underwater (u/underwater)

underwater commented on How we built Bluey’s world itsnicethat.com/features/... · Posted by u/skrebbel

rmccue · 5 months ago

As a Queenslander now living in the UK, seeing Bluey for the first time filled me with homesickness in a way that no other media has.

Despite the huge media industry in SEQ, it's so rare to see it actually represented as itself (rather than dressed up as Manhattan, eg). I also remember growing up and feeling that there was never really any media I could relate to; everything "Australian" is set in Sydney, Melbourne, or some non-descript outback setting. There was always a feeling of being second best - always America in the news, not Australia; always NSW or Victoria for settings, not Queensland; always Sydney or Melbourne, not Brisbane.

The first time I watched Bluey, immediately I could see not just vague Australianisms, but actual places and sights I recognised. From small details like the bus stop signs to scenes which I can pinpoint exactly in Brisbane. Combine that with stories which I don't just identify with, but which I feel I can remember viscerally.

underwater · 5 months ago

You should watch Harrow, too. It’s a bit cliched as a police procedural, but they show a “TV version” of Brisbane: everyone lives in beautiful big Queenslanders, it’s sunny all the time, etc.

underwater commented on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts fly.io/blog/youre-all-nut... · Posted by u/tabletcorry

skydhash · 7 months ago

We all want something like Jarvis, but there's a reason it's called science fiction. Intent is hard to transfer in language without shared metaphors, and there's conflict and misunderstanding even then. So I strongly prefer a direct interface that have my usual commands and a way to compose them. Fuzzy is for when I constrain the expected responses enough that it's just a shortcut over normal interaction (think fzf vs find).

underwater · 7 months ago

Do we? For commanding use cases articulating the action into English can feel more difficult than just doing it. Direct manipulation feels more primal to me.

underwater commented on UI tip: maybe don't round percentages to 0% or 100% evanhahn.com/maybe-dont-r... · Posted by u/goranmoomin

crazygringo · 8 months ago

Might be easier not to round at all, only take the floor. Then you never get to 100% until you're actually at 100%. You never get to 50% until you're actually at 50%.

And then in terms of the 0% vs 1% thing... my preference is to show 0% but keep an animated indicator so you know it's in progress, if you don't have something else that does the same (like showing the current download speed or current frame). Showing 1% done when it's only at 0.0001% done doesn't feel quite right to me.

underwater · 8 months ago

The 0.001% case would really benefit from this though. For example it helps me to know if requests are failing or are just slow. There is a difference between the application trying (loading indicator) and failing (0% success).

underwater commented on How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-) merriam-webster.com/gramm... · Posted by u/Stratoscope

tkzed49 · 9 months ago

I disagree, there is absolutely no easy way to do it on Windows. You can install a third party program that emulates the compose key but on macos it "just works". And I think that makes a difference for 95% of users

underwater · 9 months ago

Install PowerToys, hold dash and then press space. This works for all the variants for any keyboard character.

underwater commented on How Flash games shaped the video game industry (2020) flashgamehistory.com/... · Posted by u/jslakro

AshleysBrain · 10 months ago

I think a few comparable development tools have sprung up, including ours, Construct [1], which is very much web-first.

I think the reason people say nothing replaced Flash is because now there are lots of tools instead of just one, as anyone can target HTML5, so the market has fragmented; and the market has changed, as people develop for app stores and platforms like Steam, so the web isn't as big a focus as it used to be (although it's still important).

[1] https://www.construct.net

underwater · 10 months ago

Construct is great. I used it to make a game with my daughter. The way it jumps straight to the fun bits and then gives opportunities to learn about programming concepts is great.

I couldn’t bring myself to pay the hefty monthly fee though, knowing my kid’s interest would wane and then her creation would be forever inaccessible unless I continued to pay.

One thing I would have gladly paid for is asset packs, being able to adapt some great sprites and background art would have been a killer feature.

underwater commented on Is the world becoming uninsurable? charleshughsmith.substack... · Posted by u/spking

bluedevil2k · a year ago

Like we see in California, when the government sets a price ceiling, insurance companies just leave. Same in Florida. If the free market truly was allowed run normally, the insurance rates in Pacific Palisades or on the Florida coast would be so high that no one could afford to live there. Is that a bad thing? If someone was living in a house near where they tested missiles, we'd call them crazy. At what point can we say the same about people building and rebuilding over and over in these disaster areas.

underwater · a year ago

Price caps always seem like such a transparent political move.

underwater commented on Why it took a long time to build that tiny link preview on Wikipedia (2018) medium.com/freely-sharing... · Posted by u/tosh

underwater · a year ago

I wonder why they didn’t do the obvious thing for a crowd sourced site and introduce a manual way to define this content.

CMS’s for news publishers have distinct fields for link title and thumbnail images (appearing on the linking page) and article title and hero images (appearing on the destination page).

This seems redundant until you consider that the context for linking pages and the article page are different. Having clean summaries for each page on Wikipedia seems like it would be useful in many places.

underwater commented on Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s apnews.com/article/austra... · Posted by u/asah

JeremyStinson · a year ago

To keep under 16s out, everyone over 16 needs to prove they are indeed over 16. It's like a nightclub/pub/bar - to get in, EVERYONE needs to prove their age, either with a real or fake ID.

IDs don't need to be collected and stored, but "reasonable steps" could mean that Meta, for example, may use services to verify a Driver's License or Passport number, or obtain a myID token that proves age.

How else do you keep kids out for their own safety?

underwater · a year ago

The legislation for social media and alcohol sales are completely different.

There is no expectation of “reasonable effort” to not selling alcohol to minors. It’s flat out illegal and heavily penalised. Nor is there a requirement for companies to find a way to sell alcohol to adults without asking for ID.

I get the concern you have, but you’re arguing against a scarecrow version of the legislation.

underwater commented on Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s apnews.com/article/austra... · Posted by u/asah

JeremyStinson · a year ago

That's the outcome of the law.

Think of it this way - how will YOU, specifically, prove you are actually over the age of 16 without having some proof of age object that is tied to your device(s) or usage patterns?

If a 15 year old will have to prove they're 16 to use a service, so will a 35 year old. It's not just the kids proving their age.

underwater · a year ago

The legislation is literally

> A provider of an age-restricted social media platform must take reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users having accounts with the age-restricted social media platform.

It doesn’t specifically require them to collect IDs. However it does say the opposite and that the site can only collect government ID or a digital ID information if:

> the provider provides alternative means [not involving IDs] for an individual to assure the provider that the individual is not an age-restricted user; and (b) those means are reasonable in the circumstances.

I’m not going to argue that the legislation is perfect. But it doesn’t actually do what most opponents are accusing it of doing.

underwater commented on Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s apnews.com/article/austra... · Posted by u/asah

JeremyStinson · a year ago

Just so it's clear - this new law will require everyone over 16 to provide proof-of-age, and thus identity, to use the most popular portions of the internet. Saving the children is the voter-acceptable way of getting it past public scrutiny, and paves the way for a national DigitalID that will be required by all citizens.

underwater · a year ago

Where does the legislation say that? My reading is that it specifically says that social networks have to provide an alternative verification mechanism that doesn’t rely on government ID.