Codex

Someone shared this on Mastodon so I’ll just repost my thoughts from there. (Bonus for Lemmy, I was forced to squeeze all my thoughts into 500 characters, so this is the most succinct I’ve been on this site!)

Pretty incredible how little people seem to understand these. For one thing, every method other than waterfall is a subtype of agile methodology. The major distinction is that waterfall has a series of phases from design through building, testing, and delivery that attempts to plan the whole project up front. Agile methods focus on smaller iteration cycles with frequent, partial deliverables.

Something like kanban is designed for continuous delivery: we want to go to mars weekly.

LEAN development is a scam though, that one is accurate.

All software is political. What a terrible opinion. If you are security minded, don’t rely on any software you don’t control the source of and haven’t fully vetted. Otherwise whoever developes that code has a back door into your system regardless of what opinions they post on Twitter.

Moreover, people have rights to the code they write. If I decide that my numeric library shouldn’t be used in missile guidance systems I have a right to demand that. I’ll be ignored, and so I think a person then should be expected to escalate.

Life is political, and there’s no standing neutrally still on a planet rapidly spinning towards revolutionary restructuring.

I feel like this has truly earned a “bazinga!”

I’ve gotten back into tinkering on a little Rust game project, it has about a dozen dependencies on various math and gamedev libraries. When I go to build (just like with npm in my JavaScript projects) cargo needs to download and build just over 200 projects. 3 of them build and run “install scripts” which are just also rust programs. I know this because my anti-virus flagged each of them and I had to allow them through so my little roguelike would build.

Like, what are we even suppose to tell “normal people” about security? “Yeah, don’t download files from people you don’t trust and never run executables from the web. How do I install this programming utility? Blindly run code from over 300 people and hope none of them wanted to sneak something malicious in there.”

I don’t want to go back to the days of hand chisling every routine into bare silicon by hand, but i feel l like there must be a better system we just haven’t devised yet.

SPD! It’s been a while buddy, come lay on daddy’s chest and gimme a hug!

I don’t have a mind palace, I have a “mind city bus”. It can take lots of thoughts all over the place, but if you’d like a seat on the bus you will have to wait at your stop for the bus to arrive. Jumping out in front of it will not get you on board in the way you wanted.

Space Mutiny and Overdrawn at the Memory Bank are tied for me. They both still absolutely slay me everytime I put them on. Seasonally appropriate too!

"Sabotaged?! But what of the little children and their toys? "

“Finally, Christmas comes to Santa!”

“So he only dabbles in dopples?”

I’ve seen that damn cart ride in Skyrim so many times that Ralof and Hadvar are basically family. I consider the alternative start mod an absolute requirement now.

I love Thief and Thief 2 but there are a few levels in there (Thieve’s Guild, Trace the Courier) that are pretty dull and uninteresting to replay. They’re the songs you’re still tempted to skip on otherwise perfect albums.

In 1990, a series of CGI animation collections began release on VHS tape. The Mind’s Eye was the first experience many people (myself included) had with pure computer animation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind's_Eye_(film_series)

The best known segment from the first tape is Stanley & Stella in Breaking the Ice, which was first released in 1987. You can just watch it online now of course!

https://youtu.be/3bTqWsVqyzE?si=28YJchoAQSqfZY0P

The animation style reminds me a lot of Reboot, a childhood favorite. It still amazes me how interesting this style is even today, really shows how much more artistry and vision matter than technology. I believe this is also the first public demonstration of a flocking algorithm.

It was a very cool spiritual successor to the older Ultima Underworld games, which are surprisingly interactive for their time. In many (many) ways they are the precursors to the immersive sim genre, and Arx is an interesting if isolated branch on that family tree.

Terranigma is one of my favorite SNES games! It is a truly awesome adventure and so underrated!

I played through a lot of fan translations and obscure games when I first discovered emulation. E.V.O Search for Eden is another weird, unique RPG from that era, which I highly recommend!

The 1976 arcade game called Death Race (seemingly no relation) is one of the first to ever spark controversy over violence in video games. It’s not too well known today, being almost 50 years old and fairly primitive.

And fun movie fact, Death Race 2000 is Sylvester “Sly, The Italian Stallion” Stallone’s first non-pornographic film role.

A-bong-us a-mong-us

Star Trek sucks

You mean, it’s all Electron? 🌍👨‍🚀🔫👩‍🚀

The kid is dressed a bit like Waldo/Wally? 👁🕵️‍♂️🔎🕴👽

Wibbly-wobbly nerky-networky things

I’m guessing you’ve never seen a person hit by a car before. They don’t deflect away like video game characters. A person hit roughly in the middle of their body will be “folded” over the car, smashing their head into the body of it. Then they’re either flung away, roll over the top, or get pulled under, depends on what the driver does, how hard the hit was, and how big the vehicle is.

In a car with a molded plastic body, the head bounces back off and the plastic is dented. With a plate of solid steel, the person’s head is splattered like a melon all of the “bulletproof” windows. Then the sharp edge slices them in half. Sounds very metal until it starts happening to children several times a week.

Aliums 👽