nutrition scientists in ~food
text_garden Link ParentThat is true whether the deficit is caused by a dietary change or increased physical activity, but exercise and even basic levels of physical activity actually tend to suppress hunger through a...Our bodies are not so simple I am afraid. When you exercise your body will demand more calories to make up the difference for what it has burned.
That is true whether the deficit is caused by a dietary change or increased physical activity, but exercise and even basic levels of physical activity actually tend to suppress hunger through a variety of mechanisms.
Regardless of these nuances, the fact remains that if your surplus is small you can lose weight without dietary change through exercise.
All weight is gained slowly over time. If you gain a lot of weight suddenly it is because something has gone seriously wrong with your body and you should be seeing a doctor about that as soon as possible.
It's pointless to debate what exactly constitutes "slow" and "rapid" other than to recognize that some people gain weight much faster than others and will have a calorie surplus that can't easily be offset through exercise, for reasons unrelated to something being wrong with their bodies. That's the degree to which the difference between rapid and slow has any bearing on my argument.
But saying you should only exercise for weight loss is a recipe for failure.
I'm not saying that. My reply doesn't pertain at all to what anyone should do except to consider a culture that promotes not using your body as a problem.
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Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and US influencers bash seed oils, baffling nutrition scientists in ~food
text_garden Link ParentIf you're rapidly gaining weight or rapidly want to lose weight, then yes, diet is probably the best way to address it. However, a lot of people have grown to the point of obesity by just slowly...Weight loss is dramatically more difficult through exercise than through diet.
If you're rapidly gaining weight or rapidly want to lose weight, then yes, diet is probably the best way to address it. However, a lot of people have grown to the point of obesity by just slowly gaining weight. I imagine those are many more than people who are suddenly rapidly gaining weight or those who have rapidly been gaining weight for a long time.
In that case, the difference between gaining, maintaining and losing weight isn't that big, and while a basic level of exercise might not account for much of your total energy expenditure, it might still represent a large chunk of that excess energy that causes obesity to sort of creep up on people in adulthood.
That basic level of exercise should probably be thought of as more of a proactive measure, though. If you've slowly gained weight over 20 years and realize one day that you are more fat than you'd like, you're not looking for solutions that allow you to maintain that weight or lose it over another 20 years, and dietary changes are again more effective if you rapidly want to lose weight. But the problem up until that point was never that you weren't rapidly losing weight, rather that you were slowly gaining it.
To this end, car oriented culture and the sedentary lifestyle it promotes should be considered a problem. I get the idea that there are places where walking or bicycling isn't a viable mode of transportation for anything but getting to your neighbor. Public infrastructure, city planning and the private market all have this in mind and exacerbate the problem in their response to it. That basic level of exercise then has to be an active choice rather than just being a natural side effect of doing things like getting to work, shopping for groceries, visiting friends and family etc.
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Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and US influencers bash seed oils, baffling nutrition scientists in ~food
text_garden Link ParentTo be perfectly fair, McDonalds would be near the bottom of the list of my options to get a salad. Although I'm not in America I imagine that this is less indicative of Americans not wanting to...McDonalds actually offered decent salads. But they stopped selling them due to... lack of demand.
To be perfectly fair, McDonalds would be near the bottom of the list of my options to get a salad. Although I'm not in America I imagine that this is less indicative of Americans not wanting to eat salad than it is of Americans not going to McDonalds to eat salad.
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Comment on Repeatedly upvoting violent content on Reddit can now get you flagged in ~tech
text_garden Link ParentThey could do that, but it might have less of the intended effect than announcing it openly. Drawing parallels to penology, you can think of it as a kind of denunciation. The value of Reddit as...They could do that, but it might have less of the intended effect than announcing it openly. Drawing parallels to penology, you can think of it as a kind of denunciation. The value of Reddit as with other social networks lies almost entirely in the work of its users. People who upvote stuff like this probably represent a not insignificant chunk of the most active user base, and more heavy-handed moderation techniques might hurt Reddit's bottom line.
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Comment on Spotify down? No, your Spotify mod was just blocked—here's why it won't work anymore. in ~tech
text_garden Link ParentYes, it's frequently a problem with fresh or obscure stuff I buy on Bandcamp, though those are usually tagged well enough that I can still use Picard just to organize them into the directory...Yes, it's frequently a problem with fresh or obscure stuff I buy on Bandcamp, though those are usually tagged well enough that I can still use Picard just to organize them into the directory structure I've set up without re-tagging anything.
