Mikina @ Mikina @programming.dev

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5

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482

Joined

2 yr. ago

I've lost all of my faith in mobile gaming ecosystem ever since I saw that talk of the two guys that created a bot for generating and uploading as many slot machine games to the playstore as possible, just generic pull a lever, see an ad and that's it, based on a random keyword like "owl slot machine" or "bathtub sloth machine" with pictures pulled from google images, that let the bot run for a few months and then found out that they made literally thousands of dollars of ad money.

You may have nothing to hide, but have you seen what ChatGPT or Midjourney can do? How easily it can AI turn text into an image, or text into reply? Do you realize that the data you are not hiding is used to teach an AI how to manipulate you? It knows who you are, what you like, and most importantly - it is slowly learning (on all of the people who "have nothing to hide") exactly what to show to you on FB/YT, to eventually manipulate you into doing whatever they asked it to do.

Do you spend a lot of time on YT/FB/IG? Are you happy with doing that, or do you think you should be spending more time doing something else? The more data they have from anyone, including you, the better will the AI be at simply keeping you glued to the screen no matter what. And it's only a matter of time before someone uses it to change how you vote, or what you think. And you will not notice that, because it has so much data about you, and so much data about everyone, that it's as good at manipulating you without you noticing based on the data it has about you, as Midjourney is in generating pictures based on the text you give to it. And the only way how they could teach Midjourney to do that, was by giving it a lot of data about pictures.

Now I really want to see a parody porn that's build around the plot of someone getting stuck in VIM.

I love using WSL, and am pretty used to (and prefer) the Linux terminal experience.

However, I wasn't able to switch from Windows. I've always ran into issues that I just wasn't able to solve.

You want your work email and Teams? Too bad, Teams are no longer build for Linux, but you can use this shitty webapp or whatever it was. Want your mail? Sure, there are apps that can connect to exchange, but too bad - your domain policies don't allow you to use them, so you're stuck with O365 on web.

Ok, web it is. Now let's connect to VPN so I can start working. Oh, too bad, your company uses Checkpoint mobile, which dropped client support for Linux. And while it looks like there is some obscure way how to get it working through IPSEC or whatever, I never managed to get it working - and I think it also requires the VPN server to actually enable support for it, which I'm sure our company doesn't have. And then there's also the fact that we just use Word and Excel for most of what we do.

Well then, I guess I'm not going to be able to switch to Linux for work. But I can at least use it for my PC at home, where I just need to be able to develop Unity games, and the rest should be all right.

After spending few hours trying to get my project to build, finding out that you just can't use certain kind of video formats on Unity on Linux, and running into issues with both the Hub and the Editor just throwing random UI errors, I've just given up. Especially since there are things like multipass or WSL, and I only ever need linux for terminal anyway, where I never had any issues.

I totally agree with this. And I think it actually shows a lot about people in general, and their attitude to life.

I totally understand how can someone arrive at a conclusion that unless you can monetize or fund something, it will eventually get nowhere. But that also says a lot about the person saying that, and unfortunately is pretty common - that just a mere though of doing something for free, or for others without any compensation is basically unimaginable, and people like that will never get it.

But then you have passionate people doing volunteers for free, or creating entire events for a subculture they love while at a loss or without any kind of compensation for their (large amounts) of time and work. I'm a part of few such projects, mostly as a DJ, and I always find it really weird and surprising when I'm reading though posts or comments related to DJing where hourly rate or how much should they ask for a first gig is such a common topic. It never crossed my mind, and the communities I'm helping with are all run by volunteers without any compensation, just because they are passionate for their subculture.

Because even if you're working a day job, there is still a lot of free time left for you to offer into something you really care about. It's understandable that some people don't want to offer it to others for free (or can't even imagine how someone would be willing to do that, and probably even think that they are stupid to do so), but I'm really glad that some people are willing to do that - and that's what the FOSS community is about.

It's always saddening when I hear someone say "You could be making so much money for that! Just monetize it a little...", but it's also a really good judge of character. People are people, I guess.

This is one of the reasons why I strongly believe that if you want to do any kind of art and are passionate for it, you should never make your income depend on it. It's why even though I've studied Masters in game development and was always passionate about games, I work as a Red Teamer in cybersecurity instead, and then work on my games as a hobby.

And especially if we're talking about games, where you can just get a regular IT job as a programmer that pays more than you will ever make (assuming you don't get to work on a AAA project, but the you basically have zero agency about the game and are still just a code monkey), the best course of action (which I regret not doing, but my classmate did and is a lot better for it) is to just take advantage of the fact that IT pays comfortably, but instead of just making more money just work parttime for a "regular" pay, and use the free time for your projects.

But every time an art becomes business, it will inevitably suffer for it. There are rare cases of small indie studios getting lucky to be able to uphold their vision and still earn enough to afford paying their employees comfortably, but sooner or later you get into a point where you just have to start considering stuff around marketing that's totally unrelated to the art in itself, but usually forces you to compromise your vision

I'm actually pretty glad that generative AIs will probably really soon replace most of the artists required for mass production of such big budget commercial titles - because then the only option of someone who wants to do that kind of art will be a smaller indie studio or a hobby project, which may not be as successful and will probably end up as a niche, but it will also mean that a lot less artists end up with their passion sucked out and destroyed by execs forcing them to do shitty generic money grubbing stuff - because that will be done by AIs, and keep on being as generic as it is now.

