ryan

@[email protected]

I admin the.coolest.zone, the coolest site on the net for online social engagement.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ryan,

The matchmaking feature is kind of cute. For some reason I thought Tinder was a hookup app and not a dating app. Has that changed or was I just always misinformed?

ryan,

lmao cries in San Jose

I mean, the thing is, it's not even that great a city. Like, sure the tech jobs are here, and the bay area overall is nice and has temperate weather, but San Jose itself is a giant sprawling suburb. Downtown is "okay" and we do have public transit in the form of the light rail but it's pretty slow.

I'm paying $3.4k to rent a 2x2.5 townhome with my partner currently. It's very nice, and my landlords are just a very nice couple rather than a company, but dang is it expensive just to live here.

And before anyone asks, I live here 1) because I work in tech and the jobs are here, and 2) because my family all lives in the Bay Area and they're very important to me.

Anyway, my formal recommendation to any of you looking to move to San Jose is to basically not do that. Find a remote job and work in tech that way, or hybrid so you can live further out and commute only a couple times a week.

ryan,

Fediverse stuff is always gonna be somewhat niche. Consider that a lot of people still don't fully understand it. Federation is like email in a lot of ways, with multiple domains that can cross communicate, but the way people understood email was by likening it to the postal service and not even considering domains and such. So even explaining ActivityPub by means of email is a bit of a heavy lift.

And getting people to host their own instances? That's asking a lot out of anyone. I had to learn a lot to spin up my kbin instance here, and I'd like to think myself fairly adept at technology.

Add onto this that Lemmy is pretty stable but occasionally still has its issues, and kbin is still in a fairly early state, so it's not as clean an experience as existing centralized solutions.

However, the fact that we have a pretty steady population out here is super encouraging. People didn't migrate during the reddit evacuation and then immediately dip out - there's reasons to stay. Hopefully we can continue to slowly socialize the fediverse to folks and get more people onboard. I know everyone associates Web3 with the blockchain and monkey jpgs, but in my mind this is the proper Web3 - decentralizing the internet and socializing it back into the hands of the people.

ryan,

While I agree in theory, it's hard practically to give the ability to make private wording and typo edits without giving the ability to make more insidious changes - like pushing a certain narrative and then quietly changing words here and there to erase evidence of that after most people have read it, etc.

If news websites kept their own visible audit trail, much like Wikipedia, I could see the argument that Internet Archive doesn't need to capture these articles immediately, maybe it should be time bound to a year after publication or somesuch, and therefore recent news could retain its paywall by the NYT without being sidestepped by Internet Archive. (While it's annoying that articles are paywalled, news sites do need to make money and pay for actual news reporters.)

ryan,

I just tried the photo sphere mode again for old times' sake. It sure hasn't gotten any better. Maybe they're removing it so they can make and release a better version, but I won't hold my breath.

ryan, (edited )

Trust me, I still haven't gotten over the untimely deaths of Inbox or Play Music, and my comment history will show me raging about Google's inability to have a coherent messaging strategy. (By the way, you forgot the original Google Chat which was killed off before Hangouts!)

It's the same story every time. An app/service with excellent potential, left to stagnate for years, retired. It's at the point I don't bother trying anything new Google puts out because I can't trust that I won't be rugpulled again.

Edit: my mistake, it was called Google Talk, which was renamed to Gmail Chat, which was killed off in favor of Hangouts.

ryan,

AI is absolutely taking off. LLMs are taking over various components of frontline support (service desks, tier 1 support). They're integrated into various systems using langchains to pull your data, knowledge articles, etc, and then respond to you based on that data.

AI is primarily a replacement for workers, like how McDonalds self service ordering kiosks are a replacement for cashiers. Cheaper and more scalable, cutting out more and more entry level (and outsourced) work. But unlike the kiosks, you won't even see that the "Amazon tech support" you were kicked over to is an LLM instead of a person. You won't hear that the frontline support tech you called for a product is actually an AI and text to speech model.

