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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • We can, and we do, for virtually everything.

    That’s precisely why the DOGE takeover of the payment system is so scary. Government money isn’t being transferred from some limited pool of taxpayer funds, it’s spent into existence out of thin air.

    We also borrow, in the form of bonds, but that’s mostly to tame inflation by taking currency temporarily out of circulation with the promise of a later profit for the bond holder. (And also to encourage long-term investment in domestic currency.)



  • It’s supposed to be an alternative to the publisher system.

    In the overall software industry:

    • 25% of projects succeed, with minor changes to budget, schedule, or scope
    • 50% of projects deliver, but only after significant changes to budget, schedule, or scope
    • 25% of projects fail to deliver at all

    Games are probably even worse. (Edit: and this is just talking about delivery, to say nothing of market success.)

    What happens to publishers in this environment?

    They get risk-averse. They pass on weird ideas, they offer insulting amounts to new studios, they pull the ripcord at the slightest hint of trouble.

    And… they inflate the price of successful games to cover the losses of the rest.

    You were already paying for failed projects before Early Access existed, you just never got to see what they were or decide which ones you wanted to fund more than the others.

    That’s not to say there’s no outright abuse, but that’s a small percentage of the flops that people complain about. For the most part, it’s just the normal boring everyday kind of failure that you pay for whether you get a chance to see it or not.




  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialtoADHD@lemmy.worldDoing nothing
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    27 days ago

    Similar to perfectionism/procrastination cycle:

    I have to be very careful about the first step, because it will determine whether this whole thing will be an outstanding success or not.

    Oh crap, I took too long on the first step, and now there’s no way for it to be perfect. I hope it doesn’t look like I tried.










  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialtolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldThe best Unix
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    1 month ago

    Any judgment of “best” needs to specify “for what use case?”

    I’m a MacOS daily driver, and I think it is the best for most of the use cases that matter to me.

    But not all of them. And my use cases could easily change a little bit and make MacOS a miserable choice to stick with.

    Everything is a trade-off.

    Edit: And as for closed source security, I hope nobody seriously makes that argument anymore, do they?



  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialtoCurated Tumblr@sh.itjust.worksSenses
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    2 months ago

    There’s a quote that I’m having trouble sourcing, but it’s basically:

    Code is for humans to read, and only incidentally for computers to execute.

    I think a lot of things are like that, especially when it comes to defining and organizing work. It’s less about making the perfect requirements document and more about getting everyone to think about a shared goal in a similar way.

    Specifics are great because they make for solid landmarks. But abstract language is essential too, because it clues you into how you ought to navigate the terrain in between those landmarks.

    And there is always space in between the specifics. If you managed to nail down every last detail in your spec, congratulations on your new hand-compiled programming language.


  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialtoCurated Tumblr@sh.itjust.worksSenses
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    2 months ago

    More nerds need to get into philosophy. Specifically CS nerds. I think there’s a tendency, when you get into programming, to start seeing the world in terms of discrete, quantifiable units and categorical rules. It’s a helpful counterbalance to also study something that uses logic to deconstruct that kind of objective physicalist assumption.