How's Rust? I was thinking about learning it since I do work in offensive cybersecurity and it seems to be the getting popular with exploit being written mostly in it, but I have no idea what to expect.

I've always just used Python for smaller tasks, mainly because of it's popularity - which means it's easy to quickly find example code or library for virtually any usecase you may have for such a script.

But I've lately started using Powershell a little bit more, because it just works on any Windows machine and you don't need to install anything. And for apps that are more involved than a quick automation script or throwaway calculation, I just go with C# since that's what I'm used to the most.

I've had the "pleasure" of having to work with Pharo, which is AFAIK based on Smalltalk, and it was one of the most frustrating experiences I ever had with a language. It was a few years ago so the details are blurry, but as far as I remember the idea was that the whole IDE is a basically a VM coded in Pharo that you can edit on the fly, and it was just a mess and super strange to work with.

On the other hand, it was a great learning experience because the OOP smalltalk syntax and way of thinking about your code is different enough to be worth experiencing. But I still can't imagine a task for which using Pharo would be a good idea, or better than literally any other language.

Now that I think about it, what if someone created a Lemmy instance that just... Mirrors chosen Reddit subreddits 1:1 via a scraping bot? So that if you wanted content from a subreddit, you could just subscribe to it on that instance, or ignore it if bot content isn't what you want. It could work for smaller more niche subreddits (because I suppose that you would quickly run into a throttling problem or bot detection otherwise), but it may kickstart a few communities.

I'm kind of starting to feel like that actually may be what reddit wants - because the tech savy people using third-party apps are also probably just ad-blocking, and it's usually a niche content that will never be massively consumed. Compare that to the junk at instagram or TikTok, that doesn't require any kind of effort to interact with, and compare how many users such platforms have.

I think Reddit would be pretty happy with their content turning into TikTok junk for the masses, and their userbase changing into consumers of that content. Just because there's just a lot more of people who consume such content, and who are used to companies milking them for profit and bombarding them with ads, because they just don't care.

EDIT: And by driving away the "nerds" who moderated and kept a higher standart of content, which in turn turned away the users looking for more easily consumable content, they may get just that. The teens who probably heard about Reddit being the place where cool nerds hang out and tried to get into it, only to be turned away by actual content, will now find exactly what they are looking for.

Oooh, nice! Thanks, I was just getting fed up with YT, it's nice to let go of another bullshit stalking in my life.

I'm kind of starting to think that may be what Reddit wants anyway. Just look at the kind of content that floats around on TikTok and Instagram. The tech nerds will leave, but that will leave space for scrollable junk content for an entirely different - and a lot larger - audience.

Didn't they actually doubled down and accessibility apps are exempt from the API pricing and can be used for free?

Although, if I was developing such app, I'd probably just stop doing it for free after how they're treating the rest of the userbase, so there's that...

Is there anyone with RSI or a carpal tunnel? If so, at what age did it start to develop, and does it comes suddenly or is there a warning you may miss or ignore?

I've spent most of my life in front of a PC. Since most of my hobbies are on a computer, and I work at a computer with which I started at a very young age (basically ever since I got a dreamcast when I was 4), and aside from also thankfully being forced to do sports at least once a week for most of my life (which I unfortunately stopped a few years ago, apart from ballroom dance from time to time - and I'm 27 now), I'm literally almost all the time in front of a PC. I never had problems with any kind of pain regarding wrists or hands, but from what I've heard carpal and RSI is something that can come pretty suddenly and it's not a good time. Is that true and should I start worrying, or will I probably notice when the time comes?

Just a headsup - don't focus too much on meds, it won't really help that much if you're also lacking willpower.

I have the same problem as you, but have started meds about half a year ago. It helps a little bit, but also made me realize that whenever I'm stressed or have to do something I'm uncertain of, the problems are back.

I thought it's anxiety that's stopping me, because right now I have to finish my thesis to hand in in a week, and I've been sitting home and staring at the screen unable to work, progressing at a snails pace for two weeks already, to the point I will not be able to make it.

Due to that, I've gotten a short term medication for anxiety, because I thought that's what's stopping me and I can't get over it.

It didn't help, and while I wasn't feeling that awful, I still didn't manage to force myself to work more, and even though I would've comfortably made it, I progressed so slow that now I probably won't. But it made me realize that the problem wasn't anxiety, but willpower, and that the focus on it was just an excuse to justify postponing work.

I'm not saying that meds will not help you, but make sure you don't fall to the same trap as I did - I used waiting them as an excuse for too long, that I've learned to just be OK with procrastinating. And when I finally got them, it didn't help much , because I never tried building the willpower and have gotten too used to the excuses that even when the "need to wait for meds, nothing I can do" excuse wasn't true, I was still turning to procrastination by habit. Or you'll just think "meds aren't helping, I need stronger".