There were jokes about the whole Wendy's drive thru workers being replaced by AI, but I've seen this stuff used live. I've seen how flawlessly they've tuned the AI to respond to someone who makes a mistake while speaking and corrects themself ("I'm going to the Sacramento office -- sorry, no, the Folsom office") or bundles various requests together ("oh while you're getting me a visitor badge can you also book a visitor cube for me?"). I've even seen crazy stuff like "I'm supposed to meet with Mary while I'm there, can you give me her phone number?" and the LLM routes through the phone directory, pulls up the most likely Marys given the caller's department and the location the user is visiting via prior context, and asks for more information - "I see two Marys here, Mary X who works in Department A and Mary Y who works in Department B, are you talking about either of them?"

It's already here and it's as invisible as possible, and that's the end goal.

ryan,

I will be forever mad about Voyager. Everything was set up to succeed: crew conflict! Unknown location! Some good actors! Voyager was a nice looking ship!

And then, famously, the actors playing humans were told to be blah and less dynamic to let the alien characters stand out more, and the series had to follow a more stagnant TNG style (they tried to serialize certain plot threads which I appreciate but were confined to episodes of the week a lot of the time).

Like, I can just imagine a mirror universe where the entirety of season 1 was the Starfleet and Maquis crews learning to work together, and conflict and drama as they're brought together by even more hostile external forces, and also the actors were allowed to actually act and stuff.

ryan,

It's the same shit that's flooding Amazon right now. It's just cheaper to buy directly from China. A lot of the electronics will likely reflect the lower price point (I got a pair of Lenovo earbuds which are decent for the $10 I paid and actually don't seem to be knockoffs, but they're not exactly high quality). Some electronics will likely be scams, and anything with memory should probably be quarantined and wiped so you don't accidentally install a keylogger onto your system.

Clothing will be sized oddly or contain errors as they're being pumped out by what are basically sweatshops at high volume.

I mean, it's really hard to be ethical about buying clothing at all at this point without doing a ton of research - even established clothing brands have been caught out using factories with sweatshop conditions. But at least those established brands are likely to have some quality control that prevents harmful chemicals from being used - not necessarily so with Temu, they're very reactive (will recall when pointed out to them but not proactively checking) so that's another avenue to consider.

ryan,

Dear Medical Team:

Please send me an up-to-date itemized medical bill. If possible, coordinate with my family on my current amount of medical debt and send that across as well. This will help me determine whether or not I even want to wake up.

Yours sleepily,
comatose ryan

ryan,

I'm trying to figure out how you trigger auto flushing just by leaning over. Meanwhile, auto flush on most public toilets I've used has a 50-50 shot of just not working at all, so I have to find the manual button.

At least for me, I know that I have a small butt and don't sit all the way back against the seat (there's quite a lot of space), so often these sensors don't catch me in the first place. Do you lean so far you move away from the sensor or something?

Regardless, both of us have relatively unique problems, I think. These sensors have been tuned to the average ass.

ryan,

Oh man, you've got me itching to get into the intricacies of JavaScript...

One fun example of the difference: when doing arithmetic operations, null is indeed converted to 0, but undefined is converted to NaN. This has to do with null being an assigned value that represents empty, whereas undefined is not actually a value but a response indicating that there was no value assigned in the first place.

ryan,

I think it could be fun if it were opt-in per community, similar to custom awards on Reddit but free. The downside would be losing compatibility with other ActivityPub implementations (although FireFish does have emoji reactions so implementing it the same way as FF would help to set a standard).

ryan,

Upvote is like a Mastodon favorite, and should be used similar to a favorite across other ActivityPub implementations. Boost, likewise, is common across other implementations.

(Fun fact though: kbin originally had these reversed - upvote performed a boost, and what is now called "boost" was originally favorite! This was switched a bit ago for better interoperability with Lemmy and other AP implementations.)

Downvote, to my knowledge, is a unique implementation to Lemmy/kbin.

ryan,

Pants sizes. For women, drop the even/odd numbering for women and juniors and move to waist and inseam like men. For everyone, implement some sort of standard policy where the actual measured size can't be more than an inch off the stated size (to account for variability in manufacturing and such).

ryan,

I said this years ago and I'll say it again - if Apple puts out some laptop shell that an iPhone can slot into which has its keyboard, touchscreen monitor, and extended battery etc and basically acts as a Chromebook-esque note taking and internet browsing device, I can imagine they'd take over high schools and colleges.

