[-] Mikina@programming.dev 31 points 2 months ago

This is the reason why all games should straith up ban players from russia.

We don't want to play with them, 95% of interactions I ever hard with them online were toxic (judging by DotA, CS and Arc Raiders), and it would be a sanction that'd apparently work.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 28 points 3 months ago

The article doesn't really mention it and only focuses on it providing an incorrect value (150% when it's already at 150%), but this bit that's added as a reader context to the Tweet is even bigger blunder:

The user asked how to increase text size, but Copilot incorrectly advised changing the "Scale" option in Settings > System > Display. This enlarges text, but also resizes UI, apps, and other elements

To change only text size, go to Settings > Accessibility > Text size.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 31 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Square Enix actually has a pretty sick automated QA already. There's a cool talk about how they did that for FFVII remake in GDC vault, and I highly recommend watching it, if you're at all interested in QA.

It has nothing to do with AI, it's just plain old automation, but they solve most of the issues you get with making automated tests in non-discrete 3D playspace and they do that in a pretty solid way. It's definitely something I'd love to have implemented in the games I'm working on, as someone who worked in QA and now works in development. Being able to have mostly reliable way how to smoke-test levels for basic gameplay without having to torture QA to run the test-case again is good, and allows QA to focus on something else - but the tools also need oversight, so it's not really a job lost. In summary - I think the talk is cool tech and worth the watch.

However, I don't think AI will help in this regard, and something as unreliable and random as AI models are not a good fit for this job. You want to have deterministic testcases that you can quanitfy, and if something doesn't match have an actual human to look at why. AI also probably won't be able to find clever corner-cases and bugs that need human ingenuity.

Fuck AI, I kind of hope this is just a marketing talk and they are actually just improving the (deterministic) tools they already have (which actually are AI by definition, since they also do level exploration on top of recorded inputs), and they are calling it an "AI" to satisfy investors/management without actually slapping a glorified chat-bot into the tech for no reason.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 32 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I have worked as a pentester and eventually a Red Team lead before leaving foe gamedev, and oh god this is so horrifiying to read.

The state of the industry was alredy extremely depressing, which is why I left. Even without all of this AI craze, the fact that I was able to get from a junior to Red Team Lead, in a corporation with hundreds of employees, in a span of 4 years is already fucked up, solely because Red Teaming was starting to be a buzz word, and I had passion for the field and for Shadowrun while also being good at presentations that customers liked.

When I got into the team, the "inhouse custom malware" was a web server with a script that pools it for commands to run with cmd.exe. It had a pretty involved custom obfuscation, but it took me lile two engagements and the guy responsible for it to leave before I even (during my own research) found out that WinAPI is a thing, and that you actually should run stuff from memory and why. And I was just a junior at the time, and this "revelation" got me eventually a unofficial RT Lead position, with 2 MDs per month for learning and internal development, rest had to be on engagements.

And even then, we were able to do kind of OK in engagements, because the customers didn't know and also didn't care. I was always able to come up with "lessons learned", and we always found out some glaring sec policy issues, even with limited tools, but the thing is - they still did not care. We reported something, and two years ago they still had the same bruteforcable kerberos tickets. It already felt like the industry is just a scam done for appearances, and if it's now just AIs talking to the AIs then, well, I don't think much would change.

But it sucks. I love offensive security, it was really interresting few years of my carreer, but ot was so sad to do, if you wanted to do it well :(

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 29 points 1 year ago

the quality of search results tends to be degraded [without JavaScript].

Lol, how? That's such bullshit.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 31 points 2 years ago

This is the first time I'm hearing about Framework. Is it worth it? I'm looking for a new laptop anyway

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 31 points 2 years ago

My favourite take on DI is this set of articles from like 12 years ago, written by a guy who has written the first DI framework for Unity, on which are the currently popular ones, such as Zenject, based on.

The first two articles are pretty basic, explaining his reasoning and why it's such a cool concept and way forward.

Then, there's this update:

Followed by more articles about why he thinks it was a mistake, and he no longer recommends or uses DI in Unity in favor of manual dependency injection. And I kind of agree - his main reasoning is that it's really easy for unnecessary dependencies to sneak up into your code-base, since it's really easy to just write another [Inject] without a second thought and be done with it.

However, with manual dependency injection through constructor parameters, you will take a step back when you're adding 11th parameter to the constructor, and will take a moment to think whether there's really no other better way. Of course, this should not be an relevant issue with experienced programmers, but it's not as inherently obvious you're doing something potentially wrong, when you just add another [Inject], when compared to adding another constructor parameter.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 31 points 2 years ago

Not only investors. Everyone needs stocks to forever go up. We're kind of fucked, because once it becomes apparent that the infinite market growth isn't possible and we reach a theoretical ceiling of stock market, the world and economy will probably be in serious shit.

