cygon

Stage 2:

Documents folder? You want to rule my whole computer, dictate some nonsensical folder structure and then you act like, out of the goodness of your heart, I can have this little set of folders, deep in your weird structure, to store my stuff? And you're even telling me how to sort it? On my own hard drive connected to my own computer?

I liked agile as it was practiced in the "Extreme Programming" days.

• Rather than attempt to design the perfect system from the get-go, you accept that software architecture is a living, moving target that needs to evolve as your understanding of the problem evolves.

• Rather than stare down a mountain of ill-defined work, you have neat little user stories that can be completed in a few days at most and you just move around some Kanban cards instead of feeding a soul-sucking bureaucratic ticketing, time tracking and monitoring system.

• Rather than sweat and enter crunch mode for deadlines, the project owners see how many user stories (or story points or perfect hours) the team completes per week and can use a velocity graph / burndown chart to estimate when all work will be completed.

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But it's just a corporate buzzword now. "We're agile" often enough means "we have no plan, take no responsibility and expect the team to wing it somehow" or "we cargo cult a few agile ideas that feel good to management, like endless meetings with infinite course changes where everyone gives feel-good responses to the managers."

Having a goal, a specification, a release plan, a vision and someone who is responsible and approachable (the "project owner") are all part of the agile manifesto, not something it tries to do away with. I would be sad if agile faces the same fate as the waterfall model back in its time and even sadder if we return to the time-tracking-ticket-system-with-Gantt-chart hell as the default.

Maybe we need a new term or an "agility index" to separate the cases of "incompetent manager uses buzzword to cover up messy planning" from the cases of "project owner with a clearly defined goal creates a low-bureaucracy work environment for his team." :)

I assume this is about the physical connections.

It could be for monitoring (even with unbroken encryption, the routing information and time/server correlation can shed light on social media influence campaigns or where VPN beachheads are located). This information could probably be gathered with ISP cooperation, too, but private business and Russian money can be a problematic mix.

It could also be preparations to isolate Russia from the internet when/if their war expands into Europe. Russia has done the reverse already in 2019, BBC: Russia 'successfully tests' its unplugged internet, probably either to stop Russian people from getting news outside of government-controlled media if the tide turns against Putin or to fend off the possibility of Western countries turning the tables and running disinformation campaigns inside Russia.

Incomplete map of internet crossover points to Russia (sorry, couldn't find a better one, it had low resolution and I upscaled it):

Ich, Anfang des letzten Paragraphen: Wow, Respekt, obwohl Axel Springer sieht der Mann das Problem, politische Parteien und Gegner können durch KI die sozialen Medien in ungeahntem Maße beeinflussen, unermüdliche Troll-Armeen die gnadenlos jede ungewünsche Ansicht automatisiert totdiskutieren.

Ich,Ende des letzten Paragraphen: Oh... ... ...er denkt dass die KI-Copyright-Thematik die Regierungen dazu zwingen wird, noch üblere Urheberrechts-Daumenschrauben einzuführen und daß er dann wieder Geld von Verlinkungen und Suchmaschinen einklagen kann.

That was my impression as well. Everyone you meet seems to be some frontier redneck, either mining, farming or hunting outlaws. It could be a serviceable backdrop if you were just passing through, chasing the action, but somehow, most of the quests and plot feel like a chore in slow motion.

I wasn't trying to throw shade on the subgroup that does act in the face of climate change, it's just my impression that they're intentionally guided down paths where they fight their fellow citizens and burn themselves out instead of achieving something.

• For example (depending on the distance of your workplace), biking is certainly less convenient in that it takes more free time out of your day, requires you to bother with rain clothes, proper winter clothes, a place to store your bike while you work (which is surprisingly harder than parking a honking car) and more.

• Buying sustainable meat or eggs means they're more expensive and in noodles, pizza or cheese, it becomes either impossible or reduces your choice to one or two products which will usually be marketed as super premium. Meat industry spokesmen: "we're just giving people what they want, if they want sustainable, they need to vote with their wallets."

• Avoiding plastic packaging also carries extra effort. You need to locate a store that offers bring-your-own-container beans, rice, oats and so on, which is nigh impossible in some places and requires visiting an additional market with a price premium in others.