(I do specifically say touchscreen monitor because many kids are growing up never having used a mouse or trackpad. They won't have used keyboards either but that's a more essential/less replaceable skill for the workplace in the future.)

Edit: Yes, I know this is an Android subreddit, but it's iPhones that the kids in the US have and that's what immediately struck me reading this - a way to eat Chromebook's lunch.

ryan,

Oh, very true. I was thinking the same thing re: Androids and Chromebooks, but I forgot about the iPad market. Oh well, guess we're stuck with at least 2 different portable computer products at all times. Anything else would be of just too much benefit to the consumer.

ryan,

I love my Charge 5. I'm glad Google is keeping the series going. Whenever they inevitably sunset the tiny Charge watches and start pushing the big ol' smart watches that don't work for my tiny wrists and have a bunch of features I don't care about, that's when I'm bowing out.

ryan,

Sign me up. Even if there's side effects like nausea or whatever. I'll do whatever it takes to stop my bones hurting more every year.

ryan,

I'm 34. Yes, my bones hurt, but it's not terrible and I'd rather stay 34 forever (or at least drastically slow my aging, like if there were serious side effects I could take one every two days and effectively double my longevity).

ryan,

I can't find the exact timestamp but Jonathan Frakes does point out the single bathroom on the Enterprise D in the 1994 documentary "Journey's End: The Saga of Star Trek — The Next Generation."

But why would you use it when you can just use the holodeck? (crude humor warning)

ryan,

Ok, I'm gonna get into this.

2005: Google Talk released.
2013: Google Hangouts released.
2015: Google announces Google Talk shutting down, encourages people to move to Hangouts.
2016: Despite Hangouts being a one stop shop for SMS and Chat, Google discourages people from using it for SMS, asking people to use the Google Messages app instead.
2016: Google Allo released.
2016: RCS adoption begins.
2017: Google Talk shuts down.
2017: Google Chat released.
2017: Hangouts is re-targeted for business and moves to some sort of consumer freemium model?
~2018(?): YouTube Chat released, a 1:1 messaging system inside of YouTube. No idea when it was discontinued but it didn't last long.
2019: Google Allo discontinued.
2022: Whatever was left of Hangouts is discontinued.
2023: RCS through Google Messenger is now default instead of SMS and group messages are finally encrypted.

Compare this to:
2011: iMessage released. As far as I can tell, it's been e2e encrypted since at least 2012 and potentially since release.

Google, you have no fucking leg to stand on. Get your shit together. If you had had a coherent messaging strategy, maybe Apple would have been amenable to working with you, but what incentive do they have right now? For all anyone knows, you'll drop RCS by 2026 in favor of moving everyone to Google Heythere, the new ridiculous app for messaging!

ryan,

God I love beef stroganoff. Haven't had it in years. My mom used to make it for dinner sometimes. What a delicious meal.

ryan, 
wowe...
    so cool .....
 what a guy
ryan,

Ok but would y'all actually want to see a mental health counselor who could read your mind? I'd avoid the psychiatry department like the plague.

ryan,

Absolutely, that was my point and I worded it poorly :) If Troi were any more telepathic, Starfleet shouldn't allow her to practice mental health services. She's right at the edge where it's really useful before it becomes terrifying.

ryan,

Piracy exists because it's easier than the alternative. Textbooks are expensive as hell and publishers are working to demolish the used book market - first by changing the version every year, and now with one-time-use mandatory software keys. Sites like Libgen wouldn't have to exist if textbooks were $20 a pop, or if the used book market was allowed to exist. These problems are created by greed.

ryan,

the problem is that I would actually purchase this on a t-shirt, but there is no way to legitimately purchase it from the original creator (if i even knew who that was) for obvious Disney-suing-to-the-ground reasons.

ryan,

I often say that weight loss is "simple" insofar as the equation you used but it's not "easy" because our bodies and brains are hardwired to consume and store as much food as possible.

ryan,

Just commenting because this is a really good point and I'd love to know whether there's an answer besides "the other folks mentioned are loved more by the internet", since I really don't know about the specifics here.

