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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • ChatGPT can be super useful, but I’m kind of worried about people learning to use it exclusively.

    I tried helping a PhD student assemble a set up for measuring transistors. He used ChatGPT to do all the code for the software control (python), which is fine, even if he relied on it to fix every single part of his code when a quick trip to the reference manuals of the equipments would solve the problem instantly.

    At a certain point I realized I maybe had misunderstood his set up design and asked him “wait, which device do you want to connect to your gate? Which terminal even is the gate?”

    And I kid you not, the dude asked ChatGPT which terminal in his device was the gate

    (he also reeked of weed so there’s that)








  • I understand. I thought you had a better way of implementing the high jump with different properties, instead of just removing it altogether. To be fair, I’d remove it too and a double jump would probably be my preferred approach!

    I like Mario 64’s triple jump, but I don’t think it’d be a good fit for a colectathon like this. I can’t put to words why I think it’d be different in YL, but I have a feeling that I’d get really annoyed if it asked me to use multi-jumps often to reach specific ledges. I don’t think triple jumps are ever required in Mario games, are they? I doubt YL would ever introduce a move and not flood the levels after that with obstacles that you need to use the move on to progress


  • Thanks for your write up! I never finished the game, it didn’t really pull me in as I expected it to. But on this topic:

    My main gripe is just that they seem to have mapped controls in a retro way for nostalgia reasons and it holds the game back. Rather than triggering the moves organically through context, the left trigger is again used as a face button modifier. Jump with A, high jump with LT+A. Sonar ping with Y, Sonar explosion with LT+Y. They didn’t need to do that but at least the animations are short to trigger so it isn’t too painful.

    How would you have done it? I don’t think I’m against the LT being used in this way. For instance, how would you have implemented a high jump like what they have? Or would you have removed the move entirely?






  • Tl;dr: I asked a girl out :)

    I met a girl in a flight and thought we got along well, but she was only in a layover flight while I was in the last flight of my trip. Still, we kept in touch, and she’s apparently coming to my city for a few days in two weeks.

    So I did something I had never done before (even though I’ve been in a few relationships before) and asked her out! She said “maybe” (her trip was already planned and she is busy and staying with some friends, she seemed genuinely sorry) so in two weeks I may have a date :)





  • That’s so weird. This isn’t about Nintendo hardware sucking: it’s running on an actual Nintendo Switch, except instead of it using the Switch’s OS and it running the game, it goes Linux -> Emulator (yuzu) -> game (running from an actual cart through a dumper) and somehow that’s faster.

    It’s a software issue.

    Is it the Nintendo Switch OS which is needlessly bloated? It does nothing, how can it be heavier than an actual Linux Distribution?

    I’m not familiar with how the Switch works, but the dumper has a FPGA for decoding the cartridge. Is this something that the Switch has to do in real time in software, and maybe that’s where the performance loss comes from? It seems unlikely but I know nothing of the Switch’s internals or software. In fact let’s just say I know nothing at all, I’m just an idiot.

    PS: Everyone who buys used Switch games should see this until the end. The dumper allows you to extract a certificate file from a cartridge. Basically, someone malicious could buy a new game, dump it including the certificate file, clone it, and resell the game. Then they would be able to play online with it. If you buy the original copy afterwards and play online, you are likely going to be the one whose certificate is flagged as fake, leading to you being banned.

    Also, they could just sell multiple copies of cloned games and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference… Except for the certificate, which would be the same and would signal Nintendo that you (and like 10 other people) are playing a fake game, unbeknownst to you.


  • OK, so you have the opinion of people with flagship or even midrange phones, now here I come with my budget phone, a Redmi Note 8.

    I’ve used budget phones all my life since, well, they’re cheaper. The truth is that yes, you do notice some animation stuttering and some delayed responses, especially as the years go by and you have more apps installed (probably doing stuff in the background) and the apps you do have keep updating to be more bloated.

    This phone in particular makes it very hard to multi-task, as it’s very liberal with killing apps in the background to save RAM. This is annoying. But I’m using MI UI instead of stock android, and I’m sure I could change this.

    Honestly, I do feel like I’m being left behind and that I’m going to have to switch phones more often than if I had a more expensive model. But so far I haven’t encountered any apps I could not run (or even that I could run but only with too much stutter, making for a terrible user experience). So I’ll keep using it until I truly feel left behind, which can take a surprisingly long time. My usage time tends to rival that of people with flagship android phones and iPhones (maybe I even come out ahead)

    But you specifically asked about animation stutter. It does happen but it simply doesn’t bother me at all. It’s not constant, only happening when the phone is doing something else at the same time, and even when it does I can wait a few seconds and it’ll be fine. You also mentioned lag when opening an app, so much that you thought it didn’t register your input. It doesn’t happen to me since, while the app itself can take some time to open, the icon has feedback so I know I pressed it.

    Overall, I don’t think any of these issues are enough to bother me significantly for a good few years.