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I'm not trying to make a case for "oh, I can't do it because it inconveniences me, someone else fix it please," I'm observing that those of us that do care enough are (and have been for decades) too few to reach critical mass. For example, we won't fix the micro plastics in our oceans and food chain problem by calling for "personal responsibility" and sputtering on in that mode for the next 30 to 50 years (like it happened with fossil fuels).

Or, similarly, the entire recycling system is largely busywork for eco conscious people, considering that, still, >90% of trash ends up in landfills, burned or dumped. That is the point where I believe regulation with teeth needs to be established and where instead calling for "personal responsibility" is merely a diversion to tire out people willing to act while everything stays the same.

A point I really think deserves awareness as well:

6. Personal responsibility: It StARts wITh yOu!

Another trick to fend off regulation. Companies rail against regulation, saying that the options are already out there and that now it's the consumer's choice, i.e. as an individual, spend extra time when shopping to find greener products, pay more and try to get others to do the same.

You are now disadvantaged (higher costs, more effort, time spent evangelizing) and tiring yourself out, seeing no progress around you. Others may even perceive your advocacy for less convenient life choices as droning and obnoxious, which is a view gladly pushed behind the scenes by the industry trying to resist regulation.

See Coca Cola's "Anti-Litterbug" gambit (they funded "keep the environment clean" campaigns to resist bottle deposits), or how Prius drivers (an early electric hybrid vehicle) were depicted as holier-than-thou types, a cult, arrogant and elitist (I believe this even found its way into a few South Park episodes).

If, instead, regulators brought the hammer down from the beginning - like they did with Asbestos and CFC - products meeting the new guidelines would automatically become mainstream and cheap. Of course, it would also cut into the profits of established brands and potentially even shake up their power structures (as niche brands already meeting the new guidelines might make gains while big companies struggle to adapt their large production/supply structures).

It did change on thing for me: it made me drop support for Oculus in my game dev project.

I still own an Oculus DevKit 2. But after wildly succeeding with his Kickstarter, the founder has done nothing but jerk moves. First he silently dropped Linux support, then he funded a pro-Trump troll army on Reddit and finally he sold his entire VR company to Facebook/Meta, which then did its own jerk move by rendering everyone's hardware useless if they didn't sign up to Facebook/Meta. My Oculus account was forcefully obliterated just a week ago.

What a complete nosedive that was.

They had the nicer tech (Oculus uses infrared LEDs around the headset that are filmed by special cameras to track your orientation, i.e. it's steady state -- HTC Vive / Valve Index have light-sensing diodes on the headset itself and their lighthouses swipe light curtains horizontally and vertically through the room, with an annoying whining noise and all the wear & tear from constantly rotating parts), for a while, Meta even had John Carmack polishing the system.

I still hope VR will not completely die. Half Life: Alyx was fun, some archery, zombie shooting and climbing games were highly enjoyable and I could well imagine getting into sculpting / 3D modelling that way if only the tools were better.

But if, as the HTC exec in the article says, Meta has defined the "market perception of what this technology should cost" (and they're producing at a loss, too), then Meta has walled off most of the VR market to Facebook boomers (sorry, Meta boomers) and is hogging the more robust tracking tech for itself, too.

Maybe at some point, his best buddy will decide that he's more useful as a Martyr, rather than having him slowly drag down his base as he falls. I can imagine some good headlines already "Orange guy murdered by secret cabal assassins. have Antifa Super-Soldiers returned?" 🙃

I think the caveman wouldn't fare any better :)

There was a (possibly unethical) experiment where scientists tried to induce stress symptoms (lack of appetite, depression, panic, etc.) in rats.

They found that sudden scares or bringing the rats face-to-face with predators had little long term effect. But placing them on a floor with a constant, slightly uncomfortable electric current (low-level stress over a longer period) did cause them to develop all the symptoms.

So perhaps we're just not naturally equipped to deal with permanent time pressure, upcoming appointments and deadlines in the way modern society gives them to us.

Uh... I swear I wanted to contribute just 2 or 3 games, but as I wrote, I kept remembering one gem after another... oh well... :)

Outer Wilds - So hard to describe, it's an exploration game, but what you're exploring is a star system going supernova, in a wooden spaceship no less. And a strange way of (not) time travel is also involved, which could be the root of the whole game loop.

