[-] Mikina@programming.dev 12 points 3 months ago

You're right, I used a wrong word there. It wasn't science, more like public perception maybe? I'd consider lack of research as a part of science, though.

I'm not sure what better word would fit there instead. I wouldn't say it's the fault of marketing, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that they thought it's actually healthier to use this kind of filter.

The comparison that sparks to my mind are vapes. There's AFAIK lack of research that can tell us anything about long term issues, but a lot of people consider it as healthier. But in this case, common sense is also not correct - because it kind of makes sense that it probably isn't, and it's just marketing.

But in the case of an asbestos filter, I can see why people (and common sense at the time) would asume that it helps.

So, I guess common sense is the word that I should've used, because that's what was wrong at the time.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 12 points 4 months ago

I only found out about ODD recently, and it explains so much. It should be talked about more.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I work in gamedev, both on my own game in my free time, and professionally. Projects take years to develop, and Unity was doing pretty ok 6 years ago, when I started my own project. Will I make another one in Godot? Very probably yes, Unity sucks, but moving an existing project is unfeasible.

Another reasons are console ports. Getting a Unity game to run (run, not release/port completely, but that's an important step) on any console is pretty simple, since all the core libraries are prepared for you and you just include them. For Godot, you have to find someone who already has those libraries.

Unreal is too heavyweight for a lot of games. It's amazing if you want some kind of realistic-leaning 3D, but the project size and (editor) performance is a huge problem for smaller things. Still better in a lot of things compared to Unity, but it's also harder to get into, since it's C++. Unity with C# is way more approachable, especially for students with laptops, who can barely get the editor running (It was a reason why I barely finished my Unreal assignments on college, and stuck with Unity). So, you have a lot of people who grew up on Unity, making it easier to hire for it. And when you are used to one engine for most of your life, with years of experience that's limited to it, it is difficult to switch (although, almost everyone I talked to who works in Unity has "learn Godot" on their todo list)

I've been mostly seeing Unreal recently, when talking to other devs and studios at conferences, and not many new Unity projects. Anecdotal evidence, though.

Also, while I'll definitely use Godot for any future project (which I already did for some gamejams), I can't imagine maintaining a large AA(A) codebase written in GDscript. To be fair, it might be because I don't have any large-scale project python experience (which I also can't imagine writing a large app with), and IIRC the C# support isn't as good in Godot yet.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'd also add that IMO, it's also heavily caused by misalignment of social network personalization algorithms. It's very probable that someone developed a ML algorithm during the early years of FB/YT/Google (not LLM, just some kind of feedbacky ML), that takes data they have about you as input, and selects what posts to show you next to maximize your time spent scrolling on the app.

You have unimaginable amount of data (with literally billions of active users), and it could've been running and getting better for the last decade.

The algorithm gets better and better at gluing you to the screen, at manipulating and changing people. My theory is that one of the best ways how to keep someone glued to a social network is radicalization and introduction into a conspiraci theory. It probably removes you from "normal" people around you IRL, because you're now wierd, you feel smart because you've "figured out the truth", you don't spend time with people around you or read "traditional" media, because they are lying and don't get you, and the only safe space you have is the echo chamber on the social network. That sounds like a pretty good recipe how to keep people interacting on the platform, and there's not really a way how to prevent it, assuming it's a ML algorithm driving it. No one knows how it works, and it only works with one goal - maximize app time at all costs.

Just take a look how good some ML models are at the task of "text -> image". Now imagine it has billions of people and a decade to experiment, with a task "person -> next content to show". It's horrifying to think about what it would be able to manipulate you into, and it is even better at it that the image models, because it had exponentially more data and room to experiment in real time on real people.

Also - there's no way how to fight back. Even if you know about it, there are tens of thousands people like you, who are also "immune" to this approach. But the ML algorithm gets to experiment on them, and if there is a way how to manipulate even them, it will figure it out. Because it knows what approach won't work on people like you. The only way you can prevent this is by not using anything that has a personalized feed - no Google search, no FB wall, no YT recommendations, etc. This probably doesn't lead to radicalization in this case, because the goal is to keep you in the app, not radicalize. For now, at least. Thankfully, people managing the biggest social networks are reasonable people who are just running a business, and they have no reason to change the goal of the algorithm into something else than screen time, right?

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What drove the point home for me was seeing a Twitter account (it was years ago) that posts short 6 second segments of every new game released on steam.

