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9erdelta

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I used a tv as a monitor for a while and it was great -- but there is one problem with single monitor setups -- screen sharing/recording. If the app you're using lets you select a portion of the screen to share, that's great. But something like Slack you either share an app window, or the entire screen. This is very annoying in a single monitor setup. It would be amazing if you could select a part of your screen and tell the OS "treat this area like a separate monitor".

Unity supports USD -- also Unity isn't technically a content creation tool (well...in the sense of what Adobe and Autodesk tools are). It is way bigger deal for the content creation tools to be aligning on an export format than consumers of said content (i.e. Unity) to align on importer.

Similar for me. I exclusively used reddit via old. or apollo, and mostly just lurked. I have some good memories of some communities there but by and large it's not something I enjoy anymore. For community I'm on discord, for being in the loop I'm on twitter and HN.

Can't speak to Fourier specifically -- but heartily agree that a lot of times in math, teachers try to make it "easy" and provide visuals that are actually a hindrance. Instead of understanding _the material_ you understand the _crutch_.

That's a fair point...I tend to be paranoid about these things, and I think your point reinforces mine to an extent. Yeah I have simple taxes, and yet couldn't feel confident about it through TurboTax. But at this point we're way off topic!

Anecdotally, I stopped using TurboTax (after using it for 8 years) for 2 reasons. I was never confident that my tax situation was being handled correctly. The UI is noisy, the explanations don't explain. So I would buy audit insurance just in case. The second reason, it was slow and navigating between pages and sections was annoying. So now I pay a real person to do my taxes. It takes a quarter of the time, costs about the same as TurboTax + audit insurance, and now I now longer stress about taxes.

I did mechanical engineering undergrad, then started and almost finished mechanical engineering grad school but dropped out and got a job. Then I started studying programming at night, then co-founded a startup with some friends, and quit my mech eng job. After the startup flamed out, I went to another startup. Throughout the whole time of startups, I continued studying programming and especially started dialing in on computer graphics. Now I'm a graphics dev at Unity. This whole switch from mech eng to graphics was all in my 30s, and has taken about 9 years, I'll turn 40 in 2024. It's not easy, and there are a lot of challenges. For example I'm basically a junior graphics programmer as I enter my 40s--which sucks. But when I think about it, there's basically nothing else I'd rather be doing, so that's cool.

The general thing I've learned is: there are no short paths, only long paths. Figure out what you want and start the long path to get there, because there aren't short cuts. How to figure out what you want? Well that's a long path too.

Fork is great -- except for when you try and google about it b/c at least for me, I haven't been able to differentiate my queries between the git fork operation and git Fork the UI.

Also on my local machine, push to remote gitlab does not work reliably and I have to push via command line. Have not been able to find a solution, but also haven't done more than googling about it.

I've spent a lot of time learning how to use the Win32 api and overall I like using the Windows OS. But the user hostile design decisions of the UI/UX is making it more and more likely that I'll move on. I don't want ads, I don't want cloud, I don't want a store. I just want to use _my_ computer.

There is a dire need for a good personal finance app. Mint is just out there to grab data, YNAB is ok but super limited. And then pretty much every bank site is lacking in any meaningful tools and API access.

Crazy New Ideas 5 years ago

Anyone who has studied the history of ideas, and especially the history of science, knows that's how big things start. Someone proposes an idea that sounds crazy, most people dismiss it, then it gradually takes over the world.

Funny how he says this but then later goes on to mention Darwin. Perhaps we could say part of the natural selection of new "big things" is if they (both the ideas and the people) survive the early dismissiveness and criticism. I would welcome criticism from highly experienced and conservative people, because if you can respond meaningfully and survive - you're probably on to something.

"Several people claimed comments have absolutely zero value. Therefore their deletion is irrelevent."

What? Purely anecdotal I suppose, but I have found immensely helpful information in comments on SO.

I think it is a _little bit_ off to just consider Slack to be a chat app. Sure chat is the core function...One thing I find super valuable about Slack is that it is a searchable archive. When a new person joins a company, they have literally years and years worth of searchable content. This helps get up to speed, cuts down on time spent asking questions etc. I find myself searching Slack many times a day pretty much every day at work. Not to mention automated workflows, calendar, drive integration etc.

Working ridiculous hours at a startup (I can barely remember anything from 2016) really drove home to me that time is way way way way way more valuable than money. Use it wisely (unfortunately wisdom is hard to get before the time has been wasted). Took a few years to get out of startups but I'm out (ish) now and I'm way more picky about how much time I'll work on something these days.

A gaming engine just really doesn't seem to fit that mold

Even more to your point, Improbable doesn't make a full game engine...they make SpatialOS.

"SpatialOS is a cloud platform that provides hosting, online services, tools and a multiserver networking stack for developing and operating your multiplayer game, using any engine."

Also several projects using SpatialOS have folded recently

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-08-12-another-spatia...