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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Do you not have a bug tracker or ticketing system of some sort to manage these things coming your way?

    Incredibly few people at my work get much more than dismissive small talk from just walking up or from sending me a message expecting me to re-prioritize everything else for their special pet problem.

    My manager sets my priorities, any changes to that need to come from him. They can take it up with him if they don’t like it or disagree.

    I don’t respond to IMs or emails not from my boss or from my own team except when I’ve hit a mental road block and need to think about something else to refresh.

    And I don’t actually work on any of those requests until there’s a ticket in. If someone comes to me asking why my main job duty isn’t done, I’m sure as hell going to have a paper trail documenting who fucked up the timeline. No ticket, no work.

    That also puts some weight on anyone else able to pick up tickets for your team to do it, so it’s not always falling to you because you’re not jaded enough to say no.



  • Blockchain also has some useful applications. Most (but not all) of them are also possible with technology and such that existed when bitcoin was first created, at far lower cost for a minor tradeoff in accuracy. On top of that, almost none of them are related to speculative markets.

    It’s a way to do distributed transaction logs in a non-refutable and independantly verifiable way. That’s useful and important, but it was a solution in search of a problem. Even for the highest security, most at risk transactions, the existing international fincancial systems are “good enough” to ensure reliability of transaction logs.

    In the end, blockchain and now AI are just falling victim to con men trying to milk as much money as they can from things before people build a working understanding of them. They’ll just keep moving onto the next big thing as it comes.


  • Just like the “tesla hyperloop” or whatever they’re calling it, it’s not about innovation. It’s about keeping his brands in the public eye as a form of marketing. Even if on a logical level we all know it’s horseshit, it still keeps himself and Tesla salient.

    He can afford to burn an incomprehensible amount of money on stunts for outcomes most people would consider inconsequential.

    I’m not saying it’s 4D chess, it definitely isn’t. He’s not particularly intelligent in that way. That said, I do think there are some very simple reasons for him to do this that go beyond his absolutely insane delusional ego.

    He has enough money that he can continue funding whatever he wants regardless of public opinion. He literally exists at a level where any press is good press as it keeps him fresh in peoples’ minds.


  • Many. Technically most I still “know” through the advent of facebook, but I’m basing things off the period I interacted with them directly.

    • Numerous people I met in passing while I lived on campus during my failed attempt at college had long term effects on me. Watching other nerd’s socialization attempts fall flat helped me to learn when to keep my mouth shut when people didn’t get a reference. Being open to conversation with anyone about anything they were passionate about opened my eyes and mind to a whole ton of interests that I would have never thought about. On top of that, socializing with others is a skill that is improved with experience like any other skill. Being a freshman just figuring shit out in a nerdy degree gave plenty of excuse for me to be shit at socializing while I kept improving over time.

    • An upperclassman in an elective course I took freshman year chuckling at the same jokes the professor was making that the rest of the class didn’t get, which evolved into whispered chitchat, then study sessions helped open my eyes that there were other people with similar senses of humor to me persuing wildly different paths.

    • A girl who had a very obvious unrequited crush on my roommate helped pull me out of my shell, really demonstrated how wonderful it is to feel comfortable with who you are as a person, and her attitude of getting as much enjoyment out of any given situation (even the bad ones where her best friend started dating the guy she’d been pining after) really stuck with me. Also helped break me of the illusion that unrequited feelings are in any way worth it.

    • Many classmates and others that just suddenly had confidence in my knowledge and abilities after short talks with them helped build my confidence in my own knowledge, and helped ephasize that things that I saw as throwawy (because it came easy to me) shouldn’t be disregarded.

    • Some old high school classmates that I’ve ran into at college and now later in adulthood helped show me that despite my internal turmoil, I’ve been able to present well. It really hammered home to me that I’m my own worst critic, and that I’m the only one keeping such close tabs on my own blunders.

    • Just honestly and openly asking people how they were and truly being interested in listening to them opened my eyes to so many things, especially the sheer depth of human experience there is that each and every single person goes through.


    The biggest impact for the limited time though has to be an old lesbian couple that let me stay in their spare room for a few months over a decade ago.

    At that time I had dropped out of university. I was unemployed. I was in a deep depression, and my issues with my relationship with my parents were boiling over. I needed an out.

    My long term gf had went long distance a year or two before, and said she had these friends that could let me crash with them while I got my shit sorted.

    At the risk of doxxing myself with too much info, this couple was forced into early retirement due to a car accident leaving both of them unable to stand for extended periods, so they were partially wheelchair bound. One was a former autism spectrum diagnostician/social worker, the other was a practical effects tech for theater, movies, and other things.

    One of the biggest lessons I learned from them was to work within your own limitations. They regularly did physical therapy to improve their mobility, but they also designed and built their own tools so they could do what they needed to do around the house.

    Rather than hurt themselves trying to stand for too long cooking, they would find ways to do more sitting down. That sort of thing.