It was posting almost hourly, and while there was a lot of trash, most of the games were of pretty "standart" smaller indie quallity. It's ruthless.

And in addition with the GDC talk of someone who made literally millions by making a generator that generates super basic slot machine games on various themes (as in, generate a theme (cars, bird...), download a few pictures, place them on slot machine) and uploads them to Play Store (back then you had a limit on 20 games a day, and they did include some more rules about quality in reaction to this talk), and the game were getting thousands of downloads and when they checked how is their script doing after few months, they had like over a million in revenue IIRC. Sure, it's about mobile games, but it is hearbreaking when you realize how do the consumers work in reality.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 12 points 2 years ago

How are they controlled? If it's radio, shouldn't it be pretty easy to jamm, assuming you have the means to?

If I'm not mistaken the main weakness of FPV drones is that you have to manually control it untill it's directly at or above the enemy. Which most of other weapons don't need, and you can fire them from slightly larger distance.

But, since we are talking russia here, it works amazingly well.

On an unrelated note, if any of you haven't seen FPV drone racing, it's one one of the most cyberpunk and coolest sports.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 12 points 2 years ago

We found a RCE on a server during pentest. In KOBOL.

Learning how to make a reverse shell in KOBOL was pretty unique experience. Thankfully, we found another path to DA ajd didn't have to continue, but maan, learning KOBOL, especially of your use-case is niche, is borderline esoteric.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Same issue. I guess I'm never going back there. I've already stopped doing it, but from time to time a question I was researching let me to Reddit.

What's the best tool to delete your account, while also overriding all of your posts and comments?

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Wouldn't this, along with the other numerous talks on ECS that were made before Unity copyrighted it, be enough to challenge the copyright and have it revoked? Or is that not how copyright works?

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 12 points 2 years ago

There's one thing that I regret to this day - going fulltime right after school.

I studied gamedev, and we had a game going on pretty strong, which we were determined to finish in our free time. We were working on it with my roommate and a classmate, who is in general a pretty creative person - he writes LARPs for one group, is leading a amateur theater group, leads our game development team, masters RPGs, etc. He also works as a programmer, just like me.

When we finished school, he decided to stay working part-time, two days a week, and continue living in the student's appartment with our 3 more friends. Keeping his expenses as he had before during school, and focusing on his creative projects in the free time. Because as someone without a car, family, and i a shared household, on a programmers salary, you can get by pretty comfortably.

I, on the other hand, decided to go full-time. And boy does it sucks to get energy for hobby projects after you've spent 40 hours a week of working. Sure, I had more money - but the fact that after paying all my necessary expenses (which I was able to do even part-time), I was left with 3-4 times as much money didn't really help me at all. Sure, I had financial security, I could buy whatever I wanted and didn't need to pay any mind to my spendings, but was it worth it? I'm more and more conviced that it wasnt. I had to start forcing myself to work on my hobby projects that I've loved before. I started postpoing it, and was stressed by trying to shove that much work into so little time.

The money didn't help it at all, especially since I didn't really need them.

He's still working on plethora of projects I'd love to join in, but my contribution is getting less and less reliable, and more and more stressful for me, because the 8 hours of job work per day will just suck all energy out of you, especially since the projects are usually also programming related.

If I could change it, I'd never start working more hours than I need to comfortably get by, even with a little bit of frugal lifestyle. It's not worth it, and the stress caused by trying to overwork myself with the hobby projects, missing deadlines with both work and said projects, has taken a great toll on my mental health in the past 4 years we've finished school. In fact, I didn't even manage to finish my diploma thesis, after postponing it for three years, so I don't even have the Masters even though I did finish the state exam.

So, if you can, limit your work hours as much as you can to get by, and work on your own projects in the meantime (if that's what you want). The money are not worth it.

(I'm actually finally planning to go back to part-time, and take another Masters in game design this year, and probably stay at that, so I'll see how it goes. But seeing the difference between my best friend and me, where our paths diverted exactly by this, he's turned out a lot better than I did after those three years.)

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 12 points 2 years ago

This finally explains it. I was about to write something similar as the comment you are replying to, because it did felt like a totally unnecessary PR stunt of another corporation that only exploits the issue for publicity, and I really hate that.

But if the mod description was as bad as you say, then removing it was the right move.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 12 points 2 years ago

Now I really want to see a parody porn that's build around the plot of someone getting stuck in VIM.

view more: ‹ prev next ›

Mikina

0 post score
0 comment score
joined 2 years ago