Notices by Jacek Wesołowski (jzillw@mastodon.gamedev.place), page 5

@Leszek_Karlik @cstross Standard shotguns have the range of 50-150 metres, depending on type of ammo, and that doesn't sound like enough. I'm not sure how far you can extend the range before the weapon stops being portable.

@demofox @glassbottommeg In Warsaw after the war a lot of apple trees were planted on purpose. They were then left to grow on their own. Their fruit is small, hard, and on the sour end of the spectrum.

At the same time, crumbly bred varieties are totally a thing. I don't like them, but some people here love them. They're also considered best for proper szarlotka (a kind of apple pie).

@Nifflas I'm not saying I would torture my neighbours like this, just to coerce them into environmentally friendly policies, but that pizza does seem way tastier now...

@Nifflas When the alarms go offf, they'll go off for everyone to hear them. That's a quick way to convince people to get rid of their cars!

@Jer @cstross Funny thing is, it's entirely possible Biden simply figured he couldn't win, so he decided he wants to be remembered by his achievements, and not his last failure. Trump could try and spin this into some sort of win-by-default. I guess it didn't occur to him because he's just not much of an intellectual, really.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but whenever you have the relatively uncommon luxury of actually believing in your candidate in an election, volunteering for their campaign is by far the most powerful thing you can do to help them win. Donating is the second-best option and also helps a lot.

@agturcz I doubt it would do anything because these are all people from abroad, often from outside the EU. The internet in general is one of those things where we need a pan-european version of UOKiK (which isn't a bad thing on its own, just needs a broader reach in this case).

YouTube desperately needs a law that says an ad must be marked as such and clearly separated from non-ads. There's this game of cat and mouse I find myself playing against youtubers, who are now at the point where they manipulate their tone to hide the fact they're about to segway into an ad.

(one popular technique is to continue a sentence as if nothing happened, and shift its topic mid-way, like in the case where you should really all just buy my new book now)

@mitchw Somebody give me a million euros I want to develop this game so bad.

There's this Brit who does shortform comedy about German stereotypes, and I do recognize the stereotypes, but also my Germans are nothing like that.

@cstross Narrative driven video games have been doing this for decades using human-made content, and I can see where the appeal is (it's not a stand-in for actual friends, it's more like the fantasy of having a particular kind of friend). In fact, I get the impression some people tend to identify with book and movie characters in a similar way.

Oh well, let's see if a random babble generator can replace Baldur's Gate 3. Somehow I'm not concerned.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from a freelancer who said she's delayed with her work and will deliver a few days late.

Today I got a message from another freelancer whose previous gig took longer than anticipated so this piece is also going to come later than expected.

This is the correct approach as a freelancer. Stuff happens, work gets delayed, deadlines shift. All of that is fine, and there's no shame to it. Just keep the other side in the loop.

@owlnewworlds Yes, compared to Twitter there's not that much chatter in the comments. Which may be for the better, because comments on Twitter lean toward the abusive.

@owlnewworlds I'm not actually trying to gain visibility, but I still see some people are occasionally noticing my posts thanks to the main page.

On the other hand, my experience with tags is underwhelming. There are so many people trying to use them just for visibility that it feels like noise, and I'm reluctant to pay attention.

There are also people who sort of curate content, i.e. they share a lot. These are the best.

I someone told me 30 years ago, that the future involved getting tens or hundreds of letters a day, not reading 90% of them, and sending some of the letters twice in case the recipient didn't read the first one, then I'd say that's just silly and why would people do that.

@glassbottommeg My bugs follow the 80-20 rule: 80% of them are fixed with a single line of code, while the remaining 20% require a complete overhaul of at least one entire class.There's nothing in between.

I was watching a video on YouTube, and at one point the speaker interrupted his train of thought to deliver an advertisement. But that advertisement got in turn interrupted by an automated ad.

I really don't like where this is going, which is perhaps why so many of these built-in ads are for a competing video streaming service. Which doesn't really work in its favour in my view.

@glassbottommeg Turns out the math for drawing imaginary curves across an abstract million-dimensional space is easier than the math for basic semantics.

I'm absolutely unable to comprehend Steam's meta. For instance, as a user, I have a "level", and it's 15, and apparently that's very low (Steam reminds me one of my friends is 51, another is 44, another is 32, and so on). How do you gain those levels? What do you need them for? I have ab-so-lute-ly no friggin idea, and I actually like it that way.

@cdub Some people in my circles are still using it, so I keep it on. I've recently developed a hobby where I go into the main feed, and there's usually a friend's post at the top, but the next one is garbage. So I block it, and keep blocking until a genuine post comes up. It usually takes 10-20 blocks. I'm starting to wonder if Fb is going to ban me for blocking too much.