If you want to know how to fix this problem, the term to search for is sleep hygiene. You’ve been waking up at the wrong times in your sleep cycle. Quality sleep is a matter of habits, every person is a bit different. Research and apply what fits best with your lifestyle. Also, invest in quality beds and pillows, as well as temperature regulation. It’s far more important than most people give it credit.

Listen, that computer was manhandled and abused for almost two decades. You’d be shocked by the weird things they got it to do. Part of the hazard was all the Chinese “upgrades” it got over time.

An old Pentium III an extended family member had burned itself out of disrepair. The computer was used for about a decade before being forgotten, but plugged in for some other 5 years. Then they had the bright idea of using the old computer without cleaning it. It all went well for a while it boot up and otherwise was it old win7 self. Except, a couple of days later they let it on overnight. The house owner was awaken alarmed by the fumes of burning plastic and a faint trail of smoke coming from the case.

The over a decade buildup of dust had been trapping heat so bad that some old shoddy HDD power cable melted partially exposing the conducting wires. Then it short circuited and arced through the dust setting some lint on fire.

The flame was minuscule and it was controlled fast. But I would say that, it is indeed wise to clean your computers, at least once in a while.

I think it was a one time grant for lutris or something, not Wine. It wasn’t out of their good heart or ethical fibre. It was also a one time thing 5 years ago for so little money that it wouldn’t cover even a single developer for a single year.

Nice strawmans. You are really good at constructing them. I’m against cars, but I fight against the culprits, oil and manufacturing companies and corrupt politicians who run car centric policies under billionaires lobbying. I don’t attack people who are forced into a lifestyle that leaves them no healthy avenues for mental health or that deprives them of healthier life choices. Yours is the logic that criminalize the homeless for sleeping in their cars in a public parking lot. You get out with your twisted logic. This is not about being cruel to the people forced to depend on cars, it is against the system that forces us all into that unhealthy lifestyle.

You’re the one being bad faith all over this post. But anyways, what I really wanted to comment is that it might be a unhealthy coping mechanism, but oftentimes it is the only one people have. Specially in the context of the US, people can’t afford mental health care and a lot of people are overworked to the point they don’t have any energy left to exercise. Just let them have their private alone time, you’re a weirdo commenting on other’s habits while displaying absolutely zero empathy to other’s struggles.

Often times people have resolved all the rational arguments to act on a decision but lack on an emotional excuse to figuratively pull the trigger. I’d bet on someone high up had already made if their mind and you not using WhatsApp was the perfect excuse to just have the whole team finally migrate.

I don’t agree that they don’t care about story and only do it for marketing.

I never said that, but sure, you’re free to disagree with the thing I never said.

halflife’s episodes are all about an attempt at continuing that story.

And, as I said earlier, they got bored, found it to not be a satisfying thing to do and stopped and never did it again. Episode 2 was 17 years ago. There will never be an episode 3 or half-life 3.

I think that the Cave and Glados bits of portal are a large part of what made those games

That part sold those games but funnily enough they aren’t even half of the game. Most of Portal 2’s content is on the multiplayer coop puzzles. They have more levels and a play through runs for more hours than the single player portion.

I think the only way to know would to be an insider

We have them, I’m not making shit up. There are dozens of interviews, documentaries, in-game commentary and books written by Valve staff themselves saying exactly what I have been summarizing in these comments. This idea isn’t mine, I’m just repeating what people at Valve have publicly said about game development.

And the first Defense of the Ancients was originally a mod for a completely different game. The common theme is polishing gameplay. Team fortress existed and was popular, but between the release of TF classic, with the announcement of TF2, and the actual release there were almost 9 years and a complete rewrite between two radically different versions of the game. At one point people compared it with Duke nukem, claiming it was vaporware and would never release. Truth is, it was in development hell for a long while. They didn’t like what the game was at that time. TF classic and TF2 only common thread is class based team death match. Everything else is different. The producers have said that TF2 was resurrected to perfect the netcode, lighting, facial animation rigging, particle system and shading tech for the source engine in anticipation of the visual and gameplay improvements they wanted for HL2ep1 and 2. All three games were produced by the same guy and Gabe noticed what he experimented with on TF2 was worth developing into a finished game. Specially because they dropped all the ideas they didn’t like and stripped down the gameplay.

The other side of the coin being that Valve had learned the importance of visual packaging and marketing with Ricochet. With pure gameplay, although wildly acclaimed for being super fun, it didn’t reach the mass appeal and cultural impact of half-life. It had great repayable value, but no eye candy or lore to hook people long term. So, when TF2 was a success with its character based marketing narrative, it became the test bed for a myriad of things we now take for granted. Matchmaking, micro transactions, cosmetics stores, etc. (All things that were made to develop the Steam store social features, which was produced by the other guy who made the TF mod originally) Valve only goes hard on things they think are innovative or interesting tech, or at least plain fun to do. If the internal sponsor of an idea get bored or loses support from colleagues, the project just halts.

