Dark Arc

Graphical realism is an easier metric than good writing or fun.

All MBAs, in all industries, need to be done away with.

Some power systems do actually put a fuse in the extension cord… I think it’s the UK that does this. Basically every power system other than the US uses different (safer) plug designs that solve the arcing problem.

In practice daisy chaining rarely causes a serious problem and it makes things more expensive so it never really became a thing that was legislated or common within the US. Similar to how the plug designs themselves rarely cause a problem so it hasn’t made sense to actually change them.

There are two things going on here.

The first is that yes, more connections causes more opportunities for the plugs to slip. So you can get short circuits or even arcing that can start a fire.

The second is that the wire in the cord has a certain rating on it. Many of those cords do not use 12 (20 amp) or 14 (15 amp) gauge wire; so, they’re not rated for the full capacity of the wire in the wall. The breakers are sized to protect the wires in the wall, they don’t know anything about the things plugged into them. So what can happen is you plug too much into the extension cord (particularly if it’s a power strip) and the load on the extension cord is not enough to trip the breaker (because the walls are fine) but it’s enough to overload the extension cord wire. In other words, the extension cord can start getting so hot it melts and possibly arcs up as the insulation fails.

You can have a fire from overloading a single power strip in just the same way. However, the more you chain together, the more likely you are to overload the power strip.

Ideally, you just think about what you’re doing… But historically the easy answer is just to tell people not to chain things.

In short it’s not about the distance, it’s about the insulation and quality of the wire itself along with the number of connections.

I’m in like the opposite camp… But I’ve never been able to get past the initial learning curve of the game. Something has never clicked with this one for me

It would’ve been fine… If Google had stuck to it and marketed it, it would’ve worked out. I’m convinced interest rate hikes are what actually killed Stadia.

Also it wasn’t even Netflix like… You’re right about one thing though, part of the reason stadia didn’t do well is 90% of gamers think it was some laggy Netflix for games thing.

I do not understand why companies are choosing to make their own streaming services when they are just money pits that provide minimal benefit.

Because everyone thought they could save money by doing it themselves. It’s rarely that easy.

It’s been said that those that make change via peaceful means impossible, invite violence.

I don’t like that someone was shot, but this is the direction we’re heading unless we can get this fixed.

It’s not just health care either, it’s every large corporation trying to get more from their employees and more from their customers without giving back anything in exchange … or realizing that they have enough.

The infinite growth mindset is out of control and ridiculous.

People blame the sunsetting decision, but most people stuck around. Honestly I don’t think the stuff they sunset was all that good. The original planet designs were feeling tired. They have brought missions back as well… But it’s been too long since I played to remember exactly how they brought them back.

The actual issue in my mind is they’ve decided making things hard means giving it a lot of health and make it take almost all of yours in one hit. So the only things that are viable are people’s cracked builds.

Basically without a full team of good shooter players, even easy mode dungeons are out of reach. Things just do so much damage and have so much health, it’s just not fun. Everything feels like a slog unless you go look up a cracked build someone made.

Actually, not everything feels like a slog. The content that doesn’t, everything just dies without any challenge.

So the options to play are roughly:

• comically easy
• this will take forever
• this will take forever + 1 and hit like a truck
• this will take forever + 2 and you instantly die

With some content having only the last 3 options.

They added some new enemy types recently, but it just hasn’t been enough to really make the game feel refreshed. Like, Remnant II showed how to do this well, different enemies, different ways that they attack you, different ways to ideally kill the enemy (i.e. lots of weak spot variety), lots of different attacks for the bosses (and death is a matter of avoiding the attacks not being in a 12 hour fight), every bullet takes a significant chunk of their health bar, etc

The locations have also felt a bit underwhelming, but that would be okay if the fights felt challenging and rewarding … not just like various reskins of the same enemies with either no or way too much health.

You’re ignoring that simple principles make great guidelines for not overthinking things.

Name some great “simple principles;” everything has nuance and trying to distill things into “well it’s just this simple principle…” is a great way to get catastrophic mistakes.

And you’re doing so in the context of an article about the dangers of overthinking things.

You did not understand the point of that article if you think it’s about the dangers of over thinking. The issue with DRY is that it leads to making refractors without thinking about whether or not the refractor makes sense. That’s the exact issue the author is warning about, think about whether or not dry makes sense.

That has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with how many times the code has been repeated. It has everything to do with why it’s repeated.