I do understand the rationale behind "there are non-writers who work on the show and they still need their jobs", though. While it would be nice if this strike turned into a general strike in the entertainment industry, I don't even know how many of those other folks are unionized.

ryan,

$1/day is pretty cheap. I've been alive around 12k days. For less than the price of a car, I can erase my own existence. Sounds like a bargain to me!

ryan,

Put yourself right back into your dead body. Fear is irrelevant. No one gave you permission to be wandering around like this.

ryan,

That feeling's just gonna intensify over time, friend. The people who have time to post on the Internet are overwhelmingly 1) literal children and 2) college aged adults. It's not just here, it's the whole dang web.

Unity cancels town hall over reported death threats (www.theverge.com)

The Unity pricing debacle has taken an unfortunate, dangerous turn. In a new report from Bloomberg, the company has reportedly canceled a town hall meeting due to what the publication called credible death threats. According to Bloomberg, Unity CEO John Riccitiello was set to address employees Thursday morning, but the...

ryan,

Unfortunately, Unity has no way to tell legitimate installs from pirated installs, as far as I have read. This means someone with a massively pirated game who has just broken the $200,000 revenue barrier could potentially be on the hook to pay Unity more money per install than they've even made.

ryan,

This whole thing is absurd and overcomplicated - they could have just copied Unreal and slightly undercut them.

It isn't too complicated, but for example, a game which made $2 million in gross revenue would owe Epic Games $50,000, because it would pay 5 percent of $1 million, keeping the first million entirely—minus whatever other fees are owed, such as Steam's cut.

There should also absolutely have been a grandfather clause for games already released.

I get Unity needs to make money. They've never been profitable. But they've seriously overcomplicated the whole thing and gotten people angry at them.

ryan,

Back at my old job (I haven't really worked in an office since, remote and all that) the newer building across the street had restrooms with stalls that closed all the way and went down to the floor, no gaps. And there were an absolute ton of stalls. (One of the issues I've had since gender transition is the continued need to use a stall but there are usually way less in the men's room, but the restrooms in that building had so many stalls, it was incredible.)

What is your comfort activity (like comfort food)?

Mine is playing AOE2 in easiest (or standard if I want a bit of challenge) mode against 3 bots. I just build my economy, wall up (and laugh at the enemy soldiers attacking my walls in vain), reach imperial age and attack once my army reaches the population limit. I also send 104 in the chat so they don’t surrender and I can...

ryan,

Beat Saber, currently. Get me in that music zone and let me wave my arms around like an idiot.

Reddit Activity Plummeted After The Protests - by Adam Bumas (www.garbageday.email)

Last month marked the official end of the Reddit protests. Any subreddit that had changed its rules or gone dark — or forced its users to post exclusively about John Oliver — has now gone back to normal. On the surface, it seems like a complete victory for Reddit, but things aren’t so simple when a major element of that...

ryan,

I would have a slightly different takeaway from this - it's the vocal users, the ones that commented and posted and were active contributors, who were pissed off and left. I would wager a good amount of lurkers who idly browse memes and upvote content have remained.

In the short term, Reddit still ends up with ad impressions, no change, there are a ton of lurkers. But in the long term, this becomes a bit of a death spiral - less new content for the lurkers and they're more likely to be peeled off onto a more active platform with fresher memes, and the remaining contributors have less people to talk to and so they, too, are peeled off elsewhere.