Axiom Verge - A platformer that is such a labor of love that it hits just the perfect mix of approachability, exploration, story development and that "huh?" factor where right until the end you're not sure what your abilities actually mean - i.e. if you could glitch through walls in the real world, would that imply the real world is a simulation?

Stardew Valley - A somehow utterly satisfying farming simulator in the style of the first Harvest Moon games. Such a nice getaway game - it begins with your avatar quitting their office job and moving to a farm inherited from their grandfather. No taxes, no boss, no stress, just rise with the sun, plant, water, harvest and fix. Change your rhythm with the weather and the seasons, investigate charming little mysteries of a beautiful place.

Broforce - Another platformer, this one a bit more brutal. Far over the top 80s action heroes bring freedom to the world, but whether you play as Robocop, Schwarzenegger, McGyver, Snake Plissken, Ripley or another 50 heroes is almost random and each hero has completely different weapons and skills. Destructible environment and even a large Xenomorph outbreak (how the heck did they get the license or grant?).

Protolife - This one uses such a madly simple recipe for complex gameplay. Seen top-down, you're a robotic loader than can put down dots. That's all. But certain arrangements of dots are guns, long range guns, flame throwers, area denial, missile silos, barriers and so on. You're attacked by insect-like creatures, but instead of building tanks, you have to attack via well-placed guns slowly pushing the swarming enemies back.

Alien Shooter 2 Reloaded - Simple top-down shooter where you're the lone soldier seeking to contain an alien outbreak. Goes for the time-honed recipe of character stat upgrades (speed, health, accuracy) and purchasing weapons and weapon upgrades. The interesting part is the insane hordes you're up against and that all the corpses stay. It's not unusual for entire corridors to turn into flesh hallways of blood and carapaces.

Moons of Madness - I hope this is actually indie, the graphics are near AAA level. It's 50% walking simulator, 50% cosmic horror, set on Mars. You're an astronaut doing maintenance on an outpost, but rather than go for the "freaky alien attack" recipe, reality itself seems to be somehow bending. Cthulhu, is that you?

Lumencraft - Top-down game. You begin as a miner in an underground base. Something really bad happened to humanity and now you're digging underground for metal and for "lumen." To feed the reactor that keeps humanity alive, you have to meet harvesting goals and dig tunnels, but various enemies attack in waves, so you have to spend part of your resources on fortifications and turrets and avoid opening up too many avenues into your bases.

Carrion - 2D platformer-ish. In a secret place, scientists are holding a horrific, tentacled bioweapon locked away, but it escapes. Twist: you are the tentacled bioweapon, slithering through pipes, circumventing security systems and trying to escape from the lab.

Nuclear Blaze - 2D platformer. You're a fireman sent to contain a fire the broke out in some kind of installation in a forest. But one building has a shaft that leads deep underground where a high-end containment facility is suffering a failure. Takes place in the "SCP" universe and your only tool is a fire hose. Extremely fun trying to extinguish fires in a way where they won't spread again.

Mothergunship - This is a first-person shooter where you're bording and destroying (from the inside out) an army of AI space ships. But instead of a traditional gun, you have gun parts you can stick together. How about a triple rocket launcher with two shotguns in the middle? Or a shield generating laser with a sawblade attache to it, and maybe two shotguns just to be sure? It doesn't grow old with new weapon parts being introduced right until the very end.

Space Run - 2D base building. You're a mercenary cargo pilot fending off space pirates. But you don't do it by controlling a turret, instead, your spaceship is a building surface and you have to build the right kind of engines, turrets, shields and power generators (in mid-flight no less) to be able to shoot down incoming rocks and pirate ships. Extremely well balanced and fun.

Creeper World - 3D real-time strategy. But your enemy is not actually present on the map, you're just fighting a simulation of liquid, a gooey slime that pours out of several spots. You have to keep shooting, bombarding and containing the splashing, pouring slime until you can neutralize the slime outlets. The story is cool, too. The slime is actually some extinct species "gift" to the universe which dissolves everything into data, transmitted to some eternal storage space at the center of the universe.

Do you have any actual evidence?

No, it's just me and my assumptions here, but you can find a lot of cases showing Russian financial backing, for the Brexit campaign as well as connections between the Tories and Russia.

Also please address your statement that a pro-russian party is about to win in the UK

Sorry, you lost me there. I have no idea what party is currently predicted to win.