You’re coming across like one of the rookies who need this warning.

I’ll toss that right back at you bud. You don’t seem to understand the actual problem.

Consider counting to three, before applying DRY. It works.

It does not. I literally fixed a bug today because the same algorithm, doing the same job, was used in two different places formatted differently, exactly two, and they got out of sync resulting in memory corruption.

That’s what DRY is intended to fix. Not “I have three [or whatever number] things doing the same thing so now I should DRY this code up”, I’ve seen HORRIBLE refractors from DRY applied to 3 things; absolute spaghetti inheritance hierarchies that were “DRY.”

I hate talking about DRY because it’s this principle that so many people think “oh I’m doing it correctly; I’m doing good things!” and they actually make the code SO MUCH worse.

EDIT: Here’s exact quotes from the article (emphasis theirs):

Applying DRY principles too rigidly leads to premature abstractions that make future changes more complex than necessary. Consider carefully if code is truly redundant or just superficially similar. While functions or classes may look the same, they may also serve different contexts and business requirements that evolve differently over time. Think about how the functions’ purpose holds with time, not just about making the code shorter.

If you’re interested, now is a good time to start playing. There are some limited edition hats being dropped for the holiday!

I’m not even the author, but I looked at it, and it does look quite flexible.

It’s also not like it needs to be able to handle every case conceivable to be useful.

If you don’t have something nice or constructive to say, you should keep your opinion to yourself.

You’re both saying the same thing though.

We’re not quite saying the same thing though because …

It’s not a 2 vs 3 issue. You can have an infinite number of instances of the same logic and it still not be a case for generalization because it’s not actually general … it’s just an infinitely large program. You can also have two copies of the same code that should be reduced because they are general (e.g. you have the exact same algorithm for generating a UUID copied into two different spots). If you’re thinking about it in terms of quantity you’re already doing it wrong.

It’s not fixable by “just” copying something.

Those two points are really important points.

Brighter Shores! It’s a new game by Andrew Gower on his new game engine (just came out last month).

It’s a point and click game similar to RuneScape that’s mostly a second screen game. It’s in early access and a lot will probably change in the coming months based on feedback (they’ve already confirmed they’re rethinking some of their combat design and adding action queuing).

Unlike RuneScape it’s been designed out of the gate to provide people with a way to engage without sinking a ton of time. You can do fully offline training in this game, so you can be gaining XP while you sleep.

The game runs like a dream, has a very well done sound track, tastefully simplistic graphics, and just generally is a cozy/feel good MMO with light humor and puns.

No micro transactions, generous amount of free to play content, and a $6/mo subscription for all content.

The code in the article isn’t complicated enough that I’d bother. It even ends up with about the same number of lines of code, hinting that you probably haven’t simplified things much.

I think it’s a good example of the problem though. People take that same idea and apply it too liberally. The point isn’t that specific code, it’s about not apply DRY to code that’s coincidentally identical.

But otherwise, I disagree with the article. If it’s complicated enough to bother abstracting the logic, the worst that can happen in the above situation is that you just duplicate that whole class once you discover that it’s not the same. And if that never happens, you only have 1 copy to maintain.

That’s… Not at all true in practice. What often happens with these “DRY” abstractions when they’ve been improperly applied is you end up with an inheritance hierarchy or a crazy template or some other thing. You’re really lucky if you can just copy some code and find your way out of the weeds.

There are plenty of bad abstractions in the wild and novices applying DRY is a common source of them.

It should be about concepts but it’s more often applied to duplicate algorithms by inexperienced people (which is a huge mistake).

Something something … it’s easy to criticize hard to create … something something

I’ll save you a read… A developer that worked on the game for a while but left the studio thinks they could’ve made the game with fewer loading screens even in their engine. That’s pretty much it.

I mean, I wouldn’t exactly call it smart either. Panic is pretty useless in situations where flight is not an option (in the flight or fight sense … but it makes for a good pun too).

I would lean towards the 3M stuff… I mean folks are saying 3M plugs muffle things, but look at the decibel reduction rating. The loops linked in your article are 7 decibels vs 34 decibels from the real ear plugs.

Maybe 7 is enough… But I’d say the reason 34 decibel reduction is considered muffling is because it’s a real significant reduction vs a minor reduction. Maybe you only need a minor reduction though 🤷‍♂️.

There’s also https://github.com/OpenTournament/OpenTournament for those looking for something more modern (RIP UT4).