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Comment on Have you made a video game? Can I play it? in ~games
text_garden LinkAlmost finished with Acid Web, a straight forward arcade twin stick shooter oriented around combat puzzles, with a generative acid techno soundtrack. You can play the demo! The full release is...Almost finished with Acid Web, a straight forward arcade twin stick shooter oriented around combat puzzles, with a generative acid techno soundtrack. You can play the demo! The full release is scheduled for the beginning of April.
I've previously released Jupiter Sumo for the Atari 2600, a couple of smaller Pico-8 games and SNAKE SHOOT for the VIC-20 (which because of my gag is now listed in TOSEC as actually having been released in 1983, lol), but Acid Web is my first commercial game project.
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Comment on Recommend me a racing/driving game on PC in ~games
text_garden LinkMore on the OutRun side of things: Slipstream. Not a very deep game but I had a ton of fun with it. It has the branching mechanic and sprite scaling/bendy road kind of graphics of OutRun.More on the OutRun side of things: Slipstream. Not a very deep game but I had a ton of fun with it. It has the branching mechanic and sprite scaling/bendy road kind of graphics of OutRun.
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Comment on Spotify down? No, your Spotify mod was just blocked—here's why it won't work anymore. in ~tech
text_garden Link ParentI have a local library of music, organized using Picard. I sync it to my phone with rsync, where I play it back with VLC. For discovery beyond reading up on the musicians and labels I mostly use...I have a local library of music, organized using Picard. I sync it to my phone with rsync, where I play it back with VLC. For discovery beyond reading up on the musicians and labels I mostly use YouTube, which seems to have a good idea of what I like at this point. On the PC I use fzf for quick search in the library, which then launches Audacious.
I mostly listen to music release-by-release, but VLC ought to support most playlist formats.
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Comment on What is a book that every 13-year-old boy should read? in ~books
text_garden LinkThe Earthsea books by Ursula K. Le Guin. Kind of low fantasy coming-of-age? I never read these as a child, but as an adult I kept thinking they would leave a good impression on a teenager, and...The Earthsea books by Ursula K. Le Guin. Kind of low fantasy coming-of-age? I never read these as a child, but as an adult I kept thinking they would leave a good impression on a teenager, and deal with areas you've mentioned like confidence, development and ethics. Notably, the protagonists making mistakes our outright being wrong in their beliefs and learning from that is a recurring theme. I enjoyed them as an adult, too. The prose is simple but very effective.
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Comment on Do you have a game that you love from “before your time?” in ~games
text_garden Link ParentDoom and Doom II still hold up for me because as much as there were a bunch of "Doom clones" with few exceptions they mostly really "cloned" its technical achievements. But Doom hasn't lasted this...Doom and Doom II still hold up for me because as much as there were a bunch of "Doom clones" with few exceptions they mostly really "cloned" its technical achievements. But Doom hasn't lasted this long for its technical achievements, which were surpassed in just a couple of years. It's just a really good game at its core, and there are very few games quite like it, mechanically.
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Comment on People named "Null" are being punished by computers in the weirdest ways in ~comp
text_garden LinkI feel like this mischaracterizes the issue somewhat. The problem here isn't null references (the mistake that Tony Hoare regrets), but assigning special status to representable values of value...The origin of this coding blunder traces back six decades to a British computer scientist who first gave null its special reserved status. He obviously didn't take into account the 4,910th most common surname when he did so, and has regretted the move ever since, even calling it a "billion-dollar mistake."
I feel like this mischaracterizes the issue somewhat. The problem here isn't null references (the mistake that Tony Hoare regrets), but assigning special status to representable values of value types. A null reference in Algol sense isn't the same thing as a string value with the content "null" or any value at all. It really boils down to shoddy engineering; null was invented exactly so that you can have a reference value that represents nothing without having a special value type (as opposed to reference type) value that represents nothing.
Weak type systems e.g. of the "stringly typed" kind, awful engineering around things like building database queries, bad band-aid solutions to poor data or poor database schema, other "clever" representation solutions...these are the problems in question, not null.
Tony Hoare regrets null as it was implemented in Algol for its own qualities: the language doesn't force you to check whether references are null before you attempt to dereference them, and many still popular languages inherited this, resulting in the "billion-dollar mistake". It truly is a billlion-dollar mistake in its own right, and it has caused so many crashes and exceptions not to mention worse, more subtle bugs, but this issue in particular is caused by a whole different league of poor engineering you probably couldn't coax out of Tony Hoare at gunpoint.
