Stuart Cameron 🦋

Find me over at BlueSky at bsky.app/profile/stuart…

Holy cow! Elon Musk’s Grok AI literally thinks Trump is a Russia asset. “I estimate a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties.” — Grok x.com/i/grok/share/W…

@Jonathan_Blow @Observer_ofyou It works if the coder understands the problem fully with all its nuances. I’d argue most don’t take that time first. I don’t know how many times the font system got rewritten at a company I was at years ago until someone who knew the problem properly tackled it.

@Observer_ofyou If you are a good programmer with discipline, it *does* come out better. Many of us have had this experience. (Though "Rewrite Everything" is a strawman since 99% of software is useless and should just be thrown away.)

@SebAaltonen Looking at any sort of web tech as a game dev is a nightmare. It’s all strings. All of it. Plain text. Except they’re over SSL and encrypted at rest on disk in the browser / other client. Unless you’re the old MS Teams. Ugh.

@SebAaltonen Also if changing a password you’re probably already logged in with a signed token being sent in the header, along with the existing password and the new one. There’s well established protocols for this stuff. At a glance it looks terrible, but it’s secure and works.

Just a reminder to everybody: If a website compares your new password with your old one, the web browser has to send a plain text password instead of a hashed one. This is a security issue.

@rompa69 @mcnabbd @NOTimothyLottes One of the guys at work has been writing a GBA emulator and the VRAM behaviour had him stumped for a bit ;). And intentionally misaligned reads to swizzle byte order. That was a fun architecture. But he has Duke running now!

@mcnabbd @NOTimothyLottes I do recall using the few bytes of memory in between the two frame buffers to store the mipmaps out of desperation. That memory being a PITA because of the 16-bit only access to it (ie. you could not read a single byte).

Sprite era image compression was something else! 8x8 x 24-bit color = 192 bytes Down to 16-bit {tileId,rotation,paletteId} 96:1 compression ratio Then often they would do this hierarchically 16x16 as 4x 8x8s to say 16-bit, 384:1 or 32x32 as 4x 16x16s in 16-bit, 1536:1

@Jonathan_Blow @KevinNaughtonJr Most coders don’t have the authority, time nor budget to do that in large orgs. Change means breaking things for customers. In games a simple fix can mean affecting the feel of the game, which for an ongoing license is bad news. Different problems for different folk.

@doozethe @KevinNaughtonJr This is why programmers need to have the discipline and skill to pay off tech debt. It is not that hard, I have done it many times. If you are replacing a system with a better one, you are not stuck.

software engineering might be the only profession where you can be stuck on a task for days/weeks/months and no one will even bat an eye, question your abilities, or be upset with you

@Jonathan_Blow @KevinNaughtonJr It’s gross, but it is what it is. It suddenly costs far more to do the stuff that should be simple because there’s many tentacles, and you’re restricted to certain types of changes. You can’t just “fix the lighting pipeline” because there’s a massive team of artists it’ll affect.

@Jonathan_Blow @KevinNaughtonJr It’s called tech debt. If your code is fresh and you don’t need to worry about legacy support for existing users you can move fast and break things. If you’re working with a big team in a big complex engine/codebase then big changes are risky and cost way more.

@georgebsocial Thanks, absolutely have to check this out.

Music By John Williams was an amazing documentary. Uplifting, inspiring, moving and a jaw dropping as a body of work and collaborations. A must see to appreciate the unique work of a man who's singular in his impact. Just amazing. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ #johnwilliams youtube.com/watch?v=sNRoB6…

AI is out here saving families

@darcy_sandall Ratbag was 4.5 months later en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratbag_Ga…

just found a model on @Replicate that can take apart a song into separate tracks, find the bpm and identify the verse and chorus 😳 in less time than it takes to listen the song

@rompa69 @aaronp613 Definitely a love it or hate it thing. I’ve used one daily for years and haven’t had any issues. I don’t get the same precision from trackpads. I love the vertical touch-based scrolling, unless in Google Slides when the slightest touch switches slides 🤬.

@aaronp613 Worst mouse on the planet. Buy the cheapest Bluetooth mouse from anywhere and have a better experience. After 1 day with this mouse, I got massive pain through my hand. I replaced with a Magic Trackpad and all pain disappeared except that felt in my wallet.

Apple purposely not displaying an image that shows where the port is on the new Magic Mouse 😂

Amazing graphical representation of a neural net, never seen anything like it.

@987Nabil @ohmypy Early returns just define preconditions for a function, that’s safe and defensive programming, not bad design.

@ohmypy Early returns and nested ifs are both the smells of bad design

Early return is probably the most underrated practice, even among experienced developers.

@darcy_sandall Maybe I should have scribbled in another colour lol. Need to refine my programmer art skillz.

@rompa69 @ObsoleteSony How am I not in the least bit surprised at this? 🤣

@ObsoleteSony The Muppets Monster Adventure. Seriously.

If you could only play one PS1 game for the rest of your life, what would it be?

@OneGodel @BradCostanzo @HeyGen_Official The one talking like a monotone robot and zero humanity.

@BradCostanzo @HeyGen_Official Woah, which was the AI avatar?

Wow! @HeyGen_Official just released today ability to have an AI avatar join a Zoom meeting and interact. I invited one of their AI avatars into a Zoom room and recorded this clip. Time to build my own now