If you start forcing yourself, even if at slow pace, to not be OK with procrastination, then the meds will be a miracle that will suddenly make it so you don't have to struggle so much anymore. If you on the other hand learn to give up trying and accept the excuse that you need the meds and there's no point, and that it will be easier once you have them - my experience is that it won't, because then getting rid of the internalization of excuses only made it as hardy, or even harder, than it was without them.

Mobile phones are the part of my life that I'm so unlucky with, and just can't get right as far as privacy is concerned.

I don't like phones, or spending money on phones, so I always went with random cheap phone I found that lasted me for years. But every time I got a phone, I've always chosen one that can't be flashed easily... Fort it was Zenphone, then Redmi, and now I've gotten a company issued Galaxy XCover.

I would love to switch to Lineage or something similar, and get rid of that Google and Samsung bullshit, but last time I checked, the device has a locked bootloader or something...

I've also just got PinePhone as my second phone, mostly out off curiosity, and it's not really working as much as I've hoped, mostly due to battery life and the fact that my bank is dumb and haven't yet discovered that physical MFA keys exists, and requires a bloated mobile app... But the PinePhone is fun, I can boot Kali Nethunter whenever, and if we are going to a internal pebtest engagement I can start while waiting in a lobby :D

I was lucky in this regard, to have someone who has the drive to create and do things as my roommate. And also another roommate, who was the exact opposite - your standard "go to work, and then watch netflix all the time". First of all, seeing the contrast between those two was eye opening.

And second, the drive is infectious. I usually don't manage to find the motivation to do things on my own, and tend to procrastrinate. But having someone who has the drive, and just joining his projects, will get you the motivation. The best advice for life I can give to anyone is to surround themselves with people who have hobbies you want to have, to join communities and offer help as a volunteer with running it (this is important - don't just join as a lurker, but as a volunteer). Sure, you may not be good at it - but you're no longer doing it for yourself, which will usually end with me giving it up - but the community depends on you. And that's something that helped me tremendously with learning new things, or just getting out and doing something.

Thanks to that, we have a indie studio that is working on a game in our free time. I'm also helping with organizing and DJing at events for our smaller music subculture, because I just offered my help to volunteer and help with it, which has also prompted me to start learning how to do stage lighting, so I can make the parties better - which was a hobby I wanted to do, but never found the motivation. I was volunteering at gamedev conferences, where I've met amazing people that eventually landed me a job, while also not having to pay the ticket for the conference. I have joined a group that organizes LARPs, and even though I had basically nothing to offer aside from a pair of hands and my time, just being in the group chat was inspiring - and it's only a matter of time before someone asks "Hey, we need someone to do projection mapping, can anyone do that?", and you'll be like "Never done that, but I can try". And now you're not just doing it for yourself, so you will get better motivation to do that.

So, if you don't have the drive or motivation to do stuff on your own - find someone to do it with, who has the drive, and help him. It is infectious. Everything I now do in my free time, be it stage ligthning, DJing or projection, I had no experience with when I offered my help to the group of organizers that were doing it. Sure, at first the only thing I did was carry stuff from place A to place B, but just being around those people, in their groupchat and part of the planning they do for events, eventually led to the "I've never done that, but I can try learning it". And if it doesn't work? Well, in cases like that I was the only one willing to try, so the alternative would be to not have the thing in the first place, and if I said "Hey, I tried, it's not gonna work", then nothing was lost.

Also - watch this video. While it's not exactly about finding motivation, it shows that it's ok to not be the guy coming up with ideas, but the world needs more people who are willing to help the people with drive and motivation and embrace their thing.

I've seen those, but my comment has been more about the

the company would be sued out of business.

Because I don't think that has ever happened.

Is it even possible to implement E2E in the context of ActivtyPub? I mean, as far as I know, the federation doesn't specify what content you send, only activities, groups and object definitions. There's nothing stopping you from making the actual data E2E encrypted, altough making it so would be a hard problem.

On the other hand... As I've mused about in the other comments, it should be possible to create a fediverse app that serves as a self-hosted front-end for interacting with different fediverse apps. All of your personal data would live on it, and you are in full control. Which would also allow for a safe implementation of E2E, because you just publish your public key, and know that since the app is under your control, noone can get to it. However, this would mean that the other users whould have to use the same standart.

I actually really like that idea. If we can separate users from servers with content, so Lemmy instances would only host posts and comments, but DMs would be handled by the private user instances, it would make Fediverse a lot more private.

The only question standing in the way is - who hosts the content of the posts I make? If my home is programming.dev, and I post to lemmy.ml, do I send the post data through ActivityPub to Lemmy to host, or do I host in on programming.dev, and Lemmy.ml just gets the ID of the post? If it's first one, making the self-hosted user frontend will be easy, since all you need is a few API calls to make posts, and the only storage you need is for DMs and your account details (which may actually static, so a faked webpage returning your data may suffice). If it's the latter, then it will be a lot more difficult to easily self-host.