tung · HackerTrans

tung

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Submissions

Building Beautiful Apps from Ugly Code

prog21.dadgum.com

11 pointsby tung15 anni fa1 comments

A centralized system for sharing sensitive content

blog.desudesudesu.org

1 pointsby tung15 anni fa0 comments

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - WebTiles (requires WebSockets)

tiles.crawl.develz.org

2 pointsby tung15 anni fa1 comments

How to contribute to open source, for companies

x264dev.multimedia.cx

12 pointsby tung16 anni fa0 comments

Go Concurrency Patterns: Timing out, moving on

blog.golang.org

6 pointsby tung16 anni fa0 comments

comments

14 anni fadiscuss

My only intent was to present "the other side" of what people see in this, never to prove that you were "wrong" or "irrational" just for disagreeing with others. You're absolutely free to not like this. Pretty much all the concerns you raise about OUYA itself are spot on, and they'll need to have answers to those if they want a good shot at success.

I spent a good hour just reading your two original comments (not counting time spent writing the reply) to really understand your points as much as possible, so I could write a reply that would make you go "ah, I see what people see in this now". I gave you as much the benefit of the doubt as I could, so it really shakes me up that after all that effort, you take my points, twist them to make me look like a fool and use them to reinforce the one core point which I agree with you on: that there are a lot of practical issues that need to be addressed before this has a good shot at success.

I tried to give a reply you'd really appreciate and you punched me in the gut with it. I'm sorry for responding. :(

--

EDIT: I just read your newest reply properly (I couldn't do that before because of how upsetting it was to me); I just realized you're coming from a this-is-how-it-should-be-marketed viewpoint, while I'm coming strictly from a how-much-would-I-want-this viewpoint. My comments were just points on why people like the idea and want it to succeed, not on their marketing and relations; I'm no expert on either field and as such I have no desire to critique them. Looks like we were just talking on two different wavelengths; a simple misunderstanding.

I'm the sort of guy who automatically assumes marketing and advertising makes claims that are too good to be true, so I'm not fussed when they don't all pan out as 'promised'.

14 anni fadiscuss

The problem with your original comment[1] is that many people feel it has potential you're not only not giving it credit for, but are actively trying to sabotage its chances of success.

The crux of your comments are two-fold: (1) if OUYA succeeds, it'll be the Facebook/Zynga console that preys on the poor to line the pockets of the rich, and (2) if it fails, it hurts Kickstarter and Kickstarter projects.

The view that "the vast majority of" the games of OUYA will be "built on psychological manipulation" is the most deeply cynical and skewed views of indie games I've ever read. Maybe I'm biased: I follow indie game developers a lot, I read their forum comments and blog posts, I listen to their podcasts, play many of their games (more than AAA titles) and watch YouTube play-throughs of others by other people. The message is the same: indie game developers are trying to do what they love while introducing something unique and interesting to the world, and those who go full-time want to make ends meet, a lot like many start-up founders. They're pretty frank and don't mince words, and not one of them has so much as hinted that they want to get rich by preying on the weak. This is counter to the Hacker News view, which is stories of indie games making millions of dollars, horrible tales of Facebook and Zynga using gambling psychology to nickel-and-dime the poor and addicted, and the Kickstarter gold rush being exploited by the smart and greedy. If I had to choose which view of indie games was reality, I'd believe the actual developers before the sensational stories that hit the Hacker News front page.

As for if OUYA fails, I can't say for sure what impact it will have, but it probably won't hold back Kickstarter or other promising Kickstarter projects. Should it follow the history of failed open consoles of development past, it will at most just fade into the background, never to be heard from again until somebody takes another stab at it.

The meatiest part of your original comment (ignoring the deep cynicism ingrained in it that people objected to) are the factors that may cause it to fail:

- Ability to deliver on its $99 cost, given most consoles sell at a loss that they recoup in titles.

As somebody who watches a lot of StarCraft 2 on TwitchTV and loves the variety of indie games, I'd consider the OUYA worthwhile even at 2-3 times this price.