This also means, if Reddit wanted to curate and sell their text data for AI training, that there's suddenly much less of that coming in. Whoops.

ryan,

I do appreciate the taste, but I wish they weren't so soggy. I would love them to be fried and crisped up a bit more.

ryan,

🤯 I frankly never thought of just asking. I figured they were under the gun to deliver so quickly that they wouldn't do that. This changes things. I may have to visit In-N-Out again.

ryan,

Where is my universe noclip so I can observe myself from all angles? Why can't I access the developer console of life? How can a loving god cause such agony?

ryan,

Oh no, the Business Systems Analysts are gone. Whatever shall we do. Society won't survive like this. Who's gonna analyze business requirements for systems. A tragedy, to be sure. 😶

ryan,

I've given myself a deadline to resolve all my issues and release the first official version by the end of September. If I can't meet the deadline, I will step down from leading the project and transfer full rights over the repository and instance to the contributors.

Ernest, please don't be so hard on yourself. Deadlines slip, even for products formally released by companies, and this is more of a hobby frankly. I think what might help is less of a deadline and more of a roadmap - like, here are the major bullet point items we want to target for release by end of 2023, by end of Q1 2024, and sometimes those slip but then the roadmap can be revised.

I've been updating my own kbin instance pretty regularly, every couple of weeks, and I've seen things become more stable over time (less frustrations in upgrading, more features, etc). I'm quite happy with the progress so far. This project has grown so much in such a short time, and the fact that the kbin issues matrix is much quieter than it was speaks to the growing stability of the platform.

As far as kbin.social itself, I would agree with some other folks that you might need more volunteers on the actual instance administration and moderation front.

And as far as spam - email, the original federated messaging platform, still has that problem! Each email provider has to handle it on their own, using increasingly sophisticated methods, and they're still not perfect and it's been decades. Yes, spam is frustrating, but due to the nature of ActivityPub we will always be in an escalating war with spam. It will never be solved, only mitigated for a time.

Anyway, perhaps I've written too much here, but I have a ton of confidence in this project and also in you, and I hope you look back and see how much has been accomplished in a short amount of time, how much kbin.social has grown, and how the amount of other contributors indicates an overall great level of confidence in what you've created.

ryan,

Aw man, I thought I was just excited for Halloween, but the skeletons are your doing 💀

ryan, (edited )

IMPORTANT EDIT: I have learned that Unity is going to charge for games already released now. This is a scummy move. I have still not found info on whether devs will be back-charged, like suddenly a huge bill will show up for games which already have a million downloads and a lot of revenue. I was previously in tentative favor of this change only so long as:

  1. it would apply to newly-released games after the change (no longer valid)
  2. the first 200,000 installs would not be back-charged even after the change over (still unknown to me)

Scummy move, Unity.

ORIGINAL POST:

I'm seeing a couple pieces of misinformation in here so I just wanted to clarify:

  • This applies to the free Unity and Unity Plus - the enterprise version has different thresholds.
  • The fee will apply to games that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 per-game lifetime installs.
  • Even then, the costs are different depending on which country you are in - "emerging market" is only $0.02 vs $0.20 for other countries.

Essentially it looks to me like you have to have made a significant amount of money already to be charged these fees - someone releasing a free game that goes viral won't be charged. One thing I haven't found is whether those first 200,000 installs will or won't be back-charged. If the initial installs aren't back-charged then I would consider this very reasonable, frankly, and cheaper than Unreal provided the game you release costs more than $4.00 (since Unreal takes a flat 5% of revenue I believe).

Unity does need to make money to be able to keep developing their engine, and right now as far as I understand it they aren't making money.

ryan,

I'm just looking at Wikipedia here but their net income in 2022 was US$ –921 million. Granted I'm not a financial wizard but I am at least somewhat confident that a negative number for net income is bad, like they're not actually making money after their expenses.

ryan,

Aw man, the feels. I wish I could have told my cat during euthanasia how much I love her and how everything was okay, I know she was in a weird unknown vet's office and she was in pain but it was going to be over soon, and how much she transformed my life and made it better, and that I hope I did right by her for the eight years she was part of my life. Love you babycat ♥️

ryan,

You know, I don't think I've ever had anyone judge me for my love of Star Trek. Sci-fi and nerddom is a lot more mainstream than it used to be.

However... If someone were to flip to BBC America and watch one episode of TNG, and that episode was The Royale, I wouldn't even mind if they judged me for all eternity.

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