    It seems simple and obvious in retrospect, but I was raised by two fairly dysfunctional parents in denial of their own adult ADHD. I was used to watching them throw their bodies at the wall over and over again until it fell over when they could have just used a ladder to climb over. I could never count how many conversations I had with them that were the ADHD equivalent of them telling a depressed person to just be happier. Unfortunately, my parents often applied the same line of thinking to themselves, forcing themselves to fail at doing things the “normal” way that didn’t work for them instead of adapating to their own shortcomings.

    So meeting these women living full happy lives in cooperation with their own limitations and flaws was amazing to me.

    Success wasn’t just dogged application of will on the same path forward as everyone else, it was also choosing the best path for you.

    It’s something that has informed my entire life since and how I interact with the world.


  • I have a handful of “low focus” games for podcasts, audiobooks, youtube video essays, etc.

    Vampire Survivors, or almost any “bullet heaven” type game works well. Old School Runescape also has a ton of ways to skill grind with minimal attention needed. Turn based RPGs with minimal story are great too.

    Played through a handful of Pokemon randomizers and romhacks while binging King of the Hill.

    But the king for me for a while was Elite: Dangerous. Hop in my cargo ship, use spansh road to riches to generate a trading route, and binge stuff while flying fron planet to planet in supercruise.



  • Don’t have a direct answer, but have you tried making the same short playlist on each, exporting as json from each, and comparing the files?

    JSON isn’t a specific filetype that is interchangable between multiple systems. It’s just a way of organizing data as text. You can open it up in a text editor.

    The format that invidious is exporting is for invidious. Invidious won’t have the data in that json file organized in the way that piped expects, which is why it says it’s not valid.

    You might be able to reorganize the JSON or rename the property names to match the pattern that piped expects. You’d probably be looking at scripting something yourself though.


  • On android I use Revanced. It patches the official Youtube app (patches are open source) to greatly expand the base functionality and offer a lot more customization of the UI.

    For me the best features are ad block, sponsorblock (skips in video sponsored segments), and complete excision of shorts from all aspects of the app.

    It also works on Youtube Music, effectively allowing free premium (just don’t get the local downloads of your most listened tracks to help save data, but I have unlimited anyway).




  • They basically did similar stuff with some of the stuff in the sm3d collection thingy.

    They did not.

    For Super Mario 64, they emulated it. They increased the resolution the game renders at (trivial with emulation of 3D systems) and they used basic LUA patches in the emulator to override HUD textures with higher resolution ones adjusted for the Switch controller.

    They did not add any further enhancements in any way. Compared to even 64 DS, it was extremely sophomoric. Compared to the Super Mario 64 decomp project, and what its native switch port is capable of (more on that later), it’s an incredibly lazy port. They didn’t even fix the slowdown with Bowser’s Sub that is as simple as adjusting a single compiler flag when you build the ROM from the N64 game source code.

    For Sunshine, it’s an admittedly impressive solution of mostly emulation with some sections of the game engine ported (I think it’s the audio processing?). Once again, the game is rendered at a higher resolution, but they did not redo ot improve further any textures (besides some of the HUD again), graphical effects, or game content. Wind Waker HD this ain’t.

    For Galaxy they cannibalized the existing port of it to Android on the NVidia Shield. The Switch shares most of the important internals with it (CPU, GPU). It’s a combo of emulation with certain key code ported, like Sunshine. Again, besides resolution and HUD, no improvements.

    Beyond that, Nintendo has been content to sell straight up emulation through the Virtual Console service since the Wii. They’ve had multiple instances of straight ports over the years, and some of the most popular Switch games are straight ports with DLC bundled in.


    There are numerous impressive remakes they have done over the years, but that is absolutely not the norm.


    The Super Mario 64 decomp on the Switch supports (not available in Nintendo’s official port in 3D All Stars):

    • Effectively infinite render distance for objects (coins, enemies, stars, etc)
    • 60 fps (compared to the original/all stars 30fps at best)
    • True analog camera control using the right stick (All Stars is just the original’s clunky button based control mapped to the stick)
    • All sorts of QoL options like collecting stars not kicking you out of a level, options for streamlined/faster message boxes
    • Optional bugfixes
    • Optional cheats
    • Variety of HD texture packs to choose from
    • Variety of higher quality 3D model packs to choose from
    • Support for an astounding variety of mods. Levels, entire new games, new characters, new movement and control options (Odyssey Mario in 64 with full cappy and enemy capture mechanics anyone?)
    • Support for many more languages
    • Nearly all of the above is toggleable mid-game from the pause menu.

    I don’t think anyone was expecting something amazing out of 3D All Stars, but they absolutely fucking phoned it in.





  • In what world is that a mobster deal? The game initially released saying that PSN accounts were required, this is in every store front description. The devs clarified that was not enforced due to technical issues at release time.