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Comment on Grammar errors that actually matter, or: the thread where we all become prescriptivists in ~humanities.languages
text_garden LinkAs well as I can understand something like "I could care less" as actually implying the opposite because I'm aware of the original idiom, and I can piece together what word was actually intended...As well as I can understand something like "I could care less" as actually implying the opposite because I'm aware of the original idiom, and I can piece together what word was actually intended with a homophone from the immediate context of the word, I don't think those errors should be considered as not mattering only because their intended meaning can be deduced somehow.
Those errors create friction and distraction. Time I spend playing piecing together what you meant to say on such a basic semantic level is time I don't spend evaluating the broader meaning of what you are saying, or at the very least time wasted.
It also colors the rest of my reading with a growing uncertainty whether the author is at all concerned with the meaning of the words they are using, or even with the sentiment they're trying to convey. This is of course a kind of unfair prejudice. I know that there are people who will struggle with written words in ways that cause errors like this no matter how clear their thoughts are. On an intellectual level, I can account for that and try to give a little extra energy where it's necessary for the message to be conveyed, but I won't pretend I can fully account for my subconscious view of the author and the ways in which that interacts with my understanding of the message.
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Comment on Looking for low-precision, mouse-only Steam game recommendations in ~games
text_garden LinkI've had a lot of fun with Pawnbarian. I don't have a Steam Deck, but I imagine it would fit the bill with being turn based and playing out on a 5x5 board.I've had a lot of fun with Pawnbarian. I don't have a Steam Deck, but I imagine it would fit the bill with being turn based and playing out on a 5x5 board.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
text_garden Link ParentThanks! Poor planning mostly :D Initially I'd imagined very simple requirements. Subroutines, commands to spawn enemies, to wait for the specified amount of time and to wait for you to destroy all...- Exemplary
Thanks!
What made you decide to write your own?
Poor planning mostly :D
Initially I'd imagined very simple requirements. Subroutines, commands to spawn enemies, to wait for the specified amount of time and to wait for you to destroy all the enemies. Didn't need much of a compiler for that, it resembled a stripped down BASIC more than anything. Then after a while I added a basic looping construct to avoid repetition when I realized that would be a pain in the ass. Eventually I added global variables and expressions because I realized it would still be a pain in the ass to do things like drawing geometric patterns of enemies and parameterizing things via global variables. So I added local variables and function parameters to the subroutines, so I could factor some of that out into functions.
In hindsight, maybe I could have solved all this with coroutines in Lua, but I'm happy that I didn't for a few reasons. It's been a nice learning experience figuring these things out, and my language has no dynamic allocation during run-time, which is somewhat reassuring for a game.
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Comment on Are modern iPhones unusable without a case? in ~comp
text_garden LinkI have a 12 Mini. I used it with a case for a while but removed it a year ago. My only real gripes with the form factor are the notch and the fact that the camera juts out about 2 mm outside the...I have a 12 Mini. I used it with a case for a while but removed it a year ago. My only real gripes with the form factor are the notch and the fact that the camera juts out about 2 mm outside the rest of the phone. The latter seems stupidly designed to me, and in a way that definitely makes more sense if you have a case, but overall I prefer the smaller profile without it.
Sailwind, a trade/delivery game based around a sailing simulator. You start off on a small island with a dhow, some food and water, a compass, a basic map and instructions on how to operate the dhow. There you can pick up goods for delivery in exchange for money. After gaining enough reputation you can also just buy goods and sell them for profit on other islands. Eventually I think you can get other boats.
It's been in my wishlist for a while because I like the concept but I wasn't too sure I'd actually enjoy it in practice, but every trip I've made in this game has been interesting, if not for being particularly eventful at least for the sailing mechanics. I haven't actually sailed since I was a kid, so take this with a grain of salt, but the simulation aspect of it is great. You have to take care how you load your boat, how you approach waves in high seas, leeway.
I'm doing navigation by sight and compass for now which works well enough for my short trips, but you can buy a quadrant and a nautical chart to do navigation by stars and sun. There's also a solar compass and a chronometer which will enable even more precise navigation. The use of all these tools is entirely manual.
Strongly recommended if it sounds at all interesting to you.