I've tried looking for some articles or papers about what would actually happen and couldn't find any, but our society right now is kind of based on that premise, and once it stops it's going to be a problem. Mostly for the ordinary people, though. And of course, caused entirely by the greedy investors struggling to figure out how to keep milking the cow. Fuck capitalism.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 29 points 2 years ago

I think it's time to stop and think whether we really need all of those services? We've been slowly trapped into social networks and various unecessary services through dark patterns, and now we somehow can't imagine being without them, even though they actively make everything worse.

What was the last time you watched a Youtube video that actually was worth the time, and wasn't just a shallow content about something vaguely interesting, but something you'll probably could live without? Do we really need to agregate news and articles from the whole internet, while there probably are good local newspaper/news sites that will get you up to speed, without giving you clickbait articles? For example, we have a pretty great news company that is independent and funded entierly by users, and it's enough for keeping up to speed on world events without having to scroll through a lot of bullshit.

The more enshitificated the internet gets, the more I'm starting to realize that I really don't need almost any of it. Sure, some things are pretty usefull, like cloud storage, but almost anything I needed so far was solved by just getting a NAS with Nextcloud. The only thing I really need the internet for is messaging and email. And if I want to stay up to date, we have amazing smaller local sites for both gaming news and for world news, and those two are enough.

The more that I think about my internet usage, the more I'm realizing that I don't really mind its enshitification - because ever since it started happening, I've been just removing addictions from my life and replacing it with more niche or smaller sites that are updated less frequently, don't stalk me, and I've slowly started to realize that thanks to that I can do a lot more done and don't get trapped by scrolling through clickbaity dopamine rush made to keep me glued to a screen.

I recommend reading https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672036-digital-minimalism . I've already read it several times, and never managed to get into fully implementing it. I did stop using Facebook, and reduced my Reddit usage drastically during those years, but this enshitification is only making it easier to just not using anything I really don't need. I'm looking forward to WEI and other "You can't do this" stuff that will come with it, because it's exactly the trigger that will make me stop and think "Do I really need to do this? Or are there better ways how to solve this.". And the answer is almost always "Nope".

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 28 points 2 years ago

For some shorter experiences I haven't seen mentioned when skimming through a few comments here, I definitely recommend trying Transistor. It was one of the strongest emotional experience I've ever had in a game. I've managed to play it in a single sitting, but it is around 6 hours long. Supergiant games make such a uniquely perfect audiovisual experiences, that every game from them is a treat, but Transistor is the strongest emotional experience I've played from them.

Another one would be two-hours long walking simulator with amazing environmental storytelling - What Remains of Edit Finch. You can play it in a single sitting, and it's gorgeous and really well done.

You should also play Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice . It's also around 8 hours long, and you definitely want to play it with headphones, it's such a strong emotional experience. The audio and game design is so well done, and the game has stuck with me for such a long time. It's one of the few games where just seeing the trailer again tears me up and gives me chills. And after you play it, I recommend watching the documentary about how they tried to protray the mental illness of the main character through game design - it's such masterfully done that I didn't even realize most of what they are doing, but it has stuck with me and it worked wonders to make the experience even better.

And for some even more unique game design - Before Your Eyes. What makes this experience so strong is the whole premise of looking over your life and memories after you've died, with the main mechanic of how to advance time being by blinking - physically blinking, because the game can work with your camera. That makes for a pretty strong metaphor that makes it even more emotional experience.

And just to mention some games others have mentioned, to add to their recommendations - Outer Wilds, Ori and the Blind Forest, Life is Strange, Planet of Lana, all are really good games!

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 31 points 2 years ago

This is something that will be hard to solve. You can't really effectively discern between a large instance with a lot of users, and instance with lot of fake users that's making them look like real users. Any kind of protection I can think of, for example based on the activity of the users, can be simply faked by the bot server.

The only solution I see is to just publish the vote% or vote counts per instance, since that's what the local server knows, and let us personally ban instances we don't recognize or care about, so their votes won't count in our feed.

[-] Mikina@programming.dev 32 points 2 years ago

Yes, I think we should defederate. Don't give them free content, and don't let them monetize Fediverse.

Also, I'm not really interested in having the millions of Facebook and Instagram users here, it's one of the worst and most bland people and content internet can offer, right behind Tik-Tokers. I don't see how it would add any value, other than moderation issues.

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Mikina

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