Story is a major parte of the marketing. It’s not like they don’t care about story, just it isn’t the seed they start from.

If you read Raising up the bar, or watch the documentaries they are upfront about it. Half-life was in its inception a loose collection of levels and set pieces of experimentation to push the limits of the game engine they were working with. They didn’t start with a story then made a game to tell it. They had a game then hired writers to help them string together the levels in a way that told a coherent story. Half-life 2 was also made to construct a new physics system for the source engine. TF2 was the result of experimentation with team based death match gameplay. Left4death was created when they were experimenting with game director and mass numbers of enemies and discovered it was fun to mow down huge numbers of enemies. Alyx is the result of developing gameplay for VR. Portal started literally with the portals system. Dota2 was a polish of MOBAs gameplay. Etc.

They work on world building and story writing only once they find a gameplay breakthrough that is fun. When they tried to make the story first (half-life 2 episode 2), they found it boring to develop so they stopped. Hence why there’s no episode 3. Portal 2 was not made to tell cave Johnson story, it was to make fun puzzles with liquid physics.

It’s Valve, their whole MO is finding what would be fun next. They don’t expend money on something for any reason other than, is it fun, is it fun to work on. If either answer is no, then it won’t even see the outside world. There’s rumors they have worked on several games up to relatively advanced levels of development (at least a playable gameplay loop) then dropped them altogether because something didn’t work out, and they never talk about it with anyone unless it is finally decided it will be a launched product. That’s why this closed testing is such a big deal, they’re letting people play it, which means they already played it internally for thousands of hours.

Another interesting pattern is that they don’t make games to tell stories. This has always been a misconception since Half-life has such massive following over the story, and hurt over unfinished plots. But if you check closely, those games where never about the story. Usually Valve makes something with a fun mechanic to play, then they work on writing a creative and cool story/dialogue around that gameplay. Never the other way around. 99% of their games are about gameplay, if you stripped all flavor text, voice dialogue and art from Portal it would still be a solid and extremely fun puzzle game.

The gold surface gets dented, nothing more personalized than a medal with your teeth marks on it.

When you start a racing game, do you start with the best cars unlocked or do you play the game to earn them?

Yes. Most racing games have an arcade/zero stakes mode were you can race with almost any game. The gated progression has been on a separate story/career mode since the early 2000s. Except, you know, on the scam live service AAA mtx whale hunting games.

Maybn read the article, chill down a bit. We all hate advertisers here. Everyone trusts Let’s Encrypt, they’re privacy and encryption advocates who run one of the largests online certificates repository. They’re a nonprofit, and they have been doing this for a decade. They’re the reason the internet is a bit safer by promoting widespread implementation of encrypted traffic.

Sure, anyone can turn bad actor at any time. But this guys are starting from a really high bar and have a really strong reputation.

Add: also, this is a good step for Mozilla. We want a internet free from Google, and that includes financially. Google puts practically the totality of the money for the Mozilla foundation. Donations don’t come close to the millions needed to develop and support a web browser. A direct relationship with advertisers, under Mozilla’s terms and not the advertisers predatory terms, would be a good thing.

You don’t generally have to. There’s a package or environment somewhere that lifted that restriction or force it by trying to do something else. LaTeX is 100% deterministic. Someone, you perhaps unknowingly, told it to put that text there while trying to achieve something else.

Remember that LaTeX is about setting rules then letting it arrange the text in a way that follows those rules. If you try to meddle into the typography by hand, forcing specifics that break the rules, you will break its behavior. If it is putting text over the margin, it is because it determined that is the only way to fulfill the totality of your instructions.

If you’re trying to do something on LaTeX and you find yourself wrestling with the software or writing TeX commands. Take a step back and reconsider. The reason the software is fighting you is because you are trying to make it do something it is not meant for or you’re actively asking it to do the opposite of what you stated earlier you wanted to achieve. Thus creating a contradiction of intent.

Obvious examples are using the article template to write a book, or using the book template to write a letter. It is akin to using Excel as a game engine, possible, but not easily. You’re trying to use a hammer to unscrew a bolt. Of course the tool is gonna fight you.

If you’re trying to do pixel adjustments of figure position and changing it breaks something, you missed the point of the software package and/or are doing something horribly wrong and unsupported.

Do you not know how to read? This whole post is filled with links and sources in the comments.

“For my next masterpiece, I am going to murder several hundreds of birds, a dozen small woodland critters, 2 cats and 4 poodles! The pollution cloud will take weeks to clear completely! Biodiversity, several hectares around, will be decimated, it will take decades to recover and I will do it in only 15 minutes! Your grandpa will have a mental breakdown thinking he is back in 'nam!”

Depends on the country, but usually a “background check” is nothing more than paying a lawyer to check if you have ever been convicted, accused or investigated for a crime. Prosecutors have an archive and a office of records to collect and share that public information. This is why clearing records are important in courts and settlements. It’s a big mark to say the person is actually alright and won’t be found in the records if searched, as they were cleared. Other than that it is usually just a phone call to a previous employer to ask if you were an asshole there.