- Anemic hardware: 8 GB for downloaded titles with only USB2 for expansion.

Thing like this can and may well be fixed; from OUYA's Kickstarter page[2]:

> Launching on Kickstarter – this isn't just a way to raise funds. It's our way of involving supporters from the get go. We want your feedback as well as your support.

They seem open to this kind of feedback.

- the "lazy" (I'd claim short-sighted) factor, e.g. color-coded only buttons are hard to communicate, especially for the color-blind

See above. Putting shapes on the buttons would be trivial, and the controller is stated to be a prototype, not a final product.

- lack of a killer app and seeming reliance on the Android Market to fill the gap

I expanded all the FAQ segments, ran a search on the page and didn't get one hit for "android market", so that's just speculation.

On not having a killer app, the big sell of OUYA to me isn't the presence of one really good game, but as a nexus of indie games I can quickly try and go through. I played many early versions of Spelunky[3] well before it became big through word-of-mouth. POWDER[4] isn't a massive commercial hit with tons of attention or press, but I've spent many fun hours with it. OUYA presents this one place where I can go through a ton of games to find gems like these; I don't have to worry about THE killer app if I can find MY killer apps.

Overall, as a person who plays lots of indie games and watches StarCraft 2, I see potential in OUYA, even if it can only deliver on half of its promises. The deeply scathing and cynical judgment you've passed is not only undeserved, but actively hurts it, which is pretty sad.

--

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4224014

[2]: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-...

[3]: http://www.spelunkyworld.com/

[4]: http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=about

14 anni fadiscuss

I'm not an OpenGL expert, but my understanding is that the fixed function pipeline (FFP) is like a set of big, generic shaders and state that everybody had to go through to actually do the work of displaying 3D graphics. You could write shaders a fraction of the size that does just the work you need without having to pay the performance price for features you don't use. FFP-using code looks nice in tutorials, but performs terribly outside of demos, never mind the complexity tax it imposed for implementations as a 3D graphics layer for people who don't understand how 3D graphics works.

Also the old OpenGL API had immediate mode functions which encouraged people to trickle in interleaved data and operations; the exact opposite of what 3D APIs need to run fast.

14 anni fadiscuss

An open memo to Hacker News: Stories like this (e.g. the GitHub and AirBnB incidents) tend to draw out this ugly, mob-like attitude from Hacker News, and I'm sure none of us want to see it happen again.

Please, everybody, remember to be civil and give everybody the benefit of the doubt.

14 anni fadiscuss

Well that's a shame, since it's one of the most easily navigated, comprehensive yet concise HTML and CSS guide and reference sites I've ever used. I come back to it time and time again, and I can't say I've ever shared your sentiments.

14 anni fadiscuss

For future reference, you can list all of the files associated with a package using this:

    dpkg-query --listfiles package-name

Or use Synaptic's 'Installed Files' tab in the package detail dialog.

15 anni fadiscuss

My habit is to use 'ls' to confirm what I'm deleting, then pressing up and replacing 'ls' with 'rm'.

15 anni fadiscuss

One of the things I like about Readability is that space bar scrolling puts a blip on the side where my eyes can see where I should continue reading. I've never used the space bar to scroll elsewhere because the behaviour's too inconsistent.

15 anni fadiscuss

I dislike the new layout mostly because it wastes a lot of vertical space, particularly the fixed top part. Here's the user style I use to neutralise it:

    #top-bar { height: auto; }
    #search { padding: 8px 0; }
    #lhn-add-subscription-section { height: 48px; }
    #viewer-header { height: 48px; }

Adjust numbers to taste.

15 anni fadiscuss

The wavefront-expansion pathing algorithm described in the paper is very similar to the approach in the roguelike game Brogue [1], whose author refers to as using "Dijkstra maps". The game uses it for many purposes, such as seeking the player, fleeing, finding food and treasure, and even auto-exploring [2]. It was also one of the discussion topics when the game featured on the Roguelike Radio podcast [3].

[1]: https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

[2]: http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=T...

[3]: http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2011/10/interview-brian-w...