    Sony funded the game in the first place too. They didn’t take advantage of a moment of weakness. This is all contract stuff agreed upon long before release.

    It absolutely sucks ass, but this is an incredibly basic business deal. Sony stepped in to provide server support because it’s Sony’s game, and Sony makes money off it. Now that the game is more stable, they likely went back to Arrowhead and said “Hey, it’s time you sorted out the contracted requirement for PSN accounts. You agreed to this.” and here we are.

    Maybe Sony told Arrowhead that PSN accounts could be made by everyone. Maybe Arrowhead thought they could push back on the requirement after the game came out without them required. We likely will never know what went on behind closed doors.

    But this isn’t shady, just absolutely monumentally fucking shitty.

    Unfortunately, as long as refunds are handled reasonably well like they were with Cyberpunk 2077’s PS4 release, gamers won’t really have a leg to stand on. It’ll just be complaining that they can’t play something they wanted to play, after getting a number of hours in it for effectively free.


  • I understand this, but I also think it’s not reasonable to expect people to always stay silent when someone’s venting/feelings leads them to make broad, declarative statements about the badness/problems of a large heterogenous group.

    Like, I know I have a lot of personal baggage from growing up in a household where my accomplishments were overlooked and every problem with myself or my actions magnified. The longest streak of doing well could be brought down with a single minor screw up. I know I’m far more sensitive to this sort of shit than the average person.

    That said, there is a difference between all and most, or all and enough that it’s a problem. I don’t think it’s wrong to insist that difference is important, or at the very least that the difference exists. Insisting upon that distinction does not need to be a dismissal of the very real issues, it can simply be an insistance that the distinction exists.

    Just as we should allow people to have their feelings that x group is bad, shouldn’t we also have some room to allow people to feel something when they’ve been lumped in with an amorphous blob of “badness” that they don’t actually belong to?


    If you want to argue that “the bad feelings men experience by being lumped in with the bad elements of men are less important than the danger to women from those bad elements” then I’d agree with you fucking 100%. Actual danger trumps feelings, no fucking questions asked.

    My issue is that usually the argument is instead that “If your feelings are hurt because someone said all men are abusive, that means that you must be an abusive man upset that you were called out”, “see, you saying not all men just means that I was right”, or just mocking the true statement of “not all men”.

    Again, the distinction is important. This post is the first time I have ever seen someone suggest that the response to “not all men” is “enough men”. Fucking hell I’m behind that response all the way. I’m not about doubling down on insisting all men are shit.


  • Who prevents him from buying an atomic weapon and setting it off for a meme stunt or internet points ?

    You have to be joking.

    Nearly every military in the world. Countless regulatory agencies. Intelligence agencies the world over. It’s pretty much known that the US made stuxnet to kill one country’s nuclear program. Do you seriously fucking think they wouldn’t stop a single billionaire?

    There’s also the fact that even he’s not that insane, and any other billionaire out there who wouldn’t want the effects of a nuke going off to get in the way of their own shit.

    If you were talking a dirty bomb, that might be within his reach. Buy some mines in third world countries, mine up some material, strap it to a conventional bomb. That’s also many orders of magnitude less severe (while still horrific). Also, most mining rights in areas with worthwhile radioactive material available have already been bought up by other entities with similar financial levels of backing.

    Actual nukes require quite a bit more than just an explosive and some radioactive material to build anyway, and things like nuclear material refinement facilities are quite easily visible from satelite imagery. They also require specialized hardware that is closely monitored. Sure he could pay to reverse engineer and/or get it built. Good luck keeping that secret for as long as it would take.


    The man’s a living embodiment of a chode with a diamond studded piercing. There’s plenty of shit to be upset at him about, or worried about, without getting anywhere close to this absurd. I sincerely hope that you weren’t being serious.

    If you want shock factor, talk about the slave mines his family wealth comes from, and the slave mines where we source lithium from for EV batteries. Talk about the high frequency of using child soldiers as security for said mines, in addition to the child slave labor.

    Talk about the highly likely intentional killing of Twitter by Saudi Arabian government’s investment into Musk as a retaliation for the Arab Spring and as a way to further control rapid information dissemination during crisises.

    There’s real reasons to despise him, going for such extremely ridiculous exaggerations only hurts the point you’re trying to make.


  • That’s pretty much what the Xbox has been since the beginning. The original runs fucking directX and runs so similarly to PCs of the era under the hood that porting shit to it is famously easy. It’s why the homebrew scene for it was so mind bogglingly huge.

    Numerous times at E3 when they had demo units of new consoles people saw that the debug menus meant for staff were some mangled form of the current (at the time) Windows OS.


    Most modern game consoles don’t use much specialty hardware anymore. The OG Switch uses the nvidea shield CPU just downclocked, and can run android easily. Some emulators literally run better on the Switch through Android than as homebrew “native” apps.