15 anni fadiscuss

I totally agree. Unity in particular feels like alpha quality software. I like the idea of a sleek, modern, composited desktop, but Unity isn't there yet.

Releasing early and often is good. Pushing that software on people who didn't choose it is not. I feel like there should have been a "Try Unity" button at the Ubuntu installer so people like me could just wait until it's ready.

Maybe I'll be happy with Unity in two years. But in that time I'll have to suffer stuttering, lag and the whims of armchair UI theorists who think Alt-Tab should jump workspaces by default.

15 anni fadiscuss

Stylish themes are often out of date and/or completely change the layout of the site when all I really want is a small tweak here or there.

15 anni fadiscuss

I can't wait for those huge margins to waste my screen space.

15 anni fadiscuss

Beware of selection bias. I saw these submissions when they were posted, but voted in neither, because I didn't mind the status quo of no points, and I'm wary of meta-discussion. If I had felt differently, I'd definitely have voted.

15 anni fadiscuss

Forgive me for being dense, but why not choose the 'classic desktop' option at login, or 'sudo apt-get install gnome-panel' if it stops coming by default?

Is it a clash of ideology that caused you to jump ship? Because I find it hard to believe somebody smart enough to find, download and partition their disks to install Ubuntu would balk at the effort of customising their desktop to suit their needs.

15 anni fadiscuss

It's easy to lash Sam Odio, but doing so robs us of some really interesting questions and answers.

First, why was the idea so popular to begin with? Collective funds aren't new, nor is using Twitter as an API for tracking things in the real world. I don't have any good guesses here.

Second, why has the community reacted so passionately? Even here on Hacker News, mostly made up of people who put reason over emotion, have been extremely upset. One: Having the money taken broke people's faith in the greater good of humanity, so indignation naturally follows. Two: Diverting funds was akin to telling people what to do, and nothing makes people angrier than being forced to do things against their will.

People got very emotional over what, in perspective, isn't that much money. $625 could get you an iPad... or a really lousy computer. If somebody had that much stolen from a home break-in, that wouldn't even make local news, let alone Hacker News. It's very curious. Also, it shows money not just as a means of gaining goods and services, but as a way for people to make a mark on the world; 'voting' for things they believe in by giving money, and denying it from things they don't.

I don't approve of what Sam did, but it's better to step back and really see what's going on here, rather than just being a mob about it.

15 anni fadiscuss

The correct title for this is "Lua/APR: Apache Portable Runtime binding for Lua". I'm pointing this out because I'm tired of seeing submission titles used to make a point instead of describing what's behind the link. This mightn't be a big deal for other people, but personally, I don't like having opinions[#] forced on me like this.

[#] The opinion here is that Lua needs a standard library. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but I want to come to that conclusion myself, that's all.

15 anni fadiscuss

See also jsshell[1] for Chrome. Press the button and you can run jQuery-powered JS on the fly, save snippets and run them, even automatically on regex-matched URLs.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kmgmkbicahmbceidoi...

15 anni fadiscuss

Strange. For me, Firefox has unresponsive scrolling with background loading, but Chrome doesn't, which is a big reason I use the latter nowadays.

15 anni fadiscuss

Digging around, I found that the author used the JSON gem, relying on to_json taking an optional generator arg. But, yajl-ruby and ActiveSupport define to_json themselves without that, leading to breakage. Those, and the fix for his project[1], are all on GitHub.

The author claims most Ruby programmers are monkey-patching and causing these problems. That's almost right: they were. But by and large, they know better now, and would happily replace it with better code, if they could just find it and fix it: that's the real problem.

The author could help by, say, logging an issue, or forking and pull requesting a fix. I checked GitHub; his ID, bcoe, doesn't show in the issues, nor in the pull requests of yajl-ruby's GitHub page[2].

I'm not saying he must do this for every problem with every open-source project he happens across, but even one contribution helps more than this steam-venting blog post.

[1] https://github.com/bcoe/tire/commit/2dd5fc03

[2] https://github.com/brianmario/yajl-ruby